happiness

MOVED

2010-11-14T22:23:00.002+08:00

Hello friends,

I've moved my blog to SINGTOTHEKING.BLOGPOT.COM .

:D Annyeong.

Vocaldente!

2010-10-16T14:03:00.003+08:00

A free saturday finally! And by that, i mean an entire day free without any plans except to stay at home and do random stuff plus study. Yes study. Especially my organic chem (i'm sorry Prof Lu, I don't get you!)

Anyways, Im excited for Vocaldente!!! I've been googling them here & there recently since I found out they're coming to UCC on the 27th Oct & it's free admission!! They're performing at the Arts House on the 28th for a price of $35 tho? That's for the International A Cappella Festival in Singapore. Okay, as I was saying. THEY'RE AWESOME. They perform without mics, going back to the beginnings of a cappella music. :D I wanna hear them perform Rosanna, Hide & Seek (awesome song by Imogen Heap, which I just found out of. sorry for my noob-ness. heh), some boyband medley plus other nice songs! AHH..

However, the thing is, there's a RAYs Leaders' structure comm meeting scheduled on the 27th. Knowing that vocaldente and this falls on the same date is a hindering block for me. I don't want my decision not to be part of this comm to be based on a selfish desire to want to go for this concert. Still in the midst of praying and I need to get an answer by Monday. If i'm not called to go for that meeting, then I want the peace when I'm at the concert. If not, it'll just be bothering me throughout the concert.

Alrightay, school's less busy this week since I've got no chem lab report to submit this week. Seriously, I hate chem lab reports more than writing my Yakuza dossier (which I submitted yest!) even though citations for arts essays are super tedious as well. (!!! I FORGOT TO CANCEL AN ONLINE LIBRARY MEMBERSHIP! I ONLY HAVE 1 DAY FREE TRIAL!!!! DOING IT NOW. D:)

Whatever it is, praise the Lord.

Turning 19 on the 19th

2010-09-24T11:00:00.003+08:00

How great is our God, sing with me how great is our God, & all will see how great, how great, is our God.

That's the song that's currently playing in the background as I'm typing this post. Indeed, how great is my God. I've lived 19 years on planet earth. Congratulations Sarah for surviving 12 years of Singapore's education system and everything the Singaporean (or world) culture has wham-bammed into your face. And that's not to my credit alone; God is the one who has always been bigger than everything else, who has always been so great, so great, that words alone are insufficient to express.

19 years old is such a neither here no there age. But I suppose it's the best age to be in? The final year of being a 'teen', literally. haha. It's the age where I just finished the stressful A'levels, have an 8 month break, (never in my life will i have such a long break again unless I idle 8months away before starting work next time? haha!), transit into a new phase of life - uni. And of course, it's the age in between the that of being a teen and adult. Well, this just brings to thought of how new things would be coming along the way. I'd meet new people in uni, meet friends from the past whom i've not contacted in a long while, encounter more different experiences both academically and also perhaps in my life generally. Fear would definitely be tagging along in these new experiences I would have for how may I know what to expect?

Romans 12:1-2

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will."

In this coming of age, I stand by this commitment to be a living sacrifice to God. How so? Not conform to what the world says, in the sense that I must continuously learn not to let the world define me or to become any counterfeit God in my life, in ALL areas of my life. Renewing my mind, to enrich myself with the Word of God, keeping up with devotion as an act of worship instead of as a dead routine. I may not know what to expect of the greater things that has yet to come, or the worse things that has yet to come, but through standing by this commitment & believing firmly that I AM ALIVE IN CHRIST, I will see God's will being played out.

I may not have many(or any) dramatic, drastic experiences that were part of God's way to teach me lessons but I believe that in this journey I have with Him, all the little experiences are what He wants me to take notice of that would ultimately lead to His big picture. This means, I ought to open my eyes and ears and heart to constantly reflect in order to not miss out any single teaching point He has for me!

Thank you to all who celebrated this special day with me & for me, whether by being there presently, or just even that simple text message or facebook message of your birthday wish. God bless you, sweet friends of mine. :D

Anw, just to add on to this post, may be a lil irrelevant to the title but whatever. haha

I am done with mid terms! & hence I can post this up finally...

It was such a tight schedule last week despite being recess week. I know procastination did play a wee lil part & im guilty of that. I had to study 15 chapters of chem, consisting of entire JC1 content plus extra stuff, a film analysis for my GEK mod, and my chem lab report by yesterday, 27th Sept. As much as I tried to do them in the week (rightfully only began on wed since I went for Acts Camp on mon & tues), all those writing were really tedious & time-consuming. Hence, i only properly studied for my CA on Friday onwards? Sat was then taken up by combined worship training + worship prac + no-other-date-&-therefore-we-have-to-have-it birthday meetup with my pri sch buddies. Half of Sunday gone from church + RAYs Leaders' Meeting. & I still had half of CHEM to study for!

However, I guess all that just kinda built up that greater dependence on God. Surely I can't expect to do well based on myself but if I can get a satisfying grade, then it'll have to be God. I didnt even practice much, just look through tutorials & even so, the qns that came out in the paper yest weren't too similar except for a few. However, thank God that the MCQ was relatively easier compared to A'level chem mcq! haha.. & well, at least I more or less attempted everything except for 1 part of the structured & 1 mcq qn. And thank God for the extra 5 mins from the prof! :D And well, I came out of the exam hall, just relieved & not worried. People were complaining but I'll continue to give thanks to the Lord. Whatever the outcome, God is good.

In this new age, I seek to be NEW, not just BETTER.

Persevering.

2010-09-09T20:13:00.009+08:00

"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Romans 5:3-5

I thought this verse stood out pretty much as I read my bible (electronic one heh. the ipod bible) on the bus ride to school this morning. Perhaps its familiar so it jumped at me. Perhaps it's my whole frustration, worry and mulling over the crazy chem lab report that I had to complete desperately by today before I leave my hse at 9am to go to school, which as a result caused me to have only 4 hrs of sleep last night, that made these few verses so precious. I believe it's a mixture of both reasons?

Sometimes, familiar verses get by us so much more easily as we take them for granted, since we know them more closely at our fingertips. It then takes something for these verses to trigger and effect in us. At times like that, the verses would speak to us even louder. That's for me, for sure. These verses sure did that to me today when I read them.

Paul was truly an amazing person. Already I can feel the stress of a uni student building up, especially with the last week of madness and this week where i had to rush out that chem report rather last minute because i had other things that had to be completed prior to this deadline for the chem report. I think im 'suffering' but when I think about Paul's own sufferings as a Christian of his time, my 'suffering' is really nothing big. If he can rejoice in them, so can I. These few years in uni shall definitely serve to produce perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And this hope will be in God and not in anything else. His love for me is enough, definitely.

I am rather looking forward to the series on Romans, IWant2BeNew! Egg-citing! haha

On another note, I'm in Resonance! :D And I'm not a sop, neither am I an alto. I'm finally where I'm meant to be - Mezzo! :D heh. My range has always kinda be the mezzo range so yea. Well, we had our welcome tea last week and this tues was the official 1st meeting we had. Spent the night learning the 2nd half of the 2 songs we learnt during round 2 of auditions, as well as an Into to A capella session where we basically listened to how A capella music has evolved! Interesting! Got to know a few cool groups other than the ones I already know. :D Whee~ I'm excited bout the subsequent ones where we'll be learning bout blending, mic & PA, stage etc.. Coolios~ haha Thank God for this opportunity!!

A new phase is starting

2010-08-06T11:47:00.002+08:00

I haven't been blogging for the whole past 2 months or so I think. There doesn't seem to be very much a drive to blog mainly because I'm lazy to log out of my gmail and change to the other account for this blog. HAHA. okay, apart from that, I've got just too many things to say and as they accumulate, I have no idea where to start.

I'm in the last few days of my long holiday right now. A few months ago, everything seemed so long and dreary, but within this past week, time just seems to have sped up twice as fast. There's just so many things to complete in these few weeks, from school registrations, applications for this and that, and CORS Bidding. The last item was such a stressful thing alright. Thank God for the seniors who helped us and advised us.

University life is going to be so different and so much more independant I have no idea how much of it I can handle. Just saw a friend's blog where she says how in Uni, even unfriendly people become friendly all of a sudden. I can't help but look at it from Darwin's point of view; survival of the fittest. It's like we're just thrown into a whole new gene pool and everyone's doing their best to fit into the environment so that by "natural selection", we remain strong in this new surroundings. That would mean, being able to find a group of friends and survive through the 3 or 4 years in University life. Those that are "selected against" are thus left to fend for themselves and get eaten up by the stressworms and all. To guard against that, people just resort to conforming to the standards of the world. It's really disheartening to see sometimes.

However, I'm really glad to know that even if i'm ever "selected against", I am definitely not alone. Because I have a BIG BIG GOD who's always there for me. It's pretty awesome that this month is the Proverbs Devotional month. Those words that point me to needing the wisdom of God is just so apt as I start school. It's all those reminders from the word and also from ppl in church and crusade that will definitely always point me to God when I am stumbled or when my faith is put to test. It's gonna be tough but my stand for these few years in Uni is really: I can be in the world but NOT OF THE WORLD.

Just as Jesus hung out among sinners but didnt sin, likewise, I can surely be among both christian or non-christian friends. As long as I stay true to the values that are biblical and not against my conscience. I'll have to really really guard my heart well.

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23

The Decision

2010-05-22T23:12:00.002+08:00

I've decided. NUS Faculy of Science is what I've chosen, after much deliberation.

It was really an act of obedience to stop being so double-minded and make my choice. I thank God for using my mum to convince me to pick NUS. Of course, He later used sunday's sermon on Obedience to urge me that whatever other hesitations that I still have got to be surrendered. Then during closed cell (we finished RUTH finally btw!), the whole essence of the story of Ruth was also about obedience and submission. There and then, I thought I really have to stop hesitating about anything, stop even waiting for USP. There're so much more to uni than USP right??

However, even as I've accepted the offer from NUS on Monday, I wasn't too excited and I got worried. Is it the tension? Did I make a wrong decision? Did I hear wrongly from God? Just today, as I was doing the worship team's church camp prep devotional, it just spoke to me about following the ways of God, His statutes, longing for His precepts and choosing to live a life 'thirsty for His righteousness', which was what we went through in cell on Friday night. Just another thing before I go on is that on Friday I got a reply from the USP ppl to say my application was not successful.

Well okay anyway, I was just thinking of how my thoughts were not righteous, not Christ-like. I had thirst for the recognition of being under the USP. I had hungered basically for something of the world; it was all merely to fulfil my pride, make me stand tall in the fact that I've successfully got into USP. As if to make up for not getting straight A's or something. Previously, I was basing my decision to choose NUS with the pre-requisite that I get into USP. Even though I say I'm willing to let God determine my path, it's like I was still secretly trying to box Him unknowingly.

However, hearing the news on friday that I didn't get in wasn't so bad because I know I've triumphed over this and went ahead to accept NUS way before I knew my results of USP. If I had chosen NTU, I probably wouldn't have realised the un-righteous, un-Christlike thoughts I had. I probably would have just thought it was a good decision since anyway, I didnt get into USP wad. And I had other noble reasons (excuses!) to go NTU. You get what I mean?? But having chosen NUS despite of this turnout, I've gained more and seen more of how prideful I can get, how eager to show off and please Man.

So now, I'm glad and at peace to know that NUS is a right decision made. I know I've honoured God in this sense. So heh heh yep. YAY!
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What am I feeling? But then again, feelings are deceptive. I need more clarity.

What am I living for?

2010-05-11T17:46:00.002+08:00

Received an email that jeanette forwarded to some of us about this interview with Rick Warren.
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You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having 'wealth' from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, 'Purpose Driven Life ' author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California .

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said: People ask me, What is the purpose of life?

And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity..

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life..

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:
If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.

It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit.. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.

That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD..
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Amen to all that he mentioned. Indeed, are we choosing to honour God with this life that He's given us to have or are we gonna honour the ideas that the world is infiltrating into our systems?

As I was in Ps Thom's car with Jessica and T Franks, on the ride back from JB to Singapore, Jessica posed a question I thought it was worth pondering about. Do we believe in the act of 'making mistakes' or are those 'mistakes' simply a result of a wrong choice that we make? So, is life simply about choices?

Yes and no, i guess. It is a known fact that we are faced with choices and decisions to make everyday, big or small. Thus, on one hand, you can say life is about choices. On the other hand, as a Christian, we know that life is not just about choices. It's more than that. The focus is not on the choices but, whether ultimately, the choice we make causes us to honour God, or to sin and make a mistake. That's the more important issue we need to look at.

Our lives should be about God; we are called to shout about God and what He's done for us on the cross. We are created after all, to give Him all glory in all that we do, in all the crossroads that we're in. Just as Rick Warren says, we got to put the focus off ourselves and onto God. Simple because He deserves it all.

Transitions...

2010-05-09T16:43:00.002+08:00

The last I blogged, I was still on my toes, wondering when the letters of offers from NUS and NTU would come. Today, I thank God that I got offers from both NTU biological science and NUS Faculty of Science! =D

The saturday I got my NTU letter was on Isabel's birthday. That morning, during worship prac in church, my mum texted me to tell me the good news since she went to open the mailbox that day! WHEE~ great, finally one offer!! I don't like waiting for such things... ahh..

Then, I was expecting the NUS FoS to get back to me as well since I jolly well knew I obviously am not selected for medicine so I just skipped that choice and moved on to my 2nd. heh. Man, it was a little worrying when I had friends telling me they've received the letter of acceptance from FoS already! BUT finally! Just last friday (not the recent one), as I asked jeann online if she's received FASS's offer since I heard news that the 2nd batch of letters were out... and I decided to check my online application status and behold! TADAA~ I have been offered a place in Science!! =DDD Goodness, I was literally jumping for joy! haha.. Since there wasn't anyone around to witness my madness. haha!

I don't know to say if it's real joy when I got the letter or simply a sense of relief to know I've got a place in NUS as well and that I'm not limited to 1 choice. I mean, I've a huge inclination to go to NUS and I used to think that if I get accepted AND USP accepts me too, then it's definitely NUS. However, despite how tempting the modules of USP are, it's just not a right thing to factor for my decision making. I'd be boxing God in and being 'superstitious' in the sense to rely on such 'signs'. It's really very difficult to die to the desires of my flesh and it's just so easy to cave in to them. I mean, maybe God's will is not for me to be in NUS but to go to NTU, which has a less established science school actually. Again, I won't let myself be influenced by this too much. (same reason why I went to ACJC when I could have gone to NJC/maybe HC)

Anyway, I'm really really grateful for the timely sermon series on I Want 2 Decide Right. The four questions posed are questions I'm asking myself everyday to discern God's will for me. To make sure my heart is aligned with His and not under any deception.

Am I being completely honest with myself?
What will be my final story?
Is there a tension in my decision?
Does my decision honour God?

It all ultimately boils down to that last question. Will it honour God? I've learnt much about honouring God in this month or so. Be it in decision making, in the things I do daily, or in worship leading, serving, honouring God should be the constant thought behind them.
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On a side note, I surprised (hopefully) my mum with the Amici Tiramisu cake on Tuesday! Thank God the card I bought was not a scam! I was so worried when I first purchased this amici-granton card man since those salespeople were promoting it at the HDB area... Well, the cake's awesome! =) Shall have to go down to amici once to make use of the 1-for-1 privilege someday before October. heh.

Today's Mothers' Day so Happy Mothers' Day to all!

Many valuable lessons learnt and still learning

2010-04-08T18:19:00.004+08:00

Once again, I've not blogged for a long long time...

Anyway, about a little more than a month ago, I received my A level results. 5th of March to be exact. It was a little less than well done for the fact of the 'C' I got for H1 Geography. Seriously, I've never got a 'C' for Geog so far in the 2 years of Geog in AC. It's kinda been As or Bs... But when I received the result slip from Ms Azlina, after all the names with 3 H2s distinctions have been called out already, I think my heart did a flip at the glaring 3rd letter of the alphabet series under H1 Geog. It was as if a bomb was dropped on me. Ironically, my worst subject usually, in my JC life, Math, got an 'A'!! I mean, I admit I made a couple of mistakes in Geog that time and the week before I was sick and struggling to squeeze alot of human geog stuff into my brains while studying for the other papers I had in the 1st week of the exams. And I admit that Math was really do-able at that time...

However, an afterthought after all the disappointment for the overall, was that the results are already there and God allowed all this to happen for a reason. I believe it was all for teaching me greater humility. God opposes the proud and lifts up the humble. Just as how Ruth was so humble and submissive to the situations she had been placed in, likewise, I need to remain humble and learn to place every bit of faith in God.

It's not easy especially that now I'm like still waiting for letters of offers from the faculties in NUS and NTU I applied to. I applied pretty late and still gotta wait for them to correct my name so... Anyways, I'm not shortlisted for Medicine. Well, it's quite difficult to get in with my results soo.. unless God opens the door for me, I dont quite expect I can be shortlisted too. haha.. But now, Im starting to get anxious actually that I didnt get any offers yet!! Ah wells, have faith, keep praying!
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Well, on a lighter note, I just came back from Japan a week ago! I've decided not to extend my job in Times publishing so now I'm like slacking quite a lot. heh.. But next month, I'm gonna start interning in Church. Have a try at how things are like in a church. Anyways, Japan was awesomeee! =) Love it to bits! I wanna go on a Korea+Japan trip next time! YEUN! You go learn jap while I learn Korean and we go together! Makes free & easy over there easier! LOL.

Okay if you wanna check out photos, they're all on facebook! =))
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[just added in!]
I realised i forgot to mention the little bit of relief teaching I did in my primary school the thurs and fri of the week I came back from Japan. It was well, pretty challenging trying to contain the kids and they really come running to you for the simplest trouble they have. But I still enjoy being with them no matter how some may be 'irritating' or that the weather was super hot and classrooms have got no air-conditioning... Anyway, it was good to go back as well for I got to see some teachers who used to teach me or just other teachers who recognises me as an old girl, while I recognise them as well! They just asked me to go down on the 2oth again and I do hope I get more chance to try out with other classes before I can't go down freely starting May...

Love Actually...

2010-03-01T14:06:00.005+08:00

Love Actually… the gig’s over, physically yes. I mean, the event itself is over, but the people we met, new connections we made on that day itself is fresh and new. They’ve not ended. How can they when the relationships have merely just started?

It’s been pretty tiring this whole 1&half months of intensive planning and coordinating. Of course, we did not forget to commit all that planning and coordinating to prayer as well. And because of this, the tire and stress is able to rest on the joy of serving the Lord. I’m actually grateful for this challenge, this personal ministry.

Organising this gig was really something new, something different.

We decided to move it out of church. With Jeanette’s help in organizing, we managed to book SMU Treehouse Café.
We had new singers in our midst! Those who were sharing their testimonies also took it upon themselves to sing their song dedication.
Then, instead of simply having a good flow of nice-to-hear songs played by the awesome RAYdio band, we thought about weaving testimonies with the songs. The songs we sing therefore will have a deeper meaning and msg than simply being a performance for our friends.

Originally, there was an acapella segment, which challenged me to arrange something out. However, due to certain time constraints we have and the fact that it adds no meaning except to liven the mood, we had to cut it out at the last min. ( haha but anw, we didn’t have enough time to prac, so next time!)

We created our own video instead of showing videos taken off youtube/tangle(new Godtube). Great job Joel Lee!

Anw, so this whole journey in planning, getting things together, then going on-site to Treehouse or outside the café to pray over the place, over the event, over the people serving and over the friends coming. Then there was JJ’s sensing for 20 salvations. It was a big, bold prayer we prayed and a test of out faith! All these happened concurrently with the I Want 2 Grow series; we got to apply what we hear and that is, to ask big prayers and grow in faith! What was also exciting is that, for the 1st time, we’re expecting more than 50 friends to come!

God has been teaching me alot about faith this season with the I Want 2 Grow series as well as my own personal devotion as I'm reading Exodus. Seeing how Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt by faithfully obeying what the Lord has in mind. God gave Moses rejection from Pharoah so many times such that the miracles can be performed and all can see the glory of God displayed. Ultimately, victory was with God and with Moses!

In their journey to the promised land, there's Manna provided by God and it was a test for how much the Israelites are willing to trust God. The Amalekites were defeated as Moses raised his hands the entire war time. It taught me submission and surrender to let God do what He can do. The Israelites just got to pick up the manna according to the instructions given by God, similarly, we got to just do what we can do and obey God in all that He's called us to do.

Finally, the day came. It was a long tiring day for some of us had worship prac in the morn. (actually, majority of RAYdio had worship prac.) Wow. The café was really bursting with people. 65 friends came and plus ourselves, we had 121 people in the café! Sadly, the air-con was turned a little down and couldn’t sustain the large crowd. So the place was quite warm. However, despite that, everything went smoothly except for a few hiccups that weren’t too drastic…

The salvation call came that night after JJ’s sermon. But even as we all prayed so hard before the event, during the gig itself and had all that trust and excitement to see God move, no one raised their hands. I hadn’t got the time after the gig ended to process all I was feeling. Had to make sure the place was restored, everything cleared from the venue. I followed Terence’s car and the other guys as they moved the instruments and equipment back to church. While we had dinner/supper(?) at nam kee chicken rice, we had a short sharing of the overall gig that night. Yea it was good, pple were listening attentively (or were they just restless? I would choose the former) during the testimonies and sermon. No stray noises at all! That was unusual. But, no salvations…and honestly, i did feel that tinge of disappointment.

Like I mentioned, that night, I was pretty tired to process alot. But during last Sunday's worship as we sang 'Mighty To Save', there was a rising feeling of comfort to know that God is still MIGHTY TO SAVE! He can even move mountains, what more can't He do? If He told JJ about the 20 salvations, He will bring it to pass. Not directly in this gig alone, but throughout this year, as we start-off with the follow-up with the friends who come and for subsequent events. I believe the minimum 20 is indeed a promise to be fulfilled.

Then from JJ's heartfelt sharing on Friday’s corporate cell, I was given that platform to really really lay down whatever disappointment that was still left in me and claim this promise He's given to the ministry boldly.

It's gonna come. God's shown us how seeds have been planted. As we called up the friends who managed to fill up the response sheet, there were just so many indications of the seeds sown, even for my friends who came. It's like God's telling me, ‘See, I didn't not do anything. I still moved in the place so just continue trusting!’

And yes, we all gotta keep giving thanks to God and being ever grateful to Him for He's taught us alot more in this whole journey and this faith journey will not stop here for RAYs. This faith journey will not stop here for me either.

P.S. Thank you JJ, Jeanette, LydiaLee, Joel Lee, Shalyn, Reuben, Don, Deanna, Nun, Shermin, Isabel, Lydia Tan, RAYdio band (all you who're involved in planning, coordinating, food i/c, band i/c, emcees, and those of you who availed yourselves to share your testimonies); thank you to the rest of RAYs who came and help out in deco and even simply just bringing friends. =)

a busy february

2010-02-09T22:56:00.002+08:00

january ended with a great class outing at Minds Cafe. It's the gathering before the guys have to slowly enter NS one by one... daryl and yonglit just went in last fri and thurs respectively. yepp.

anyway, so i've started work at Times Publishing Group, under Panpac Education. well, if you're wondering what i do there, its basically a temp assistant editor. The editors there will pass me random projects to do with deadlines to meet of course. Just finished some ppt slides and typing in a maths paper solutions, doing the checking and stuff. After completing this, got to do some sci txtbook thingy for pakistani kids. yep...overall, it's quite interesting but the only downside is having to stare at the comp the entire day.

I'm quite glad that I didnt enter the company all alone! I got to know Serena who was from AC and dear stacey's classmate too! Her mum's actually the person I was supposed to report to. haha...what a small world...but she was only working till last thurs coz she's getting the SAF scholarship and needs to go BMT and OCS. She left for them on sat!! but again, thank GOD i made a friend with this new perm girl, Jessica. She's 21/22 this yr? yea, I pray it'll be a providential relationship. =D so I've been lunching with her, Irene(serena's mum), Helen, Lyana(a perm staff who's 24yrsold but looks so young at first impression, but not so after that. haha..)

