Christmas week, and many other things

I still remember this year's Easter message, pastor remarked that many people enjoy and look forward to Christmas ever year. The decorations, the small baby in the cradle, the giving and the joy. Yet no where in the Bible were we asked to remember or celebrate the birth of Christ. But Jesus, in the last supper, did ask his disciples to always remember his death. The body broken, the blood that flowed - his death to complete the work of salvation.

This messaged stayed in my mind for more than half the year, and somehow changed my outlook of Christmas. Christmas, as commercialized as it is, does in a way, draw people to pause and ponder its true meaning. Why the babe, the wise-men, the shepherds, the stars, the lowly birth in the manger, angels heralding His birth. Everyone loves the baby, loves the joyous birth, and somehow it is so hard to connect that this babe, Christ, would grow up to walk the path of the suffering, to be nailed on the cross to bear the sins of the world. Somehow Christmas and Easter become two very differently themed occasions, when they should be in a way, one and the same.

While Christmas is filled with church activities, carols, programmes, gifts and reunion dinners, this year I learned that salvation is the focus of Christ's coming, and it should be the thing I focus on. Instead of the night of Christ's birth itself, to remember why He came, and how this has become personal to me.

On a separate note, due to certain complicated changes that arose most last minutely, next semester, I'll be doing my FYP (Final Year Project), and will postpone my industrial attachment plans to Semester 7 in July instead. On one hand, I look forward to taking more modules this semester, especially since I have the freedom to choose most of them. On the other hand, I am a bit worried about doing FYP this early, but I guess I'll just have to make that up with putting in extra work and research.

Exam results were out yesterday, and they were exactly the same as what I had been experiencing semester after semester. I can't tell how numbed my feelings were towards them already. Learning is indeed a journey to be enjoyed, but still, people do have to be evaluated at the very end of the journey. My family remained supportive regardless of the fact that my performance was really 'below average' all the time. Coming into NUS has really been an adventure that had awakened myself to come to the awareness of where I really stand in a competitive academic society. It is painful to realize that you will always stay that way because you don't learn as fast, because your passion doesn't match up with others, and because you don't put in as much as you really should.

There is a limit for everyone, and I don't think I've stretched myself as far as I really should. There is always room to push oneself further, but with what consequences? I always wanted to be a high achiever in academics, and given another chance to start over in NUS, I believe I would have done things differently, worked harder and pushed myself to the max. But as it is, even with what I'm currently putting in, I'm compromising a whole lot of things just to study harder, and it would be dangerous to compromise further and lose myself. For what it is for man to gain the world, and lose his soul?

Nevertheless, a new semester is ahead, for me to strive harder and learn more before I leave university and enter the working world. And I believe, as always, God's grace is sufficient for me, and that is always enough for me to carry on.

First Holiday Post

Holidays have started so long ago and now's my first post since. LOL. I'm really a lazy blogger nowadays.

Simon drove Jon and I back to Malaysia - he was going down KL with Geri. The night before that was the best packing cum moving experience ever. I was searching for my lost ringgit somewhere among my haphazardly packed stuff, and by the time I was back to sealing boxes, Jon and Jerome had practically moved all my stuff from my room, and Tirza's things too. They were so quick that my sealing the boxes became the limiting factor! Thanks to them I hardly had to move anything at all. After arriving at Malaysia and doing some shopping for campus group, I stayed in Jon's house for a day and now I'm back home. Walked around Jusco in Seremban. Was really tired those few days so I didn't really want to walk around too much.

I'm supposed to do translating this Sunday but my Chinese is really dead this time round. This is what happens when you speak English like almost all the time in Singapore. I even speak English to Yew Hong half the time now! And the Chinese I speak is so conversational that I can hardly string a proper sentence together after looking at Pastor's notes. Thankfully my dad got those notes home earlier so I had some time to prepare. Unfortunately this week's sermon is rather technical, so it's going to be quite a challenge.

