The extra push

This is Jon's favorite image on motivation:

How best to motivate oneself? To race after timelines closing in as the number of weeks increase, and the time to finish work decrease. It's very easy to get motivated if you set a nice (tight) timetable with closing deadlines to show how little time you have left. Push yourself further by comparing yourself against classmates who have done this or that on top of gazillion things, sent out a thousand resume's and is progressing leaps and bounds in a project that you're falling behind in.

It is very easy to get motivated to meet urgent needs; to work, to eat, to splurge. But sometimes it is not easy to get motivated to love others, to grow one's self spiritually, to serve; unless you love God enough. Indeed urgent timelines and sinful pleasures crowd out the Christian's capability to love God and others.

My teacher posted up an interesting status on her wall: Would you give up relationships for dreams? Those who are ambitious and have high spirits, said yes. Those who have people at heart, said no. Me? If giving up a relationship means to stop loving, stop contacting, and stop being concerned about people, my answer is no. Although sometimes it's a challenge, but my principles say no. But if it means giving up space in terms of distance - maybe yes. Depends on what dream you're chasing - is it God's dream?

A dream that may not prosper one materialistically, it might not even feed your ego. But any dream outside the will of God is futile. No one dreams of working in some unknown place for others who reject them, unless by the will and strength of God. No one dreams of battling cancer so that others may see how strong or weak they are inside, unless by the will of God. No parent dreams of bringing up a rebellious kid, to pierce their own hearts, even though just to watch him change one day. However, any dream held for one's own is futile. For men may well plan, but the best of plans may fail.

This is the point of time where I think much about my career, and whom I aspire to be at least in the next five years. As I plan, I need very much to remember whichever road I walk on, I want it to be one that I glorify God in. I don't want to live the next decades raking in $$ just to cover loans and expenses, take leave to go for trips, and then just let my youth fade worthlessly in some unknown workplace.

Let the next place where my career continues be a place where I can make a difference. And most importantly, let God be my biggest motivation.

Thought-Processing

I realize that I have fewer blog posts than before. That's because I have little blank spaces of time to write them down, and whatever pockets of time I have, I spend it processing my thoughts instead. Which means I have a blog post out and ready, but only in my mind. And once it's there, I think there's no need for it to be anywhere else.

This might be a good thing or bad thing. Which means only unprocessed, or half-processed thoughts come here (like this one). And it means that emotions here are not completely raw. Not that it has often been anyway. But many times my thoughts are random, and they just come.

There were things I wanted to write in detail about this week. Like the last handball match I watched. Like preparing for Career Fair. Struggling with project work, and The Review Paper. Like how I handled my emotions when they were too overwhelming. Like how I liked the content for last week's Bible study despite my doziness due to coffee withdrawal.

But they were all processed and kept in the store room. I guess it will be sometime, or some other stimulus that will cause me to draw them out again.

I want to go CNY shopping! Like I want a new (cheap) top or something that looks presentable for CNY instead of recycling all my clothes almost every time I go home. But then, that has to give way to other tasks of high priority. Sigh. Hopefully the bazaar in the central forum has some good deals these two weeks.

My last Week 2 in NUS

It has been a very busy week, and I'm anticipating more it to be worse next week due to multiple conflicting demands.

Design project planning and execution has been going on in full blast. None of the project mates I have now had I worked with before, though I know Anna and Jillian quite well from MSD. However, we are getting along quite well, and I hope we will be close by the time the project is over. I think I like all of them :)

The paper Mei and I have been working on for Prof Lee is hopefully going to be over soon. Thank God for Bevan being really considerate and understanding, saying that he'll forward our workload concerns to Prof. Lee. I like Bevan because he is not just someone who wants results, he cares about what we're doing at school and bothers to chat with us too. And Prof. Lee has been very understanding as well throughout the past year.

Other modules are kind of being side-lined at the moment, except for graded tutorial-preparation. Hope mid terms are not too cruel on us final years. I'm sort of arranging CNY songs on Sibelius for Andrew. It has been some time since I did song arranging, but it's fun! :) Other things to be busy about include preparing for Career Fair and the never-ending job-hunt. Hopefully I get to survive next week!

More Youtube songs!

I like how the composition method of this form! Not easy to write something for one guy to 'duet' with three girls leh. And if your name is Mable Lee, and you're reading this - you might or might not know, but that guy is the first runner up from that particular year of 超级星光大道! And his singing is actually quite good (towards the end). You might want to Youtube some of his songs too.

And this is one of the series of M-girls CNY songs I was talking about. I was more interested in the dresses they had than the singing though - they are pretty unique. And I like the way they do up their hair when they are wearing the traditional costumes! Quite different from the type they do on TV. Quite a nice watch. I have forgotten most of those CNY songs already - but I guess I will copy this for our CME CNY performance. Now the challenge is getting those parts written out!