ms sharon: "so... you guys have a Juris test this wednesday, right?"

All

Ya. *groan*

Ms Sharon

Isn't that exciting? *grins*

All

Har~~~ (being one with a dense mind, i really couldn't tell if she was serious)

Ms Sharon

And there's even better news - I'm marking your paper. *grins*

All

HAR~~~~ (we recall the 52%'s and 53% 's we got for the last essay we wrote for her class)

Wilber

Then we'll get 52% again! Traumatized already ah!

Ms Sharon

Oh no, this time you'll realize that the blood of human kindness runs through your lecturer's veins.

Seriously. That's what she said.

I like Ms Sharon. Haha!

Also, I realized that I'm like Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

I need a sarcasm sign.

Schedule for September 28 - October 3

Sept 28
9.00am -  Public International Law (PIL) tutorial
10.00am - Company Law tutorial
12.00 - 1.50pm - Italian class
2.00 - 4.00pm - Company lecture
4.00 - 6.00pm - Oral Skills for Law II
8.15pm - Bible Study

Sept 29
10.00am - PIL lecture
11.00am - Jurisprudence test
12.00pm - Type LSMUN certs & finish nametags
3.30pm - Go to Lee Hishammuddin

Sept 30
11.00am - Equity tutorial
12.00 - 1.50pm - Italian class
2.00 - 4.00pm - Equity lecture
5.15pm - Law Career Convention Marketing meeting

Oct 1
9.00am - 12.00pm - PIL tutorial
12.30pm - PKV + Collect nomination forms for AGM
8.00pm - PJGH Young Adults CG

Oct 2
? - Law Society Model United Nations thingy
8.00pm? - PJGH Youth Drama thingy (Chen Li designed the flyer! Whee!)

Oct 3
8.30am - PJGH
11.15am - Sunday School (I will go this time!)
1.00pm - Balik tunggu makan malam KFC bersama housemates. =D

And work on Banking assignment which will be due the next day.

Baaaa.

i said i don't like mosquitoes.

Not because I don't like them biting me (I don't like also lah actually), but because a mosquito once flew into sis' ear and it buzzed around in her ear for who knows how long.

(So I sleep with my hair over my ears)

Hooi Ping

Owh. Eee.

Jessica

Yer!

Esmond

Actually the mosquito can fly out the other ear what.


Also, I sat beside Wai Yan with the aim of telling her a lame joke and she asked me one instead:

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a fish?

my father’s world.

A couple of years ago I spent two weeks in Switzerland. Switzerland is known for its beautiful mountains. From my hotel room I could see some of these mountains.

One afternoon, as I was enjoying the beautiful view, a scary thought came to me.

I thought: What if?

What if all these mountains aren’t part of God’s world at all? What if this whole world isn’t God’s world at all? What if the whole world is actually the head of a big giant?

What if the grass the cows are eating on the mountain slopes isn’t grass at all, but hair – hair growing out of the head of a big giant?

What if those cows aren’t cows at all but lice living on the head of this big giant?

What if the mountains I’m looking at aren’t mountains at all, but bumps on the head of this giant?

What if some stars had fallen on this giant’s head so that now he has big bumps on it – bumps that are hurting badly?

And what if suddenly a giant hand would appear out of nowhere and start rubbing those bumps?

And what if, by rubbing those bumps, those hands would kill those cows and smash the hotel I’m in and kill everybody inside?

What if, I thought.

But then I thought:

That cannot be, for this is my Father’s world.

I’m not living on a giant’s head. I’m living in a world that God made.

- John Timmer, Once Upon A Time

Then he quoted the oft-neglected hymn:

This is my Father’s world:

Why should my heart be sad?

The Lord is King, let the heaven’s ring!

God reigns: Let the earth be glad.

I like John Timmer and his simplicity.

I picked this story because of Mark 8:17-21:

"Why are you talking about having no bread?

