my house is

exceedingly abundantly above all i asked & thought. (and yay my internet is up! it came yesterday but i was waaay too tired to do anything but install it)

1. my flat is on southampton row in between russell square and holborn (fantastic area) and about 15min walk to school
2. my landlord is kenneth - my housemate, his mom bought the flat
3. i'm paying 80 pounds a week for a shared room - with utilities and food it'll probably come up to 120 max, which is less than hall fees last year
4. ken's mom handled everything - all the furnishing and decorating... and the house is super atas


so here's a tour of the house:

our front door (a bit harry potter-ish with the number of locks on the door)
walk in and turn left and you reach the living roomto the right of the living room is my room shared with soph... i think you can guess which side is mine... no prizes if you get it right - check out the differences man
if you turn right from the front door you see an uber long corridor
and our shoe cupboard - everything on the right is sophs! and none of those are mine =S
down the corridor a bit and to the left is kenneth's room
then chrissie's room
then there's more corridor

the main toilet on the right

and the kitchen on the left - check out our stockpile of asian cooking goodies
turn right and you hit hermit kingdom - ken and chrissie actually came home once and didn't realise that mr hermit was at home before going out again
the door at the end is mr hermit's room
and mr hermit is poor gordon with the smallest room in the house
and here's the hermit toilet, to the right of mr hermit's room

ohwell. living together has been really eventful.. 2 kitchen accidents liao
1. soph put a muffin in the microwave to heat up and smoked out the house
2. gordon opened the spaghetti packet and forgot he did and a lot of it ended up on the floor
well. among other things...

heh. i actually went around anointing all the rooms with oil on the second day... pray that we'll keep the house running smoothly and maintain peace in the household =)

i am alive

and internetless
and uk phoneless (can call my sg no. but pay international rates =S)
and have built 4 tables and 3 cupboard-rack-things
and i actually have to use the space under the bed for storage.

photos will come when i have internet and can slowly update without being kicked out of the com lab. yup. but the flat i'm in is nice and i'm super blessed to get to stay in it =). just annoyed cos i can't do all the admin things from home grawh.

oh and i broke in the kitchen cooking meat sauce pasta and broccoli in garlic & oyster sauce for 5 ppl =P

and school starts proper on monday! wahhhh

my new baby!

*drumroll* please welcome the newest addition to my family!

hahaha.. well.

CrossRoads Bijou 3... great sound for a small sum of $70 =D but... when i was trying stuff in the shop... there was this pair for $400... and i'm eyeing it... *drools*

in other news - i'm packing... and ironing... and packing... and i'll be flying 2330hrs tmr 19 sept - terminal 3 if you wanna send me off =)

hilarity

there was this guy on the train who was singing to himself...
james blunt - you're beautiful
the result?
horrendous...
can kill cheekuns (worse than angus)
worst thing was that his pitching sucked too... gah - i truly wished for earphones then.
to my amusement, he seemed to be truly confident and happy with his singing 0_o

...

yday was blading, then dinner with operations ppl at waraku
and the bowl sizes were hilarious... hehe. and they were served in order too! small to large.

sam's on the left, then karyong's on the right - when karyong's one was served we went 'woah' when daniel's one was served... 'WOAH'
of course - army jokes came from the army guys - *splash* what's your name? 'don't know' *splash* where's your ____ 'don't know... uh. sir... can you move to the right a bit, the beef is there' - LOL.

...

today @ an atas earphone shop
me (on the pair that renhao was trying): omg... the sound is damn nice...
shop uncle: haha you like it? get it then.
me: but it's $400... no moneyy
shop uncle: don't worry, it's okay... you'll be poor but happy!

...

and later i saw a guitar shop. the pictures are in the order of what caught my attention:

1. PINK guitars 0_o 2. home in for a closer look.
3. OMG... it's a POWERPUFF GUITAR4. what the heck... IT'S SOLD?!?!
and guess what it was hanging next to -_-"

wah

it seems... that going away is much more exciting than coming back. interesting

6 days more... i haven't packed... but my schedule seems to be becoming more and more packed. today's a pretty good example - 11-2 frisbee recee @ bugis(omg the variations were SOO FUNNY... someone PLEASE TAKE PHOTOS of the actual event!!!), 2-5 shower, have lunch, chill @ suntec, 5-8 games at the mind cafe @ purvis st (alot of slapping things and dropping things and citadel), 8-930 cheekun rice @ purvis st, 930ish-10 sitting in a 'voice driven car' (LOL i believed lor... cos i've actually heard of those before. cheat my feelings eph.. only the normal wheel controls)... then a walk from smu to plaza sing to catch the train home

time to defrost/ unchill and get into the mood of doing things again
gosh.