I do hope I spend my time there well... dont want to regret missing out on what Matthew(recruitexpress) was going to offer me when he finally called again last tues. By then, I was already in this job. I don't want to regret the sudden call from peps asking if I could relief teach today/for some time? Was God calling me to this job such that all the other stuff I was waiting for only came back to me after I accepted this? or hmmm....
-
Love Actually... planning is very stressful. Different problems kept erupting and surfaced, one after another. Setting up the dates for pracs & what songs to prac took like forever. Plus accapella prac is so lacking, I had times that I just want to give up on having it at all... But each time, God seems to say that it's a part of a journey if I want to grow in faith. Taking up this planning and organising is really a personal ministry. Then he puts me through pivotal circumstances such as these to grow me further. The people around me, I have opportunities of building providential relationships. These are really piling up on me, shouting, screaming at me not to give up just like it. Moses had to keep going to Pharoah to let the Israelites go and he still went. He didnt tell God he wanted to stop or doubt whether God was ever going to soften Pharoah's heart. God showed him that the purpose of all the wait was so His glory can be shown even far more greater than ever.

Pray big, bold prayers. yes I will and trust in the Lord for HIS plans to go well, not mine.

remaining in God's love.

2010-01-29T13:07:00.003+08:00

John 15:7-17 (New International
Version)

7If you remain in me and my words remain in
you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear
much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain
in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my
love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that
your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love
each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay
down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I
command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his
master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I
learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit
that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my
name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

I was just reading the chapter to prepare for my mentoring session today with Ps SokHwee that I came across this scripture. Though the portion was leading on discerning God's will & my will, I found this scripture speaking to me alot.

Remaining in God, is it really that difficult? YES. I wouldn't lie & tell you a NO for an answer. To do that takes alot of hard work & sheer discipline because many times, the enemy comes along to distract us with our weakness, causing us to steer away from God's course for us. That's why we always need that dependence on God & never strive to do things ALONE. God encourages community & fellowship in the body of Christ. That's where we find our anchor, our support.

If we remain in Him, align our hearts' desires to His desires & what He takes delight in, we can be pretty sure He will grant them. After all, it is for His glory & that we may 'bear fruit'. As we choose obedience & submission to Him, we'll remain in His love & He'll give us joy & delight in what we do. We'll have that God-perspective & thus, a joyful outlook to life.

Another thing for me personally is His command for me to love. He's a friend to me & made known to me everything so clearly. It's my turn to go & make known of His love to others for He has chosen all of us individually.

-

Anyway, on tuesday night, as I was chatting with my dearest friend ever, Yeun See, we just randomly decided to have a sleepover so we could swim together at her condo in the morn. It's also coz she's moving out of the condo soon so better make full use of the facilities...haha.

Well, we had a splendid time catching up with each other one on one... havent had the chance to do so since don't know how long... haha..we only got to meet up during those birthday get-togethers. Yea so we basically stayed up till 3plusalmost4am before we slept & woke up for our swim at 8am! haha.. chatted while swimming our 20laps too. Then it was breakfast at macs before we parted ways as I went home & she met with a friend to go safra kbox. =) Enjoyed our sleepover date haha! jeul-gi-da!!(haha it's korean for enjoyable!)

Doing nothing much.

2010-01-19T10:33:00.003+08:00

i'm like super free but i'm not blogging. I really need a job now! Sigh. The person at RecruitExpress hasn't called me to tell me whether that cust service job allows me to leave earlier on fridays to go for cell. I suppose the deal fell through...Well, it seems like after it fell through, I kinda regret not taking it up immediately. haha.. or maybe i'm just no 'fated' with that job.

Actually, after helping out at AC openhouse by tending the booth, I discovered something about myself. I actually do like to talk to strangers sometimes. I don't think I mind very much about their attitudes back to me but it's more of the excitement in approaching someone unfamiliar & attempting to talk to that person. I'm not a naturally talkative person. In fact, I can get boring in conversations even with friends if there's no one else to keep conversations going. However, I think talking with people I dont know is interesting as there'll always be new things to discover about the person. Of course, even with the closest friends, there's always new things that can be found out. But with a stranger, it's all about making friends & making them feel comfortable talking to you. Talk about providential relationships. haha

Anyway, I'm currently in charge of planning the V-day gig my youths are doing. Well, it's good i'm doing it since i'm so unbelievably free right now...All's going pretty smoothly & fine, praise the Lord! Yes & I've completed the arrangement for the accapella..but I don't know if it's gonna turn out good. *crossing my fingers*... haha I'm quite excited for this gig...it's outta church, acapella, doing our own short film..whoo~ discovering the idea of what's love, actually? =D

Cell's been great. Last week was a great start as we had cell at WeiJie's house. Quite a handful turned up so it was considered good nonetheless! Both WeiJie & I gotta continue to depend on the Lord for more guidance in leading this group of boys & girls who've got immense potential actually... =D

Yep, I'll stop here for now.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010.

2010-01-01T14:58:00.004+08:00

A year has fleeted past once again, so quickly that it's just amazing to wonder how God created this element of time. Does time always exist? Who came up with the idea of counting in seconds? Who did all the subdivision to achieve it all? Of course those who researched would say it's so & so scientist who discovered how to quantify time. However, do we ever look closely and ponder, that it is actually the person who even allowed time to exist whom we should lift up. That's God.

Time may be quantifiable; this is irrefutable. But quantifying time, giving time the magnitude, a measurement, is not as important as spending those seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years with meaning, with quality. Just as it is with many things in life, quantity is nothing, quality is all.

Therefore, I ask myself this question, did I spend this one year meaningfully?

I would say I did. This year had been quite a challenge. Managing schoolwork, choir activities, leading a cell single-handedly, A levels... I did some things for the 1st time such as being a stage manager for Rags. As cliche as it sounds, the year had been an emotional roller-coaster ride for me. I had moments of utter joy & delight such as during SYF, concerts, seeing friends being saved; I also had moments of disappointments & stress as I had to deal with my exams, my cell, relationships with people around me. However, as it is with such rides, we always end up still enjoying it and I must say I am really glad that I went on this journey. This year, I really felt the presence of the Lord with me and even experienced how He can use me in a way I never thought He would, in the case of my friend's salvation. He also took me through the A'level period with so much peace & assurance when I was really afraid of it. God is AWESOME!

I suppose my 2009 resolution was met. It was the simple Micah 6:8 that was what Pastor Guna preached on 0809 crossover service.

8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Indeed, Gos has shown me in 2009 what is good. & I dare say I tried my best to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.

In 2010, I will have this year be the year when I increase in my faith in God, where I lay down all my 'Rachel's and always praise His name. I want to grow. & I look forward to what God is going to do in my life as I enter into this new year, this new beginning of yet another phase of my life.

a long break.

2009-12-28T10:35:00.003+08:00

My title for this post takes on 2 meanings:
1) I took a long break from updating this blog...close to a month!
2) I am having an awesome long break from school currently!

Anyway, I remembered I mentioned in my last post that I had a packed schedule straight after I ended my A's with biology paper 1 on 3rd dec. Therefore, I'm gonna unpack it here slowly...

1. The Edge Conference organised by VFC.

It was quite an experience and even though sometimes some speakers can seem inspirational but still, you never really know how God works, when God works, who God works through. On the last morning when Matthew Barnett asked us to seek God for a vision to our future, our 'ambition', I thought I got that nod on the head to just apply for Medicine and not ignore this option totally. I can't rmb why but during the song Consuming Fire, I just started tearing already as I worshipped and prayed over this idea of mine. If not a doctor, it'll be a job regarding medical help one way or another. However, I will definitely still need more confirmations as I continue to seek the Lord. Other sermons like Charissa Seaward's one on ordering our lives the way God wants was also pretty apt since I'm going through a transition period where I need to order my life the way God has it for me. Jeremy Seaward's msg on SHOUT also stuck with me as he preached on how we need to SHOUT Jesus always, without fail...worship there was awesome and there was this really beautiful composition Set Us Apart that is a song which just so ministered to me.

2. Seniors' Night

It was a night to remember i guess? haha. well, I had a fun time thinking of how to dress up for it, dress, shoes, hairdo... On the day itself, I did my hair quite early at Linda's, a freelance hairdresser who lives a few stories above Jody. I loved that awesome hairdo really! After I came back, i had a big hoo-haa with yiming as to whether I should still meet her. In the end, I still went to her house yep. We did our own makeup and all at her place and once we're ready, we set off to fetch xinrui & eunice from bishan...

Basically, the girls really just shined brightly and prettily as they took efforts to doll themselves up for the night. The guys look smart in their suits/shirts as well. =D Snapped many photos for memory's sake that night. Half the time, people were just out of their seats, moving around with the cameras. haha.. The food was mostly eaten by our class guys. I didnt get to eat much, given that I was moving around too and I just changed my braces wire the night before so it was a little tight on my teeth to bite. hee.

Anyway, it was a memorable evening indeed. and nope, i wasn't on any drunken revelry.(inside joke with a friend of mine.)

3. RAYs Camp 2009

I missed the first day due to Senior's Night and I realised I missed an important sermon. Sigh. I'll introduce the speaker first and he's none but Jeremy Seaward! yea, the one from VFC. =) Well, i think he's probably having a lil of culture shock with our youths since VFC youths are super loud(in a good way), enthusiastic... i mean our youths are just abit more restrained when asked to shout out responses and stuff. haha.. and worship is less jumpy? haha.. but still, that did not prevent him from delivering the word of God to us and neither did it hinder us from receiving. =) True freedom, True Discipleship, True Purpose. Those were the 3 sermons he preached. True Discipleship was the 1st one I heard since i missed the first nite. anyway, it was good as we got to know the 12 traits of a true disciple and identify what we're lacking. True purpose was also impactful as we challenged to pray for one friend that God placed in our hearts for 1 week straight and thereafter, invite the person to church. I did pray for one week but maybe it's not intensive enough or just not God's timing but my friend couldn't come for the Christmas musical. yep. Nvm! I won't stop at this... =D

We also did an amazing race sorta thing along the orchard road stretch. yes i am definitely not kidding. it was a race based on our camp theme verse, 2 Timothy 4:12 whereby the stations required them to go out in faith, love, purity, word, spirit, conduct. =D We also spent a day on a rafting adventure which i dreaded initially but realised in the end that it's actually really fun! haha.. indeed, 'do all things without complaining...' it's somewhere in philippians.. haha..

Devotionals were awesome in the morning as well. Everything in this camp really flowed along well and hand in hand with each other. I enjoyed myself and God sure went before us since He always solved the problems occurred be it during the planning or during the camp itself. Praise the Lord! Hopefully, our edification campaign established in camp and to be officially announced on 2nd jan will be followed through... =)

4. Altoes Farewell + Guitar Christmas Concert

Our dear junior altos met up with us at the Esplanade sky garden for a special, unique, only-altoes-have-it farewell for us. They prepared the song 'Beautiful Girl' for us, acapella of course. Then they made us watch a video they made for us while they ran away to hide from the embarrassment due to the lame things they said/did in the video. After that, we just mainly sat in our circle and ate the sandwiches they made and the sushi they bought. And not to forget for sure, take photos!! =)

Rushed my way to ACJC to meet with some of RAYs to watch the guitar christmas concert. If I had known that jiaying and wanling were still intending to go for the concert, i would have shared the cab with them and save me the trouble of rushing here and there, in heels furthermore! lol. anyway, the songs were all christmas song and they played them well i suppose? cant quite tell... haha.. then we found stella to take a photo with her and I saw shuyi who came to support yishi! =)) Must kbox with shuyi sometime...

5. Carolling + Choir Christmas gathering

I carolled in the end due to the urgent pleas of my juniors and fellow batchmates. haha.. I only went for the very last rehearsal before their season starts while sayhwee just went straight to sing without joining the rehearsals! haha.. anyway, the both of us sang for 3 days...miss the season for our batch with mrs tay.. this yr, mrs rachel teoh conducted and well, it's not bad as well. On the last day, Sayhwee & I went to watch them carol at Keppel Bay Towers and joined some of our batch guys for lunch at pastamania. To kill time before heading to Jack's house for the christmas gathering, the guys went to play lan while sayhwee & I stayed in Plaza Sing. Finally saw the scrapbooking shop there and oh my, it really rocks! haha...yep we all then went to the gathering and well, it turned out to be just a simple one. The teachers couldnt make it in the end and many of our batchmates were either not there or left quite early. Sayhwee, Kim & I stayed till about 9 as we waited for Amanda to join us for a while before we left. yep...It ended off nicely as the choir went to surprise Stella with her farewell gift over at the 34th student council christmas party at the function room below the swimming deck(what a coincidence!). We carolled for them there and then with Jingle Bells being super off-tune! haha

6. Agapeland Christmas party+Chinese Harvest

Helped out at the filler stalls for the Agapeland Christmas party. Before the bread dist on that day, we helped to first set up the place and decorate the LOR room with balloons!! lots of balloons! haha.. and my stall was with Alyssa & Edwin. The game was a cool game - pick out sticks! but the other games were fun too..like the fishing one I kept seeing SNSD play in Hello Baby. haha.. Anyway, after helping out, I ended up playing second keys for some songs at the Chinese Harvest at the CC Hall. That night was really eventful and happy... Liping & her mum came with my 4th uncle that nite too!

7. Christmas eve & Christmas day itself.

After a supposed soundcheck + rehearsal for worship team at the victoria theatre, my sis & I left earlier. She went to straighten her hair at a random salon at Raffles Arcade while I walked around the area by myself. Then we met and continued walking around + satisfy a slight hunger with some Polar pastry. Then Terence came with my mum, adele to fetch us to meet my bro, px & daddy at The French Stall...(oops this is not in the scrapbook photos coz the photos are on my sis's iphone, but anw, there weren't photos of the main idea. haha..) Foie Gras is really delicious and I'm satisfied having the chance to eat it once in this lifetime; it just melts in your mouth and together with the applesauce... Escargots tasted like mussels to me, as in the texture... My main course was the pan-fried fish with white wine sauce & potatoes. This was a tad too salty I thought. The lamb chop tasted good, better than their steak. yepyep... I really recommend this restaurant. It's cheap for french cuisine and definitely worth the money! =)

Finally, Reckless Musical is going to be showing on Christmas day itself! I thank God that Sayhwee & her mum could come for this musical! =) Just yesterday, I heard from isabel that her mum said Sayhwee ticked the 'I want to know more about Jesus' box on the response card!! I'm really really glad for her and will definitely continue to keep in touch with her and continue to pray for her and invite her to our events again! The people I prayed for to come-my 3names4christmas & the One-they didn't come but someone I just decided to ask out of the blue, managed to come. God is wonderful and surely unpredictable. =D

8. Singapore Flyer adventure + Sherlock Holmes

I finally went to utilise the 2 complimentary Singapore Flyer tickets that my bro generously gave me. Thus, I went on a aunt-niece date with Shermin. (LOL.) So while we were waiting to get inside the cabin, the kind stewardess was telling us that there was actually a student holiday promotion where tix was at $10 each! then she also talked to us about some pple working part time there during the holidays and told us how we can go apply haha.. Oh then there's this awesome cabin with has like chandeliers dangling and nice red vintage printed walls and red seats. She said it was for the company events etc... How I wish I was able to ride that... haha.. Finally we got up the cabin and the view up there was really spectacular! Took some splendid photos which can be viewed in facebook... haha..After we came down, we really went to apply for a job there! =)) But actually, I came home and found out that they don't have stewardess vacancies but instead, sales promoter vacancies... Oh wells...

After this adventure ride, shermin & I walked at super speed to buy tickets to Sherlock Holmes movie which was slated to show at 4.30pm. We only reached Marina Sq at 4.05? and there was a long queue and Sherlock Holmes was selling fast. So by the time it reached us, we were left with near front row seats. sigh. Despite the bad seats we got, I have to say that the movie was really great! I love Sherlock Holmes like alot before and I still do! But I have to agree with Job that I don't remember him as being that comedic in the book... hmmm gotta have to read some of the mysteries again...I would catch the season 2 if there is... there should be, right?? Those who watched it would prob think the same as me because...

Then, what's more shocking was that Ben, Lydia & their parents were all in the same theatre as us! haha.. That totally explained to us why the youths had to meet at marina to surprise Ben for his 22nd birthday! lol... Anyway, Shermin & I still went to say 'hi' to them before leaving. I really left for home while Shermin stayed on for the surprise. haha... On the way, I saw michelle and then after that, I saw deebs, jk & his bro walking towards marina too but they didn't see me...

So, it's been pretty eventful huh... thank you for reading this long post!

here's a scrapbook I created to highlight most of the events!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

3 more days!! =)=)

2009-11-30T12:00:00.003+08:00

I finally got my long-desired shoes!! =)) no pictures till after prom.. haha.. I went to fareast with my mummy after church yesterday to buy it. Got some belts at a steal as well. heh.. can't wait to do new year's shopping after this whole A'levels, TheEdge, Seniors' Night, RAYs camp... so many things coming one after another, leaving me with no time to breathe except for now, before the last last paper! Anyway, I doubt I have the time to carol with the choir already.. will watch them instead... I don't have the time to rehearse with them before the actual carolling..sigh.

Well, the last few days, I've been slacking alot already, apart from doing a few bio mcqs each day. haha.. I started watching Cinderella Man. =)) Although it's not highly rated by some people and didn't appear to have high viewership in Korea, I'm still watching it because of Yoona & Kwon Sang Woo. heh. halfway through now.. haha.. Shall have to cut down these 2 days so I can do some studying for some weaker bio topics... then after thursday i'm done!

Oh, I got my provisional approval for relief teaching! =)) Shall go to PEPS, RV, ACJC to apply... though I would really want to try teaching at PEPS.. haha.. see if I'll get to meet Ps Thom's son Josaiah and be colleages with Auntie Mee Eng. heh. I saw some other job offers in the healthcare field(do admin work la..), Superdog... haha.. I'm also thinking of working at Udders if all else fails.. who wants to write in for these jobs with me??

1)Healthcare admin: http://sg.jobstreet.com/jobs/2009/11/default/20/2179086.htm?fr=J
2)Healthcare admin: http://sg.jobstreet.com/jobs/2009/11/default/20/2177143.htm?fr=J
3)Superdog: http://sg.jobstreet.com/jobs/2009/11/default/20/2177760.htm?fr=J
4)Udders: just go to their website and checkitout. =)

I really gotta work somewhere to pay for half of my driving lessons fees. talking about that, should I do auto or manual?? sigh...

1 More Left.

2009-11-24T10:46:00.002+08:00

A levels is about to come to an end... with just one more paper, bio paper 1!

BUT the distasteful fact is that i have a 10 days break in between and because of this break, I CANNOT GO TO EAST TIMOR!! coz if i don't make it back for whatever-the-reason-may-be, my entire bio grade will be forfeited! AHHH..

oh wells, there'll be other chances.

Anyway, chem paper 1 was the most horrible paper ever. Some didnt complete it; I rushed through the last 10 qns in 10mins? and now worried if i filled in everything of left one out and shifted all my answers up from that qn onward.(a lil hard to understand but i just gotta rant.) but it can't be helped since it's already submitted...

went window shopping with some class girls after our papers yesterday...we didnt like walk for super long and yet my feet felt super tired. Maybe it's the heavy bag... i saw a pair of shoes from Tangs that is like what I'm planning to buy but it was so expensive and it's troublesome to just try when I'm wearing shoes & socks. haha.. anyway, was planning to maybe wear a hat for prom but guess i'll forget it and use the money for a belt.
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on the whole, the A'level journey so far has been fulfilling not in the sense that I did well for all my papers. Rather, it was a period where God wanted me to depend on Him so badly.

A week before my papers, I fell sick. Had a major runny nose/blocked nose. The doc said there was a lil throat infection but it didnt feel like it at that time. That week, I had to continue studying under the drowsy effects of my flu medicine. Thank God, I kinda recovered during the week of exams. Having a choir tour jacket also kept me really warm in the exam hall but there were still times I had to like blow my nose or suffer from some runny nose still in the hall. However, I think God was really with me during that week where I had 7 out of 11 papers in 5 days! Each time I step out of the exam hall, there's is just a calmness and peace that fills instead of alot of worries or anxieties.

2nd week of the exams I only had chem p2 which felt good as I thought it kind of salvaged the paper 3. haha.. but this 2nd week was abit more relaxed after chem paper2. Had to study for Bio paper 3 and spam chem mcq practices. However, I think I didnt actually fully recover yet and this time, I really got throat infection. Did my papers yesterday with a sore throat. Yes i've lost my voice AGAIN. the 2nd time this year... sigh.

But just on Sunday, Pastor's sermon on pain was really good. It led me to think about my illnesses this period. The msg was that pain existed from the beginning because of sin, because we're always in the 'bondage of decay'. And we experience pain now but only to see God's glory shine through in the future. At this moment of pain, we musn't be deceived by the devil that God is punishing us or anything like that. Instead, God is actually always near us during our 'painful' season and caring for us. It's whether we see it or not. How true it was for my case as I saw that when I was sick, God was really near me and calling out to me to depend on Him! yea..
-
I won't be slacking too much these 10 days... musn't be complacent for bio paper 1. After that, I'm truly done!! =))

Because you loved me.

2009-10-15T19:41:00.002+08:00

Today was a rather emotionally intense day, I would say. It was Baccalaureate Service for the class of 2009. It practically marked the end for the 2 years of JC life in ACJC especially. So many 'last's took place(some of them yesterday)...

the last time singing for morning ensemble - for real,
the last time going for assembly and trying to be punctual for it,
the last time we get dismissed from the hall to our first class venues,
the last time going for tutorials -whether we enjoyed them or not,
the last time attending lectures marked out on timetables,
the last time sitting with choir in the morning during assembly,
the last time walking from buona vista mrt to school in the morn and walking that road back after a day's lessons with great company,
the last time we had a sit-down-together time with ms Azlina in our base class venue...

The service itself was meaningful and got me high instead of feeling down with all the song-singing by the student leaders. Following that, there was all the hustle and bustle of students strutting around school, giving gifts or taking photos for memory's keepsake... My class met at our base class for the very last time and waited for Ms Azlina to come meet us there. She finally came and got these bags filled with her love for the 24 of us. We then slotted in the pre-written notes for each special individual of 2SC6'09. I gave out my giant pocky sticks & heart chocs too. =)

As we later stood up, one by one, to share our thoughts of being in the class the 2 years, there were so many things that really touched my heart. Indeed, 2SC6 is a one special class that may superficially has split into a few cliques here and there. However, I'm sure deep down in everyone, we love each other much and believe in the strength and unity of this class. Deep down inside us, we believe our class is ONE still and that's more important than anyone else? Anyway, after saying my own share, as I heard so many of them speak, this song just popped up in my head. Strangely, it was just 2 days ago I heard it and yesterday, thought of it again. Then today, as it came up, I thought yes, that's the sentiments I have for the class.

Because You Loved Me (Cover by SNSD Taeyeon, SeoHyun)

For all those times you stood by me
For all the truth that you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For all the wrong that you made right
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you I'll be forever thankful baby
You're the one who held me up
Never let me fall
You're the one who saw me through through it all

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

You gave me wings and made me fly
You touched my hand I could touch the sky
I lost my faith, you gave it back to me
You said no star was out of reach
You stood by me and I stood tall
I had your love I had it all
I'm grateful for each day you gave me
Maybe I don't know that much
But I know this much is true
I was blessed because I was loved by you

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

You were always there for me
The tender wind that carried me
A light in the dark shining your love into my life
You've been my inspiration
Through the lies you were the truth
My world is a better place because of you

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

Thank you SC6, thank you choir as well for teaching me to always seek to bless & not impress. Thank you for loving me. =D
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On a side note, class outing today was highly successful! Whee~ looks like we're bonded by the murderer game too. hee.

The beginning of a new season

2009-09-21T21:53:00.003+08:00

I've turned eighteen years old. Wow. I've lived my life for eighteen years; and out of these eighteen years, perhaps only 4 years of my life where I truly found a close relationship with God although I've attended sunday schools and church all the eighteen years.

