work day 3

Forgot to update some very interesting stuffs,
the male staff toilet at my workplace alone had....24 posters!!
That is like totally excessively "motivational"!
E.g 1: Keep the Faith
If you don't see the stars twinkle at night,
it doesn't mean they are not there.
They're just hidden behind the clouds and you will surely see them...
E.g 2: We aim to please, you aim too please!

Am still physically adapting to the working hours.

I wish you were here to answer my numerous questions.

hugged

I went for witnessing day 2 days back, managed to invite my friend, zheng guang for the english evangelistic meeting and am very thankful for that =)
His original intention to not to go and just go out with his friends for a chrismas meet up, but in the end he changed his mind and was willing to take some time off to listen to the worthwhile message of the gospel =)
I went everywhere else after the english evangelistic meeting haha, went over to the chinese side as well, made friends with chai's friend, yiyi. Had a couple of interesting conversations back there haha.
Then I went downstairs to the SSH to join those who went for tracting and chatted with them over fruits.

Feng Hua's mum is really humourous! [the following is a rough outline of the content of the conversation]
Her: Come eat more fruits, there's a lot of leftovers! (in hokkien)
Me: Wow, so much? Cannot la, we are already very full! (in hokkien)
Her: Must eat! Qizhi you wanna bring some back? (in hokkien)
Phls: Why don't you wanna eat it? (in hokkien)
Her: wa im si te bu! [I'm not a sow]
LOL LOL LOL
Funny logic that eating fruits like oranges is fattening hahaha.

Started wory yesterday, very thankful that I have this opportunity to work and through it, continue to learn how to learn. I have an excellent boss, uncle thian chew whom I address as Mr Thiang. He was really patient and meticulous in teaching me, guiding me along and took real good care of me. Guess thats the privilege and blessing of having a brother in christ as a working partner! He just makes me feel so warm, a warmth that I have not felt in quite a long time.
Had a headache and felt nauseous after work though, it was quite terrible and persistent cause I just could not get the tight-up-feeling off..so I took uncle kenny's advice that sleep was hte best medicine. I went to sleep but still I felt uncomfortable, then I prayed and God listened to my innermost plea not only for my physical discomfort but also for mental and spiritual protection against the many thoughts the devil were assaulting me with at that time. He heard!
I asked Him to hug me and He really did. Realised later that I received 8 replies..wow unprecedented.
Ah, wonderful prayer, so real, so tangible.
Psalm 18:2
The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Psalm 3:4
To the LORD I cry aloud,
and he answers me from his holy hill.

work!

I got a part time job yesterday :)

Working in a sch as an admin staff, first time working though..

Money comes into play.

Hmm...

I'm so going to blanja those who have forcefully blanja-ed me and many more=P

brother who never fails to amuse and surprise

From _ _ _ _   _ _

10:47am

Hong En, i'm very bored.

10:52am

...now doing area cleaning..so bo liao..even window also muz clean..now nothing to clean..stoning

10:55am

...everyday rice..very sian..

11:00am

Haix..dont noe when can come out..hope its TMR! Haha..

11:05am

...havent cfm

hahaha, army sounds really boring!

Chasing after the wind

I was removing the stuff from my old cupboard in preparation for the moving in of the new just now, digged up quite a lot of old books, photos, notes, medals, certs etc.

It just suddenly dawned upon me that the strings of alphabets, the blocks of awards and the pieces of papers/certs were just simply blocks and papers that are rather worthless. I remember myself taking pride in these when I was younger in primary school, regarding them as my achievements. Now when I look back, I do not even consider some a feat to be worth mentioning. 

1 Corinthians 4:17 

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 

The wise look beyond and walk above trials and sufferings of the present life because they envision the glory in eternity that surpasses all the vanities of the present life, and they pursue it. Along the same line in the opposite direction, the foolish commit their entire lives to material pursuit, where the god of the present age has blinded their hearts with the pursuit of pleasure, indulgence and "achievements."

Philippians 3:19
Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, 

and their glory is in their shame. 

Their mind is on earthly things.

Self sufficiency is the height of folly.

3rd last sunday of 2008

2008 is coming to a close soon..

