when the pawn hits the conflicts

2010-01-01T20:16:00.002+08:00

got rid of my medals (which are plastic, they're plastic, they're plastic) to make bookshelf space

filing took me half a day

i try.

dialogical inquiry

2009-12-29T22:38:00.002+08:00

The good things I have done for the year 2009.

I quit my first job.

Bought a LX 3

Bought a Mac Book Pro

Became a BodyShop Member

Spent a lot more time with my grandparents

Became bolder on the piano and guitar

Stopped hating.

The things I want to accomplish in 2010.

Have all the love in the world in me (is that possible?)

Love You like I never knew I could.

Obey You because I always said I would, but I have not.

Listen.

Ride a motorbike (like a pro); if not in Singapore, at least in Nam Kem.

Not be bound to anything.

Live.

Next year I turn 25. It will go uphill from here.

you know something is wrong when

2009-12-15T21:42:00.003+08:00

i spend a thursday night at a book fair, till 10.30 pm, and come home with a little too many language books and tapes.
everyone in the house is now using an iphone
you see blue in singapore skies
i sleep, but do not dream
i stop taking notes while reading.
.....

you know something is right, when you're on the flight to Nam Khem in less than 48 hours.

11 Laws

2009-12-11T11:58:00.000+08:00

1) Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."
2) The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
3) Behavior will grow worse before it grows better.
4) The easy way out usually leads back in.
5) The cure can be worse than the disease.
6) Faster is slower.
7) Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
8) Small changes can produce big results...but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
9) You can have your cake and eat it too ---but not all at once.
10) Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
11) There is no blame.

3GS

2009-12-08T11:48:00.005+08:00

never thought the day would come where 3/4 of my most used gadgets come from Apple.

one lesson from this though, my friends - don't jump!

2009-12-07T00:47:00.000+08:00

i don't make wish lists

2009-12-05T22:36:00.002+08:00

but these are just too beautiful

get ready for 2010

2009-11-28T12:05:00.001+08:00

get an organizer

Nuance.

2009-11-13T18:56:00.003+08:00

"We are not ants. We are not so faithful, or so disciplined. We cannot continue with our work without some assurance of how it fits with other, larger things. Humans need a resonance. This can be an affirmation, or it can be a reasoned debate. But silence, the stonewall of stock replies in smug tones of "we know best", kills the human will to action. I realize this. Yet I am powerless to defy its gravity."

- This is not a reflection of how I'm currently feeling, but, a para that I extracted from Simon Tay's "City of Small Blessings". I've came across many sections in this book where he has been able to encapsulate many emotions I felt like I've experienced before.

city of small blessings

2009-11-04T20:53:00.002+08:00

kindness among those who know each other and deal with each other daily is another thing all together. it is a sun that rises each morning. logic tells us there are no guarantees. philosophers tell us to savor the moment, seize the day. yet something in each of us expects, expects it until we are no longer expectant, hopeful, and awed at sunrise. we only wake after too little sleep, when the sun is already up and the alarm startle us.

building a tribe

2009-10-29T20:53:00.004+08:00

today was sherry hour. i was told that i was sorely missed, and yes, i was nostalgic when i thought about the nice plush couches that we sit around for hours at end over wine and tiger beer.

incidentally, the institute also had its happy hour and it was nice and cozy. the Lord takes away, but the Lord gives. Gives. Gives.

i'm at a happy place right now, and I cannot be more thankful

john 3:30

first impressions

2009-10-22T21:22:00.006+08:00

The cubicle is equipped with a Herman Miller chair and Fridays are dress-down.

The supervisor is aus-chilled, bakes, very nurturing.

The visiting fellow cracks me up approximately 5 times a day, and refuses to believe that a dragonfruit is a fruit - more like a plastic hand grenade.

No quick conclusions, just first impressions. The place is not perfect – no place is – but at the core of this transition, I am excited about being in the centre of the research process; watching how it grows, how it works, what are the existential problems every researcher faces, get familiar with jargon.