Well, I remember on Friday, 18th sept, when my classmates gave me the 3rd installment of the surprise, Jocelyn asked me,"Do you feel older?" At that point, I just thought: Being 17 or 18 doesn't feel much different. I'm still in JC, attending school, wearing a uniform, still in my 'teens'... except for the fact I get to watch M18 movies legally ( not that I ever sneaked into a cinema for an M18 movie before.. haha). It just felt like a very routine thing to celebrate birthdays year after year, without thinking too much about it.

Never would I have thought this perception could make a 180degrees turn overnight, and further develop over these few days.

On friday, I deeply felt the love of my friends and the people around me. My classmates showered me with strawberry surprises and absolutely unthinkable presents; my sec4 classmates also celebrated it for me this yr even though we're not like in the same class; then at night after town hall meeting in church, RAYs sprung a surprise for me as well by presenting me with strawberry shortcake and josh's elegant butterfly card. That surprise was really quite well done seeing that I didn't suspect a single thing and I was even so gullible to be 'lied to' by shalyn earlier that evening. THANK YOU ALL for the surprises.

On saturday, my actual day, I received so many well-wishes from friends, people I know...wow. I was overwhelmed by the fact that some people, despite not being that close to anymore or not in close contact, still bothered to drop a birthday greeting on facebook or msg me! Sometimes, these make me feel super bad if I didn't rmb their birthday before...But looking on the positive side, God seems to be reminding me of how I must not lose that contact with them but keep it and use it for His glory. That day, I also decided to do something special for my family. I whipped up a pasta dish for them. It was a whole lot of linguine to cook but I overestimated/understimated so there were leftover cooked linguine not used. I just thought it would be nice to do something different. After all, I'm eighteen and it's a supposed independent age so showing some cooking skills would be an indication of the age. haha..Thank God everything went well during the cooking except for a few clumsy acts on my part like spilling a some cream over.. oops. haha..I really thank my family for willing to spend so much for me-the food, my contact lenses...it's alot of money! I will surely repay them when I earn my own money, doublefold, or best still, triplefold. =D

On Sunday evening, I met up with my bunch of besties, Faith, Yeun & Jody for dinner at JP. We decided on Thai Express & promptly headed there without wasting any time. There, we had a great time just talking nonsense over the delicious food. =) It was a time of catching up too. Halfway, I was surprised by a cake from them! Apparently, Jody already pre-ordered the cake and sneaked up after our meal to get the cake from the JP Bakerzin! It was strawberry shortcake =DD I've always wanted to try theirs after Jody told me about it last year. Anyway, I was really touched as again, it was an act of love from these 3 dear friends of mine. We walked around abit before going to Ji De Chi for some desserts! After which, we parted ways and went home.

One thing from last night's dinner was while I was opening the presents. Jody actually got me a Christian devotional. A simple Daily Bread with like verses for every day & lines to write down thoughts. It may be a simple devotional book but something else stood out from it which touched me deeply. Jody described the gift as being 'so me' that's why she bought it. This just assured me that she actually could see Christ in me and so, she knew I am really devoted to God and that I love God alot alot alot. That thought just passed through as I saw her present. That's just enough for me to know. And it's like on Friday, I shared with Gnet that for my open doors journey, I'm still praying for Jody. It's as if God is trying to let me see some work being done slowly.

Today, I had a good time talking to God about all these wonderful experiences I had that shows me indeed His goodness in my life. It spurs me to work hard for A levels seeing that my prelim results were just so-so and not very good. Why? Because, I really want to for my sake, feel deserving of His mercy and goodness.

Thank you God for your mercy and goodness that shall follow me for all of my days. I will choose to let you lead.

taking a BIG BREAK before the MAD RUSH.

2009-09-09T23:12:00.003+08:00

It's the September school holidays once again!! My favourite month of the year is September. Guess why. I'm sure it's not hard to guess the reason so.

Anyway, prelims went pretty okay for me I suppose. Not say that the papers are easy or otherwise, but rather, I just felt at peace after every single paper, be them 1,2 or 3, geog, gp or chem. haha... I told myself, & I told God, that I'm just going to study whatever I can, prepare whatever I can in the time that I was given(actually, it's perhaps more of the time I started to give myself). & I'm not going to hold too high an expectation for my results to come. Of course, I would really wish for at least Cs for the subjects. The reason for the not-so-high expectations I made for myself is that I know that I just want to do my best for this exam and not get all fretful or overly morose over bad results. It's my own gauge as to how far I need to progress before the big thing really arrive at my doorstep. It's my marker genes so I can identify the sequence in which I should concentrate on. (heh, can't help but add in a bit of C.S.I. knowledge here!) So there, now, i'm happily enjoying my good break before the mad rush comes out again.

Oh yea, last monday, I went back to RV with a couple of my cosinettes to visit the teachers! Ms Dora Lee has left sadly and Ms Tan's also gonna leave at the end of this year to work in MOE. quite sad but cool huh? haha.. she says she'll invite us over someday before our male species of the class enter army! YAY! Took photos with her, mr chen, mr chan(forever the lovable geog old guy :D)...forgot to take with Lam Wan when she found us at our table when we were at the canteen. It was a great time to be back at that campus. Felt a rush of nostalgia as Huimin and I went to the gallery of the hall to watch a part of the teachers' day performance. haha.. Well, I shall be singing with RVCS for the opening at the new school building next year! Can't wait for it.. =))

Then on last friday, it was AC's teachers' day celebration. The reason they had it so late was because they wanted to wait for us JC2s to end our prelims first... =D The performance was quite good. The emcees were really lame though...cannot tahan! haha.. but the band was good very lively and well, choir wasn't as fun as ours last year but well, they did a good job in singing the songs well! Had a surprise celebration for ms Azlina. she prob thought we were just giving her a teachers' day celeb but NO! we're also giving her a belated birthday celeb! and i'm so proud of 2SC6 for working together to finish all the pages for the months for the calendar we made for her! Eunice, Yiming, Jenni and I met on thurs, the day before to do the sheets for the months and the cover and our own designated pages.. took the whole day but it was fun and worth it! haha..

Sat was alumni welcome tea which brought the J2s together once again.. well, I would prob join alumni for just certain events i guess but not for AEWF next year because I really want to be able to enjoy listening to my juniors this time round. =) then on Sunday afternoon, I went to Mrs Tay's house after church. It was a J2 gathering at her place. She baked yummy pizzas and chicken wings as well as prepared nachos with specialty dips! Then there was a WII frenzy in the house as pple took turns to play WII. I didnt play though. haha.. Anyway, her house was really nicely furnished and I like the layout. Because of her projector and screen in the house, I suggested something to my sis for their new house and Terence said they'll likely use my suggestion! =))

Okay, I'll leave another post for something else I want to blog about. It'll be off topic to blog that in this post. haha..

some thoughts...

2009-08-16T23:33:00.000+08:00

I can hardly find the drive to come to the blogger homepage, log in, and click on 'New Post' as I used to do a few years ago. Maybe it's something called growing up...?

Anyway, the reason I finally started 'penning' this post was that I have to eventually stop my procastinating and post some thoughts of mine regarding my RAGs journey as well as some recent happenings.

Well, I was sharing with Ps Sok Hwee during our last mentoring about the RAGs musical journey for myself. Indeed, it may not have been as 'intense' as some of those who were heavily involved in the acting and props. Yet, for me, there was a different sort of lesson that I learnt along the way, during inviting and also on the day itself.

I was really surprised that some friends of mine agreed to come unexpectedly. It really took me several years of opening invitations before some friends are able to come for a church event. Then another classmate of mine also agreed to come even if it means coming alone! Fortunately, another classmate came along with him. =) There may not be like big numbers of friends who came but still, I consider it all a breakthrough since it seemed so easy to invite this time round. This, I believe it was all God's work. What amazes me more is the work done in my friends' lives after the musical. From one, I was told she was glad to at least know God more and took home some lesson from Ps Guna's sermon that day. From that classmate of mine who readily agreed, there was even more amazing things! About 2 weeks later, I learnt that he accepted Christ! I really praise God for that for I knew He was using me as His instrument in paving the way for that classmate to meet God. Even the musical was part of God's big plan and purpose! Wow, I was completely astounded by learning all these.

Another lesson I learnt was to be ready to take risks. This resounds one of the church camp take-home. =D It was my FIRST time participating in a church musical, and I dedicated this FIRST time to being a STAGE MANAGER. Never have I done something like that and it is a really important job for I had to be the connector between the stage as well as Deeben, the director. Smoothness in transitions depends on our communication very much, so I was definitely stressed. Besides, I only actually came down on the thurs before the actual day to watch the rehearsal and familiarise with the scenes and the sets. And only one try with the walkie-talkie and everything on the sat rehearsal at the Main hall. I can only say it's God who helped me coordinate all things well. Prior to it, I've been praying and surrendering my abilities to God and just wanted to let Him take control and by His grace, He really came through. =D

Praise the Lord for His ever abounding grace and mercy!
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Remember in a recent post, I mentioned about needing some clarification? Well, God did speak to me during the worship retreat that I ended up going for since I thought it would help me to hear from God better without distractions and in a place with just one focus. During Pastor's sermon on serving in the worship ministry, he mentioned that our calling does not just mean a calling to serve. Instead, there's also the calling to BECOME, BELONG & then to SERVE. This really spoke to me. I've been struggling to come to a decision whether to stay in Chinese worship team where uncle Tommy recently asked if I could perhaps lead a team next yr, or head back to main service worship team & train as worship leader for main service. Now, instead of asking God where should I serve, where is my calling, I will ask Him,"What are you calling me to become as I serve in worship ministry?" From there, I believe I will get the answer of where to go...
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I finally came and finished this post. It was actually started sometime ago... haha.. Anyway, tmr's the start of Prelims. GOD BLESS whoever visits this blog and is a J2 from AC! I'm just surrendering it all in God's hands and just trying to finish up all the topics for the subjects as much as I can... Let God do the rest. =)

School falls in once more...

2009-07-01T21:47:00.002+08:00

Alright, so school has started. And i'm currently slowly trying to get into the school-time sleeping hours and switch my biological clock back to norm.

Guess what? on tuesday, i just got my 1st D.C.(detention class!) haha... people must be wondering, whatever did sarah do? well, due to my own insensibility on monday night, i went to sleep late(1amplus?) and i suppose my body was contented with my sumptous korean meal and also exhaust. Hence, i didnt hear my alarm ring AT ALL. Plus, my mum thought she saw light outside from inside her room and so she assumed i was up, eating breakfast. But she found me out only at 8.10am. Fortunately, school starts at 8.10am on tues and i'm not like few hours late for class. haha.. daddy was nice to fetch me to school and i reached at around 8.50am? yea.. it's quite awkward to walk into class late. sigh...so i obtained my 1st and last(it will be!) DC ever. It's not that bad tho.. mr Lau was nice and the environment was really good to study. haha.

Anyways, i'm starting proper, real revision. =) Prelims are coming soon, august 17!! and they're following the A'level schedule in sequencing the papers. Geog's first! it's got pros and cons to have that first. I'll leave that for you to figure.
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Right now, i'm fasting dinner together with the musical cast. And after reading today's devotional from the 40days devotional bk, I figured i got to fast my 'youtube watching' during that time too. yep. So i replaced it with studying other than the praying.

I trust God will come through this Sunday. =D

On another note, i need some clarifications from God now... shall blog about it another day...

All that gatherings, all that opportunities...

2009-06-24T17:22:00.004+08:00

There were a few rather eventful days over this week which I shall gladly blog about. =)

18June2009
My clique in class went to Yiming's house for an afternoon+evening of FUN! Our dear xinrui brought her wii to plug it at Yiming's house and we played Raving Rabbids, Wii Sports, Cooking MAMA!! =)) I finally tried playing wii and gosh, you won't imagine how some of the games can really make you feel super tired! In my opinion, wii is the best gaming device ever invented. It's not just finger exercise but you actually do use almost your entire body muscles to play the games since you wave your hands and blah. haha..

After that, we headed to the rooftop for some tennis and bball. LOL. and finally it was time to splash into the water for a swim or two!

At around 6, PeiHoon arrived and we soaked awhile at the jacuzzi area before bathing and returning to the hse for dinner prepared kindly by Yiming's grandfather! Then I hitched a ride from Xinrui's dad's car to Bishan as I was going to attend WeiJie's Grandfather's wake. yep.
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20June2009

Muse: A Night to Remember.

Well, before the concert, I met with xinrui, eunice, eunice's friend-naijie, mark and his friend-kenneth, for dinner. Then we went to get some small gift for peihoon while jeann was on the other end buying the flowers for peihoon, jim and melvin. yea.

Indeed it was a night to remember, with all the concert gimmicks thrown into the show this time. Anyways, it was a good job done! Great music and entertainment! I loved the pieces. Les Miserable was especially reminiscing of RVChorale's concert and Ghost train was just wow. haha.. I enjoyed this concert =DD Daddy picked me up from VCH after it ended. =)
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21June2009

XiaoJun's back in Singapore! Hence, instead of celebrating Father's day that night, 22 Cosinettes gathered at Shirui's house to have a welcome steamboat for xiaojun! haha.. my family's kinda celebrating it belated so yea.

After dinner, some of them went up to the roof but jinhwee and I didn't dare to. Maybe I would if it was in the day? Going up is not that scary, it's the thought of having to come down the very vertical ladder. Plus, the veranda wasn't very high up there. =S I ended playing a little bridge with ziyi, xiaopang and karhow. haha..

Finally, we decided to take a class photo before people had to go! And we presented xiaojun with a small gift as well, bought by the courtesy of Jolin Goh who couldnt make it. yep.

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22June2009

J2 sops & altos, most of us.

while performing, J2s & alumni

The J2s and alumni performed at the International Water Week at Singapore Suntec City! It was quite a grand affair as there were about 1500 guests from several countries and apparently, Prince William was supposed to be there but the person sitting at his place didnt seem to be him? haha...

After the performance, which actually marks the end of the closed door conference, we headed upstairs to the exhibition+reception after forming groups. Each group had different ethnic costumes and a mix of alumni and J2s. Some people did come and thanked us for a good performance, one even videoed us down while another called his son from Chicago to listen. HAHA. People also took some photos with us as we were all dressed in our ethnic costumes, which seem bedazzling? haha..
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Alrite, that's all. These few days, I'm just kinda staying at home to finish up whatever work's to be done and yea complete stuff basically.

Outing with RAYs

2009-06-13T19:39:00.002+08:00

On thursday, a few of our families went to eat at the same restaurant for lunch after church camp ended. There were the Tan family with deebs and don who were in the car, Lee family and the Justins. We were in a convoy actually. Then soon after we settled down, another group of church pple reached but they went to the restaurant next door but shalyn joined us instead.

After the meal, there was the idea of going to Playmax and then go for a movie at night. Thus, one RAYs outing was formed there and then. However, when I reached home, I decided against playmax and thought of using the time to study more instead.

Anyway, I arranged to meet Shalyn to study together while the rest go to Playmax. We said to meet at 2pm at City Hall as I wanted to go to the Esplanade Library to study. BUT, she was late. oh wells, I saw JK waiting for the others who were going for Playmax so I waited with him. When the others all arrived, they went ahead first. When Shalyn finally arrived at about 2.25pm(?), we walked over to esplanade library. Due to our hesitancy, the empty seats we first saw were grabbed by some fellow acsians. SIGH. We decided to go to Gelares to study instead. She offered to treat me since she was late. haha.. so yea, I ordered the tea-time special and her, an ice-cream cake. I wanna go there again next time. =D haha..

Good thing she managed to do her chem and stuff. It's probably a good idea to study with her coz then she'll REALLY study. haha.. when the playmax people were done, we met again at the mrt station to head over to cine for our movie! When we were about to reach Cine, I met gay, fatin, samlam, joel, pyl and kristy! They were out together yep. Well, then we had dinner at BK first where the rest coming for the movie also arrived and had dinner there. Then we headed up for our show, The Taking of Pelman 123. It's not a bad show really. Quite an exciting one... haha..

After the show ended and we were heading towards the mrt to go home, at the traffic lights, Lydia just had to get struck by bird poo! LOL. We all couldn't help laughing and people were staring too like we're hysterics but I guess they saw what was on Lydia's shoulder too. It was really sick! Anyway, we helped to clean it up of course.. then we parted ways!
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choir today was just J2s with Alumni, rehearsing for the international water week performance. what took me was that the organisers or something came to so-called vet our performance today. We had to perform without score and there's this new chinese song which I only saw it today and didnt exactly learn it very much! haha.. amazing that I managed to smoke my way through the song, catching on to the rest who knows as much as possible. Good thing Mrs Wilson knows that gen and I don't really know the song too well and allowed us to go to the 2nd row today to save ourselves since we had to show the perf to the organisers. haha..

then i came back home. =) the end of the post.

Chasing after the Spirit takes COURAGE

2009-06-13T19:16:00.002+08:00

i'm back from church camp 2009! =) Actually, I was already back on thursday evening.
Anyway, this church camp had been enjoyable in a new way for me I suppose. It's a different kind of enjoyment for me. Well, the emphasis was that church camp is a journey that's not to be focused just on the camp itself. Instead, it's an ongoing process from before we go up the mountain, to the experience up there, then to how we going to retain the word and bring the experience back to our valleys once more. Indeed, indeed.

I learnt quite alot from church camp this year and I'm glad to be a buzz group leader as it allowed me have more chance to ponder and reflect on the sermon preached so as to facilitate the morning word better. I was quite stunned that I managed to actually understand why in the parable of talents, the servant who buried the talent was wicked, like how Pastor mentioned it. When I went through it prior the session, I had the idea he was selfish and therefore, he was described as wicked. Then at night, pastor said just that too! I'm glad that I was right as it gave me a great sense of encouragement that I'm not all inadequate or ill-confident as a leader to my cell.

In the camp, I went for the altar call to receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as I felt tremendous stress this season. A part of it was also feelings of inadequacy. I really needed God's spiritual gift in leading the cell, which is by the way, very transient right now... Some other important take-home lessons for me was really about having the courage to do what God wants me to do and to follow His leading, and the courage to spread Christ to my friends as well. Hence, I shall be more bold to direct my friends to this Jesus that I know as my personal savior. One way's to get this blog more known. haha.. I guess it'll be good to post links to my blogposts on facebook. =)

Another reason I enjoyed camp was that I felt that I was learning to be more relational this year. I felt more comfortable being with RAYs, not that I wasn't but there's a greater breakthrough with them this time round. I showed sides that some were perhaps surprised to see and discover. Trust God to work since I admitted that I was jealous of people who are able to be just so relational with people. haha..

Well, overall, this mountaintop experience shall not stay up at the peaks but I will make an effort to bring them down to my valleys. =D

An(other) Evening With Friends.

2009-06-02T21:58:00.005+08:00

Yes. An evening with friends, for both the choir as well as the audience who came to hear us last night.

Anyway, the journey leading to this performance was full of its bumps but fulfilling it was. Preparation for the concert this year wasn't as hectic as last year where we sung so many songs and did so much choreography. However, somehow, there was probably this simplicity to the concert we displayed this year. The college choir represented was a showcase of our SYF pieces generally and fullstop. Not much fancifulness but just showing the joy of singing those songs. Alumni segment is fantastic as usual with the different styles they portrayed, alongside their deep friendship forged shown in their performance. Combined choir shows the ACJC choir spirit and legacy I suppose? Seeing the alumni and college singing together just declares our passion for making music together. And with the added reflection on singing with humility instead of being complacent just before we went upstage perhaps made us try harder there and then to give a better performance to touch hearts.

Well, this may not be my last performance with the choir as of now but I'm not sure if it'll be my last AEWF in which I get to sing in. If it is, I just wanna say that AEWF has been a very good portion of my 2 years in ACJC indeed. Thank you, every ACJC chorister, Mrs Wilson, Mrs Tay, the rest of the teacher team.

Of course, it's been a long time I've uploaded any nice pictures. Here goes!

ALLTOES: J2s'09

instead of zhenping skipping away, it's stacey's turn!

almost ALL the TOES are present except for wanling, anthea

with beloved SC6 classmates!

my clique, so called. haha. (xr, eunice, yiming came both last yr and this yr!)

separate photo with jeannette coz she werent there yet when we took the SC6 photo.

whee~ buddy!

with eunice yeap & kaiting! yifan didnt come in the end though.

dear friends from RAYs, my sister with terence, uncle tommy. oh but where's uncle david? lol anyway, really thank them for supporting me both last year and this year!

the gifts/flowers i received that day! i didnt get to take a photo with caroline and shirui though. aiya. haha..THANKS!!!

Goodbye.

2009-05-31T00:01:00.003+08:00

Goodbye Charlotte.

You'll be dearly missed.

(I forgive you for sleeping/sitting on my strawberry chair although i strongly warned you against it many times.)

pre-exam. D:

2009-05-26T20:06:00.002+08:00

It's the day before the last three days of Term 2, which sadly, are also the days of our mid-yr H2 papers.

Despite that fact, I felt a sudden urge to just blog just abit, after i flipped through the 1st few pages of my CSI notes. =) I saw a part mentioning of restriction sites have nucleotide sequences being palindromic - same sequence when read on both strands in 5' to 3' direction.
E.g. GAATTC and CTTAAG (imagine they're placed one above the other, they form the dna double strand sequences. sorry to those who don't take bio!)

Some literary examples:

straw warts!

A nut for a jar of tuna.

A dog! A panic in a pagoda!

Hint: try reading them backwards, ignoring the spaces but concentrating on the letters. =)

Interesting? haha.. okay, I gotta get back to studying!

Sing To Bless

2009-05-07T16:24:00.002+08:00

5th of May had been the day all 73 of us plus the 6 teachers/conductors had been waiting for.
10.30am, VCH.

For the first time after so long, there was no latecomer on that day. Everyone was punctual, in great anticipation of the day ahead of us. Warm ups in the beginning was led by Mrs Tay as usual. Afterwhich, Mrs Wilson led us through the 3 songs and great, we sound prepared except for small bits that could afford a little more sharpening still.

Then was the time where we had to go board our bus towards VCH. It was a wait of about 20 minutes or a lil more? then we got to go to the terrace for a 10min short run-through before we had to stand by for our turn on stage. As we were outside, we could hear a little of RJChorale and JJC's choir as well but of course, we focused and blocked them out of our minds, thinking of just our music. Prayers were prayed and final words were said before it was finally the moment.

We stepped onto stage, beaming, with the encouragement that came in the form of applause from our beloved Alumni. =D Then, we performed our 3 pieces. It was really amazing. I really felt interwoven into the whole music itself, feeling each others' parts as much as mine. Together, the choir was connected with one another and with Mrs Wilson as she waved her hands and conducted the 3 songs. Any pitch probs we had, totally vanished and we were all just enjoying each sound that came out, even the silence in between. As we stepped off, we knew one thing: our music has definitely touched hearts out there and that's enough.

For the first time in my many SYF experiences, it was one time that I felt no need to know the results anymore. We have given a performance worthy of the music and worthy of what we can do. Thank you all who gave your very all to this music making!

Last but not least, thank God for rewarding us with the Gold With Honours still. However, it would be a greater reward to know whether the judges did feel our shared passion in choral music. =)

Oh and congrats to RVCS for making through the 1st SYF with a SILVER!! It's not bad really for a choir with just 26 people, all being just Year 5s. I'm sure RVCS will continue to grow as a choir and shine among many other JC choirs. =)

syf intensive.

2009-04-26T16:37:00.002+08:00

The syf season is one which all performing CCAs gear up to and aims for performing their very best during the competition itself. It's a time where all eyes are on their own schools' performing arts and hoping that once again, they get to clinch that Gold With Honours they have done so the last time, or to get a better award than the last time. However, when they don't perform up to standards or putting it in a better way, attained something deemed less, eyes of hope turn into eyes of accusation or just simply disappointments.

That's the stress of many performing arts CCAs in many schools. Yet, again, I'm blessed that ACJC's belief is such that, as long as we offer the best we could give and the school knows it, there's no disgrace in getting awards lesser than a Gold With Honours.

