Of Doing and Re-Doing Work, and of Hugs

So today in lab I realized at the end of shift that I have to start re-doing from scratch (or almost) the things I've done for the past two days.

It is not a nice feeling. But I realized that this is a feeling that I haven't been experiencing for quite some time (whereas in university it was something that I went through ALL the time for projects). So in a way I guess, I am very fortunate! Top it all with awesome team mates who help and encourage you to pull through. It makes everything OK, or more than OK.

It's PQ's last night shift today, then she'll be transferred to Tablet (which is another branch from my site, a bus ride away). I knew PQ through my orientation in Merck -  because then she was new too. I liked her as well as her sister - PQ was friendly, cute and happy; her sister was also kind and willing to talk to me. And when I was in new to the lab she was very helpful to me as well. Will miss her presence during handovers :(. But we might see her sometime or other during bus-waiting sessions or maybe during training sessions!

Will miss SJ too who's attached to our team for one month, and has boiled us barley water today. People can be so nice at work! And although there are always small things to grumble about - there's always tonnes and tonnes of things to be happy and thankful for. I love my job! And I'm really thankful for it because in a way I know that I only obtained this post circumstantially, or by grace. I love the things I learn, the things I do, the people I work with. The only sad thing is this shift timing is killing my social life (and maybe my health in the long run), so I don't see myself staying in the job for too many years.

Anyway with regards to the 'hugs' portion of the title. Apparently NUS now has this wonderful red can dispensing machine that looks a bit like a coke can except the words on it is 'Hug Me'. And if you do, a free coke drops out! Argh why don't people hug this machine all day. And why didn't they have it during our days in NUS, why why why? Of course if it's free I guess the cans are going to be super limited, so will have to go hug right before they top up... But it's a really awesome machine to exist especially right before exam and reading weeks!

Of Power, Of Love

Easter is drawing near.

Yet another reminder of how Christ died so that we may live, and live abundantly.

Yet how often do Christians forget, that the power that resurrected our Savior, is the very power we draw to win victories over sin in our lives. And how vast is that power is!

That love Christ had for us when He died for us on that cross, is the same love He has for us today when we go through our little struggles. And how deep is that love is!

I know there are many in this world who are struggling with the question 'why me', and 'why this'. I had a conversation with such a person just a few days ago. And there are many many more like him whom I talked to.

But why ask why? What can overcome you when there is the love of Christ there for you (if God is for you, who can be against you)? What can be 'bad' for you when God meant it for good? And if you love God, it is always for good, as Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

To be assured of power, to be assured of love - all these are evident by Christ's finished work on the cross. But if we feel insecure in our daily walk along life's road, how do we even reconcile this with the knowledge of Christ's saving love and grace on the cross? Why would a Christian fear? There is no need to fear, for there is nothing more fearful than being separated from the love of God, yet in this we are secure.

Therefore, if you're feeling downhearted and helpless today - turn your eyes upon Jesus, upon that cross where salvation came at the price of grace, and all these will become strangely dim.

M.Y.F Tampin

It's been some time (or maybe the first time - I'm not sure) I've blogged about my Youth Fellowship back in Tampin. Maybe because I've left that phase of life when I've been ministered to there, and have ministered to others there.

It's been close to 5 years in Singapore, and I've had CampNUS (or Campus Group) here. Campus which I learned, grew, and served in. Where I had my needs ministered to, where I had examples to look up to. And Y.F at home shrunk to just become a place I meet up with church friends every time I go home. It has become a place I visit, rather than one which I belong to.

But last weekend when I went back, there were just 5 people around, out of which only two are really regulars. And something pastor said really shook me up a bit. According to my teacher Hwan Lin, pastor had been preaching a series of sermons which ran along the theme of the church being a refuge. And when we were planning out the month's events for Y.F, and lamenting about the outflux of our church's youths from Tampin and from Y.F., I saw the need for me to become a part of this fellowship still wherever I went.

Yes it's true that I no longer really need to be ministered to by this fellowship. But in a way, my ministry is still needed! NOT only because of the people inside the fellowship (who are by the way, almost parched by discouragement), but MAINLY because there is still a youth population in Tampin.

How could I have forgotten (for years), the needs of this population unseen from inside the gates of the church? How could I have not remembered, that these youth too have spiritual needs like mine, and we need to prepare a place for them to meet those needs? How could I just look at our dwindling numbers and think the need is no longer there because the people are no longer around? And how could I belittle God's grace and mercy towards the youth in my hometown that I forget that they need a place to be ready for them when they come to Him?

And there are internal needs. The love for God's word among His youth in the church needs to grow. The love for people outside His kingdom needs to be instilled in their hearts. To serve not only responsibly, but with a Spirit of love. They need guidance and they need examples in us. These needs are neither to be forgotten nor belittled.

I pray that I would be able to support this fellowship again, in prayer and in works. And as God continues to reveal Himself and the works of His Spirit in my life, I pray that I will meet Him in ministering for this fellowship too. Please pray for us and with us.