Do you still not see or understand?

Are your hearts hardened?

Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?

And don't you remember?

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,

how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"   

"Twelve," they replied.

"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,

how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"

      They answered, "Seven."

He said to them,

"Do you still not understand?"

Do you still not understand?

I like Jesus and His simplicity.

This world is messed up.

I could wish for another world, but that world would be messed up soon too.

We weren’t made to last in this world.

And the world wasn’t made to last.

But as imperfect as this world is,

It is my Father’s world.

That is sufficient.

before i turn in (my earliest in two weeks).

No matter how big our problems are,

Jesus Christ is bigger.

Faith is turning to our mountains

and telling them how big our God is.

The wait may be long,

the inconsistency unbearable,

but our day of rest can, 

and will come.

Based on the story of the leper in Mark 1:40-41 and the story of the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:21-24.

"Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean."

"I am willing. Be clean!"

"If You can do anything, take pity on us and help us."

"'If you can?' Everything is possible for him who believes."

"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

 

I sangat suka itu leper punya story.

I recently took an interest in the story of the desperate father.

"If You are willing"

"If You can"

He is always willing,

and He always can.

It is my unbelief that must give way.

Help me overcome my unbelief.

the dot.

The week was great until the dot happened on a Saturday evening.

I would write more, but there is work to be done.

I know when I'm angry, and I know how angry I can be.

You know all this too. I need you to put that knowledge into action before I do something we both regret.

You know who you are.

in case you missed this on facebook:

Amreeta

Guess what? I joined a pantun-writing competition in First College. Lousy pantun lah I wrote.

Tse Hwei

Ooooo let me try! Dayung sampan di Selat Melaka... Nelayan semua kacak-kacak belaka... then "merdeka!" for the last line, but I can't think of something for the third line.




Long story short, our end-product:

Dayung sampan di Selat Melaka,

Nelayan semua kacak-kacak belaka.

Ingin saya merompak mereka,

Untuk alih perhatian, saya melaung "Merdeka!"

- Amreeta Kaur Dhillon & Lim Tse Hwei -

You saw this first on Hwei's blog. =D 

Tse Hwei

It doesn't make sense. It's like, completely pembayang for all four lines.

louis sang:

"I'm not a boy, not yet a man."

Seriously. He did. Haha.

But that got me thinking as I drove home. 

I think it's easy to be a woman. 

It's easy to 'grow up' for those necessaries of life - the stress that needs to be handled, the youth in church who needs to be encouraged, the Bible Study that needs to be led, the concert that needs to be performed, the marketing call that needs to be made, the trip home that needs to be taken...

It's hard not to rush through childhood. 

Then suddenly, you realize you've rushed through it after all, and adulthood will last you a lifetime.

I remembered the time Seoks, Chiao Wern, Shae Lyn and I went on an all-girls outing and laughed the night away.

Then there was the time at PJGH's Young Adults CG when the girls went off to pray in that little room, and we giggled. I realized I hadn't giggled in a long time.

I was always Tse Hwei the pianist, Tse Hwei one of the youth leaders,  Tse Hwei the Christian, Tse Hwei the secretary, Tse Hwei the younger sister, Tse Hwei the older sister, Tse Hwei the lame, Tse Hwei the law student.

Somehow, I missed out on being Tse Hwei the girl.

The Rodents (Amreeta, Thulcy, Chelsea) and I are planning an all-rodents outing soon. 

I'm secretly (though now not secretly anymore la since it's written here) hoping to recover some of that lost girliness.

a head on a platter.

The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.”  

And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.”

She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?”

“The head of John the Baptist,” she answered.

At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her.  

So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.

- Mark 6:22-28

If my father gave me a wishlist, I know what would be at the top.

Also, "the girl"s mother left her father for the king. Cheap woman. Again, I say: CHEAP.

I'm sorry, I have no compassion for these people.

There's just no excuse for adultery. 

third parties.