I kinda like the weather today, is nice and cool :)

Wonder if momo likes his botak head (which he should be, by now).

phls wasn't around today so shu yi took over, haha guess she's also influenced to use some english in class to accomodate our preference, she even brought a study Bible in NASB translation.

Couple of funny things happened today:

1) Eric and kristine, the couple to be wedded soon walked to our class,

    handed over the invitation card to chaijy

    ...because they thought she was the teacher, LOL!

2) While chengxi was watching tiang meng, yi liang and I play carrom, yi liang was rocking his small chair

    ...and he fell over

    ...and he continued to laugh at himself on the floor -_-

Ahh chengxi's going in for his army soon as well, all the best and have 5 full days of fun settling admin stuff at tekong. hahaha. Already got photos of chengxi and amos before army, can take a photograph of them a week later and compare :P

First sunday sch class outing!

Had our first sunday sch class outing yesterday, those who turned up were: yi liang, jia ying, jiemin, yue xi, cheng xi, cheng xiang, ling chung, ri xi, phls and myself. Hopefully its not the last! However if we're gonna have another one, it'll probably be an alumni gathering already :( Everyone's just busy in every phase of life..

Its ok, we can still have much fellowship on sat for YF, so...come for YF!!! :)

It was quite embarrassing when we met up at dhoby gaut mrt cause the sisters were earlier than the bros, we all woke up after 10am, hahaha. yi liang was the champ, he was still dota-ing when I went offline o_o

We had lunch at Cafe Cartel, where we made use of the opportunity to exhibit our fei lou nature by kopping the free bread when it was made available at the first instant :P

I was really satisfied with the sumptuous and filling meal :)

1) Main course

2) Soup

3) Bread

4) Iced peach tea

5) Mineral Water

6) Ice cream

:D

Too bad there was not a row of tables big enough to fit in all of us to phls ,cx, lc and I shared a table while the rest shared the long table :(

Next, we moved on to Settler's Cafe at SMU, along the way we noticed how quiet it was and noted it down as a future potential location for mugging, very exaggerating I know but its a really cool place!

Starting off by playing a warm up game snorta!

It was really hilarious when we had to make all the weird animal noses such as poh poh kia, oink oink, snort (can't be pronounced in words), meow, woof woof, webbit, quek quek, meh meh, baaAAh, squeak squeak and hee haww.

Then we decided to switch to a more intellectual game, saboteur. We paired up, me and chengxiang, cheng xi and yue xi, jiaying and jie min, phls and ri xi, ling chung and yi liang. First round was warm up and saboteurs won :(

Sigh chai and chia just makes an excellent pair. Second round was more interesting and tactical, but at the last moment...althought chengxi and yue xi were gold diggers, but I thought they were saboteurs from the start the gold diggers lost at the last moment despite the underground cooperation (b/w me and chengxiang n chai n chia) haha they were very funny, just whackk.

After that we went to look for brainless and crazy games, then the shopkeeper kinda owned us by saying...crazy games are brainless games.

-__-

So we played another 2 violent/crazy games: Sandwhich and UGLY!

We realised that chung was seriously a pro at it. But he always...FOULS!!

E.g for sandwhich, there are certain occasions on which we 'heart attack' such as double decker / slamwich/ snatch thief

chung: *slams hand on the pile and grabs it over to his side*

quarter of a sec later: chung says: "double decker!"

boo same for ugly but I thought ugly was more fun esp at the point where we had 5 pairs, it began to get very very tense and exciting! yi liang was just excellent at kop-ing!

Then we played another crazy game [jiemin n yuexi left at this point..] similar to heart attack called...I have no idea, so let's call it Bones since we gotta grab a bone after gathering 4 cards of the same colour..waa after playing ugly and bones, seriously radiated heat, even chung n chai also, lol!

Last game we played was, I'm the boss!

Very interesting game, especially thrilling when I spammed all my cards (I'm the boss! I recruit you!) on my 1st turn trying to get the most out of a deal! But realised after ward, it was not such a good move...slowly got overtaken and ended up 2nd by maintaining good relations though, lol. yi liang kinda got ostracized :(

However, I did not enjoy the game politics very much, its kinda ugly and made me feel uncomfortable about the treachery and viciousness, didn't really correspond to the aim of our outing I thought or maybe I'm oversensitive haha.