Smile. Walk, walk, walk, walk. In the sun.

Declaration of Dependence.

Leaving

2009-10-09T00:43:00.008+08:00

I wanted to put this off as well (like the many other things I have procrastinated and not done in the past few months), but thankfully, several kind people, like Tiffany, have reminded the need to sit down and reflect on why the past 14 months happened. Because I am frankly quite disgusted with my sitting and not doing anything behavior, I will not procrastinate on this one, and will try, tonight.

I shall attempt to segment my reflection into four parts (i) Pull (ii) Push (iii) Factors that triggered the struggle (iv) Afterthoughts

Pull

What drew me to the Service? I've been retracing my steps, to the day where I had made that online application. What made me apply? After I got through the screening stage, it was one stage and another, until acceptance. I was accepted before graduation. The sense of relief was incredible - I could now go travel and not worry about searching. The 5 months in between knowing and starting, I had managed to provide reasons for myself; justify why this was a good thing. But these were my reasons. I was sucked in. Perhaps I never knew why I had applied at the first place.

Push

Entering, the learning curve was steep. Not only were there the ropes of bureaucracy to untangle in a harsh environment, it was adjusting to working life as a whole that tricked emotions. The transition year leaves you dry. That said, I was starting to learn, now, what I liked, and what I didn't like: in people, in myself, in the work I wanted to do. A process of elimination - is this what this stint is suppose to be, a list of strikeouts? It started to feel like it was going to be so.

Struggle

I am glad that when I left on 7 Oct 2009, it was on a good note. I wasn't running away, from anyone. The boss gave me a hug, and said that she would take me back in an instant if I ever wanted to return. The big boss said even funnier stuff, I will keep this to myself. The long parting conversations, the emails and notes that were coming in, the affirmations from leaders that I was a good officer and that it was a pity I was leaving -- gave me butterflies in my stomach cause it made me doubt my choice to depart for split seconds at each time. The colleagues and their tears that I could not reciprocate, because I just could not cry along with them, made me not regret my decision to be their trade unionist. The lunches, the dinners, the drinks. The struggle was two-fold. One, the knowledge that I was doing well and had the potential to continue to do well; two, the people.

After thoughts

You do not have to convince me that everything happens for a reason - I am sold. I would list down all the good things that came out from being here (of course, the number of not so nice things could match up on the list) but I will save it for a rainy day, tea at hand. The conclusion of the matter here is that I trust Romans 8:28. The immediate follow-up for me now is to internalize the lesson and be a better person. This was surely a deep trough in the pilgrim's progress but on the way out, so many flowers lined, I put some in my hair.

there is no more want

2009-10-03T20:47:00.007+08:00

i have the feeling as if i were dissolving

2009-09-18T09:06:00.006+08:00

After reading every possible review there has been about the movie and a 24 hour break in between, it only just struck me that the Abbie Cornish in Bright Star, is the Abbie Cornish in Somersault, the Aussie movie we watched and tore apart in class, that i raved about in Nov 2006 here.

I am really looking forward to watching this. Watch the trailer and check out the production scrapbook.

2009-09-17T13:53:00.000+08:00

could we do something similar?

2009-09-16T14:45:00.000+08:00

why not.

happy birthday and merry christmas

2009-09-12T22:47:00.004+08:00

everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

2009-09-12T00:16:00.002+08:00

Today i passed so many events, sights, scents and sounds, that reminded me of how blessed I am; many of us are. At the end of all those moments, I stopped in my tracks, (in the middle of an interchange), and was thankful. I still am thankful, for the really simple things. And, for the big things, I sometimes do not even know what to say. Excited for what is to come, everyday, from now.

One last time, before my trusty camera, that has been with me since '05, be replaced:

Pops celebrates his 56th

The second bookshelf runs out of space....

....for this heavyweight.