Reading Seoks' blog reminded me of a conversation I had with someone not too long ago.

Someone asked me: "I like this girl. She has a boyfriend already. But that's not fair, because I knew her first, since secondary school. I can still go after her right?"

Because all's fair in love and war.

He didn't say that, but I could almost hear him say it.

I got very angry. Not at him but at the thought he entertained, which is the same thought so many people entertain these days.

I think that it's CRAP to bring up how long you've known a person, RUBBISH to use it as an excuse to justify the very wrong act of going after someone already attached to someone else.

I replied, 

"If YOU fell in love and didn't do anything about it, no matter how long you've known the girl, it's YOUR loss to bear, not her boyfriend's. How would YOU feel if someone did that to you and said what you said?"

All's fair in love and war? This must be the stupidest phrase in the world.

I dare you to look at the casualties around you in war and say that phrase again. Would 'fair' even be in your vocabulary?

There are some thoughts that will make me go mad with anger, and this is one of them. 

Don't try your luck.

“i want to go back to the way things were.”

 

And someone replied,

“You won’t want to be where you were. You want to be stronger, because you extended and experienced grace.”

The past isn’t a burden. It’s a part of me.

Not so much me, but a shadow of who I am now.

It’s hard to look back, harder still to talk about some things.

Because I’m in the Moving On phase, and I want to keep it that way.

But like this picture suggests,

I suppose carrying the past is part of moving on.

oh my.

"At best, we choose to be just only because the alternative is worse. If we could get away with injustice we would do so; what is to stop us, since it is bound to be preferable to be able to get what you want when you want it, regardless of consequences?"

- Peacock, A. Kent, "The Republic of Plato: Lectures", Spring 2005.


I found a friend in Plato.

He was as cynical as I am.

Maybe that's why I hate him so much. Hah.

(the Republic contained dialogues between Plato's teacher, Socrates, and other people, but I think my personal testimony, particularly this blog, will show me to be quite believable when I say that you really are what you note.)

the camp that was three weeks long.

Ok lah. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Just so you don’t get confused as you go along - the campers were divided into six chalets, each cared for by a pair of grandparents (either grandma-grandma or grandpa-grandma) and an aunt/uncle, and headed by a papa and mama. We had Grandma Eu Pui and Grandma Darshini in our chalet, but there was this one time we had Grandpa Michael too. For two days only la though.

 

 

The first night of camp, I saw this familiar shirt from far far away:

(compare)

 

Then it rained the day we were supposed to have our first Games Day, so we played indoor games instead. My chalet (Chalet 8 a.k.a. The Lapanites) decided to play Pictionary.

From left: Christina, Uncle Kenny, Grandma Eu Pui

 

My group won. Yay.

Also, me and my chalet-mates were supposed to tell everybody else in the chalet how we felt that everyday (for a week) through our mood forecasts on the wall. E.g.

(the purple thing on the left is a man in a coma with a tube running through his nose *bangga*)

 

Those who dubbed themselves ‘less artistically-inclined’ were more simple:

 

Others resorted to even simpler art:

 

Sometimes I received comments from others (like on Facebook):

 

On family matters, on the fourth day of camp, Uncle Kenny and one of the children (Choo Soon) tried to increase our daily allowance.

From left: Uncle Kenny, Papa Derek, Choo Soon

 

Also, a baby was born into the family!

 

No la. That’s Grandpa David and Grandma Lian Chui’s son la.

 

Anyway.

 

See, we have four meals a day, right? (breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper) Lunch and dinner were provided, but there was always room to improvise for breakfast. Some days we had fried rice:

 

Some days we had only bread and ice:

 

No la. That’s soap from the soap-carving workshop.

 

Anyway.

 

Uncle Kenny made pancakes for us once. =D

 

Oh ya, we went for outings too. The first one was to the Boh Tea plantation, where I heard one of the lamest things ever:

A: “Eh, here don’t have tea wan noe.”