Since I first joined AC Choir, I've learnt alot in this area. We perform not to glorify ourselves but to bless those who listen, who watches. And it's with sincerity in performing that we can make people feel us. Take our school's dance for example. They danced with the heart to tell the story behind 2 disabled dancers. Although they didn't get what they expected and hoped for, they knew their dance have acomplished the greater purpose - touching the hearts of the audience. And that's enough for them.

Last week, I learnt that all the performing arts in RV obtained something lesser than the previous SYF. Initially, it was shocking to find out. RVC got a gold? I was curious as to how that happened yet I knew afterwards that they did give a satisfying performance and Ms Tham is pleased already. Whatever they are given, as long as they themselves knew they've given a good performance, would no longer matter. RVCS would be competing on 5th May together with the other JC choirs. When I went back on thursday, certain things shocked me and Yifan and I had to talk to them. I really hope that they will see that being new, being a small ensemble does not excuse them from giving slipshod performances. Instead, they need to show greater passion and love for performing to overcome the negative feelings.

As for AC Choir, we're almost getting there. This week will be intensive morning pracs and also short afternoon pracs on mon & tues. Hopefully, all will truly go well. Sops and Alto 1s, we shall be in perfect unison for Forvaskvall entry, no matter what.

Anyway, just a video on Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent to inspire. She's got a dream and she dares to live her dream despite oppositions! We got to learn to display her tenacity and focus and passion. Most of all, sing and perform with sincerity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg&feature=related

Good Friday

2009-04-10T10:23:00.003+08:00

Good Friday is the day Christians all over the world celebrate the cruxifixion of dear Jesus Christ, Son of God. The act of dying on the cross to pay the price for our sins is immensely incomprehendable. It demonstrates the great, merciful love of God over everyone of us, believers and non-believers alike.

This year, my church is embarking on a whole new journey together, a journey to open doors. This is totally different from what we have been doing for the Easter Season year after year. Instead of preparing an Easter musical this year, we're moving towards personal evangelism where we are challenged to open our houses to invite friends for some dinner and movie. For RAYs, we're doing it on cell level.

Personally, I feel that im slowly stepping out of my comfort zone in the area of evangelism this season. Yifan's been coming to my church twice already and it's a good start to see she's willing to attend church and stuff. I'm just not very sure how much of her has really accepted God and so this is something I have to breakthrough during our conversations.

Besides this, I had an amazing conversation on Saturday night with my classmate online. He sent some of us(classmates) an email requesting us to watch this video. I opened and realised it's something i've seen before, about the Father bringing his paralysed son to compete in triathlons like the Iron Man etc. Since he was online, I just had the urge to discuss the video with that friend suddenly, sensing that if I didn't do it, I may just regret it.

So, I just started the conv casually by mentioning how I've watched the video and prior to then as well. Then I added that the video simply demonstrates 'how God loves us as well'. I'm glad I stepped out of my hesitancy to type that out. It's not something I've really done before and so I was really unsure of what the response would come out of it. Anyway, thank God for technology like MSN. haha..

Well, indeed PRAISE GOD as my friend started to ask lots of questions regarding this love of God that I mentioned, like whether non-believers experience God's love and how do they even know it's God's love when they don't know God etc. I started off first and foremost by sharing the gospel with him and explained whatever I could explain to the best of my abilities, some of which also stumped me to an extent too. haha.

He proceeded to let me know that he's actually been curious about God before and once asked God to show him that God's real. To his amazement, God did speak to Him in a way he found so strange and yet he didnt dare to be convinced. So he asked again for God to send someone to invite him to church/cell. I felt so shocked. During the conversation, before we reached this point of the discussion, I was thinking how to bring up the topic of invitation to the Easter Service this Sunday. I told him about it and he was like amazed. I further learned that he startedn pondering about God since sec4 and he asked those questions sometime in the beginning of this year, 1/2 weeks after attending Daryl's christmas service. There and then, I realised that at the start of this year, during Vision Nite when JJ asked us about the numbers/faces, I got the number 3. As I was waiting to see which 3 friends, I did think of this friend but I wasn't confirmed and didnt take that into great account, thinking I was probably thinking of my classmates as a whole. Why this classmate when we are not really close friends?

As I thought, I figured it really was God telling me about this friend already that time! I mean, it's quite close to the time where that friend asked those questions as well. I was really excited and that friend has accepted to invitation to come for the Easter Service this Sunday too! Actually, another good news is that on Monday's Chapel(it's REW :D), I heard that the friend ticked the response 'prayed to receive Christ' and I'm super thankful! Somehow, I felt the sense of gratitude that God has used me in one way or another to save this friend. Hopefully, this sunday, his faith will be further strengthened. =D
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On another note, school has been stressful. My H2s are not doing very well. but on a happier note, I GOT MY PW A!!!!! In fact, my entire class managed to get our very first A'level A together!! It was a day to celebrate! heh.. after all that slogging for PW and tolerating the differences in the group, it was worthwhile. haha..

RAYs GIIG + NATURALLY 7

2009-03-22T22:26:00.004+08:00

it's been a long time yet again. haha.

anyway, it is the end of the holiday and i had my fair share of work and play. =D heh..

on the whole, choir had been like a roller coaster where we keep getting better and dropping low once again. hopefully, we can really be like a race car instead, pressing forward, moving forward all the way. the geog extra lesson on monday was really fun, as usual. come on, it's Mr Lynn's lesson. haha..(im not hinting any form of sarcasm, if that's what you thought. it was really fun.)

the week was full of studying(rather, intensive math practice). i went to je lib on monday afternoon and spent 2 hours there.. the purpose of going there initially was to get back my stuff from shirui. haha.. then i decided to join her and jingmin to study there too. they left first while i continued to do my math. i went there to study again on thurs morning with shirui. yishi joined us in the noon. after that i left for GIIG prac. yea..

aside from all these, i went for GIIG prac on mon nite and thurs afternoon. whee~ raydio rocks the house. haha.. anyway, we managed to do up the 10 songs with 4 practices altogether. how awesome is that? i dont think i'll be uploading all the videos here. perhaps just a few representatives. =) feel free to search tantaibi or wavehand for the other videos taken of the rest of the songs.

VivaLaVida (job, ben, sarah)

100 years (Weijie, Isabel)

Drops Of Jupiter(JJ)

You to Me are Everything (Weijie, Ben, Sarah, Isabel)

Lucky(more bossa nova style) (Ben, Sarah)

a new version of 4-chord with additional voices of Isabel and Weijie!

anyway, RAYs GIIG happened on friday nite. yepp.. yeun and jody went for it! i'm so glad they agreed to come. i thank God that jody gained a new perspective of what a youth grp in church can actually organise and also happy for the seed already planted in her heart. =) jody, if you're reading this, thank you and also, you'll always be in my prayers girl. yeun, you too =D

well well, today was a long day. the sermon today spoke to me so clearly. these 4 weeks, we are on the series on Jonah. so today's was about Jonah calling out to God desperately and God still answers him and saves him in the nick of time. then the ministry call was for several groups of people. i found myself falling into the category of facing discouragement and struggling with worries. i've mentioned this umpteen times. my cell is giving me a mountain of problems. and to add on, today especially was discouraging. i didnt see like 3/4 of my cell members in church today. and we're supposed to have a cell lunch but many couldnt make it. that's fine. i was planning to go ahead with just the few at hand. however, some pulled out last minute and one who said she could go didnt even turn up in church today. finally, it was down to just alyssa again. hence, the lunch was a flop and was cancelled. but alyssa just joined us for lunch la.
i am only this one person, an ordinary 17-going-on-18-yr-old girl, only went into being a leader proper sometime last year, and God's really giving me a big big challenge. what's more, i've got my A's to prepare for this year. i dont need an emotional breakdown to deter me from my A's on the report slips. already, im trying my best to keep up with all that learning.

but today's message rejuvenated me. i know this is going to be hard but am i going to give it all up? am i going to be like jonah and run away from this Nineveh and escape to my Tarshish? Or am i willing to realise that i need God, like how jonah realised, and dare to humble myself to cry out to God to really help me in all of these? today, i said yes, i need God. i can't do this alone. i cannot think im self-sufficient for all these conviction comes from God and only He can convict the girls of my cell. i am only that instrument that He is using and i can only do that much. maybe i've not been praying enough for them. hence, i shall really invest alot alot more time in prayer for them. for a breakthrough.

anyway, because i was of course still swept by my emotions of feeling just slightly discouraged still, terence had to provoke it further by forgetting his bag twice and making me lug it all the way to esplanade lib. sigh. well i studied there for a good 3 hours before meeting lydia, ben, jk, reuben and weijie at marina sq FC for dinner. after that, we headed back to esplanade to meet up with my sis and terence for... NATURALLY 7's CONCERT!!!!!!!!

my oh my, it was really worth my $43! they were totally fantabulous and really blow our minds away! their LIVE performance is SO SO SO GOOD! the acoustics of the hall plus the sound system made their performance so awesome! i really really enjoyed myself.. haha.. they are all so cool and gifted with their voices man.. and i've got to mention that the bassist of the group was really superb with his ultra ultra sexy low voice! haha.. im sure it melts everyone's hearts, even the guys man. haha..

im so gonna get their album! and will definitely catch them the next time they're in town! WHOO~ oh yea, i met nathan while my sis and i were waiting for terence outside the gents. haha.. wad a coincidence! he was at Naturally 7's too! together with some friends of his and he told me marcus went too. haha..

oooh lala~ Naturally 7 are really naturals. haha.. they made my day. =DD

inject music into life.

2009-02-15T21:33:00.002+08:00

today has been a pretty musical experience. =)

anw, let's backtrack to the week for awhile first before i start on today's reflections.

the past week has been very very tiring and yet exciting. i helped out at the auditions on mon, tues and thurs till almost all the way for all three days. my oh my, thurs was really overwhelming with people. now what did they say bout having spillover effects from the past 3 days? it was really boring actually to be waiting and waiting for so long till the group goes for their audition finally. my group had to wait till about 5 plus(that means, they waited for 2 hours?!) for their turns. however, it was really nice to be able to get to know more J1s, even if they didnt get in. Still, i hope we'll be able to rmb each other next time! =)

cell was, half great, half not so great. worship was very free that nite and therefore, we kinda dragged it till really long and ended up having little time for the sharing of the sermon. anyway, my cell had only alyssa. which is why it made cell not so great. well, i know it's not easy for some to come for cell since they have to either depend on their parents to fetch them there and home or else, they have ccas which end like super late and make them all weary to come for cell.

apart from school stress that's already starting to take its toll on me, i'm also getting to lose steam in leading this cell. i'm so afraid i'll one day break down totally. today's sermon was great. i can hope and hope that i can cope(oh it rhymes.). i can also hope that my cell members can grow up and decide to really come despite feeling tired and such. however, what will make these hopes turn into FAITH. which is like what Hebrews 11:1 says, " Faith is to be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." to have faith and not just hope, first of all, i need to really hear God's promise for me in both areas. hence, this shall be something i would be seeking God for this week's devotions.
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just to mention abit on yesterday's choir! in the morning, we had our choir rehearsal as usual. but before mrs teoh took us on the vocalises, after the physical warm ups, Nathan asked all the guys 'out of the room'. well, we girls were just minding our own business and looked through our scores. suddenly, the guys came back into the room, but now with their two hands holding a rose each! and they presented roses to each girl! how sweet huh! this year's v-day tradition was sorta broken as normally, we would prepare and song and gift each for the opposite sex. yea. kinda embarrassed that we girls didnt prepare anything. finally, after the welcome tea for the J1s, we did an impromptu performance of the song 'L is for the love you give to me... O is for the only one i see..V is very very extraordinary..E is even more than anyone that you adore and Love...' yep. haha..

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so today i got to hear about a few more youtube stars from Lydia Lee and Isabel - Rin On the Rox as well as Nick Pitera. They all rock, together with the group of talents who started the version of Tribute to 4-Chord songs on Youtube. =))

before attending High Places, i went alone to Esplanade library to study. i think i love that place! i understand now why Lydia used to like going there to study during her Os! haha.. at about 3, my sis joined me and we headed down for Mrs Tay's and Mrs Teoh's recital at the recital studio when the time came. oh, the sops and altos bought chocs for Faith as she was going to perform together with Mrs Tay and their other sisters! =DD well, the recital was fantastic!! Mrs Tay sang really well and so did Mrs Teoh with her superb piano playing skills! haha.. i love that piece she played man...

sidetracking a lil, my sister and terence knows Mrs Teoh's brother, Victor Toh, from NTU Crusade! haha.. soo cool.. if i get the chance, maybe i'll let mrs Teoh know, if i dare. haha..

anw, yes, we need to inject music into life. indeed.

Happenings!

2009-02-08T21:32:00.003+08:00

okay, im using the laptop because the computer is really screwed up. and because i placed the lappie in front of the comp, i keep forgetting and typed on the keyboard for the comp! how stupid right. anyway, this blogpost shall be a pretty long one as i'll be recounting some past cny happenings as well. haha..

anw, on the 2nd day of the cny, as i've mentioned in the earlier post, my maternal relatives came. =D mag and xue brought SPRING!! heh.. i love him so much more than luvluv please. haha.. he's so active despite being handicapped. he played with charlotte too, who was kinda less active already since she's such an old dog. well, this year, we didnt camwhore or anything so no photos! in the evening, my paternal relatives met up again for steamboat dinner. this time, i saw my little cousins but well, as usual, we dont really interact. sigh.

hmmm.. school reopened after cny and things just got back to the norm i guess. oh yea, on thurs, 29jan, RAYdio practised one last time before the performance for the cny party happening on fri30jan. anw, the cny party was quite a blast. we had 24 friends who came! Praise the Lord! the game-show sorta thing by weijie and sam was really cool. haha.. the mass game, lai lai lai, was fun too~ JJ shared about the coincidence between a certain few chinese characters and what the scripture has to say. it was really amazing actually. haha.. after that, it was song items! RAYdio put up 2 songs. =)) here you go, for your listening pleasure.

RAYdio - Yi Ren Yi Ban

RAYdio - 4 Chord Tribute =D Original from a grp of talented singers who uploaded their vid on youtube

sigh. i sounded so bad at the pre-chorus. phlegm was stuck and couldnt hit the note properly! ahhh..

after this, we just ended with a lucky draw kinda thingy and the party was concluded. yep. on that sunda(which is last sunday), some few of us went to carry out the C-Challenge!! SO EXCITING. heh. shalyn led us to the houses of those few kids we met during lantern fest last year-Mishan, Sandy and finally Shirley's house. they're all sec 2 this year btw. oh and sandy has like a brother, andy and a sister, cindy. together, the form Andy Cindy Sandy! haha.. alrite lame.

then it was Feb 2nd where the J1s finally started school! NAT's in AC. =D i keep seeing her in school now. haha.. Orientation for the J1s really brought back memories of my own orientation. haha.. anw, Nat's in Mushu, a clan which i would like to be in as well. haha coz it has a cute name! haha..

last nite, there was yusheng celebration. it was rather well received la. yep. i had nothing in particular to do so i was basically like just helping out here and there. haha.. today's sermon was good but i guess i was a lil sleepy, to confess. but it was a really impactful sermon nonetheless. how many a times do we actually derive faith from circumstances? that should not be the case as circumstances are just catalysts to faith. the true foundation is Jesus Christ, who came and died on the cross for our sins.

anw, in the afternoon, about 10 youths or more went to Bishan J8 to support Weijie and his WAH-LER-MAK. heh. it was super hot and my heels were killing me too! anyway, halfway through the group vocals rounds, there was a power failure! the poor group was like singing halfway through their song man. so we had to wait for them to fix the things before they could resume. oh yea! I SAW LIYING AND JIAYI! =DD they were taking part too! haha.. i already sorta knew liying would be there but not sure as a participant or supporter. then weijie said there was an AC girl singing too. and when i saw liying and identified her as my rv senior, weijie said the ac girl is singing with her! immediately, i guessed jiayi and im right! haha.. weijie helped me call jiayi and i guess she was somewhat surprised to see me there! haha.. anw, wah-ler-mak was not bad!! and THEY GOT INTO FINALS =DD ( no photos yet, shall wait for isabel. haha.. )

alrite.. that's it for now. =)

HAPPY CNY.

2009-01-26T21:34:00.002+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year y'all!

Anyway, i think alot of us probably feel the same. This year's cny seems to feel kinda empty, lacking in atmosphere of some sorts. Probably it all started with not having a proper half-day on Friday since MOE claims it's not the eve of a festive and so we aren't obliged to a day of simply celebrations and day-off from lessons. I don't feel any sense of festiveness in all this, well yet.

well, since we had lessons till about 10.50 on Friday, obviously i didnt get to skip swim p.e. i'm in advanced so i get to learn Butterfly stroke. we started out with some drills using flippers but some of us belonged to the 'lower advanced' and had to be separated to work on using the flippers. okay, it wasn't as bad as i thought. i guess i won't hop over to intermediate then. heh. AC celebrations was not bad. The performances put up were really entertaining and great. haha. Mr Sum just had to end off the programme with singing cny songs. we were so not hyped up and there he was, trying to rub off some of his 'high-ness' onto us, all in vain though. haha. oh yea! he invited AC's CSS-YAP JIAMIN onstage! WHOO ~ haha..

that afternoon, went out with some choir friends for a movie at vivo! inez, say hwee, megan, yueyue, jenny(inez's classmate) went to vivo first and bought tix to Yes Man because there weren't any left for Changealing. sigh. i wanted to catch that. but well, since the tix is free so yea. haha.. we bought Macs for lunch and went up to the amphitheatre to enjoy them. i've got to mention this, vivo is practically a popular hangout for rvians for i saw them everywhere. i even recognised 2 juniors there! lol. chris and nat sim found us up there and joined us. faith only joined us for the movie at 4pm. yep. we saw the Aetos clan ogls watching the same show too!

well, saturday was another normal saturday where there was choir in the morn. yep. sunday, church!! after chi service duty, went back to church to find the rest of the youths for lunch. we ate at KK's renovated foodcourt. =) i was so ignorant to know that the foodcourt was opened for business again only yesterday! it's bigger and there's more stalls? however, some weren't opened coz it was the eve. after lunch, those of us involved in the song items for our RAYs cny party headed back to church to practise the songs. =DD i love the 4-chord song we're doing.

came home after the practice to help out in the kitchen. yea.. then my paternal relatives started arriving one by one. sigh.. every year it's such a pattern, it's predictable and so routine. hence, no excitement and all. one comfort was that my 2 cousins have grown quite adorable as the older boy is now more sensible. heh.

today was well, boring. i woke up with dry throat and runny nose. basically, i need to cut back on the cny goodies and bak kwa this year. lol. anyway, in the morning, my sis, terence and adele came over to 'bai nian'. my mum wanted to take a family photo with my bro's family but my bro won't arrive in time. but we just took one without them first. yep. then after all that photo taking, my sis and i started pasting the nail art stickers on our varnished nails. lol. she bought some new pretty ones so i happily koped from her. =))

i spent my afternoon sleeping coz my head was really spinning and i couldn't do my chem tutorial. sigh. im glad i still managed to do it after that. =) right now, im finding info for my essay outlines. urgh. alrite. hopefully, tmr will be more fun when i have some company when my maternal relatives come!

1st week of school

2009-01-18T18:44:00.002+08:00

it's back to school!

on sunday, i was still dreading the thought of having to go back to school again and face the horrible monster, named A'levels at the end of this year. of course, another reason to add to my reluctance to go back was the fact that i had homework left undone! haha.

on monday, being back at school was much better than expected! it just felt great to be back with my classmates. oh, now my class size shrunk once again to just 24 of us. apart from sam ho who's retaining, melvin has decided to re-do his JC 1 year once more so he could prepare better for A's. oh well, i wish them all the best.

anyway, i've got to mention that i love my timetable!! =DD my lessons do not get past 3.30pm at all! wheee~ and i actually get to end school at 1.10pm on Tuesdays! that's really awesome. hence, i shall be attempting to go swim on my tuesday evenings. =)) on fridays, i end on 1.50pm and that's great too coz that means i can go home first before going for cell. :D

the week had been pretty interesting. on Tuesday, we had our Openhouse and no doubt, there were more people who came this time round. the choir sang qutie a fair bit of songs and we were all so tired. people just kept coming into the viewing gallery in large groups so we had to keep performing now and then. oh yea, on wednesday, something electrifying, shocking happened in the HR after our sectionals. gosh. i shall not post details on it lest it leads to some unwanted attention from people. lol. by the way though, we've learnt our SYF set piece, Sounds of Joy. it rocks! heh.

Thursday was a tiring day! we had our 1st mass P.E. gosh, it felt so terrible while in the midst of it but if i compare it with what we had in J1, this yr's was much better already. well, i ended up aching on friday of course, seeing how unfit i am. haha..

Vision Nite had been quite alright. the Win for RAYs ministry was stated down to everyone that nite. And i'm excited for us and what we're gonna be doing in November! the street evangelism thingy will be such a blast man! and not to forget, as individuals, we were asked to think of a number/faces whom we wanted to share the complete gospel with by this end of the year. i heard the number '3' and has a confirmed person in mind already. however, i shall be waiting to hear from God about the 2 other people who are not yet revealed to me. yep.

well, that's it for this post. i've decided to blog every sunday, by the way. haha..

last day of the long long holiday

2009-01-11T21:54:00.002+08:00

i was very tempted actually to change my blogskin to one of those scrapbook designs that i found on blogskin. however, i've decided to put it off for the time being and use this current skin for a longer time first.

anyway, im dreading to go back to school. i feel so ill-prepared for the year's vigorous studying and even more new things to learn and grasp. i didnt finish all my GP homework. sigh.. the essay outlines are tough to write okay. i've never been exceptionally good at writing GP essays. argh. why must A'levels come so fast? strangely, a'levels fall on the year we turn eighteen. hear the similar first syllable? haha..

enough of the negative outlook because i know God has His plans for me, ready for me to grab hold of. I just have to be willing to let go of myself, of my expectations and really let Him take control. =D

anyway, i wanted to mention a lil of the SC6 class chalet. =) we did night cycling and it was so fun! haha.. i enjoyed the experience a great deal. however, it was also a really painful one! haha.. we cycled from aloha loyang all the way to ECP and back again. but i didnt complete the journey back on bicycle. only cycled back to changi beach park and then hopped onto a cab after that. i was with the slower group which had lots of problems with the bicycles. hence, we all couldnt cycle back all the way but resorted to different means to get back to the chalet with our bikes. lol. the activity left me with aches all over, from my hands, to arms, to shoulder blades, to my butt, to the thigh muscles. gosh. haha..thank God though that chalet was a success! =))

well well, i have concluded my shopping for new years' clothes! with accessories and all. heh. im so glad and i cant wait for chinese new year to come! oh did i mention, i got my navy blue and grey stockings from yeun who helped me buy them when she was in taiwan in dec! THANKS AGAIN if you're reading this, yeun. =D now i need to find the ocassions and clothes to match them with. haha..

alritee... im gonna go prepare for school tmr! sigh..1st day of school + the release of the O'level results! God bless Nat, Isabel, Deanna, Don, Job, Joel Lee! i'm sure no matter what results they get, it's God's plan. =)

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T15:35:00.002+08:00

Happy new year everyone!

Unlike past years, I forgot to write my reflections on the 31st and I'm going to intentionally forget to write my new year resolutions today as well.

Pastor's very right. When do we actually heed the resolutions we lay down at the beginning of the year? If we don't really follow them, there's no point in stating them because we're just wasting our time to think of somethings to put up so it looks like a good way to start the new year.

Since, I'm moving on to my eighteenth year this 2009, I shall break away from that pointless act and just use today's post, to sincerely show gratitude to God's faithfulness in my life in 2008.

ONE; He's led me to ACJC for my PAE and then JAE and gave me a very fun and exciting Orientation to JC life. I had my first taste of being in a Christian school, where the values were pointed to God, where i get to hear devotionals every morning with some speaking to me sometimes, where I felt comfortable knowing there are definitely like-minded people around me. He's enabled my transition from secondary school to be very smooth and easy. I would have thought the switch from a Chinese-medium school to an English-medium one would not be easy. But thank God, He helped me fit in seamlessly. =D

TWO; somewhere in late january? was the release of the O'level results. I was really blessed by God to have managed to get 7points for L1R5. On top of that, all either A1s or A2s! I still remember that when I first saw the slip, I saw the whole column of As and I just couldn't believe it for myself! PRAISE THE LORD! I know much of it were only attainable because of the moderation but still, it's God's hand at work!