My aunt's family is here to stay at my grandparent's home in from Adelaide. My cousins are quite grown up now and conversations can be kind of awkward as all of us haven't seen each other for quite a long time, and our social background is really different by now. Hence, we were thinking of playing Monopoly to bridge the social gap, but I wonder if that's really going to be effective. With my slightly increased knowledge of existing board games, I do know that Monopoly is nowhere as exciting as Citadels and the likes of it. Hope they are not frequent visitors of board game cafes. The games in my house are more word-themed. Otherwise, the ever-versatile pack of cards would have to be the only other alternative.

Speaking of board games, to people who know that I like to play Bang! which is extinct from the shelves of Singapore shops, I just found out from XJ that it is actually sold in KL. However, I suppose I should forget on ever purchasing that for myself. It's a hefty RM 55 which can easily buy me two dresses or nice skirts or something like that at the right places. (Please don't get the wrong idea buy it for me either. I'm not hinting for a Christmas present! Even if I own it I would need at least 4 other people to play with me, which is harder to get than the game itself.)

Many other things happened besides. XJ came down to visit. I still can't bug Mable to start studying - nor start writing the Phoenix articles myself. I'd have to force myself to sit down and do it these few days. :S And I just found out that one of my project group mates last year is going to the same IA company as I am. Which would make it a much better experience, I feel, with someone I know around. I'm having trouble deciding which electives to take next year though. It's like indirectly trying to choose a major - and things would be much less complicated if I do not have to try and predict how positively skewed the bell-curves of each module would be, and whether I'll have time to take up a heavily project based module or not. All these are matters of life and death.

I know learning should be the utmost priority of every student and somehow I'm still struggling to make it so. This kiasu culture is not good for me. However, working in a company should be kind of a new start, and I do hope that I'd be able to learn much and enjoy doing so. :)

More holiday posts to come, hopefully!

Exams are over :)

Exams are over! But I hope I won't get too much of a heart attack after seeing the results. The lecturers were really out to kill this time, and there were many laments of this nature across the whole cohort. Will trust God to keep me whatever the results!

I'm going back tomorrow - Simon's going down KL with Geri so he's fetching me and Jon along too, and he'll send us back home after that. Which means I won't have to be stuck in the train for like 5 hours or so (although a KL trip is longer but it's just a day trip). Thank God for Simon! Luckily I have some ringgit stashed away for use.

Packing the room is so not fun :( Although I could have finished in a very short time I took twice (or thrice) as long then I usually would. And thanks to hall events my t-shirts are multiplying as the years go by. I will have to move all of them and Tirza's things too in the middle of the night or something as today's schedule is packed full. I have a shopping mission (yes it's a mission as well as a leisure), a piano therapy date and Bible study at night.

I'll be having a coffee-free month for now unless I suddenly end up in Starbucks or Coffee been for some unkown reason. I always have anti-coffee roomies! Don't worry Tirza, I haven't been drinking much even during exam period. Been relying on pure excitement and stress to keep my eyes open, mostly.

Holiday plans include
1. Tutoring an SPM student. Muahaha.
2. Joining church Christmas events + serving in church.
3. Going back to SG for company orientation.
4. Trying to come up with an creative something - either song or a short short musical that I'm going to attempt to write myself for fun. So whoever reads this please don't think of asking me to craft anything serious k.
5. Playing piano playing piano playing piano.
6. Slacking +doing miscellaneous stuff at home.
7. Planning my electives.
8. Writing Phoenix articles!!! And I have a writers block once exams are over. Will bombard the people I want to interview with emails by next week.

Actually I have more things to say but I'm going out already. Will contiunue later.

Celebrating Daylight

It was 6 something in the morning and it was just so delightful when I took a walk to Cheers when everything was quiet and peaceful in Raffles Hall. Most residents were still asleep and the atmosphere of a sleeping NUS around the YIH area was so serene. But a few hours after that there will be noise and queues, the buses will start operating and a life of intense mugging will start.

On the way back to my room.

You can't see the sun but the clouds show you it's there through their colors :)

You can't see God but nature shows you He's there and has orchestrated their beauty.

