good tidings we bring...

i'm just back from egypt!

well actually one day ago... but hit oxford street immediately to check out boxing day sales XD
back with 12gb of photos... 1200 pounds less in my pocket... and unforgettable experiences

i've one week till i'm off to budapest - really gotta get some studying done... then school reopens and thesis writing begins... hurrah =S. this feels quite surreal... like december has disappeared without christmas coming.

anyway i promise to put up some photos before i'm off to budapest again =)

Isaiah 51:1-13

¹ “Listen to Me, you who follow after righteousness,
You who seek the LORD:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
And to the hole of the pit from which you were dug.
^.
.
.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
And look on the earth beneath.
For the heavens will vanish away like smoke,
The earth will grow old like a garment,
And those who dwell in it will die in like manner;
But My salvation will be forever,
And My righteousness will not be abolished.
⁷ “ Listen to Me, you who know righteousness,
You people in whose heart is My law:
Do not fear the reproach of men,
Nor be afraid of their insults.
⁸ For the moth will eat them up like a garment,
And the worm will eat them like wool;
But My righteousness will be forever,
And My salvation from generation to generation.”
.
.
.
¹² “ I, even I, am He who comforts you.
Who are you that you should be afraid
Of a man who will die,
And of the son of a man who will be made like grass?
¹³ And you forget the LORD your Maker,
Who stretched out the heavens
And laid the foundations of the earth;

raw emotion

the singing teacher pulled something out of me yesterday - amid the nerves ( cos i was singing to her for the first time)...

singing as an expression of the soul. i've always known that... but it never really sank in - or translated to the singing itself cos i'm just so afraid of sounding bad (which then causes me to sound bad cos i tense up and can't sing when i'm scared). i sounded so so so bad yesterday that i went home and cried... cos it was such a waste - and i absolutely hated myself at that moment for not producing what i knew i could... for not sounding as i should

and then it really hit me - that it isn't about me... that it's not about whether people will criticise me afterward (which definitely happens in singing class) but about having expression flow through me - and in context... having God express His love/ our wonder/ adoration through me

fear stops the talents that God has given us huh. i don't have a right to say 'i can't sing' cos God's given me a voice and pitching... and now the ability to harmonise

but this fear of man/ of making mistakes... God really has to remove it... cos He has given me so much - and not just the singing - that i can do with my life... that i can use for His glory that i don't dare to show cos i don't dare to be me/ tend to screw up under pressure. and therein lies the problem - cos it's not me who has to scrounge up the courage and do well under those circumstances but God has to be the one to do the work through me

end-of-term-syndrome

i didn't do any work today...

but i'm about 40 quid poorer
and 2 dresses and a shirt richer


yes. i actually own dresses now. (and one of them cost 5 pounds haha)

house-wife-y day

0930: wake up.. snooze...
1000: wake up proper, wash up, spend time with Daddy God
1045-1145: grab a bite for breakfast and clean kitchen
1145: run to chinatown in an attempt to get claypot rice paste... couldn't find it but got sushi-making-stuff instead =) and some nasi goreng paste haha
1230: run to sainsbury to get groceries & stuff for baking
1320: rush back to meet rachel to give lemon meringue pie tutorial (haha!)
no pic unfortunately... wasn't pretty cos the pie base was too small to hold everything and the meringue was spilling out oops. but it was quite yummy =D...
1500: short break while waiting for liz to come... watch the plumber do his thing (our toilet's leaking)
1520: liz appears... time to do red velvet cupcakes!
1600: oops... got distracted while mixing stuff. mixed butter and cake flour instead of butter and sugar -.-"
me - shall we throw it away?
liz - no! cannot waste food... do something with it!

therefore... i went searching for cinnamon roll recipes and we made bread haha.
"turd"! haha couldn't be bothered to make the end bit of the roll look nice =P
well... eventually got round to doing what we meant to do in the first place =P
1800: sometime in the middle multi-tasked and made dinner -> fake claypot rice
and ended the day off with dessert
2100: chillin & eating... and now down to work (which i haven't done all day oops.)