THREE; I've never regretted the decision to join ACJC Choir. I think if not for my time spent with the choir, I would not have learnt alot from being in AC. haha..I thank God that He gave me a chance to learn about AC choir in early 2007 from Clement. I think that kinda sparked my interest at going to AC. There, I learnt alot about giving, singing to bless. There, I also found great friends as well as regained a childhood churchfriend. haha.

FOUR; Being among the leadership for RAYs has been a whole new experience for me. It's really forced me to step out of my own shell and really really take onus of the ministry along with the other leaders. Besides, since my cell is the group of younger uns', it was a good chance for me to get to know them better and mingle with them better. I guess the cooperation with Deeben also allowed me to interact with him more as well? haha. yep. Whoah, and planning for youth camp with Ben. That was a very very new thing for me! Settling accommodation, food, camp directions, programmes... Plus we met with the sudden turn of events when we were almost getting settled with the 1st campsite. There came the rush of finding a new location and stuff...It really taught me to depend alot on God and believe in Him despite the seemingly helpless situations.

FIVE; I thank God for the birth of my brother's daughter, Lui Hui En! =) She's also irresistably cute but can be pretty demanding at times too. haha.. I'm glad Adele and her are getting along well. It's such a joy to see the 2 of them play. With Adele being able to utter several words now, it's delightful to see how they interact with each other and with us as well. haha.. Oh and not to forget, because of them, Hi-5 songs are once again put into my head as they watch them everyday!

SIX; I've really been blessed with a good family relationships and friendships too. This year's church camp has unloaded a certain deception I faced and I'm not going to let myself return to feeling that shame anymore. As for friendships, I'm glad my long-time friends are still in touch with me and also for my current school friends. =D

Indeed, praise God for such a wonderfull and abundant year 2008. I look forward to 2009 where indeed, I will continue to shine for Christ, to live my life worthy of the gospel of God as learnt from youth camp this year. =) And I shall also seek to ACT JUSTLY, LOVE MERCY and WALK HUMBLY WITH GOD as with what Pastor shared during last nite's 009 Resolution sermon. =D

boxing day!

2008-12-26T13:07:00.002+08:00

the 26th has always been termed the Boxing Day. haha but i've already opened the whatever presents i've received over the days leading to christmas before boxing day.

really, giving gifts is a joyful thing. but urgh, i forgot to give all the altos their pops! crap, only gave to 2 of them. sigh and i won't get to see them anymore till jan 12? yea. anyway, receiving the gifts are also touching. again, i've mentioned before, it's not how big the gifts are, or how expensive they are. simple, small gifts count because the people who are giving them prepared them with a cheerful spirit and with lots of sincerity placed in it. Even just a simple christmas card is also really something to be appreciated. =)

this morning, i went to dig out whatever cards i had-birthday cards/xmas cards that were still lying around. then i kept them inside my huge letters/card box where all my christmas cards and bithday cards from past years are stashed away in. then i decided to pack my stuff from 4C LAST YEAR. yes, i didnt really keep them away properly this whole year! so now, i have them all in a 0.2588 box. (heh, unless you are in cosine75, you prob wont know why 0.2588)

anyway, yesterday, it was christmas! Yifan came with her friend to watch the 4pm musical but left before I could talk to her! :( well, i'm glad she came. even though i didnt see her raise her hand to accept Christ, but i know God has planted seeds in her that will one day germinate and be watered. lol, one funny thing though. as the worship team were leading the song during ministry time, my sis, who's the worship leader, didnt really know whether to stop or not. when we all just stopped singing and seemed about to end the song, the audience who were still there just clapped. omg. haha.. then pastor had to ask us to just continue. haha..

well, last nite was a success! we had a total of 25 salvations! PRAISE THE LORD!! :D this is alot more than last year. indeed, we had been too preoccupied with filling the space with a crowd for last years' musical that we neglected the fact that the purpose of inviting is to evangelise to them. so this year, our win is to actually just be bold to bless 10 and evangelise to 1. doesn't matter if the audience is big or small! =) and yes, God is faithful!

alrite, i gtg get ready to go to Ben's place. He's having his 21st birthday celebration tonite! but some of us are going down earlier to help to deco & also have a rays leaders meeting for youth camp first. heh.

Christmas is coming.

2008-12-17T21:35:00.003+08:00

whoah...it's close to a month that i haven't blogged. somehow, i'm enjoying just journalling things down manually there and then. however, still, i would say blogging is a useful tool if i intend to get something across to whoever that reads this blog.

well, it's less than a month to school reopening and i've yet to really start on my homework proper. now this is very very bad. im trying. but urgh, this week's been carols and carols and yet more carols. i spend my whole morning out and reach home earliest 3pm. then i'm busy with my xmas presents, youth camp stuff, xmas musical worship...blah.

oh well, im glad christmas is coming though. and through carolling(frankly speaking, it's my first proper time carolling! :D), i've learnt lots too. after a somewhat bad start during warmups on monday, our 1st day of the carolling season, we are all quite jerked awake from our small self to transform into musicians who use our music to bless sincerely.

im proud to say im able to move aside from my stone-face and wooden block image while performing as i sing the carols. i hope i stay that way for syf pieces and other pieces too! haha.. well, anyway, just today, the teachers brought up an interesting occurence. they noticed that as compared to the times when past batches carolled, this year, many people actually sat through almost the entire performance! some were waiting there before we were slated to sing and sits throughout; another group will happen to pass by and decide to stop and hear us; some came by intentionally and though they may leave before we end, we see them leave with joy and glee.

really, i'm amazed at this. it makes me really think alot more of singing to bless and not singing to perform and showcase our choral excellence(if there is any haha). the economic crisis that singapore and US and many other places are facing, with the addition of the recent outbursts of the mumbai attacks and thai protestors, are all threatening events to everyone. especially for the people working in the CBD area, they are probably living with apprehension and fear for their jobs, if not year-end bonuses or even just their monthly salaries.

this season of christmas is going to be very meaningful. i always believe that there is a reason behind everything that God allows for and this series of setbacks are no exception. the fact it also happened kind of before the christmas season this year should make us, as christians, to let others know that there IS a savior whom we can all depend on. He loves us all and will surely lead us out of this 'shadow of the valley of death'.

Timor 2008

2008-11-24T11:27:00.009+08:00

FRIENDS: I'M BACK FROM TIMOR.. LALALALALALALALA~

18.11.08

I left for timor. In the morning, my dad drove me to Nat's hse where her mum then fetched nat and myself to the airport. We had to reach at 7.20am. =) There, we checked in our luggages and boxes of lab apparatus before we went separate ways for breakfast. Some youths came to send us off! Jeanette, Josh, Ben, Sheng(who was leaving that evening for europe too), and oops, i cant rmb who else! We prayed before entering into the gates and also took a group photo!

On the plane, we all switched places since everyone was split up somehow. Good thing that there were several empty seats here and there so we could change seats. Nat, Isabel, Shalyn and I sat at the very last row. LOL. I spent my flight there just reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and sleeping. heh.

And we're finally about to descend...

to Timor Leste with the super hot weather welcoming us!

We headed to Isabel's(Shallom's principal) house to load off the boxes first and also had our briefing there. Oh yea, there was a row of kids standing at her gate before we left. AHH so cute huh.

After that, we headed to our hotel, Hotel Audian. Shalyn and I were room-mates. yepp.

Dinner that night was at a restaurant where we had a 5USD Eat-all-you-can. yep.

Back at the hotel, the respective groups started to prepare for the next day's lessons with our kids! My group met with a specific trouble. Our video can't be shown for no one has QUICKTIME! urgh. Thank God Auntie Lily has some bible stories on ppt. Hence, we decided to use those instead.

Finally, we got to rest and sleep...zzzz

19.11.08

We started the day with devotion at Isabel's house before we crossed over to the school for the lessons. My group consisted of Joyce(team leader), Nat, Xuan and myself. Uncle Andrew only joins us for the afternoon class. We were in charge of the P3/4s. They made such a racket when we first stepped in alright. Imagine a classof 78 little boys and girls shouting and fighting. LOL.

We started with telling them the David and Goliath Story using the ppt but they weren't exactly interested. One thing's coz the interpreter kinda sucks and they just had very short attention span since there's also the language barrier. yea.. We tried to do a pass the parcel game and ask questions but it didnt work out. Thus, we just proceeded to do the lion masks. They enjoyed it but it was very messy as they had to share glue and we had to find ways to contain the strips of crepe paper. They did their stuff rather quickly actually. Nat and I did the hole-punching and attaching the rubber bands for them while Joyce and Xuan cut out the eyes for them. yep.

After that, they had their breaktime. A time for us to rest as well. After their break, we decided to just sing songs with them and whoah, i tell you they were very ON about it! haha..glad it still ended nicely.

PHOTO TIME WITH THE KIDS!! haha.. yep.

Had lunch over at Isabel's house and after that, some of us were so tired we took naps be it on the sofa or leaning over tables or some even lying on the floor. haha..At around 2plus, we made our way back to the school. Our group then took the P7 class! We were all looking forward to seeing them once again man. haha.. Uncle Andrew joined us back. We started with the Story-telling as well. Told them the story of David and Goliath. It was much much easier as they were more teachable. Then we got them to play pass the parcel too and asked them questions. Following that, we got them to do a role-play. haha..It was quite funny.

After the story, it was craft-time for them! Joyce taught them how to tear the cross using the paper. We then made into bookmarks for them as well as pasted stickers on them too. yep. After their break, Isabel came over to help us with the worship. heh..The day then ended...

That evening, we had dinner at Restaurant 88 which was jsut a walk away from the hotel. When we were done with dinner, we gathered in our groups to discuss what to do with the kids the next day. We figured that the P3/4s cannot have any story-telling but more craft and songs. Hence, Nat thought of using back last yr's craft idea. We drew pictures and the kids stick coloured paper on them. Another craft was the same tearing of the cross. yep. For the P7s, we decided to tell them the story of Daniel and the Lions using a skit. yep.

That nite, almost all the youths crowded in my room as they helped isabel with doing this booklet thingy for the kids her group was taking. yea.. our noise level was kinda high and got some complaints from an aussie living in the room opposite mine. haha.. oh wells.

20.11.08

Devotion this morning was great. Ps Thom got us to pray in our groups for what's gonna happen and I just felt that that was so needed. Something just kinda broke when we prayed for things that day turned out VERY smoothly! =D

The P3/4s seemed strangely tamer! haha.. They greeted us when we came in and were rather cooperative. Well then, we decided to start with singing first. Isabel came to help us. Then we did the sticking of the coloured paper. This time round, we put the glue for them one by one and issued each kid 2 different coloured paper and 1 picture. yea. They really enjoyed it. Some will bring to us and show us what they've done and when you tell them 'diak (los)', it really puts a smile on their faces. And it certainly put one on mine as well! We collected them after they wrote their names on it before we announced some rather nice ones and awarded stickers. After that, we told them the Colour book story again and also did the cross with them as well. It was good to see they actually listened and were so fascinated when the cross emerged! haha.. When some knew how to fold, some helpful ones helped the others too.

I remember this girl, Claudia, asked me whether I knew teacher Alisa! It took me some time before I heard her clear enough to know she was asking me that! haha.. the kids really miss Alisa. Similarly, we also gave them stickers to stick onto their crosses. After that, we played a Pass The Ball game with them before their break. Whoever has the ball when the music stops was supposed to come to the front to sing a song! Alot of them liked the Donut Song! haha.. hot fave.

Then we gave them their break. Some kids gathered around the teachers' table so I just tried to speak to them a little. Jeffery! He's actually quite a nice boy. Not as naughty... haha.. After they all came back, we continued the ball game and Isabel also came to continue to lead worship for them. It ended off where we quietened them down to sing some slow songs. They closed their eyes and sang this song 'He is Good' and the atmosphere was very very God-filled. REALLY. His presence was indeed with us!

As usual, after having lunch, all of us just rested before going for the PM sessions. That afternoon, we started off with an Alphabet Game which they enjoyed! Then we decided to move to another classroom as the one we were in was really stuffy and like a sauna! haha.. Over at the new classroom, we did a skit on Daniel & the Lions. HAHA. it worked out! we got several kids involved in the acting and yea, main characters were our own pple. LOL. Strangely, the male characters were all portrayed by us females la. haha.. After that, Isabel came over to help with worship. We also sang the song Alisa taught us, Loron Ohin.

Uncle Andrew somehow loved that song. haha.. He made some come out to sing solo and even asked ME to sing solo for them too. After we sang that song, the P7s wanted to do some items for us too. They got Domingoez to sing!! WHOO~ I missed his singing! haha.. then some others came out too..(will prob upload the videos another time yea. this is already a long enough post) After that, they had break time.

We then continued with teaching them how to make a jumping frog and then Uncle Andrew just decided to brief them on what's gonna happen the next day. Class was then dismissed. But we caught them all practising their marching for Proclamation Day on Saturday. heh.

That night, we went to a restaurant and had pizza for dinner. After reaching the hotel, my group just had a short discussion on the games we were going to do for the P3/4s and P7s respectively. We also decided on doing a gift for the P3/4s! Well, we planned to write their names on a RED HEART we cut out previously and also give them indivdual postcards.

Later that night, I spent it doing the heart. It wasnt a 'fasil' job writing the names. The names the kids wrote for us, some were quite hard to determine the spelling! haha.. and I still had to make sure the names have got to fit in altogether. In the middle of it, we put down 'Maromak Hadomi Imi' meaning, God loves you all. =D

The postcards we did contained the message, 'Ami Hadomi O!' which means, 'We Love You!' Gave nat and isabel to help with that coz it was running late and I had not enough time to complete everything. yea. (forgot to take a photo of that!)

THEN SLEEPING TIME. oh yea, really gotta thank God for doing such a wonderful job that day for both classes we took!

21.11.08

Headed to the classes after devotion that morning which was also a good one. We planned a series of games for the P3/4s. They were split into 2 groups, Korea and Espanol. haha.. they named themselves that. LOL. However, the games were quite a failure. haha.. We resorted to just singing songs with them. By the way, there was a power failure that morn and so it was even warmer without any fans. At a point through the singing, Sebastiao, the somewhat ringleader of the whole class, wanted us to sing Loron Ohin with the class. Soo cute right! haha.. So we did and after that, he wanted myself to sing. So i did and then he wanted Nat to do it too but she declined. Instead, we got some boys to come up and sing! haha.. After they sang, we gave them the break.

After break, Isabel came over and we played the ball game again and sang some songs with them again. Finally, we ended by presenting our gifts to them. They became very quiet that time and very orderly. Well, they really appreciated us and the gifts. It showed, really. I was certainly touched by that. yea. THEN, we took a class photo!! and more photos with the kids!

Was really tired out that morning though. I really slept for maybe half an hour undisturbed on the sofa at Isabel's house that afternoon. LOL. Before we left again, my group came to do some last min preparations for the games we were gonna do for the P7 class.

We played a revised version of the alphabet game with them. After this game, we brough them out for a match of captains' ball but it took quite a while for them to understand how the game works out really. The weather was really hot anyway. haha.. After we played that, we attempted to play Blanket Game but it was hard for they either cheated or they were just too competitive and it was susa for us to see who actually called out the name first. yea. So we jsut decided to stop the competition and gave them the break.

After their break, we taught them the English version of Still. I heard they actually have a Tetun version of the song! So well, they took down the song and sang it along with us all. yep. Finally, we got them to write their names down onto this big green vanguard. Did it quite last minute! haha.. Afterwards, we gave them the oreos and eyeglass. Uncle Andrew also took the time to ask some of them about their dreams and claimed them in prayer. heh..

Lastly, we took a class photo and many other photos too!

Dinner that nite was at Paradise, with Isabel, Lydia and Pastor Rui. Along with us were Lishan and Xiuli who are the ones Nat and isabel are attached to during their extended time. yea. Seafood platter and avocado juice. yum.

We also sang a birthday song to Pastor Rui and prayed over him, lydia and Isabel.

our youth group photo again!

22.11.08

Woke up at 5am that morning to get ready to go to the Jesus Statue to catch the sunrise. In the end, Uncle James decided to do the devotion up there as well. Poor JK has to bring a guitar up again. yea. this time, Isabel and I didnt get to sing our way up and down. haha.. sadly. We were just a lil breathless climbing up and also, we didnt know what to sing...

I helped Uncle James lead the worship that morning. yep, felt really at peace standing there and worship God as we overlooked how great indeed God has been to Timor. Anyway, the sharing was also pretty good la. The youths then had a short personal devotion led by Grace. yep. Of course, not to forget, a group photo!

Upon reaching the hotel, shalyn and I put our stuff down in the room before going for breakfast. After eating, shalyn, jk and I just listened to Kelvin with his nonsense Hokkien number songs. LOL. you've got to ask him to know what I mean. Then we also heard his and Grace's well, love story. haha. Apparently, it was the 2nd time they shared it on this trip. haha..

After that, we decided to head back to our rooms to pack our stuff. At 9.30am, everyone gathered for a final debrief where we all shared our reasons for coming to Timor and also what we take home from this entire trip. I would conclude that the children's love and innocence and purity simply touches everyone of us.

For myself personally, I really learnt to love the kids even more than before. The previous times I went, I guess I didnt have as strong a relationship with the kids as this time round. I didnt remember any names in particular, just faces. (only domingoez la..haha..) But this time, despite the P3/4s being so naughty and rowdy, they were my favourites. I feel that they can all still be tamed and got lots of potential for the future. I just felt so la. haha..In addition, I really saw God's hand upon us all during this trip. Many things obviously didnt turn out as what we planned before the entire trip. Alot of the stuff we did were impromptu planning the night before only. Thank God that he saw us through and really taught us that we must must always do things HIS way, not OURS.

No doubt it was a very complicated feeling that we've to leave the children again, but it gives us reason to come back once again to see the kids and do more for them! I just hope that my A's next year can end before the trip! I really really want to go back, not as a habit, but to see the children! Another option I'm thinking of is perhaps to go on those other trips with adults or else, see if I can get to stay there for a month or two to help out. However, I shall definitely continue to pray for Timor and about this matter.

At the airport, we waited for a very long long time and it was super warm there coz the air-con broke down long long ago and they didnt fix it. However, we were all brightened up when we saw that a shop there sold the East Timor phrasebook! Almost everyone bought one home! haha.. And all the youths were like reading it, studying it. LOL. How weird is that that we are keen to learn something we wont be tested for! haha.. Studying is really very interest-based! haha.. I'll be brushing up on Tetun before I go back the next time! haha..

Eventually, we really had to bid farewell! Adieus Timor!

Sat with Shalyn this time round. Nat and Isabel are still in Timor right now. heh. yep. God bless them. =) After 4 hours of flight, we finally reached Singapore once again. yep.. One last youth group photo in front of the luggage belt... heh.

PW is overrrr!

2008-11-10T21:15:00.004+08:00

BYEBYE PROPS!!! BYEBYE SCRIPT!! haha

PW was over on friday!! let me give an account of that very very memorable day.

0550 i woke up.
0600 breakfast =)
0630 fetched joel along the way
0650 reached school and met up with jocelyn
0700 went up to QM room when jim arrived and we practised the skit twice
0715 went to concourse and met up with other groups who had their slots that morning too
0730 headed up to our assessment room and i saw AMANDA ANG! haha.. her grp's the last.
0800 assessors finally arrived about that time. before that, we were all practising outside.
08?? we started setting up our stuff as my grp's 1st!
0830 started the presentation but met with problems with the sound! ahh. so malu.

but after that, things went smoothly, thank God. =D haha then cause we didnt really have a dry run for the entire process(we didnt have q&a during op-prelims) so we weren't quite sure what to do while waiting for the qns. hence, guess what? we stood smack center at the front accordingly to our order of sequence for i guess about 3 or more mins before the teachers noticed and told us we could sit and wait. but they appreciated our ENTHUSIASM. LOL.

the qn i got was so, hmmm..., made me quite a meanie. haha.. i was asked," what are the benefits of your proposed cultural exchange programme better than a camp?" if you don't understand why i felt that way, it's because xinrui's grp, after us, is doing on RACIAL HARMONY and they are proposing a CAMP. gosh. haha.. but i didnt totally slam them down. after all, i did mention that yes, a camp does provide reason for interaction. haha.. well, i guess my group did fine for the q&a? we all only got asked 1 qn each and that should be considered good. heh. =)

after it all ended, we were so so so relieved and super high that pw was finally OVER! haha.. my grp then headed down to the canteen for some food. then we took photos at the QM room!! haha grp shots and some individual shots, by courtesy of melvin! haha.. yea. then we went back to the room to be the audience for the next 2 groups' presentation.

after everything, some few of us went to find those grps presenting in the afternoon to wish them all the best. yep.. then i went home with well, the 'go-home' gang as sam would call it. haha.
that nite, cell was good. worship was really refreshing and spoke to me about certain stuff i guess when JJ prayed over me.

-

choir on sat was quite..hmm.. but i believe we will all be able to progress if we really really learn lessons and not make the same mistakes and have consistent work. yea.

on sunday, i had to miss the class outing to watch hsm3 and the going to jurong bird park! but well, the east timor meeting after church was rather good. it's great to start proper discussing of the things to do and the tetun class was fun too! haha..

then today, altos sectionals were held at GEN's HOUSE~~ haha.. such a strange thing to do, having sectionals at someone's hse. haha.. anyway, we met at kembangan first and her grandma came to fetch us all. her two dogs were so cute! haha.. well, we had a yummy meal there before continueing with our singing and then we left at about 3.30pm. yep.

i reached home and switched on the computer and went to http://www.mysoju.com/. lo and behold! the operator posted a msg saying that the much awaited HANA YORI DANGO FINAL has been uploaded! apparently, someone had kindly subbed it for the videos at dramacrazy.net heh. =DD i had some problems loading them properly so i shall try watching some parts again later. =DDDD im so freaking happy. know what? i actually watched it without subtitles. half the time, i was referring to the spoilers someone posted on crunchyroll forum. haha.. so yea.

oh yea, btw, it's a new blogskin. main skin's from hearteditorials and i added a background to it. shall change the pink slightly next time.. too pink eh? heh..

season after season

2008-11-05T22:27:00.003+08:00

i finished watching Fated to Love You before the holidays started i think.. heh.. it was a great taiwanese drama after so long.. it really deserved it's record breaking viewer ratings (13.67! the last top used to be 8+ which Prince Turns Frog owned & what's interesting, both had the same female actress as the lead, Joe Chen)

well, now i've finished watching Hano Yori Dango I and II. =DDD

not a very nice cover photo. hah.

a better cover photo

They are the jap version of the anime. if it still doesnt ring a bell, remember the taiwanese drama Meteor Garden? it's kind of the jap version except that it's more precise and less draggy. i liked the pace of this jap one better. =) short and sweet! and it's made me start to like back the japanese language too haha..

anyway, been trying to find if there are any video uploads of the movie, Hana Yori Dango Final which ultimately concludes this series for good. well, it's a better idea to have a movie closure instead of a third series since it's already a happy ending! haha.. don't want to make things worse instead do they? yea.. but the only places i can d/l from, ive got to d/l the server itself which is really troublesome. and my disk drive is seriously lacking space. haha.. i'll see. i did manage to find a place i didnt have to d/l but there's no subtitles! crap. haha..anw, i'll see how. prob over the weekends or something. yea. or else, i'll have to really wait till mysoju.com uploads the movie one day... haha

on another note, my OP's on FRIDAY! after that, it's gonna be liberation day from PW!!! the days of PW are ending soon... =)) WHEE~

the return.