B: “Har? Cannot be leh.”

A: “Really la.”

B: “How you know?”

A: “’Boh’ tea mah.”

(‘boh’ =  hokkien for ‘tak ada’)

 

The second outing was to Tanah Rata, where Grandma Eu Pui sat on a random motorcycle like it was hers.

 

The third outing was also to Tanah Rata, but we were supposed to try to hitch a ride there this time. And we did! At least some of us la. I managed to hitch a ride in Grandma Darshini’s car, if that counts. =.=

Ya, since I didn’t take a picture of the scones we had, here’s a picture of Ed trying to ber-jiwang with his bottle.

(the bottle was my substitute cuz according to Uncle Kenny, I looked like a bunny in the picture. like, a bottle is more photogenic than me? hahhhh~)

 

Anyway.

 

The highlight of each week was really the Camp Special. Three weeks meant three Camp Specials. Here’s a Camp Special #2 moment:

(John, the undisputed winner of Mad Hair Night with the cleaning gloves and banana skin on his head, later accompanied by a plant with four leaves like Doraemon’s helicopter thing)

 

Other stuff we did during camp (besides exchanging lameness with fellow lamers) was to give people unsolvable riddles like this one:

 

You’re supposed to connect each element to each triangle, meaning every triangle must have all three elements. BUT the lines must not intersect, and you cannot, say, draw a line through A and B to get fire to C. It sounds simple, right. But it got these guys thinking for quite some time, and one even fell asleep with the riddle in one hand and a pencil in the other. Ladida~

 

Ok lah, there was one guy who didn’t bother la.

(John: “After Camp Cam, I’m gonna be a chemist anyway, so these things don’t bother me. Yay!”)

 

We also danced.

 

And Thurston drew strawberries on people’s car windows.

 

Yeah. I had a good time in Camp Cam. But you know what? Even though they made camp even more memorable for me, I can do without those things – pictionary, lamehood, skits, and fun, even.

Because what made Camp Cam worth it for me was confronting what was happening in my life back then. Back then and now, actually.

Week One of Camp Cam was the week I was challenged to redeem my relationship with God and myself. What was there to redeem? I would’ve asked myself that a month before Camp Cam. But Week One saw me asking God “Why?”

Why? Why? Why?

Today, Wilber said that humans were made to ask “Why?”

If that is true, Week One was the week I was fully human.

I said before that in camp, I learned to doubt, then truly believe. It sounds nice when I put it this way. But when one is in doubt, one doesn’t doubt nicely. Doubt wasn’t just ‘why’, it was more “I don’t believe You.”

This doubt carried on to Week Two, where we were told to try to redeem our relationships with our families. Doubt became Blame - “If You could, why didn’t You?” and “If You can, why don’t You?”

By then I had begun to find that I couldn’t worship anymore. I began to be cynical towards songs that said, “I will soar with You above the storm”.

No, I don’t. I don’t want to soar.

Songs that easily said, “I offer my life to You.”

Do these people understand what it means to offer their lives? Do they understand what ‘life’ is? If we knew what life could be, we would not offer it so readily.

Songs that declared that “Jesus, I believe in You.”

I’m not sure anymore.

Then came Chapel in the middle of Week Two. Grandpa David gave us each a piece of paper, where we were supposed to write our struggles, our hurts, our hates, secret sins – anything that was holding us back. Then, when we were ready, and if we wanted to, we could go up to where two pots were -

One, where we could tear up that piece of paper and throw the pieces of our hurts into,

Another, where we would then take a nail.

“You can hold on to your chains, or you can surrender them to Christ, who was crucified for you.”

It took me a while. Like, I even considered waiting till the next day. But in a God-given moment, I realized the chains were too heavy to bear, and I tore my piece of paper.

As I’ve often said since then,

He chose the nails,

and so did I.