As The Deer (Some Vague Sharing)

As the deer panteth for the water

So my soul longs after You

You alone are my heart's desire

And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield

To You alone may my spirit yield

You alone are my heart's desire

And I long to worship You

I was back diary reading the other day, and remember quite a number of Sundays ago how I was encouraged by this song based on Psalm 42:1 (which is surprisingly not as old as I thought it was, it was composed in 1981).

The lyrics are so short and repetitive but to me back then it held a wealth of meaning.

I was coming out to church that day from night shift and was fighting a series of not so nice thoughts that were hounding my head. I had kept on rationalizing myself to leave those thoughts as I travelled for an hour plus fro work to church. It was a tussle, and I sort of won, but it was the sort of victory soldiers get in a bloody battlefield - even if your side wins, you don't feel happy about it because the whole army has lost many good men and is in a bad state. Battered victory.

But when they sang this song at worship (on top of a nice thing that happened before that that really helped), I recovered. And I realized that how I recovered is in remembering how much strength I could draw from God, and this understanding came through the lyrics. "You alone are my heart's desire", "You alone are my strength, my shield". My heart's desire, my strength, my shield. He protects my desires, He protects my heart against evil.

And all a sudden it didn't hurt anymore. All that tiredness and heaviness was swept away, replaced by a balm of thankfulness, by just understanding who God really is, and what the relationship between us was like.

And I longed to worship Him.

The Next Step

Yesterday my supervisor remarked to my team leader that he is now viewing me as a senior, no longer a junior anymore in the lab. I don't know the exact, detailed implications of that, but I think it means more responsibilities, higher expectations, and less leniency over mistakes.

I've been in work for almost eight months now, and I guess it is high time I got out of the 'still learning and making forgivable mistakes' zone. In fact I was in this zone for a bit too long, which makes me a little too dependent on others. Not that I've been doing things wrongly, making grotesque mistakes or what; but my learning curve and my expectations towards myself has kind of plateaued. I've reached a nice comfort zone, and have more or less tried to stay there.

To be frank, it's nice to be thought of as a junior, and to be treated as one by supervisors and peers (partially because I'm a fresh grad and I err... look young). Expectations are low and easy to surpass. Little encouraging 'daily victories' are easy to achieve. And people are always looking out for you, checking on you, being more tolerant towards you. But yes - this easy way out is not for me. I'll never grow if expectations stay the same, although it would be more comfortable that way.

Yesterday night I did a quick gap analysis on things I know or don't know about my job, and realized that there are quite a number of areas which I am still not familiar with and could improve on further; just that I haven't put in effort to leave tasks that I'm doing fine in and venture into those unfamiliar areas. It's always nice to stick to safe, routine, work and do it quickly and accurately; but if I'm going to be depended on when there is say, only one or two persons in the shift, I need to do better than this.

I'm not really planning to stay in this shift pattern for too many years (hark quotes from doctors on how unhealthy our sleeping pattern is); but I want to stay at least enough to give back to the lab what I've been receiving from it: knowledge, training, encouragement, assurance and much more. I'm really sorry this can't be a long term job, because I've already grown attached to my responsibilities, and I've heard things could be much worse in other places. But now I'm here and at this stage of my life, I need to continue learning and improving.

Nice Weekend

Highlight of the week/month/whatever: Ah Boss proposed! Haha.

Was quite a nicely done affair. He made me get WMWMWM out of the way by meeting her up and shop after work. We told her it was a campus thing held in church building. And Boss even said to her that it was a 'campus agreement' to be formal. Thankfully she never suspected anything though she asked a host of difficult questions, which I answered rather vaguely.

So Boss aired a home made video with loads of friends inside (me not included, sadly), and proposed with flowers and a ring in front of the whole crowd of us - church friends and their mutual friends. :D Quite heartwarming, and while they were in bliss, we were busy discussing the process of the whole thing being pulled off. It took about a month plus to prepare. I must say Boss has quite a good eye for the diamond ring. He did loads of research too.

Have to hand it to WMWMWM for even attempting to think of ways to 'make it difficult' for him despite all this being sprung on to her as a surprise haha. I won't go into details but all I could say is if she knew he was proposing beforehand, Boss will never get the 'yes' as easily as that.

So this is another of my close friends getting engaged (and eventually married), and I'm really happy to witness the proposal. In fact this is the first and only proposal I've ever witnessed. It makes me feel like we're all really grown adults now - planning about money, housing, marriage etc. No kids in my plans though. Still have not changed my mind about that, and don't think I'll ever do.

Another thing is I just got my first ever performance bonus and pay increment! Although it's not really a lot as it has been pro-rated, it's still a significant amount of money. And it means I've advanced somewhat in my job. I'm really thankful for the improvements I've been showing lately, even though they are really small things such as speed in preparation and accuracy/consistency in analysis. It actually shows that I could be okay with hands-on testing (that I've been despairing over the first few months), and could actually achieve quite good results. :D A baby-step for many, but a mile-stone for me.