2008-10-24T10:55:00.003+08:00

time: 10:56 am
location: School comp lab

today's the last day of school and i'm finally blogging after being MIA for quite a while. heh. these last two weeks have been the ultimate slack-a-doodle days. last week, we had lectures and tutorials to go through our scripts. the rest of the time were then allocated for chinese and PW. im thankful for those PW times because i can at least do my work in school. haha.. yep.

last friday, we got back ALL our scripts at one go to check the addition or marks and whatever mistakes in marking there was. i passed everything. ALMOST FAILED MATH (as in a S grade) but of course i didnt. the teacher who marked my script added 10 less marks!!! xinrui too but she did really well, different case from me. she can get the A with or without that 10 marks but for me, it's a matter between passing and failing okay. haha.. i kind of anticipated that i wouldnt do well for math so i wasn't that disappointed with just a D. but im disappointed with my bio's low B. sigh.. i screwed up the structured qns quite badly so yea. thankfully, i got my A for geog. =D i love GEOG!!

this week was even slacker as compared to last week. this week, it's simply PW and Chinese only! oh, my group had our OP prelims on tuesday. it went quite smoothly i would say. however, i still overshot the timing and committed a grave mistake too...i planted myself smack center during my presentation! haha.. but well, overall, it was still quite okay. yep. after OP prelims, pw time seemed really pointless.. we were basically slacking around and playing games. haha.. DS lite is fun to play!! i love cooking MAMA. =) haha.. but we are also planning some more things for OP la.. yep.

oh yea, i finally found a new venue for youth camp!!! =)=)=) i was like searching and searching since don't-know-when and then finally, on tueday morning, i finally found this place called Choice Retreat House. the rates are pretty cheap too! i'll be going to view the place with ben in the afternoon. yep. soo excited about what God can do! somehow when you look at it, this whole turn of events is really from God. the Pulau Ubin resort was actually very expensive..very very expensive. suddenly, we lost that venue. then now, just in time, we found another venue and what's more, it's soo much cheaper and convenient! haha.. so exciting... heh.. im looking forward to what else God can do for RAYs this youth camp man. =D

alrite..im going to blog till here. shall be changing my blogskin soon i hope.

my blog's resurrection.

2008-10-08T20:36:00.002+08:00

whoah, i think the last i blogged was about 3 weeks ago? or a little less than that perhaps.

well, anyway, before that, i've gotta announce that PROMOS ARE OVER!! hahaha.. the written papers actually ended last friday. Math marked the end and boy, it was such a depressing paper to end with for me. i didnt perform to standard and felt super down after the paper. because there goes my hope of getting in for top 10%. sigh. however, sunday's sermon preached by pastor was really apt. the title was 'when you dreams don't come true'. even though i always say i will leave it to God to decide what's best but the actual doing it is not easy. esp if you realised you didnt do really well. but that sunday, i decided to just recommit to God once again and trust that He has His plans ready and it's prob not my share to be part of that 10%. yep. hence, i felt better after that. haha.

after monday's bio SPA, i went with 13 classmates to vivocity to catch 'Painted Skin'. i wondered how we ended up being cajoled into watching that instead of 'Mama Mia'. haha by the way, i still wish to watch that as well as 'Connected'. =D we had our late lunch at Marche. tsktsk..burned a hole in my pocket. oh well, some few of us played the all-time-fav childhood game 'Pepsi-cola 123'(is that how you spell it?) before we headed to the theatres. well, the movie was pretty alright but i guess i would have enjoyed the other 2 better? i teared at some rather touching moments and yes, jiahui managed to scream at certain spots making this not-a-horror-film-at-all become full of laughter from us.

yesterday's chem SPA which was also a joke because the exact same thing we did for our SPA rev came out. it was how predictable. since when was a chem SPA not similar or identical to the SPA rev we always have? haha.. after that, went to holland v to have ipoh hor fun with jeann, xinrui, jiahui and yiming. it rained and jiahui actually wanted some of us who can, to accompany her before she goes for her cheerleading at 6pm. it was around 4 that time? yea, so in the end, we had a good idea. jiahui and i went with yiming to JE lib to meet eunice. ym and eu were already planning to meet anyway. yep.. so while we were there, we searched for books regarding scrapbooking and cardmaking. they all looked super pretty! haha..then i left with jiahui.

oh i didnt mention. saw several people i know while i was at JE. first, while crossing the road, i saw jiawei, my pri school friend. when i was waiting to cross i was already suspecting but didnt dare to like shout or anything. only when we saw each other on the road then did we greet each other. haha. second, i saw MAGGIE. waved for some time before she saw me. haha.. eh..actually that's about it. haha..

today was AC OPENHOUSE. busy busy busy. in the morn, the BGz stayed in the void deck to deco the souvenir postcards. after that, we headed to the viewing gallery for choir rehearsal for our songs. following that, we had lunch and finally, the openhouse started.

sigh, we could only stay in the cold viewing gallery for the whole 5 hours of the openhouse! and we're only limited to the toilets! haha.. yea, so we performed each time there were visitors, together with string/guitar ensemb and harp ensemb. each time, we chose from our 3 choices, Mamayog, Plenty Good Room and a last min change, El Hambo. we sang the latter 2 more times as mamayog was really not very well done. so out of 12 times, we kind of sang it only twice or thrice? haha.. Plenty Good Room was a hot favourite. haha..

oh, nat came! haha.. jeanette managed to take time off her studying and bring nat around. sigh, maybe she can come with her classmates or with church pple in jan2009's openhouse again. haha quite stupid to come again.

response today wasn't rather fantastic. first, it's a weekday after school for some people. second, there's o'level chem prac tmr. third, the weather wasn't that good in the late afternoon. yea, that prob explained the difference in atmosphere from last year's openhouse that i went to. or maybe coz i was like stuck in the viewing gallery the whole afternoon and didnt get to see any action in the hall or CPA. haha..

tmr's the baccalaureatte service and start of AC games day. another 2 long days coming ahead...

(sorry, shall post photos during my birthday next time! hahaa..need time to sort out.)

a transition

2008-09-19T23:14:00.002+08:00

i'm seventeen. just like that.

whoah. it is really strange how the world seems to be moving so quickly, too quickly for us to stop and bask in and relish each single moment.

today, i received many many birthday well-wishes. among all of them, some were like the primary school friends whom i still keep in close contact with; some were sec2 besties whom i seldom get to meet up; some belonged to my current circle of friends; some came from even those im not particularly close with. but of course, there are some who probably forgot but i wouldnt blame them. i do sometimes forget people's birthday too.

THANK YOU ALL WHO WISHED ME. =)

it's an encouragement to know that they took the effort to spend an sms or drop a note on facebook.

i thank my classmates too for popping me with surprises. during the free bio period(ms azlina went for course & yea, she wished me too on facebook!), i plugged in my earphones while doing my bio MCQ worksheet. surprise #1 came. the whole class suddenly burst into singing the birthday song. and eunice and yiming came and put a strawberry-printed party hat on me and check(fyi, it's the bunny-like doll on my schoolbag.). surprise #2 came during the break. the two of them, again, appeared in front of me with 4 doughnuts and a cake. all were strawberry flavoured except for one choc one. haha.. finally, when i was eating my prata, surprise #3 came. yiming, or was it xinrui, presented me with the gift. a memo pad and 17 butterflies+1strawberry(origami!).

even tho the gifts weren't like big gifts or anything, but i really appreciate their thoughts. as the saying goes, its the thoughts that count. how true. nothing can worth more than the heart of giving.

just covered on 'sacrificial love' for mentoring with Ps Sok Hwee yesterday after school. it's important to have friends to be there for you. hence, i'm thankful to have found these lovely friends in my class. =)

and back to the point on the evanescence of time. it's slightly more than a month of school and then the J1 year would have ended. thus, i'll cherish every bit of the time with people around me since time never stops.

the next year ahead will definitely be tough and difficult but i will put my trust in God. =)

and yes, thank God for bringing me to this earth. i never regret living a life designed by the Almighty one. =D

(photos of today+tmr and sunday's will be up sometime later..)

Friends for life.

2008-09-05T09:41:00.005+08:00

I've decided to accumulate my photos and post them up once and for all.. haha..

Last friday(290808) was Teacher's Day Celebrations. Well, of course, choir performed for the teachers! We sang 'Somewhere Out There' and 'Plenty Good Room'. Haha.. the funny thing was that some of us still ended up doing impromptu clappings or snappings during the 2nd song. Everyone really enjoyed that 2nd song because it was such a different feel to all the songs we've always been singing. At least something they can appreciate this time. haha.. a pity i didnt really take any photos in the holding room. Ater our item, we got to sit at the back of LT 1 to watch the rest of the programme. My oh my, there were some shocking facts revealed to us as we played the 'Guess which Teacher' game. Then the OGLs put up such a spastic performance. haha.. But amidst all the celebration, we had to recognise that it was still Mr Loo Ming Yao's very last day in ACJC with everyone. He's leaving to study at Harvard! How cool's that? haha..The mood was quite saddening as he was a really nice person. =D

After the celebs, we went to our base class venues for class contact time. It was totally a time of camwhoring. heh.

We celebrated Ms Azlina's birthday! =)) It was that very day! haha.. oh PYL just spilt the beans again when he asked everyone,"I thought there's a cake for Ms Azlina?"(not the exact words, but something like that.)

We headed to the void deck to have the cake. Went to squeeze into the photo halfway but i think that photo wasnt taken. The reason i did that was because i was previously waiting with the choir for our choir teachers. We were celebrating LaoShi and Mrs Teoh's birthdays. heh.. yep. Left first to meet yishi, lemin and shiangming at the backgate to go back to RV. Thus, i have no photos with my beloved altos that day. =(

Back at RV was really refreshing! All the cosinettes and dudes that turned up that day, it was good to see them again. Oh yea, Ms Tan(Mrs Yuen) showed us her wedding photos and she looked really pretty in them! oh then again, which woman ever looks ugly in their once-in-a-lifetime wedding photos? aiyah, we forgot to take photo with her!

Then we managed to speak to Lam Wan for a bit. Suddenly, I just missed chinese lessons. haha.. despite all the compos/compres/zonghetiankong that we were so fed up with doing. School without Chinese may feel good when you think of all the free time you get but still, it still feels as though a part of school life is missing after having experienced 10years with chinese lessons. haha.

We camwhored from the canteen all the way into 4C classroom! Yes, we invaded 4C'08 classroom which was also 4c'07's classroom alrite. Guessed they were shocked and we felt bad too. However, they're nice to offer us the leftovers of their party food. haha.. we were ravenous by the way. After that, we finally decided to move and head down to vivo for lunch. Then Masu and I left for home.=)

-

Just that tuesday(020908), i went to Marina Square to meet up with Michelle and Joanna for a belated b'day celeb for mich. We gorged at Sakae Sushi. They had the tea-time buffet for youths. It was so filling haha.. i think i prefer the other kind of buffet where you stand up and walk to grab your food. Sitting down the whole time is not a very good idea of having a buffet because my food cant digest properly before i can eat more! haha.. as we were eating, we just basically chatted and well, had fun loving rice! haha.. only mich and jo would get the joke. heh.

jo and i treated mich and bought her a small slice of cake too. yep. after footing the bill, we stayed for awhile to camwhore for a bit. heh..

We decided to leave the restaurant first because there were people waiting for seats. Hence, we went to the toilet for more photos.. haha..

-

Yesterday(040908), went out with Yeun and Jody to celebrate Jody's birthday. Met Jody at BB Mrt Station and then Yeun joined us on the train at Bukit Gombak. =) talked our way down to Novena. It was a long ride you see. haha.. Walked around in Novena Sq and Velocity for a while before going over to United Sq's Bakerzin for our dinner.

Jody saw some of the colleagues who worked at Paragon's outlet before. haha.. The dinner was so funny as when yeun and i were ordering, Jody was like,"i don't need the menu, i know everything!" in a hmm matter-of-fact tone. haha.. she's part-timing in Bakerzin. yea. Yeun and I just got the incredulously cheap meal set. While we were eating, Jody was like watching us eat because she wasnt hungry yet. haha.. but she still ate in the end.

oh a funny thing was that the chef, who's her friend, came out specially to serve our table but Jody wasn't around! she was talking with one waiter she knew. haha.. Yeun and I kept taking photos of our pretty food and drinks. haha.. The only regret was we didnt take the Warm Choc Cake!!! It was awesome. =D

Photos at the restaurant:

with birthday girl, Jody

After eating, we decided to go to Cine to take neoprints - something the 3 of us haven't done in ages! haha.. The neoprints were pretty!! =D

at somerset mrt station

When we were done, it was home sweet home. =D
-
All these people really make up a great part of my life. Thank God for blessing me with all these people around me.

Time Between Dog and Wolf

2008-08-30T20:27:00.004+08:00

A fateful romance amongst three souls that is sad but beautiful.

The time between dog and wolf - L'heure entre chien et loup - (French) is seen when dusk becomes night as the sun slowly wanes between the mountain ridges. This is the time when day and night exist together.

This is the time when objects become dim to sight, and from far away, the lingering approach of a silhouette can be seen. Friend or foe. Or someone who protects. Or just a dangerous wolf...

This is the moment when both the righteous and errant paths all become crimson.

This is the time when friend nor foe are indistinguishable, and it is in which the epic story about the defiance, surrender, love, and friendship of young agents takes place.

I've just finished watching the best Korean Drama ever - Time Between Dog and Wolf. =D it stars Lee Jun Ki, Nam Sang Mi and Jung Kyong Ho as the main characters. Of course, Lee Jun Ki is the most main actor in the show.

This drama is totally unlike other korean dramas. This is a very action packed drama with movie-like action scenes and also a story of friendship, family, love and well, vengeance. There's a lot of things that happened to the protagonist's life that made his character appear very pitiful. His parents died and he vows revenge for them. Thus, a series of events happen as he embarks to seek revenge. Little did he expect such a twisted relationship to exist among all of them...

i shall not be a spoiler. if you are interested to watch it, then go catch it yourself. i assure the suspense and many twists will keep your eyes glued to the series.

gosh, the last episode was really touching... the ending is more or less realistic but well, not a very desirable one for me. haha.. if only they will film a sequel to it! heh. i hope they do film one. ahhh..

there's a question that's occurred to me as i watched the show, how does it feel like to regain all your memories suddenly? haha.. but i heard the idea of the amnesia thingy in this drama is a not really what happens in reality. oh well then. haha..

i shall be posting some photos taken during yesterday's teachers' day celeb in ac and rv tmr yea.

He gives and takes away.

2008-08-23T22:52:00.002+08:00

the past week can simply be described by one word along: BUSY.

we totally reached the maximum quota of tests you can have in a week. on wednesday, GP Mock Exam; on thursday, GP Package test; on friday, Geog test. and you know what, i think this is going to be the worst geog test i ever did. im just hoping for a pass. SIGH. i totally didnt plan my time wisely and thus, byebye to my A grade! to top them all off, i had my GP resource file and assessment file due on friday too. and i had to stay back on mon and tues for unofficial sectionals to learn teachers' day songs. so as you can see, the week was really burning me out.

thank goodness there's no more official cca until after Promos. so this means i was home today! haha.. a thing that is not very often ever since i entered JC. did my math tutorial 19 which took me an awfully long time. then i slacked around in between to watch Time Between Dog and Wolf. Lee Jun Ki rocks. heh.

in the evening, i went with my parents to NUH to visit Mr Lee who lives in Blk 47. as i heard him speak of his mishaps since he was very young, i couldnt help but tear.(of course, i tried my best to control and if they do come out, i tried to conceal it.) it just was such a powerful testimony on how God did so much to protect him despite him not believing in God. there were so many instances where God somehow saved him from dying.

that just impacted me a lot. it's like, here's this guy who suffered so much and went through so much. i look at myself and think of how healthy i am, how blessed i am to have my family by my side till now. and the fact i have an awesome education and relatively good standard of living. many others are just like me. however, because our lives appear so fantastic and problem-free that we just forget about God. God is so merciful to everyone; He kept on picking Mr Lee up from the depths of death even before he gave his life to Jesus. how much more can God do for us who believes Him? but we just always 'forget' to attribute the good things in our lives to God.

He is a God who gives and takes away. our lives belong to Him, believers or non-believers alike. when we say we believe in Him, we are saying that we are willing to acknowledge this fact and really let Him rule over our lives. do we have to go through what Mr Lee went through to understand how God works? i hope not.

on another note altogether, i was just wondering whether i should give a shot at Medicine for Uni. haha. i'll prob just aim to be a GP and not specialise. then i can do a post-grad on Psycho. well, just a passing thought.

olympics!

2008-08-14T21:58:00.002+08:00

this week is just my most relaxed and slack week. there's not really any real tests, nor is there a need to rush anything since the WR has just been entered for turnitin. i hope it goes fine. oh yea, and my newly submitted EOM too.

well, the interesting thing this week was all the olympics games! i love the Olympics season man. it's just so interesting to watch and try to support your fellow Singaporean who's doing their best, though mostly still unable to match up to world standards yet. TaoLi was a miracle and let's hope the table tennis teams and players will be able to win something in their games. =) right now, it seems like they are our last hope for any medal of some sort.

another update is that i chose to do Hydrology instead of Urbanisation for Geog. it was such a tough choice. it was like interest VS difficulty level. however, after much much consideration and consulting pple(tho jeanette & josh both rather take urban. haha..), i decided to do hydro. i figured that i'm already taking H1 geog, which is actually not as content heavy as when i was doing H2 geog. Since i have a choice, why kill myself by studying something that i don't really have an interest for? i would just not have fun learning it and what's more, study for exams. i'm quite a person who prefers to pursue something out of interest as i believe the skills can be harnessed but it's not as easy to cultivate an interest. besides, hydrology was really a factor that prob got me my As for O's! haha.. actually, for human geog, i only like the topic on Population and maybe tourism.. maybe. haha..

oh wells, in the end, turns out that for our cohort, more of us chose Hydrology. hence, the teachers had to switch the venues around. we get to use the LTs while the urban pple will take the Geog Room instead. haha.. how nice. one thing that i'm not looking forward to though, is going for Mrs Meow's tutorial. i'd rather have Mr Lynn, serious! haha..

nvm.. anyway, i'll be going for CF tmr as they've got this christian contemporary band coming in tmr called The Carpenters.. something .. haha.. after that, shall head off for cell directly then. yep.

National DAY!

2008-08-10T17:51:00.003+08:00

It's finally come to the national day weekend!

AC celebrated it on wednesday, all for trying to be special huh. haha.. it's actually because the J2s' last schoolday was that wednesday. so they decided to make it a national thanksgiving service. yep. well, it was similar to our Founders' day service where the band played the processional and choir sang songs. we did Shirul'adonai and Pater Noster. most J2s came to perform along with us that morning. oh, us altos finally gave the J2s our completed 'reflections'. haha.. YEA REFLECTIONS RIGHT. haha.. they are actually megasize cards that were prettily made by sayhwee & zhengping. =D the cards contained our well-wishes for our dearest seniors.

that afternoon, we had our little exchange with the Southern Choir from UK. basically, it's a choir consisting of pple from the same district but studying in different schools. it's like a community choir if i can say that. at night, they had their concert at our CPA. we sang 2 songs, El Hambo and Soleram. the alumni also performed. then the Southern Choir did their items. they had a couple of soloists. haha.. a different kind of repertoire for a change. finally, we ended the concert with a combined performance with them, singing Gaelic Blessing. =) that's it.

Friday night, 080808, was Day of His Power. it's a service where all Love Singapore Churches gathered to pray for the nation. kinda an annual thing. yep. So after school, i headed straight down to Expo first. did some work in BK then ate my dinner there too. Lydia Lee and Nat came too. told the others to meet at 6.45pm and wow, they were all on time. so those who've reached before i went back to the mrt station to meet them, went ahead first. then met gerald and waited for deeben and jk. after that, we went over first. nat and lydia headed over to Max Pavilion by themselves as well.

well, quite hard to worship that nite although the music & everything else was like very good. anyway, halfway through, got called by Shalyn to go backstage to help out. haha.. had to put out chairs and the basins for the Reconciliation part of the night. Then what's most impromptu was the sudden need for us to hold the respective country's flags behind the representatives. HAHA. yea.. i thought previous years' event were somewhat better? hmmm..

Yesterday, i went for worship prac in the morning first. yep, on national day! haha.. then in the evening, i went over to Yeun See's house to celebrate her birthday! yes, it's on national day and so is Nun's birthday. haha.. anyway, met up with faith and jody first. i purposely wore my red collegiate and white short to be patriotic. heh.

we ate tons of junk food man! OH MY. haha.. oh ya, her dad was around yest too. we watched abit of the NDP show and eventually just lost focus on it. haha.. i was trying to spot alyssa and louis. haha.. i thought i saw louis but i realised today that i was probably wrong. haha.. anyway, saw hartono's performance right at the start. sigh, so obvious it wasnt live la. i think prob only joi chua and hady's performance was live. haha..

some photos! some other photos like those where there're the 4 of us together, are with yeun's dad's cam.

her pretty birthday cake!

Sparkling Juice...

her dad sculpted this swan out of an apple. pretty.

Yeun and I. Happy birthday to you!

stress.

2008-08-02T22:20:00.002+08:00

JC life is really quite draining me out, a litle too quickly. CCA had been a hectic part of my already-quite-busy life. It doesn't help to have boring lectures or rather, lectures that does not make sense to me. To add on to that, chem tutorials haven't been very productive. AND PW IS ALSO KILLING ME. SIGH.

It's no wonder I'm having signs that show I'm stressed.

#1 massive pimple breakout. gosh, i've never ever had so many over such a short period of time! there goes my complexion. argh.

#2 VERY POOR SHORT-TERM MEMORY. As a biology student, i've to correct people who always say they've got short-term memory. That's wrong to say actually. If we forget things that happened recently, then it means our short-term memory is actually failing us and not that we have STM. To quote a really recent example, my parents and i just went to IMM for dinner. Before we left, I was in such a rush as my parents were waiting for me and me only. When i stepped out, I can't even remember whether I switched off the lights in my room. tsk.

#3 I'm very very worn out lately. Well, I probably have myself to blame for spending time on the computer doing other things besides PW. haha.

However, despite all these, I will continue to look to God. =D

God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
And my portion, forever
Forever and ever

the peace of God.