all in a days work. i should be a housewife. sigh.

hurhur

waking up 10 min before the start of lecture... running for lecture and being 10 min late... coming back after lecture after wondering if there's seminar and loitering outside the seminar room... buying & eating lunch... then k.o.-ing for the next 3 hours all make for an interesting day.

that said.
it's end of term! yay!
but therefore also a lot of work! boo!
so today i really really didn't wanna get out of bed...

awesome goodness

wow.
today i was so truly humbled by the goodness and greatness of God.

the story goes something like this -
one christian fellowship christmas outreach, very last minute planning, me doing sound (grabbed alvin to do projection). found out at the last minute that there were very many requirements for each item... that there wasn't a planned pre-event rehearsal, that no one had seen the place before, that the church venue we were using has a digital mixer that i'm not familiar with... and that somehow i was to be able to make them sound good and make things flow on the av side.

me = 0_0 and ='( with lack of preparation and help from people who also know sound and stuff

but at the end of the day, it worked... somehow... and during the altar call 3 people gave their lives to Jesus (from what i could see at least - not sure about feedback from the evangelism team)

and i felt just then that... wow... our abilities are that small... the event that disorganised and still God used us... blessed the event... and i really felt that the Holy Spirit was working in people's lives just then.

Daddy took care of all of it.
wow.

...

And once again I look upon the cross where You died
I'm humbled by Your mercy and I'm broken inside
Once again I thank You
Once again I pour out my life

regression

in stats... it's finding the best-fit line among a bunch of scatterpoints such that the sum of squares (from the line to each point) is minimised. and there are a bunch of ways to do it - but let's not go there.

in my life.. i suspect it's the act of going back to singapore.

which is a bit strange... cos singapore is home right? but i seem to shrink down into i-am-small-worthless-cannot-do-anything-for-myself mode and stop doing things... challenging myself etc etc. if that's not regression what is? haha.

well that's what's been happening in the two summers past. in all the going home and finding that i don't really fit into 'home' or the idea of it -- and trying to squeeze back into the box that makes all of us singaporean. hum. london lets the 'me' in me out... which makes me wonder whether i'll be able to keep that me even after going back to singapore for good. (graduation-blues... haha oops)

Lord... can you make me not-regress...? to not be bound by all the 'i cannot' and 'circumstances cannot' but to live only bound by You...

on the pretext of doing my essay readings

hilarious.

lemonade

why does life not throw you a lemon at a time instead of a bag at once? bags are heavy you know...

these are a few of my favourite things

1. good food with good company: jem and rach, foie gras, steak, creme brulee

2. stuff in the mail: especially when what's inside is cute.... my new babies =)
pray for my family... the implications of what i found out yesterday are overwhelming. truly 'oh shit'.

Berets and Baguettes: day3&4

man... all the exciting things happen around the same time and i can't keep up with blogging... anway. paris first.

Day 3
woke up early again (where i had even less sleep cos the jem snores and rach sleep talks and they take turns) and got on the train to Versailles... we gave the palace a miss cos it cost a lot to go in and we didn't think we could spare the time. bad call on hindsight (but it saved me 11 euros so i won't complain hehe)

mushrooms... yum.man if i had a faster focus and better reflexes...

took the train in a hurry back to central paris to see the catacombs... and of all the pathetic things to find...

fail. so we went to this huge graveyard instead. cannot see catacombs... substitute with gravestones... hmmm. anyway, some really famous french people were buried in that graveyard (it must cos a lot to be buried there cos the land is right smack in town centre/ tourist area). strangely enough the graves of the famous people were plain marble/ granite slabs when various others were amazingly elaborate

i would freak out if i saw this at night..

going traveling in a group of photographers would be amazing i think (esp if i had a dslr).. we stopped for something like 10 min to take photos of bright purple berries after we came out from the cemetery - mine didn't turn out as well as glen's (duh.) and then stopped for about 20 min taking pictures of a cute kid and waiting for some of the gals to use the bathroom.