And finally, today I missed the last bus (didn't know it left so early) to work, and had to cab. However, it so happened that another colleague from the production plant missed it too, so I shared a cab with him. In the end he insisted in paying the full fare for the cab and would not let me pay him. It was both very nice and very embarrassing at the same time, considering it's the first time I've properly conversed with this guy. :S But it shows that there are nice people everywhere and I'm very thankful for their presence :)

I Cut My Hair

I suppose only girls blog about this kind of thing. Or guys if they've shaved themselves bald or something. Even vain guys won't blog about this. They'll just take lots of 360 degree pics and post them up on their Facebook walls.

So I'm blogging about this because I don't know what to blog about. Apparently my current hairdresser and her employee have very different ideas on what '2 inches shorter' means. The last time I cut which was around CNY had me coming out with my hair looking hardly any different from before, and my room mate had to be told that I've already had a haircut. She was asking me when I was going to cut my hair (as I had been rambling on about that for a very long time), and I told her that it has already been cut.

So this time, '2 inches shorter' meant the most unobservant among my friends could spot the fact that I just cut my hair some 30 - 50 meters away. I guess the thing that made it obvious was the extensive layering that was done to it. And after the cut was finished I could see mounds of my hair on the floor. So it's nominally shoulder length now, but curling up at the ends because it's a bit thin and layered. I feel weird about it, but every one else has been assuring me it looks OK. (And Jon prefers it this way.) And it makes me look years younger than before. I don't know how to feel about that as I'm already looking a bit too young for my age.

Hmm. There are two things that I've felt like I wanted to try doing to my hair but haven't the guts to do it yet.

1. Dye it

2. Curl it (a bit)

But so far I'm ok with straight middle-length hair so I guess I'll be sticking to my safety zone for a long time.

My Third Language

I've always considered Bahasa Melayu as my third language (or fourth, if you count Chinese and Cantonese as two separate languages). Don't ask me if my first language is English or Chinese. I can't answer that because I don't know. How do you define your first language? The one you talk the most in, write the most in, or think the most in? Or was it the very first language you learned to speak? I consider Cantonese not as my first language, but rather my native language, because it was the first language I used to make sense of the world. Ironically, I'm not a native Cantonese. I'm of Teochew lineage, but yet, I don't speak a word of Teochew.

Anyway, all that nonsensical charade aside - I consider Malay to be ranked bottom of my list amongst the languages I learned in terms of competency, fluency, and self identification. I never thought much of the language except as one I was forced to learn when I was young. During primary school days it was the bane of my life (at least for the first few years). Even Chinese (which I only started using properly in primary school) was not as bad, though they always say that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Maybe it was because I never used Malay day in and day out at that point of time, whereas Chinese and English were integrated with my daily life.

It was a bit better in secondary school when I finally found out how to properly grasp the 'laws of the language'. And it reached a point where I kept on scoring A's in my Malay essays in Form 5, and I really enjoyed essay writing in Malay because every time a new essay was assigned, I'll find ways to phrase my words that everything sounds nice and unique and grand. But my essay writing skills went downhill in Form 6, and my General Paper answers were more or less in spoken Malay, which means I write as what I speak, no nice terms and all.

Today my supervisor asked me if I could still converse in Malay (because he wasn't used to speaking it anymore, having spent many years in Singapore). I replied 'yes!' a little too animatedly, and at that point of time I rather surprised myself how much I cared about still being able to read and write in this language. In fact, although I have hardly been using Malay here in Singapore or even back home in Malaysia, hearing the language being used in public places such as fast food restaurants or MRTs reminds me that I used to be able to speak and write in this language too.

Sometimes I would even practice Malay to myself inside my head, and be surprised at the number of words I still remember. This is a little extreme, but having been out of practice for so long, I'm a little shy to use this language in public even with my Malay colleagues, so I could only practice it mentally on my own so that I do not completely lose touch of it. Somehow it means a lot to me that I can still connect to others in Malay: I don't know why, but perhaps it's because this is Singapore and I need this little connection to feel that I'm 'still a Malaysian'.

I still wish that one day, I would be able to sit down and write a proper essay in Malay that is of some use to the world. I could blog in the language, but somehow it doesn't feel natural to do so, as all the writing I used to do in Malay were fact-based and had nothing to do with sentiments at all.

Miss That Part of Life

I suddenly miss that part of life when I wake up to go for lectures, mug hard in the computer lab/c central library/ hall premises/ my room, play games in RH or visit people's rooms, and go out to eat and study in McD in the middle of the night.

The day in day out mugging wasn't that great, but I do love the little things that go along with it.

Work is all fine and dandy now, and despite whatever general complaints I see and hear, I like my job a lot; and I consider myself very fortunate to be in this job. I love the things I learn, like the things I do, and am excited about the things I will be doing.

But part of me wishes that i can return to school life - I wonder why.