2008-07-16T20:40:00.002+08:00

today was quite an eventful day. well, i think i should instead start with the end of yesterday.

well, yesterday, the lists of candidates for choir comm 08 was out and up on the noticeboard. i was pretty shocked to see my names up for the 2 positions i was running for-Alto SL and Secretary. well anyways, there was a briefing for all candidates at 4.45pm. thank goodness tania's sms told us to check the notice carefully and so i went to look at it a 2nd time. that's when i saw the timing for the briefing. haha. if not, i guess i would have just overlooked it and gone home! in order not to waste time by myself, i went to join the class for their chinese lesson. gosh, the relief chi teacher is super hilarious to the max. HE IS SO LAME, i tell you. haha. then after the lesson, had the briefing from mr sum. he basically just told us to prepare a speech for today's election. (YES, that's why today was eventful.)

alright then, let me continue with today's happenings yea. well, from yesterday, j1s had to start singing for morning assemblies. i belong to ensemble A which sung yest; ensemble B sung today. so tmr's my turn again. yep.

a first event is that we had a mock bio spa for skill D. urgh, i just hope i can get 1 main source of error correct. haha. yea and for the rest of that bio period we just did a revision on cell division. geog was funny as usual. eunice's friend dropped her camera so her film was exposed. good thing we were in the LT before mr lynn and so we switched off the lights so she can do something bout her camera. then mr lynn came and was so puzzled by the reason we gave him. but 'cause the friend was taking quite a long time and my lynn had to start the lesson so she did it in the darkness of the bag. yep. oh, today, the technologies in LT3 somehow weren't responding quite well again. haha.

the other lessons were pretty much normal. then comes PCCG. ms azlina asked us to share how our past 7 months had been for us so far. so we went one round. and gosh, yonglit was super noisy today. he just couldn't stop talking and hello, what he says are totally OFF-TRACK. haha. yea so we all spent lots of time hearing his non-sense and laughing at what he says. haha..

after school, we had to attend our leadership elective modules. i picked the Conflict and Anger Management this time round. it was well, pretty boring at the start. but the end was a little more interesting coz we had live case studies to look at. haha..

erm, after this, it was Choir Comm Election. gosh, i was like trembling while giving my speech. i hope it wasnt obvious. but anyway, well done everyone who were candidates! and CONGRATS TO THE NEW COMM! CONGRATS TO RACHEL, our new beloved ALTO SL!

yes, i didnt get any positions after all. oh well, i wasnt expecting that much, just letting things go as it is. i've already told myself that whatever the outcome it may be, i will trust that it's just part of God's plan for me. perhaps right now, He wants me to focus alot more on my sec2 kids since they do need alot alot of help to keep them on God's track all the time. plus, i have to serve in worship ministry as well. so i think maybe God just don't want me to overload myself with too much. ACJC choir is a very very fun and exciting CCA but it is also one that can drain you if you're not strong enough. so i think God just wants me to really be focused in serving in church more instead of trying to juggle so many things with my two small hands.

i have my fellow alto mates coming to me and patting me on the shoulder. but im really fine. haha.. i know i have a totally expressionless face sometimes. or to put in another way, my expressions cant let pple know whether im truly like what i look, smiley and all, or am i sad and disappointed. i wouldnt say im not but i guess the peace of God that's resting in me surpasses that amount of disappointment im feeling. when i heard my name not called for the new comm, i think i just felt more relieved then sad. i truly felt happy for those who got their new appointments and sincerely wish them all the best as they form the core team to serve the choir. as a member, i will do my best to help and yea, speak up more. haha.

alritee.. i think my diarrheoa is kinda gone but maybe coz im sitting down? i dont know but i went to shit after choir and then when i came home, i LS-ed twice. sigh, i will just take the charcoal pills no matter what afterwards. yep.

a belated post. haha

2008-07-12T20:44:00.003+08:00

OKAY! this is like a one-week belated post. i'm blogging about AEWF 2008. =D

right, so on the 6th July 2008, many things happened. firstly, it was Youth Sunday, which i could not be involved in this year because i wasn't sure of my reporting time for my choir concert only till the day before. in the end, i only had to reach Esplanade, changed into costume and made-up by 2.30pm latest. i had wanted to attend 2nd service and yea.. you can read all these from my prev post.

oh yes, this day was also JJ's birthday. he's 23 this year.. lalala.. so old. haha. anyway, RAYs had a small surprise for him after the mentoring talk he gave to those adults who have responded to the call during the service. i wasnt there. =( yea, so i wished him beforehand. well, and also because that day being his birthday, his mum wanted him to have a bday dinner with the family instead of going to the concert. thus, i had to hurriedly go find someone to go in place of him. some problems cropped up but in the end, i got news that lydia's mum is going then. and i helped her to get one more ticket for her dad thereafter.

well, i went home, ate lunch and then got ready to go. sayhwee's father came round to pick me up and drove us both to Esplanade. THANK YOU. (even though i know she doesnt even know my blog, much less read my blog entries.) many arrived at esplanade then changed. yep. after a while, we made our way backstage into our dressing rooms.

then the soundchecks started. due to some slight technical problems, we had to start with college choir soundcheck first, followed by the alumni and finally, it was the soundcheck for the combined choir. after that, we went to have our dinner. i remember that room! we went there for dinner the last time we performed at SCO goes pop! haha.. anyway, back to the point, then we went back to our dressing rooms and did the touch-ups as well as prepare ourselves for the concert.

at 7.15pm, we had to standby at the door and we had a word of prayer before the concert started. THEN, came the moment of appearance. the college choir did well for the whole opening i felt. yea, saw nat and lydia waving frantically before we started singing. haha.. my mum and classmates were at circle 2 so i couldnt really find them quick enough. haha. im glad our songs were pretty well done. haha..

the alumni were good too! well, as we stayed in the room again, sam went through the combined choir music with us. however, we paused to listen to LiangLin's solo piece. haha.. he's seriously got a superb voice. =) yea so after the intermission, we went upstage again, this time as a combined college + alumni choir. the songs were all pretty well done i thought. sang Soleram as encore piece. was really breathless while singing it.. oh man, gotta work on stamina! haha..

all in all, the night ended really well and we enjoyed the entire performance as much as the audience did. =) heh. we had to then clear the backstage before 10.30 in order to prevent getting extra charges. the moment i stepped out, i saw this group of people outside! love them to the max! haha..i truly thank God for the blessed night.

saw them when i came out..(not all are in this photo.)

after i went up and then came back down to the basement to find them again. (now everyone except lydia's parents are in.)
oh yes, and not to forget, my strawberry sticks they gave me! =D

Lydia and Ben Tan's parents who came for the concert so last minute. THANKS.

with terence, my sis and my mum. =))

sadly, didnt get to see my classmates who came. they left like right after the concert? sam lam said they thought i was going to take very long to come out. oh well, nevermind then. at least they came to hear the choir. im happy enough. haha..

THANKS ALL WHO CAME! it wouldn't have been a success without an audience like you!

oh yea, i forgot to mention this. PRESIDENT SR NADAN came to watch us that night. and friends from RAYs were just 2 rows behind him. haha..

day before AEWF.

2008-07-05T22:05:00.002+08:00

well, im frowning. like really frowning. because my day just had to somehow end on the wrong note.

my day started pretty well actually. i went to school and headed to the sti first to deposit my one-day overdue math file, to find that mdm didnt even bring back the files. okay then. choir rehearsal this morning bywhich we did our college repertoire was great. we just needed to be even less inhibited and throw our self-consciousness out of the window for good. haha.

combined rehearsal didnt seem to be so good for hymn. oh well, i do hope we get all our pitchings correct tomorrow and the diction sorted out so that the song would really turn out heavenly. =D other than that, i thought the rest of the combined repertoire were very much okay.

after choir rehearsal, my sis and terence came to pick me up and we headed to visit ps sokhwee and her newborn son, aziel. my little niece adele came along with us too. then we stayed till about 6pm and left for natalie's housewarming.

she's now staying rather near to me. haha.. at least it's more convenient to go to her place now. i'm just a bus-ride away! haha.. both pet's and nat's bedrooms are really pretty. yep. and basically the entire unit is quite well-furnished and all that. yep... watched step up 2 halfway before i had to leave first.

argh. i thought i could go for 2nd service tmr since i only had to reach esplanade by 2.20pm. but looks like assumptions are really bad to have. my dad has to work tmr so he cant fetch me. so cant terence. urgh. so now i've got to go for 1st service so i can come home first, change and make up and take a ride from sayhwee's dad's car. sigh. this is what got me frowning. but i guess the frown's kinda gone since the matter's settled. haha.

alrite. i pray AEWF would turn out really really well! haha.. =)

school.

2008-07-03T20:11:00.002+08:00

school has been pretty fine so far. well, we got back some papers. i got a E for chem and a D for math. and i can tell you i'm definitely not pleased with this kind of sucky results. it may be a pass for the system but to me, i treat it as FAIL. haha. hopefully i will do well for bio and okay for geog. don't know what to expect for GP though.

by the way, we finally got to know our new GP teacher. he's Mr Martin Dickson, an australian. how cool is that. my 2nd aussie teacher. i still remember our dear Mr Hook(er.. not captain hook! haha..) as my english teacher in sec 3. it took us so much to try to understand what he was saying most of the time, till some of them just couldn't be bothered to listen anymore and just talked in class. haha. well, Mr Dickson's being described as 'hot' apparently by some. haha.. i'll just leave it to you to decide for yourselves. anyway, lessons with him so far had been okay. i would miss mrs khemani's fun and sometimes OOP lessons. haha.

i had a long choir practice yesterday. actually, it wasnt that long, to be exact. we only started at 5.30pm and ended at 9pm. between 2.30pm to 5.30pm, each section had their form of sectionals and then headed for dinner time too. altos ate at this new foodcourt, Broadway. the variety there was sadly, very little. well, it's a small foodcourt so yea. good thing say hwee's dad comes to pick her up so yanling and i hitched a ride since we all stay at bukit batok. haha.

okay, so this sunday's AEWF! WHEE~ i'm pretty excited by it all really. the last time i performed at Esplanade was at the SCO goes Pop! but even that was at the other concert hall i think? ochestra hall of something? to be even more accurate, i last performed at Esplanade Concert Hall was for Beautiful Sunday-a combined concert with mgs choir and tjc choir. yea. so i'm waiting for sunday nite to come! but hopefully i'll still at least be able to go for first service on sunday. crossing my fingers. haha..

alright, i shall be blogging about adele's 1st birthday soon after i get all the photos. heh.

PHOTOS TO RAYDIO GIG. =)

2008-07-01T18:54:00.007+08:00

alrite, as promised, the photos of RAYDIO's GIG.

BEFORE THE GIG...

THE GIG! the first two songs had all three of us singing: ben, jj, me. we sang Shackles by MaryMary and I Don't Wanna Be by Gavin Degraw.

Alrite..the place has this lounge-like setting! haha..thanks to the disco ball effect. credit of the deco goes to Ben and his team! whoo.. haha.. up next was jj and me singing Chris Daughtry's Feels Like Tonight and Home.

Then after this first set of songs, we showed this touching video. it's titled Most(The Bridge).

Following this were the acoustic solos.. i sand Alcoholic by Starsailor while JJ sang Switchfoot's I Dare You to Move.

After this, there was a time for lucky draw and mingling around. managed to go to isabel's choir friends and shalyn's table to know their names. heh.. they brought the most friends that nite. yep. then, ben and i went up to sing Jonas Brothers' When You Look Me in the Eyes, Rascal Flatt's Bless the Broken Road as well as Switchfoot's This is Your Life. JJ joined us in the last part of the last song.

Then he proceeded to talk a lil about the video that was played. and finally... the lifehouse skit by our very own RAYs Ministry! you can find the original on youtube too. just search lifehouse skit.

then there was a short message by jj again, explaining the skit. although we had no salvations last nite but we all knew seeds had definitely been planted deep into the friends' hearts. yep. last but not least, we ended that nite with our all-time favourite, ONE WAY!!!

after-event shots!! haha..only 2..coz the rest are in terence's camera..shall be getting the photos soon. RAYdio photo is also in there..haha. yep.

val chan and i in the same colours.

nat and i.

hopefully there'll be more to come again so wait for further updates.

and i'll sing.

2008-06-28T23:13:00.002+08:00

RAYs GIG last night was really super duper good. it's really GOOD good. heh. shall update when i manage to get hold of pictures okay. yep. Raydio did a fantastic job and gotta thank jj's friend, justin, for joining us as the electric guitarist that nite due to our current lack of a member(nun's in ns...so reuben gotta play the bass and not the e. guitar). the cast members were seriously good too. they did a wonderful job at the skit. i will do a proper run-through maybe on monday perhaps. yep.

anyway, went for choir rehearsal once again after about 2 weeks without any choir? haha.. but i've still been singing since i had to practise for the gig event. yea. well, we did our college choir repertoire in the morning. everything went quite well actually. just that we need to be even more concise with 2 songs in particular. and one more thing, to basically be free of all inhibitions. yep.

then in the afternoon, we heard the alumni choir's repertoire. they sounded awesome too. after hearing them, we did our combined music together. basically, hymn is currently the one that is more worrying in terms of keeping in pitch esp for the first half of the song. the other songs were pretty much fine actually. just again, needed to really put in 100% in making every nuance present.

im excited bout the concert next week! however, i might not to be able to turn up for youth sunday. sigh.. but i believe the concert at night will truly bless those who turn up. right now, we've still not sold out the tix! howhowhow?

PPLE!! WHO STILL WANTS TO GO MAY ORDER AT SISTIC NOWNOWNOW!!! =) THANK YOU. YOUR SUPPORT IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.

alright, tmr morn, i've got to go collect some award of academic excellence given out by PA. my dad used my o's results to apply and it got through. i hope i wont miss too much of the service. then in the afternoon, im going down to the chalet at pasir ris for adele's 1st birthday celebration! gotta help decorate it first before the party starts. we're having bbq. =) heh. yep. what an exciting post-terms weekend for me! heh.

another load lifted off.

2008-06-26T12:38:00.002+08:00

yes. TERMS ARE OVER! =D

today's bio paper was considerably the easiest of all. i hope im not wrong to think i will do best in bio among all my other papers. haha.. but i wouldn't know. it's just a feeling. math and chem were the worst i think. gosh, i left 12 marks worth blank for math. and there's one part of a question that i only realised the method to do it while waiting for the teacher to collect the scripts. urgh. gp paper was ... i just hope i can pass.

sigh.. i don't think i will be able to get Cs and above for terms. it was my new year resolution to get at least a C for all my tests/exams.

on a lighter note, i only have myself to blame anyway if i don't do as good as i was hoping for. i only had about 1.5 weeks to prepare for terms? and if i were to minus the time slacking/raydio gig practice, i had even less. haha.. right now, i have to chiong my geog tutorials and resource filing and EOM throughout the weekend.

tmr's my class outing without poor joel though coz he has an exam on monday still-history paper! anyway, i shall be going to school to conduct the interview with my pw group in the morning and then go home, change and join my class at cathay for movie 'Get Smart!' haha.. i was hoping to watch it. =D then after that, it's either to kallang or to decoders' cafe. then at nite, those who can make it will head for RAYDIO GIG!! =)))

i'm excited about the gig. haha.. i'm more excited that i have classmates who are on about such things. i just hope they will truly be able to enjoy the concert tmr and everything else of it. yea.

oh, by the way, if you reading this haven't noticed(i wonder how on earth you cant), i've changed my blogskin again. been spending some time the past few days(yes, while ~~studying~~ slacking) trying to search for another blogskin. don't really like the previous template somehow. as for this choice, i think it's got a very interesting picture. and it's a nice colour. haha.. it may be plain but im fine with it. haha. cant seem to find another one that is simple yet nice as well. so this be it.

studying.

2008-06-19T22:57:00.005+08:00

this black flat screened technology is distracting me to the max. how i just wish this piece of intelligence could just be moved back to the other room! argh.

im pretty stressed up for my terms, i think. i still have so much of geog i think im just gonna be so saturated im precipitating even before the exams come next week. i thank God however that He's in my life and i can cry out whatever stress or frustration that i'm feeling inside of me anytime i want to. He's not gonna jerk me aside but be a wonderful listener for my grouses and fears. =D

after terms, on the friday, RAYs ministry is having an event. it's mainly by RAY-dio, our youth band. the event's called THE GIG. well, if you are familiar with band performances and stuff, you would know what a gig is.

we're performing SECULAR SONGS. and there'll be a very cool and interesting skit and video shown. i'm sure it'll be a real great time of relax after your exams! haha..yep. below is some info on it.

alrite, i'll blog about my 'homestay' experiment at Masu's place maybe tmr or something. a lil lazy to upload the photos. haha..

church camp+acjc thanksgiving service

2008-06-14T21:33:00.003+08:00

i came back from malaysia, tanjong puteri resorts on thursday afternoon. church camp was fantastic this year. it was named 'strength for the bruised reed'. i went without any idea i was at all 'bruised' in my soul but i still went despite this. and of course, God has a reason to bring us to the church camp. indeed, He taught me many valuable lessons and also managed to make me realise something of myself that i did not see or just subconciously chose not to feel it.

well, im thankful for what God has been constantly doing in my life. there is never enough of Him. oh yes. our youth sessions were basically on Emotions. and as usual, terence also touched on the topic of dating and stuff like that. it's really important to reinforce again and again how important it is to know when's the right time to start dating. i agree that in the secondary school years, all's just plain infatuations that come and goes. and one more thing, we should really always be careful with what we do when we want to start a relationship. things shown in movies and tv programmes are so not right and we should not attempt to follow what the world is doing. some may think just a little of hugging or kissing will be fine but hey, you never know. especially when a christian dates a non-christian. i can be very sure, the relationship would be hard to sustain. the relationship with God will also be likewise. so, i am very very certain i will stay true to my commitment to God and not give Him up for anything of the world. hence, i will definitely only date someone who's a devoted follower of Christ too. however, of course it's not now, not when i've still got one major national exam to get through.
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immediately on friday, i had choir rehearsal. we went through almost the entire concert programme. oh man.. concert's in like 3 weeks' time! ahh..soo soon. to add on to this, we're technically left with about 2 rehearsals before the concert itself due to the j1s' break for terms. it's okay, i believe we can all do it and do it well! we will be better than before!

anyway, it was our thanksgiving service this afternoon. gosh, we spent 2 hours plus last nite to go through about 7 or more songs. to be very very honest, i was really trying hard to follow with the notes and words this afternoon! haha.. the service ran well and yea, 20 years is a long time. heh. i should be coming back on the 25th year. haha..

alrite, i gtg try to study enzymes now!

ACJC EUROPE CHORAL TOUR 2008

2008-06-07T15:10:00.002+08:00

YES IM BACK IN SINGAPORE ONCE AGAIN.

i feel very lazy to update my blog nowadays. i just can find the kind of impulse to type the everyday happenings of the tour in this blog. haha. im lazier to even select photos to include into the post. so pls forgive me yea. i shall just be uploading them on facebook so go look if you have facebook yea?

well, it was a fruitful trip! we sang alot basically. haha.. and and me got GOLD for all the 3 categories we took part in! =D adult(mixed), youth and folk category. for folk, we even got a perfect score! it was such a blessing! heh.. THANK GOD. =)

well, we did alot of sightseeing definitely, in vienna, then in slovakia(just a lil), melk's abbey, and finally salzburg! we saw several 'sound of music' filmsites there! it was an eye-opener. haha.. im glad to be part of this trip. yep..

right now, my ears are still half-blocked! urgh..all due to the 3 times of descending(vienna-dubai, dubai-colombo, columbo-s'pore) that caused my ears to hurt like mad due to the pressure changes. eeks. plus i think i was having a slight blocked nose that's why it hurt especially on the plane rides back to singapore. and also why the ears will be blocked for several days before they can be entirely cleared. sigh.

im heading off to church camp tomorrow! i cant wait for it actually. heh. well, gotta make some time in the afternoon for study periods! i've got lots to study for terms ... ahhh.. alrite.. after blogging, ive gotta go pack my baggage for the camp. =D

2008-05-25T22:08:00.002+08:00

whoah. it's been more than 10 days since i last blogged! haha..

anyway, the school holidays have started! but almost half of my holiday is spent away from singapore. heh.

well, i went for the Hillsong Concert yesterday with yeun and RAYs. IT WAS PRETTY GREAT WORSHIP. look here, i emphasize, it's the worship that's good. HAHA. there was a message preached too. but gee, it wasn't a really impactful sermon at all. in fact, it was quite simple(i wanted to use the word shallow, actually.) but yet, it still contained some doubtful portions on the whole. i think he was probably trying to preach a sermon that's easily understood and youths can find it relevant. (ah..why am i trying to find excuses for the preacher? because well, i've no right to really judge if i dont see the entire picture clearly anyways.) on the whole, im blessed by Hillsong's worship! it's never felt so easy to worship. i guess we ought to bring RAYs' worship to a deeper level again. =)

church today was alrite la. we've just completed the 2 part sermon series - Life is Full of Options: YES/NO. yep.. it's quite good i think. it's pretty applicable to our lives, whether we are teens or adults. anyway, played keys for chi service and then went to pek kio market with xuan after the service ended. met up with the rest for lunch.

after lunch, ben and i had to go back to church glam room for our cell leader training. we decided to hitch a ride from jj. and hoho, he's car was packed to the max! seriously. we squeezed 5 pple in the backseats! i was sitting on lydia's lap while jk was also almost sitting on nun. only sam got to sit most comfortably at the front. haha. the sight was hilarious. because the car was so heavy, the car couldnt move out of the lot without scraping the curb. gosh. so jk and nun got down first. haha..

after cell leader training, i took the train home. mummy came to westmall to meet me. then did the before-trip shopping for some miscellaneous stuff la. yep. just packed my luggage. the check-in is about 7/8 done but still have the hand luggage to pack tho. yep..

shall post a 'last thoughts' post tmr afternoon perhaps. after i really really finished packing! haha..

new blogskin =)

2008-05-11T20:24:00.002+08:00

i changed my blogskin. however, i somehow dont like it as much now. er.. i know im fickleminded! haha

anyway, this week was totally crazy. there was chem test, then geog test. and i had my first public performance with acjc choir. we performed at the ASEAN's 40th aniversary dinner. it was so cool alrite. we wore our ethnic gears for this performance. it all went well, thank God! yep. reached home like super late and i still had like geog lecture 8 to study! urgh.. stayed up till 12 plus but i still couldnt complete studying it. the next day, friday, was the due date for GPP submission too. oh, we had to write a graded essay for GP on friday too. so many major things going on this week man. im so thankful it's less so this week. ive got a math test on tues and GP package test on thurs. i gotta do well!!

choir had been fantastically fun with Mr Fred Sjoberg. i somehow recall Ms Tham telling us his name under all the names of the jury she listed. yep. we had productive rehearsals and they were really good. yep. then we also did some really fun warmups. =) and we learnt Elton John's Border Song. Got Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven but we didnt learn to sing it. yep.

after choir yesterday. i made my way to Mandy's birthday party. Thank God i got off the bus at just the right stop! =) but the walk into the restaurant was super long but good thing i found my way nevertheless. it was quite fun la.. the tooki game and nehneh games were super hilarious. so was the revised hai-dai. haha.. but i had to leave right after singing the birthday song. yep.

okay. It's Mothers' Day today! Happy Mothers' Day to all mothers on this earth!

2008-04-30T20:22:00.002+08:00

tomorrow's labour day, a public holiday, and i'm going to be in school. paradoxical, isn't it? well, i've got choir prac tomorrow. my abs and diaphragm and vocal chords shall be labouring tmr while other pple labour away at their notes and tutorials.

oh man. i've got a chem CA on monday and geog CA on next friday. urgh.. there's a whole lot to study for geog and i've not even started revising chem properly. i shall be starting on it later. yea. tonite's gonna be a night of chemistry. shall attempt to complete the tutorial on intermolecular forces and revise the first 2 chapters of chem, namely, mole concept and redox.

anyway, i was just suddenly so shaken by the fact that term 2 is going to come to an end like really soon?! gosh. time is flying past at bullet speed! it's as if the ticks of each second have doubled its speed. i can't help but realise that, pretty soon, i would be taking promos and saying 'sayonara' to happy J1 life.

on the other hand, im really thankful to have God in my life, whom which i have no qualms about depending on Him. coz i simply understand that He is always there for me. He holds my life dear in His hands and all i've got to do is to submit to Him and be a faithful servant to Him always. hence, no matter how tired i get from the activities of school and church, i never give up. instead, i will look to Him to draw strength and receive the new mercies He gives every new day. =)

2008-04-26T21:01:00.002+08:00

it's been more than a week since i last blogged, huh?

well, this week was basically a time of completing tutorials and cleaning up the PI. it was finally submitted officially yesterday. just as well, takes one load of our shoulders before more things continue to build up.

got back my bio test. im pleased with the results but of course, i still got to do a lot more better to ensure 'A's for future tests, esp terms and promos. since, the topics tested for this test is actually comparatively easier than the many more topics to come. results for chem class test was also okay la. quite well done i guess but on one hand, my tutor said she marked extremely leniently.

choir practice is really intensifying. there's so many songs we've got to work on - the 9 competition pieces + our concert repertoires. there's about 20 songs?! haha.. however, i think if we are able to make good music out of each practice, it's worth my time there and im happy to be singing there. heh.

anyway, enough about school life. pastor's series on Discovering God's Will just ended. oh well, it was such an applicable sermon. last week's talked about having a vision for where i want to be. after thinking through, i felt greater assurance for something i've envisioned for some time. i think i would want to be in the counselling arena, to help either youths or jail convicts. this would mean studying psychology. yep. alrite, i guess that sermon has helped to sort of straighten my thoughts. previously, i was still quite indecisive, thinking i may want to go into food science instead after all. however, now, i can be quite sure of this calling, if i can term it that.

one more thing. church camp rooming issue got so complicated last minute. urgh.

how timely it is..