I got the last copy; new stock will hit shelves only in a few wks time.
I swear there were a few of them in Borders who gave me dirty stares when I was paying for the book at the cashiers.

play politics

2009-09-08T09:03:00.001+08:00

By Gary Wills, for NYTimes

1. Play to your strengths. Do not make random choices from a bewildering range of subjects for study. So far as you can, choose courses and write papers on topics where you already have (or think you will have) some interest, some knowledge, some enthusiasm. Do not fear that this will narrow you. The deeper you go into one thing, the more it connects you with other things.

2. Learn to write well. Most incoming college students, even the bright ones, do not do it and it hampers them in courses and in later life. Read what you write to a friend, and ask the friend to read it back to you. Lack of clarity, coherence or shape will leap out at you.

3. Read, read, read. Students ask me how to become a writer, and I ask them who is their favorite author. If they have none, they have no love of words.

4. Seek out the most intellectually adventurous of your fellow students. Some are shy around “brains,” but you have proximity to young minds as they are developing. That is a great opportunity. Take it.

5. Do not fear political activism. I was once at an event where a student asked Jimmy Carter how he, formerly the guardian of American law, felt years earlier when his freshman daughter was arrested at a protest against apartheid. He answered: “I cannot tell you how proud I was. If you young people cannot express your conscience now, when will you? Later you will have duties, jobs, families that make that harder. You will never be freer than now.” Also, among the activists, you are more likely to meet the intellectually adventurous people mentioned in the last item.

Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University, has been teaching since 1962.

macam faham

2009-09-05T15:24:00.004+08:00

the boys celebrated my birthday, belated, last night, at our recently established favourite hangout (circa Jan 2009). they got the cakes, came on their bikes, and sang selamat hari jadi. the boys are 20 now, and i find us moving from what-used-to-happen-in-school-types of conversations to dialogues about life and greater things. some things don't change though, like how their antics and the things they say make me laugh too much in three hours, and how we love to steal secret glances at each other before breaking into megawatt grins.

our next excursion, we're going bowling.

***

still raving

***

soon, i will walk away from all this, as it only brings out the worse in me.

***

life's what happening.

basic space

2009-09-03T17:52:00.004+08:00

presenting.....
the xx.

next big thing.
i'm hooked.

thanks RJ, my source of good musik, for the recommendation.

mazel tov!

2009-08-29T00:44:00.006+08:00

I trek back to the aug 28s of yesteryears: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and it is consistent - birthdays are never a big affair. I find it difficult to make it one. Why should everyone be nice to you on this one day in the calendar? Why can't we be nice to each other, all the time? Yea?

Consistently, birthdays have been a time where I actually isolate myself for a bit, and think about the year that has passed. This year i was blessed to have had 24 hours of alone time in Bangkok, before returning to a sick and pretty screwed up body that was not ready for any form of celebration. The alone time, I appreciated more, cause it helped me to make sense of why the year was what it was. Consistently, the retrospection always ends with pretty similar conclusions: I'm truly blessed.

So, even though I am not a fan of big celebrations, celebrations did still come this way, as undeserving as I am.

alone time in bangkok -- at an internet cafe after a morning stroll

with the girls at palais, after touching down.

morning surprise. the colleagues were so sweet. yes, that's me almost-crying.

this is a whole other story.

at our monthly brewerks, minus one, plus one.

snippet

2009-08-24T15:32:00.003+08:00

bets • lost of bets • margaret drive chicken rice • sugar cane with lemon • kay siang road • falling really sick • meds meds meds • seven pounds • forgiving, and holding back • zi yean and multiple celebrations • singing with a bad throat • ready to go • lots of lana cake • being happy in good weather • being happy in bad weather • rochor road tao hui • conversations with old friends • happy news • change • really wanting things to get better • birthday week looms • the week in sum.

aspirations.

2009-08-20T09:19:00.001+08:00

forty years. but never too late.
at least, now, we are looking at the words of our pledge, and asking the questions that matter.
let the dialogue continue.