Then...we played: We went to CS because we NJ so we PJ.

The above line is crap.

Took a photo, but we should have taken one earlier! Then we made our way back home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today, I accompanied chung to enlist, fortunately it was not as emo as expected..

I missed the train just by a split second arg!

So I met up with chung and his parents at pasir ris mrt. Went to have breakfast at Ya Kun then took the shuttle bus to the ferry terminal, the ferries had interesting names: Penguin Chawan, Penguin Princess oO

HE: Hey chung, so did you bring in any sentimental stuff?

LC: Er...your letter?

HE: Stunned, lol. [gave it to him today]

After which the boredom started...went on a tour to look around falcon company's residence and training areas, equipment etc, it was so sian that I forgot all the details..

Then came the part of the talk and the affirmation of allegiance, almost dozed off during the talk..

Was interesting to hear the batch say "Yes sir" for the first time, hahah.

Had lunch, talked and quickly, chung had to go assemble and we said our farewells, sigh I'll miss him much, one less regular-brother-in-contact for at least 2 weeks :(

Youth camp 08: Lord, teach me to love

AMAZING GRACE

This camp has been a relatively busy one for me as I was in the publicity group, venue 2 I/C and singspiration leader for for camp's main topic sermon. I still remember rushing around to find the missing MP3 kit right before the sermon on 1st night -_- Thank God, I was less distracted and unsettled by the duties that I was bound to during the camp and able to focus better than the last! 1st day games was rather interesting, while playing H2O, we kept sabo-ing phls :)

And my group totally dominated the 'blanket game', it was kinda cowboy, very exciting!

Basically one person from both groups had to go in front of the blanket, when it is dropped, each had to shout out the other party's name. So, sean and I did it ninja style by playing foul, covering our faces. The funniest part was when Jeff and Tom were on opposite sides and had the same tactic, when the blanket was dropped, both of them screamed at each other to intimidate, ROFL, it was a really hilarious sight.

For 1st night's sermon, [The infinite God becomes a finite man]

we learnt about 5 testimonies for christ, that of Himself, the Holy Father, John the baptist, His ministry on earth and the scriptures. Our 1st group sharing was great! Had much fellowship during supper too, phi gu acting out how chung walks, HAHA :P Didn't even get to deep sleep though :(

It is precisely because God is so great, that makes His sacrifice so great! One which no human can match.

2nd sermon for main topc [The Holy God becomes a man with sin]

God was a perfectly just God and cannot overlook sin, however, God is also a God of love, thus the only solution for Him to be our propitiation. God was wililng and it was God's will to do so.

"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"

Such are the words of the king of kings and the LORD of lords.

I cannot fully comprehend or share in Christ's intense sorrow when even God had to forsake Him and could not look on Him because of the sin of all man which He bore on the cross, for you and for me. It was as if, what light could be found in a sphere of darkness, from a naked flame was snuffed out. What anguish!

Christ's crucifixion is injustice in the human court, however in the divine court, it is perfectly just as it satisfies the righteousness of God. But, Lord, why?

Also on the second day, we also watched a a honkee movie/video about how a broken family was reconciled in His love, sort of saw some reflections back there. Then we played station games, did many interesting stuffs including making our own cheese cake! I did something really embarrassing though, the instruction read 'whip the cream', so yi liang happily passed me a block of butter/cheese and I literally whipped it, it took me about one minute to realise it was not the cream...

Went to play soccer in the muddy field which guowei, sean, jeff, yu en and yi liang afterward and I fell once when I tried to do a shaolin kick and slipped once -_- totally regretted not playing frisbee instead, bo jio! My shoes soon lost its shine :(

3rd sermon for main topc [Christ's propitiation]

God forgave our sins because of Chris't death on the cross and gives us his righteousness that is in Him.

Also talked about the characteristics of a chrsitian. 1) Does not walk in darkness (sin) 2) Obeys God's will 3) Loves God 4) Loves brothers and sisters 5) Does not love the world 6) Does not deny Chrsit is God

Slept much more quickly on the 2nd night :)

I thought the rest of the sub topics for the camp were really useful and applicable as well, sincerely loving God and drawing near to God. It really spoke to me regarding the fact that God loves us with a sacrificial and unconditional love and He wants us to love him with an exclusive and particular love, putting Him in first place.