This is not so pretty but it's a view from my room and I like it because it's my favorite room! The ground is empty because renovations killed all the grass but they will grow soon! The blocks on the right are still being renovated.

I realize that the main reason why I can actually start enjoying this morning when I'm not Wing Mei or any other 'nature-loving' person, but is that I don't have exams today. Pathetic reason, I know. But when I have a stressful papers coming up in just a few hours, daybreak after mugging through the night is really not very welcome because it means I have less time to cover whatever I need to cover. And it's the time I start feeling really tired.

My exams are not over yet. One paper down, three more to go next Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Then Tirza told me yesterday, that Simon told her Wayne's going back to Hong Kong on the 30th (next Monday). He asked me and the other campus people out for dinner last night quite a number of days before but I turned down the invitation because I had very limited time to mug for exams, and I didn't know he was going back HK for good so soon! Fortunately I got the news early enough and actually took quite long to decide whether to go or not because my revision progress was terribly slow and anything might potentially make me go a letter grade down or more in exams. In the end I decided to go, and went. In fact I felt terrible even considering not going even after knowing that I won't be seeing Wayne again (till someone get's married, he promised to come back to Singapore if any one of us got married). What in the world has exams turned me into, even considering not saying farewell to a friend (and Yeh Yeh!) for the last time! Horrible.

It was a fun night out and Simon and Jiun Ming were very kind because Simon fetched us to Sakae Sushi in Marina Bay for that farewell dinner, and JM fetched us back. :D They are always generous with their time and petrol! Pictures of the farewell dinner will be up after exams. In fact I didn't take too many because I saw Wayne brought his own camera and I got lazy. I wish he didn't have to go back HK though because I miss him already! Maybe it's because I know I won't be seeing him again (till someone gets married) and also we're both from the Lee family (although his is 'Li' in Chinese it's the same) and I call him Yeh Yeh, and I still owe him ice-cream for his birthday! Wayne, if you're reading this I'll treat you ice-cream if you come for Friday BS before going home. Or after you come back to Singapore again one day.

I was in JM's car on the way home and was so tired I was nodding away on the way back. Still as we passed by the city area I saw all the lights and then again thought that Singapore would be such a lovely place if it was not all about meritocracy and stress. The daybreak today was so nice, the environment so peaceful and green, the city was clean and beautiful. It would be so perfect, as it even seems now when I'm a student and not yet exposed to the stress in the working world. Even taking exams as a student has distorted me so much. How much more will I change after I work?

Somehow my thoughts remind me about this all-famous story about peace:

Years ago a major art gallery sponsored a competition for painters. They were offering prizes for the best painting on the subject of "Peace." As attenders browsed through the entries, most had decided that a one certain painting was almost sure to win. It portrayed this lush green pasture under a vivid blue sky, with the cows grazing lazily and a little boy walking through the grass with his fishing pole over his shoulder. It really made you feel peaceful. But it came in second. The painting that won was a real surprise. The scene was the ocean in a violent storm. The sky was ominous, the lightning was cutting across the sky, and the waves were crashing into the rock walls of the cliffs by the shore. No peace. But you had to look twice to understand what was going on. There, about halfway up the cliff, was a birds' nest, tucked into a tiny hollow in the rock. A mother bird was sitting on that nest - with her little babies, tucked underneath her, sleeping soundly. That was peace!

True peace - is not walking under the daybreak sunlight knowing that there are no exams today. Real peace is walking into the exam hall knowing that I've done all I could and God is holding my hand. Real peace is not fretting over results when exams are over, not fretting over job search after I graduate, knowing I've done all I can and God takes care of my future, only providing the best for me. Peace is knowing that even in Singapore, I can take time to enjoy daybreaks and sunsets, because each today is a gift, and tomorrow is well taken-care of and provided for.

Ahh! I have so much to learn! I need more faith. Open my eyes and let me see, Lord. Let me see and acknowledge there's the sun behind the clouds and the Lord behind the nature I behold penerates and guides over every little detail of my life for His glory.