Falling Leaves Return to Roots :)

Came across this song just now when randomly following a Wang Lee Hom playlist. It's quite an old song by now but it still sounds nice :) I like the nice autumn feeling it gives. I played it before last year for CME during Mid-Autumn festival and it was a nice song to play (although it was in A flat major which was the horrible part). I was lazy to listen to it too many times and did not follow the improvisation exactly though. Still I'm pretty sure the important parts were there. :p And ohhh I did powerpoint slides for the performance, which was the only time CME performed with powerpoint slides ^_^

Wabbit year was pretty peaceful with minimal outings and visits from a very antisocial me. :p But I got A LOT of piano time which was great as I have hardly touched the piano at RH at all, and this is going to be my final semester with a piano around :(.

Give Thanks

It is amazing that how God wants me to learn how to give thanks to Him in this particularly difficult week.

When I accepted Annie's Thanksgiving Challenge, I thought it would not be a hard thing to do. The next day I was hit by bouts of headache and fever. It was not too bad, but it wrecked my whole mood, and my whole ability to study, which is quite crucial now as I still couldn't get my Design Project simulation running.

Today the fever subsided but the natural phenomenon that happens once a month to ladies (before a certain age), deterred my ability to stand for long hours and made me very uncomfortable throughout today's career fair. Thankfully I more or less managed to note all the booths I wanted to see.

Yet I won't say this week is at rock-bottom stage because many, many nice things happened; and people were really understanding about my physical state and kept asking me to rest more. Jon did all he could to make me get better. Tirza has been urging me to sleep more (I slept A LOT yesterday + today!) The dinner Andrew cooked was beyond awesome too. And the 3 in 1 birthday celebration was worth staying up for :)

I know in the future there are most certainly worse days than this, but the more things turn downhill, the more we must learn to give thanks. Because if this is what God has mapped out, it can be nothing else but the best.

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.