Day 4
woke up not-so-early but i had spent the night talking to jem instead of sleeping after we played citadels. bah. so slept at 3ish and didn't get enough sleep. we took the metro back to notre dam to get ice-cream (for breakfast!). again i wished for better reflexes... i took pics of trains 7 times and this was the best one -.-". spotted a random grave on a wall... and got our ice-creams... which were really worth going back for *drool*

then it was off to the Louvre for many hours and many famous exhibits

exhibit A: charity trying to be a statueexhibit B: jeremy trying to be egyptiantourist failure #02. famous painting on loan... after we walked halfway around to get to the room 'it was in'
veggie man

then it was rush rush rush to Champs Elysees to get our souvenir macroons for people back home... and we alighted at this really dodgy station with a crooked sign =S. then rush rush rush back to hostel and grabbed dinner at a cheap jap place nearby... the food was amazing for the price... fresh slices of sashimi to end the paris experience (aside from the uneventful train ride home). man i hope there's jap food in heaven... escargot too...

i had a thought when i was anointing myself today...

God's physical temples in the old testament were always majestic... full of riches, glory, beautiful, awe-inspiring... etc etc.

and i've seen lots of european churches... and wondered at the amount of effort and money that went into building them

'I am the temple of the Holy Spirit'

I, the temple of God, have a body beautiful to behold... my life as the temple is awe-inspiring, full of riches. I reflect the light of His glory and people see the uniqueness that God has made me to be, the extent of His labour in creating me and the wonder of it all.

wow.

things 'to come'

1 “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold,
My Elect One in whom My soul delights!
I have put My Spirit upon Him;
He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.
2 He will not cry out, nor raise His voice,
Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.
3 A bruised reed He will not break,
And smoking flax He will not quench;
He will bring forth justice for truth.
4 He will not fail nor be discouraged,
Till He has established justice in the earth;
And the coastlands shall wait for His law.”

5 Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it,
Who gives breath to the people on it,
And spirit to those who walk on it:
6 “ I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness,
And will hold Your hand;
I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the Gentiles,
7 To open blind eyes,
To bring out prisoners from the prison,
Those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
8 I am the LORD, that is My name;
And My glory I will not give to another,
Nor My praise to carved images.
9 Behold, the former things have come to pass,
And new things I declare;
Before they spring forth I tell you of them.”

~Isaiah 42:1-9

no prizes for guessing who the 'Person coming' is =)


better yet... He's already come!
my Jesus rox.

What to do if you are type A (personality)

1. Every day, preferably while looking at yourself in a mirror, remind yourself that life is always unfinished. You are only finished when you are dead.
2. Begin in your leisure hours to listen to the conversation of other people. Stop trying to finish their sentences, never interrupt with such hurrying phrases as ‘yes, yes’, or ‘aha aha’, or ;I see, I see’ and an even better drill is to seek out a person who stutters and then deliberately remain tranquil.
3. Stop trying to think of more than one thing at a time. Remember that Einstein, when trying his shoelaces, when trying his shoelaces, thought chiefly about the bow.
4. If you see someone doing a job slower than you think you might do it, don’t interfere with him unless you are positive he can’t do the job at all. Remember that he is not suffering from ‘hurry sickness’ – you are.
5. Also, remember when faced by any task to ask yourself the following questions: Will this matter have any importance five years from now?Must I do this right now, or do I have enough time to think about the best way to accomplish it. Your established sense of time urgency will tend to make you believe that everything has to be done by yesterday. Asking questions like these brings things back into perspective.
6. It will be difficult for you ever to be a leader of men if you never say anything, but it will be impossible for you to be such a leader if you habitually utter nonsense. Make it part of your drill to ask yourself before you begin to speak: a) Do I really have anything important to say? b) Does anyone want to hear it? c) Is this the time to say it?
7. Tell yourself, at last once a day, that no enterprise ever failed because it was executed too slowly or too well.
8. Ask yourself, are good judgements and correct decisions best formulated under unhurried circumstances or under deadline pressures?
9. Whenever possible avoid making appointments at definite times. Admittedly, almost all work appointments must be made and kept at definite times but your eventual arrival time at home should be elastic. Remember, the more unnecessary deadlines you make for yourself, the worse your ‘hurry sickness’ becomes.
10. Carry reading matter with you whenever you go to the station, hairdressers or anywhere else where may be a delay so that being occupied, you won’t fret.
11. Try never to forget that if you fail to protect your allotment of time no one else will and the older you become, the more important this truth is.
12. Purposely, with a companion, frequent restaurants and theatres where you know there will be a period of waiting. If you and your companion cannot find enough to say to each other as you wait in a restaurant or theatre, then had both better seek a different companion.
13. Whenever you find yourself speeding up your car in order to get through an amber traffic light, penalise yourself by immediately turning right at the next corner, circle the block and approach the same signal light again.
14. Try to read books that demand not only your whole attention but also a certain amount of patience, such as Proust’s seven volume novel ‘ The remembrance of Things Past’ because the author needs several chapters to describe an event that most type A subjects would handle in a sentence or two.
15. Find periods each day during which you purposely seek total body relaxation and peace of mind.