1. buy earphones
2. call cust services to suspend phone line
3. rip sermon cds & get the new hillsong album
4. buy chilli and pastes to bring over
5. do the alcohol inventory for parents
6. sort/ wash/ iron/ fold stuff to bring back & throw out some clothes
7. hang out with the ppl i'm not gonna see again for another 9 mths

yeah... more or less. lol.

jio me to go out hor! and if you're interested, i'm going blading on mon 5ish with various church ppl (mainly arrow ops/ rsm right now i think), text me/ give me a call if you're coming =D

one crabby patty please

once there was a little hermit crab... and a little child (who incidentally is of little consequence)

anyway. the little hermit crab was brought up to believe that everything in the world outside his rock pool was terribly scary - the world was full of seagulls which would eat him... so he stayed in his little rock pool, day after day after day - comfortable, content.


one day the little child picked up the little hermit crab - "mommy look what i found" - "put it back dear, don't kill the poor thing" - but the child didn't put the little hermit crab back into the right pool.

the little hermit crab felt it immediately... the water was colder, the currents were different, the air was strange.. and he was terrified. so he never ventured out of his shell... maybe a leg or two... or a feeler... or an eye was out at any one time - but he never really dared to come out.


but... the little hermit crab finally outgrew its shell and needed to emerge to get a new one.

tentatively. he stuck a feeler... then two... a leg.. then another and another. then suddenly as he was scuttling to his new house he realised - that the rock pool he was now in was not all that much different from the one he grew up in. sure - the waves felt colder, the air was different, but it was very much the same.

after all. he was still living on that same Solid Rock.

everyday thoughts

today i felt like a social misfit/ idiot/ imbecile/ hermit/ etc etc.
oh i dunno.. only about 4 times... maybe more.
then there were the 'oh crap' moments...
maybe a couple thousand and counting

what to do?
... ugh.
thank God - and i say this fervently - that i can't out-sin the grace of God

how to please a perfect God?
especially since the only way pleasing occurs is if you're perfect yourself..
impossible.

all the more amazing to realise that someone - Jesus - has paid... no. overpaid the price of perfection, that God now blesses me with the fruit of Jesus' perfection. amazing that His grace covers all my crap and know that as i behold Him more and more i'm being transformed from glory to glory and won't remain in the 'oh crap' place

fleeting

a glimpse of two men holding hands in the middle of a crowd
tenderly.

...

a smile.
"that's a good book you're reading"
from the lady over the counter

...

a stare from a child as i smiled at her.
*are you an alien?*
there was no ready smile back.

...

chocolate fondue is yummy.
i wonder how the candle heat works... convection conduction... radiation
yeah that's why fires are hot all around. mmm.
who came up with the word radiation anyway..? or conduction or convection...
some geeky scientist... maybe i can make a new word.
hm. emo is a relatively new word...

...

i feel more like me today =)

geeky things

highlight of the week: wednesday
lunch... and movie outing to watch wall-e.. dinner and house meeting (with a super assorted bunch of people)

it's amazing... that pixar can get us to watch a couple of hunks of metal with no dialogue for 1 hour and 38 minutes. okay, i admit. there's dialogue. but most of it goes 'waall-ee'... 'eeevvaaaaa' with various intonations and exclamations. the people who dream up things on pixar are just crazily good - who would've thought there'd be a movie about two robots falling in love?

aside from an interesting wednesday i've been moping around the house and working for the parents... and being geeky.

rubik's cube and sudoku... no life sia.
but i remembered someone saying rubik's cubes make pretty photos... so i tried it outlesson of the day week? i must be careful of distortion now that my camera has a wide angle lens. but man. i love the way i can be more or less closeup and still get a lot of background - will be fun taking this cam on holidays in europe =D.
after solving the cube somth like 20 times a day... no kick liao - but then i still don't really understand the last layer of the cube... still can't grasp it spatially. gah

paradim shift(s)

simplicity. whatever happened to it?

what happened to 'if you lend me your eraser i friend you!' days?
though it's probably a relief that 'you don't play with me i don't friend you' days are over... lol.
why can't those days still exist? we humans aren't that different after all.

what happened to the days where you 'didn't care' cos you knew your parents would take care of everything...?
why can't those days still exist? since Daddy God takes care of everything.

...

small pleasures - going swimming @ my grandma's condo

and speaking of my grandma... who is now a millionaire cos her old flat went en bloc... she happens to be illiterate... and never ever worked in her whole life - and God has always provided.

so blessed... i also want =)

...


and above all... Daddy was just reminding me that He was in charge.
even (especially.) of my $$$

a rather broke charity was calculating how many outings she could have... how many hours she'd have to work to buy a pair of good (not just decent) earphones and considering going for something cheap when she was presented with $400 as 'going away money' to wish her a safe trip to london and to 'encourage' her to study hard.

charity is no longer really broke - and is rather surprised that she isn't.