 

We were told to name this God, as personal as He had become to each of us. The name wasn’t hard to discover. I didn’t have a cool Jewish name of some sort for Him, but since then, He has become The God of Freedom.

Shortly after, Blame became Belief, Belief became Trust, and Trust became Faith.

And I found my voice again.

So if anyone should wonder if they should go for Camp Cameron in 2012, don’t even think about it. I’ll sign you up for it and forge your signature.

GO!!

disinterested.

i'm not interested in what they're doing / gonna do.

i don't really care anymore.

introduction to international law.

"60 years is a long time for vindication, but the world changed while they waited, and that is the point."

You lost the battle, but the world won the war, and the lawyers call it justice.

What is justice?

ku mahu.

Ku mahu cinta Yesus selamanya
Ku mahu cinta Yesus selamanya
Meskipun badai silih berganti dalam hidupku
Ku tetap cinta Yesus selamanya

Ya Abba Bapa, ini aku anak-Mu,
Layakkanlah seluruh hidupku,
Ya Abba Bapa, ini aku anak-Mu,
Pakailah sesuai dengan rencana-Mu.

it's the saddest thing,

how people leave Christ when they need Him most.

i was trying to decide between reading Mark and the Psalms for my Quiet Time series.

because i heard that nothing helps the soul more than poetical passages.

then i looked at the first chapter of Mark.

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

and i decided i'd read Mark.

i need to know Christ all over again.

because it's the saddest thing,

how people leave Christ when they need Him most.

and here -

a portion of what i take to be the English equivalent of the song above:

Through the storm I will hold on, Lord
And by faith I will walk on, Lord
Then I’ll see beyond my Calvary one day
And I will be complete in You.

besides "pedagogic"

...I also discussed some serious stuff with Amreeta in the library, i.e. the title of my project paper. To cut a long story short, this is the fruit of our labour:

Local Bloggerina: "Will I Get Caught If I Blog?"

Also, we discovered that we can talk like a good Italian speaking bad English, but not like a good Italian speaking Italian. 

A day of discoveries. Whee~

*edit*

Amreeta 

Or you could just name your project paper: "I Write, My Blog Speaks".

Hm. 

holiday-schmoliday.

-Me-

from choo soon.

"Never, never, never, never give up. Because God never gives up. 

What I've learned is

that I can only give up when God gives up on me and my family."

Slightly paraphrased, but his spirit and heart are preserved.


People seem to say great things when they need to.
I should take note of everything, then write a book one day.

My acknowledgments section will be, like, 5 pages long.

Ahaha.

if i had to write an essay now.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 

1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

Love is, love is.

Is love a thing, a decision, an emotion, or a person?

If love were a thing, it would not be able to rejoice.

If love were a decision, it would not be able to be angered.

If love were an emotion, it would not be able to protect.

If love were a person...

If love were a person...

There is no such person.

The Bible also says that God is love. (1 John 4:8) 

Is love, then, a standard unachievable by none but One?

If so, none of us are able to love. What then, do we mean when we tell each other, "I love you"? When man and woman stand before the altar, do they say, "I hereby vow to achieve the unattainable"?

Yesterday, I asked God if there is a painless love.

But without pain and hurt, there would be no need for love to be kind, or to keep no record of wrongs, or to persevere.

Aye, I do believe in love. It would be stupid of me to not believe in love. Because love, in its fullness, is perfect. It is we, man, who are unable to measure up to love's standards. 

I like how The Message interpreted verse seven of 1 Corinthian 13:

Love trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end. 

If imperfect beings could try for an imperfect love, this would be the imperfect love I would choose to have.


Abba Bapa, 
Apa yang  kelihatan mustahil bagiku,
Itu sangat mungkin bagi-Mu.
Anak-Mu tetap percaya. 

from sieh jin.

"The shadow proves the sunshine"

It's a song by Switchfoot, but it works well as a gentle reminder.

Thanks. =)