Ah... Psychologists -.-"

Berets and Baguettes: day1&2

Day 1
took a hike from the train station in search of the hostel and found it about 20 min later (sleep deprived and all)... checked in, dumped bags and went off to our first touristy spot of the day - the Eiffel tower

super teenage ninja turtle u-glen

my first impression of Paris -- crap it's as gloomy as london... and so i asked Daddy God for some blue sky... just for a while to take photos with.. guess what happened =)
we went up the tower (climbed... and earned our lunch), came down and spotted this cute kid! btw i think the previous photo looks kinda obscene for some reason -.- maybe cos it's the 'iron lady'

ray of hope

and then came my blue sky! which lasted for about 5 min while we took the photos =D

went on to see Invalids, then walked to (and through) Champs-Élysées... found the famous macaroons from Laduree (yum. and really ex! 1.30 a piece!) and ended the day at Arc de Triomphe where we happened upon some commemorative ceremony... right place at the right time man... though glen probably disagrees cos we couldn't take nice photos - the place was just barricaded and the nice angles taken by camera crew =.=

Day 2
started off bright and early (with not enough sleep on my part) and headed down to Notre Dame de Paris. honestly. it looked like just another church on the inside (perhaps i've seen too many 'empty' buildings) but the gargoyles on the outside were amazingly lifelike. and the stairs to get to them were amazing too... painfully so.
next up was Musée d'Orsay with some funky (and kinky - but i didn't take photos) exhibits... and then a hike to The Panthéon where we didn't go in cos it was late, entrance fees disgusting and we were falling asleep on our feet. headed back to the hostel after that with much anticipation for dinner =)

hellooooooo anybody homeeee?oh i would so love to have this in my living room
tri-colour galore
tired travellers

we ended up nua-ing in the hotel instead of leaving to take a peek at the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on Montmarte (where we were staying)... which resulted in an interestingly stressful experience for me navigating down the hill to the dinner restaurant in as short a time as possible and finding that about 50% of the roads that were on the hill weren't marked on the tourist map. fun.

view from the hill

Dinner was an atas 3 course 31 euro affair at Bistrot des Vignes... well worth the money...

kir and wine
through a looking wine glass
1st course: Rabbit pate with prune and porto jelly
2nd course: Duck fillet in calvados sauce and mashed potatoes
3rd course: Homemade baba with St James rum
and dessert coffee =)

On the walk back to the hostel to work off the calories, we walked through the montmarte district proper. Paris wins the London red-light-district hands down... sex shops on a main road? no problem... gosh. and so we ended the touristy part of the day with glen using rach's head as a tripod - awesome innit?