"Has someone/somethings stole your heart away from loving me?"

"Many o Lord" I replied.

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18

Then there was games again, hahaha I was always looking forward to being active :P We went bubble-tea-straw-hunting. My group was purple and we had to find 10 straws to complete the game, so as we moved out, we saw a packet of straws so we just took a handful of purple straws and showed them to chaijy, she was like... ?!?! hahahaaa tio fake! Had much fun on the way, although the camera flash kinda hindered me haha, keep seeing flashes when I blinked. The games team did a good job on hiding the straws, very challenging!!

So my group was 2nd and we sang 'grace greater than our sin' in kind of a ... karaoke manner (flop..) esp uncle zhuang!

On the 3rd night, we also had a service dedicated to meditate on hymns.

May the Lord find us faithful,

May His word be our banner held high,

May the Lord find us faithful,

Everyday though we live though we die.

The 3rd night after supper was extremely interesting, the fun began when a group started playing chucky chucky (consisting of chengxi, phillane, polo, jieyi, yuduan, yingxi, zixin, chaijy, chung and jiemin) unable to understand the game, I went over to sit beside lion king (sean) and told him, "hey, let's come up with our own game!" So he immediately gathered one group of bros: guowei, yi liang, ri xi, andrew, kenny, mingfa(!!!), samuel, yi kang etc.

hcls joined in later and it was hilarious as we played: 0-0-7-bang, jurassic park, row-row-row-your-boat and AH-HIA!

It was truely retarded I must say, but we trained some 6 pacs back there laughing like crap, I doubt I have ever laughed so badly before in my life. If I have the chance I will upload the vids.

4th morning, every one was tired after the late night, lol. The brothers low-ed all the way during worship (infrasound).

I thought the message brought out spoke to me much, 

Destroy and cut down all your idols!

Rid of the things that displease the LORD!

All the vain things that charm my heart, I now sacrifice in His blood.

Love so amazing so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

Lord, teach me to love.

Sunday sch class 08!

Woohoo! This is the first time that our sunday sch class has had this informal lunch gathering cum advanced birthday celebration. Hm I really like my class, they're an interesting bunch of people: yuexi, zixin, jiaying, phls, chen xiang, cheng xi, rixi, lingchung, zi cong, jie min, kai xin, qiao en, yi liang :)

phls blanja-ed us to botak jones for lunch, the food was really delicious! Except that the broccoli tasted rather..raw.

Most of us had our fair share of 'unglam' moments during lunch, hahahah.

1st up: lc chomped on his corn and somehow some of its juice which is the projectile followed a parabolic path and flew right across the length of the table landing right in front of me, LOL.

2nd up: cx was also chomping on his corn when someone said something funny then...you can expect what happened, he resembled a merlion :P

3rd & 4th: zx and yx almost simultaneously let out a shriek because...they broke the fork while cutting the fish!

quote from yuexi when she tried to salvage the situation : "it's the fish's fault! Not ours!" hahaha

5th: sadly to say, its me :( I accidentally spilled some of the sauce of the black pepper chicken (BPC) which I was eating onto...the white pants I was wearing, yea it attracted quite some stares -_-

We also had a very advanced birthday celebration for zixin, cheng xiang and myself, jiemin was overseas so she missed it, but of course we have back up plans heh ;) err lc, rx and jy sorta enjoyed playing with the soggy piece cardboard which contained the cake ??? The cake was hard to cut! Fortunately phls lent a helping hand, phew.

Throughout the whole period of time we talked about many interesting and random topics from comparing whose school was the most rundown to broccoli to algebra to drawing models etc.

In a nutshell, we must thank God for the wonderful time of fellowship we had with each other and thanks to phls and yfls who took the effort to organise this informal lunch gathering cum advanced birthday celebration!

I thought the sermon also impacted me a lot, challenging my values and outlook of life.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 

18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen     is eternal.

Only one life, 

it will soon be past,

only what's done for Christ will last!