2008-04-17T21:00:00.004+08:00

we had a 'surprise' birthday lunch for isabel on sunday at US's pizza hut. why the inverter comma? because our good friend josh let the cat out of the bag! urgh. and that wasnt the only secret he leaked but i shall be nice and not disclose it openly.

anyway, on saturday, i came home from choir and discovered that the modem wasnt functioning. it cant switch on even though the cable was plugged in. this happened after my parents shifted the comp and everything into my room. yea..so i was like somehow deprived. haha. and gosh, i was desperate for the internet, not to play, but because i wanted to research on a new person for my PI and i thought the draft needs to be submitted on monday. so in the end, on sunday, i went over to my sis's hse to use her notebook. then i came home at 9 plus to do the draft.

but oh well, i guess the modem broke down very timely. well, i have a bio ca1 and gp package test today and i think if the internet was alive and kicking on monday and tuesday, i would probably be distracted to use the comp. then miraculously, the modem revived yesterday! how weird it is. haha..

oh yea, i forgot to mention this impt piece of good news! pingxin's gave birth to Lui Hui En on 14th April 2008, 5.04am! =D she's my 2nd niece! WHEE~ haha.. but i didnt get the chance to visit her at the hosp. only saw the girl for the 1st time when i reached home yesterday. heh.

by the way, pple! come for my choir concert!

An Evening With Friends

Esplanade Concert Hall

6th July 2008, 7.30pm

tickets are priced at $20/27/32

okay, i gotta go edit my PI now.

a tiring weekend

2008-04-07T21:52:00.002+08:00

i had a really tiring weekend. saturday, as usual, i had choir-full day. we ended earlier though, at 4plus. so i came home, bathed and wanted to start on my PI research. oh i have to mention this. from thurs, i've been cracking my brains to think of who's journey i could feature in my PI. then on saturday, while in choir, i had the idea of doing the journey of the people of East Timor. heh..

anyway, i didnt really got down to the researching as my mum said she wants to go to IMM for dinner. i struggled in making the choice. in the end, i went with my parents but said i would go home by myself first while they go shop for certain stuff. however, we had a hard time finding a place to eat. every restaurant had super long queues! we wanted to eat at Baystreet but had a hard time finding it and by the time we found it, we discovered there was a long queue there as well! haha. in the end, we just settled for the foodcourt. by then, it was already 7plus. God was faithful to us that nite. first, we got a carpark lot very quickly and next, we found a table in the crowded fdcourt very quickly too. =) then my mum managed to get her presents real quick and so i ended up following their car home. haha..

came home and researched like mad. was unsure as to whether i should choose what i thought of in the morning or pick Xanana Gusmao, East Timor's ex-pres, current PM. in the end, after seeking the opinion of dear friend, yeunsee, i picked Gusmao. discussed with her what i should do for my plan coz she told me that an exhibition is not preferable. should be something hands-on. so there i was, at a total loss of what to plan. then an absurd idea came to mind: paintball! haha.. and then i had another obstacle: how to put it to good use in the wider community? by then, it was 11plus in the nite and my eyes were really blur from staring at the comp for so long. they almost popped out! haha.. so i decided to continue to do it the next morn when i go study with nat.
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on sunday, i attended the 1st service and then i went over to the Macs at KK hosp to study with nat. did about 75% of my proposal there. gosh, that time i had no info about the paintball fields in singapore la and so i just crapped through certain parts first. haha.. then the two of us went back to church again when the 2nd service ended. nat had to go for keyboard lesson while i headed with the youths to novena square. because of alyssa, my cell lunch could only start at 1.45pm. haha. so deeben and i waited in BK while the rest ate there.

finally, 1.45pm came and my cell had lunch at KFC. it was a great time of fellowship indeed! haha..i think we(the girls esp) got to know each other better. after we're all done with eating, the guys left first while i went with the girls to visit joy's mother's boutique at square 2. heh. then i went with clarissa to take the bus back to kkhosp coz i was meeting nat and lydia there to study AGAIN. heh. oh before that, we saw shalyn and her friend, James. finally talked to him. apparently, shalyn and james had some prob deciding where to go. they wanted to come with us but in the end, they went off by themselves again. aiyo.

anyway, studied till about 5.40pm and we headed for United Square to meet the others for deeben's goodbye dinner. haha..he's going NS tmr. yar..ben came to find us before that. at United Square we saw reuben first. then all of us went to Popular for a while. haha.. then when we reached swensons we saw that most of them are already there. oh well. i ate Mac' & Cheese! =) first time trying it. haha.. it was the last to come la. tsktsk. after eating, we had dessert. we six girls shared one pan of apple crumble which was seriously more than enough for us so we cancelled the other icecream that we ordered. while waiting, i was doing one sudoku puzzle from ben's book. it took me so long! ahhh..

before we all went home, we went to a rather quiet corner and prayed for deeben first. yep. then joshua, lydialee, reuben, xuan and i went to take the mrt home. reached home at 9.30pm, as i predicted. heh. i hurried to bathe and quickly went to rush out my PI. i thought i could complete it within an hour or so. but hey, by the time i finished, it was around 11.40pm and then i realised that i overshot the word limit. so i spent lots of time cutting it down..till it was 12.15am! ahh.. finally, i finished it! whee~ there was such a sense of accomplishment can.
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im so thankful i heard my alarm today. haha.. however, i was still feeling super tired in school. sigh.. just shows how i cant stay up late. haha..

Fun-O-Rama XIX

2008-03-31T19:11:00.006+08:00

WHOOTS~ on saturday, 29th march, was acjc's biennial big event - Fun-O-Rama XIX!!

anyway, on friday, instead of having lessons, we were given the entire day to set up our stalls. like putting up the tables, banners that we painted, getting ready the games stall (in this case, our boards of ladybugs) etc.. we had to pass the first round of inspection that was supposedly to be at 2pm before we knew whether we could be dismissed. well, the teacher only came at about 3 i think. after we're done, we got to pack up and i went home first. most of my classmates headed to fatin's house to prepare the food for the foodstall.

that nite, we had prayer night. worship was good and reflective i think. after cell, we celebrated joy's birthday! i asked lydialee to buy a cake. heh. then home sweet home. haha.. oh yar, and on friday, my mum brought back news that she didnt manage to find any badge refills. boo~ it was quite a disappointment not to be able to sell the badges.

on saturday, i reached school earlier than usual but oh well, no one was there yet. haha.. when pple finally came, we started to further set up the games stall. as a form of deco, black trash bags were stuck onto the floor with the cute giant ladybugs that eunice made just on friday nite itself. got briefed by mark about our specific roles basically and then got down to work.

since jean and i were not in the morn shift, we took the time to walk around and visit stalls in the morn. eunice had photog duty so she only joined us later. oh anyway, the two of us bought jelly drink from our foodstall. haha.. i chose strawberry+lime(notice the colours of strawberry) while jean chose raspbery+pineapple. weird combi it may seem but it actually tasted quite nice! haha..

we met pinkoon and eunice had come to join us by then. together, we went to 1SD2's foodstall and found laoshi and some of our ex-classmates there with several new faces. haha.. we bought 2 hotdog rolls from them to support them. heh. took a photo with wini!

eunice, me, jeannette, pinkoon, wini!

continued walking around and finally we went back to 1SC6's stall since it was supposed to be my shift soon. started my shift at 12pm. since there wasnt enough pple, eunice also helped out even though it wasnt her shift. was supposed to swop a few hours of duty with her, but in the end, the stall was too busy that i couldnt leave. anyway, when the church youths arrived, it was just the peak period! haha.. anyway, nat made weijie play our game for her. haha.. after the played, i managed to leave the stall as some pple came and were able to take over me. yep. oh..saw yifan! =)

so jeanette, lydia, nat, deanna, weijie, deeben, job, xuan, don and i headed to queue for The Haunted Hotel. man, the queue was extremely long! haha.. nat, weijie and i stayed to queue while the rest went to get some food. actually, deeben, xuan, job and don didnt even want to go in anymore. anyway, in the meanwhile, the three of us played about 3 rounds of fuzzywuzzy. haha.. then when deanna came back, nat and i went to get some drink. showed nat that shawn lee is in AC. haha.. then we gathered back at the queue. finally, we decided to just forget it and we went to the hub as jeanette's friend was there. yep.

our food stall! isnt the banner nice?

(lydia+nat; deanna+me; jeanette+nat)

bought the croissiants from my class's stall! the beef one was good. ah.. i just realised i forgot to take photos of the food! well well, after eating, we went out of the hub. jeanette and nat then went to play the money-grabbing game. haha.. i took a video of their act!

some of them left first, leaving just lydia, nat, deanna and weijie behind. we went up to the supermarket after that. then i decided to go back to my stall to help out. heh. finally, the day was over! before clearing up, luke visited our stall and we took photos with him.

oh yes, i asked nat to help me buy an iheartAC file so as to spend up my coupons. haha.. we cleared up and nice daryl made icepops for us all! heh.. he rocks lar! i went home after that.

today, acjc was given half day off! WHEE~ chapel worship was really good today. i could feel the presence of God so strongly this morning. well, we went back to our base class venue after chapel to do the reflections on Fun-O-Rama. then settled some accounts issue before we were all dismissed at 10am sharp! =D

i went home, changed and met my classmates at JP at 12noon. ate lunch and then had a long time deciding whether we should go to jurong birdpark today or not. in the end, we decided to go catch a movie instead while go to the birdpark another time when the whole class is free. yep. watched Step Up 2. it's not bad lar.. but i was kinda sleepy tho. haha.. after the movie, i was pretty tired and wanted to go home. yea. took some photos on the train ride home.

will upload those photos another time. =D

"ask and you shall receive."

2008-03-27T22:30:00.003+08:00

just yesterday, i was busy thinking of the songs for worship on friday. there were too many songs to choose and i had to make sure the songs after the different prayer points were suitable. it was quite a challenge actually.

then today comes the most stressing day of all. alrite, my parents went to malaysia so i asked them to kindly help me look for the badge refills in some of the toysrus outlets in KL if possible. today's the day they reached KL from genting and so i was hoping that they would call me to tell me if they've managed to find it. last nite, my mum actually asked me how many i would need to buy. at that time, i told her to get only 10-15 boxes if possible but rite now, we kinda need 20 boxes! then i learnt that my mum's autoroaming system was not activated by starhub lar! this is what's causing me to be super peeved about. so im practically jumping on hot coals, feeling extremely jittery and uptight. coz my mum didnt call me today bout her findings at all la.. okay, even if i didnt ask her to call again maybe, she should just call to at least let me know. it's not just me knowing, im to let my teacher know asap too. ahhh!

then i did my extended devotion just now. i read half of Luke 11. this is the part where it mentioned: "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Luke 11:9

i knew rightaway that this was definitely God speaking to me. i think ive once again committed things into my own hands. He's reminding me to just surrender and lay my worries and fear before Him. just one word from me, one request, He will have an answer for us. it's all a matter of time sometimes. again, im still feeling a little impatient but im still asking God for His plan to work out the way He wants, and not to what i want.

i feel much more at rest even though i really didnt hear from my mum at all. and if she's bought, she prob only managed to get at most 15? oh well.. i must really just commit it to God.

TGIF + EASTER

2008-03-23T20:26:00.002+08:00

i had a very fun-filled good friday this year! haha..

alrite, here it goes. on thursday evening, after crashing the prac for the song item for the youth's easter party, i went to shermin's house to sleepover for the nite. she's moved to woodlands. heh. then on friday morning, i took the train down to khatib to meet with reuben and lydialee. we took 855 and saw joshua on the bus as well! what a coincidence. so together, the four of us made our way to the carpark of the entrance to the treetop walk. we reached rather early so we waited for quite a while before everyone else have reached. xuan was exceptionally late so we went ahead first after prayer. he finally caught up when we were queuing to walk across the bridge.

gosh. i was a lil scared while walking across that bridge. i'm scared of heights! ah.. haha.. it's okay if i hold the railings but without them, i'll feel pretty insecure. haha.. it's both good and bad that it's just a short bridge. 25m is so not enough. haha.. after crossing the bridge, we wanted to start heading out. however, we seemed to have gone by a wrong route and ended up on our way to macritchie! oh before that, we went up this jelutong tower. quite dizzy to climb those stairs; they go in circles. haha.. in the end, we exited at lornie road that area and took a bus to The Prata House. some of us borrowed money for the bus coz we left our wallets and stuff in uncle eric's car. while we headed to the prata house, uncle eric took the bus back to venus drive to fetch his car. yep. had prata for lunch! yummy. =)

in the afternoon, the bulk of us went to lydia&ben's hse. the guys wanted to play soccer/basketball but it started raining the minute we reached. hence, everyone went up to the house to slack around till 4. then those of us watching movie headed to bishan j8. there were 10 of us watching. weijie, ben, deeben, nun, sam, reuben, jk, xuan, lydia lee and i watched Rule #1. heh. my first ever horror film in the cinemas! but it's not really that that THAT scary lar. there's only a scene that got us all jumping. haha.. yes, even the guys. haha. some other parts just got me shutting my eyes for a sec. haha. after the movie, the guys ate subway while lydia lee and i decided to go long john instead. yep. then we all went home after that.
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had to go for choir yesterday. hence, i ended up not going for the Easter party at all. had to rush down from school to church for the last rehearsal. but oh well, i reached only after they've rehearsed. they were praying when i walked in. haha.. i supposed i looked kinda lost. haha i was pretty frustrated when the bus from novena took so long to come. anyway, the sat musical was alrite. but the worship team had some small mistakes here and there.. heh.
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reached church at 8am this morn for a secret worship prac before the rehearsal starts. haha.. however, pple still came late and we ended up starting at about 8.20am only. well, it was actually sufficient since we only needed to touch up on the fast songs. yea, anyway, i think this morn's was better than yesterday. in terms of worship, musical..everything. oh yea, yeun came with her mum! im so glad =D.

after church today, went to kk fdcourt for a quick lunch before going back to LOR room for our calendaring. yep. oh man. im planning for youth camp with ben. gotta need some ideas soon. heh.

hmmm.. i'll be uploading the pics from treetop walk asap, after i've gotten everything from ben. i shall put them in facebook but will still put some key photos here. heh.

busy week

2008-03-18T17:44:00.003+08:00

i present to you Term 2 of JC one life.

i think this term is really starting to feel like JC life. we are finally having normal lessons with a class that's gonna stick around for two years, through thick and thin. as a class, we attend lectures together, attend tutorials together, plan fundraising, plan for funORama etc. (of course, for the H1s, we are separated.) anyway, we have been placed in this class of 1SC6 so i guess we need to get on with life and treasure this current class of ours and treat the PAE class (1SD2 :D) as fond memories for us to keep.

besides entering into the real routine of JC life, i'm even more loaded with choir practices. because of the upcoming tour to Europe at the end of may, we're to expect longer practices and sectionals. saturday practices are all going to end at 4 plus -5 pm. therefore, this means that ive got to step down from main worship duty for april and may. oh well, at least, one less thing on my mind first.

this week is exceptionally hectic. other than settling the fundraising project(supposedly assisting jeannette), i'm to go down to church almost everyday. yesterday, i had to rush down after sectionals for Easter musical rehearsal. the worship team was to be down. so do we have to be on wednesday as well. again, i shall have to make my way down hastily after choir practice. im thankful that at least today, i get to rest at home first before going to church for worship prac. however, im abit guilty of not staying back to help out with the filming. what's worse is i cant help out much after school tmr since there's choir. oh man.

but i guess this is just life. i have to set my priorities right and things will turn out fine. =) we really ought to adapt and adjust well to our environment, our new regime, and to have a positive outlook instead of continually ranting and feeling sorry for ourselves. this way, our lives would be more fulfilling and fun-filled. of course, we can continue to trust in God always. =)

spectacular.

2008-03-14T23:27:00.002+08:00

omg! omg! omg! guess who i SAW and TALKED to just now. you would never expect it. haha.. but probably after i say his name, you'll just go 'chey'. haha.

i saw him!

Kang Cheng Xi

haha.. we went for flyer distribution after worship at owen centre. then joy and i paired to do levels 2 and 3. i shall not reveal the block and place. heh. so i went to this particular house and rang the doorbell. this guy came walking from the living room and whoah, for a while, i thought i was seeing things. then he walked to the door and i just passed him the flyers and explained to him about our events and such. he's such a cheerful guy lar! haha.. i was like asking whether there's any youths in the house, then he answer:"hmm..im the youngest but i guess im overage?" then i just thanked him and stuff lar.

after that, as joy and i were walking down, we went," hey..isnt that the guy who acts?!" haha..plus lots of gasps and excitement. haha.. damn cool lar. i didnt know he lives in that area! oh my.. my first time talking to a well, famous being! joi chua is not counted coz i never talk to her, she just addressed us. haha.. i want to always go to that level! haha.. maybe he'll even turn up for the musical, haha.. who knows!

its all about choir.

2008-03-13T21:48:00.002+08:00

i had my 4 eyes(with glasses!) glued to this flat screened invention of the 21st century, (or is it the 20th?) for the past 50 minutes, on a fruitless quest for a fantastical blogskin. hence, due to my reluctance to retire to my bedroom and either mug or sleep, i have decided to blog about my holiday week so far.

ive just counted that out of the 9 days of this march holiday, i have to go back to school for 5 days for choir! okay, it's 5 if i confirm that there's choir this sat. apparently, the schedule says there isnt but the impression they gave today was that there IS. now what?

anyway, choir practices during this holiday had been pretty exciting. haha. we had a workshop with Mr Stuart Wood, a current music therapist in Berkelee(if im not wrong.) and also once an ACJC GP teacher! hoho. well, he wrote 2 songs for us specially and both required lots of improvisation. so throughout the course of these 4 days with him, namely sat afternoon, mon and tues evenings and this morning, we did alot of improvising. but of course, we also did singing nonetheless. haha.. i enjoyed the sessions with him, really. we did some exercises that i've definitely not done in rvc before! well, we all learnt alot about music in relation to one another and the surroundings. that's probably the highest level of attainment i would say? yep.

besides spending most of my time in choir, i went out with some 1SC6 classmates on tuesday morning. it was supposedly a toys-r-us outing! haha.. i shall not divulge why we went there. but anyway, we had some fun watching some magic tricks at the outlet at Forum. haha.. ate my lunch at Secret Recipe which cost like a bomb. hence, im trying to spend as lil as possible now. haha..

alrite now, there's actually a 4C`07 outing tmr. should i go? kind of lazy to go out and was thinking of doing some mugging tmr morning. haha..

holidays!!

2008-03-09T22:44:00.002+08:00

alrite, over the weekend, we had our cell BBAs. on friday, my cell, the sec 2 cell had ours at marina square. we went bowling!! well, thank God for shawn's friend, Liang How ( i think it's spelt this way. ) who turned up because clarissa's friend decided not to come in the end. if there's no friends, we were just going to have to cancel it since there's no point!

bowling was fun. i got a lucky strike! haha.. havent bowled for about 2 years i think? damn long.. haha.. anyway, i made a boohoo. i didnt know that they consider one game as in for one lane. but if we're playing cross lanes obviously 2 games as in for the 2 lanes on the whole rite? nvm if im not making sense here. haha.. so in the end, we paid a lil extra for the extra times we bowled. after that, we went to subway for dinner. yea. and then i went to take the train with the younger ones while deeben met with the other youths who went to marina square to celebrate the release of As. heh.

sat was choir prac. the first ever full day prac. gosh, there's going to be full day pracs for the next term in prep for tour. AHH. i shall have to make arrangements for worship prac and i cant go for the Tim Hugh workshop either. eeks. i guess this is a test of time management for me by God. i just pray that God will be able to lead me out of every predicament i shall face. yea.

went to crash the older cell's BBA at lydia's hse after choir. the guys surely had fun playing soccer while us girls basically just sat in the living room, played a few rounds of Rami-o(i like the game. heh.) then we watched a lil of this movie, Model Behaviour. well, it's some bimbotic chic flick lar. haha. bout 2 pple who bears uncanny resemblance to one another who switched their identities. didnt finished the show lar. ate dinner at the patio, sat around and talked, then took thea's car to Khatib with lydia lee and i went home.

the sermon today was kind of relevant i felt. talked about submission being something to be done IN EVERY AREA, AT ALL TIMES and IN ALL SEASONS. i just felt it to be so real as i am currently not really practising it. in school, in church, yes, i submit to the authorities over me but at home, it's not really done everytime. just this morning, i kinda didn't submit to my mum. so there was somehow this guilt feeling when i heard the message today.

after church, there was Rays Leaders' Mentoring. had a good sharing time as Thea shared with us something she heard from God regarding our ministry's attitude towards evangelism. it's quite true. i myself got reminded of being that beacon of light for my own friends as well.

i need more discipline!

strawberry cheesecake. =D

2008-03-04T19:47:00.003+08:00

I finally bought the much-sought-for cream cheese from cold storage on sunday! it was so expensive for such a small box of it. ): well well, there were no cheaper ones so i HAD NO CHOICE but to get it.

made my strawberry cheesecake at nite! heh.. my first attempt at it. well, i thought it was quite successful when i saw the result of it. heh. freezed it and everything. they were only to be eaten on monday evening, together with the ben & jerry's icecream that my sis was in charge of buying. so i took them out, wanting to serve.

to my horror, one of them, which was taken down from the freezer into the lower compartment at an earlier hour, is soft like dont know wad lar. so in the end, i put it back to freeze again while we ate the other one which is harder. and then, another bad thing, the crust which is made out of pounded biscuits, did not harden at all lar. haha.. but it's still delicious. =)

anyway, today was an extremely boring day. while yanling went to crash the physics lectures, i just went to eat with gen and her friend. then i did the sudoku challenge from cynthia's reader's digest. it was tough alrite! i spent so long doing it man. haha.. but eventually, i solved it. =) heh.

i decided not to stay back to help out at the choir auditions today since judging by yesterday's turnout, the ratio of helpers:pple who audtioning is high. haha.. so i left school with shirui and shiangming at 1.10pm. took the bus with shirui today. heh.. ran to board 200 and then waited for so long for 189. haha..

jody came to print something in the afternoon. then she told me that her aunt says for the cheesecake crust to harden, one should freeze the crust alone first before pouring the cheese mixture onto it. OH. haha.. shall do that the next time i make it. heh.

i have a sudden desire to go to the mind cafe. heh. but too bad it's too late to plan that for cell BBA. shall go there for the next one. haha..

urgh. i want a new, decent, blogskin.

Founder's Day

2008-03-01T21:18:00.001+08:00

ACJC celebrated their 122nd Founder's Day yesterday. well, the actual day's today so everyone, Happy Founder's Day. haha.

anyway, it was ACJC choir 2008/2009's debut performance yesterday. daddy fetched me to school in the morning. isn't it nice of him? heh. wore my numberTwo to school since i came by car. did our warmups in the hall where the MRC did sound check simultaneously. after that, we went back to LT2 for the last attire check before entering the hall and sat at the risers.

the service officially started at 8.40am? it's somewhere around that time. well, we basically sat through the thing and stood only when singing our songs and the hymns. gosh, it's so freaking uncomfortable to sit so demurely on the risers. it's especially so when you're in the front row, which was my case. we had to sit in such a manner that our legs were all slanted to one side so as to protect our modesty. haha. needless to say, all our legs went numb within a few minutes of being in that position. the longest time we sat was throughout the prize giving time. after that, we stood to sing the school song and man, were we all struggling to stand up properly! haha..

i guess our performance weren't quite bad. =) just that Rytmus was a little on the fast side. heh. after the short evaluation in LT2, we took a grp photo and then section photos. yea. then i rushed to change out of the stockings and court shoes and went out with shirui, shiangming, yishi and jeromy.

for the fun of it, i wore my tie along with the uniform! haha.. we went to buy tickets for L Change The World at The Cathay first. then we headed to PS yoshinoya for lunch. we were all ravenous after the entire morning without food. haha.. after gobbling down our food, we went to carrefour to buy some chips into the cinemas.

our show was at The Grand Cathay. gosh.. it's huge and MAGNIFICENT. haha.. i took some photos but couldnt capture the entire theatre. ~~well, just some shots for you to take a look at!~~ the photos are super blurred! i shall not put it up. heh.

anyway, the movie was hmmm..not bad. just a lil on the gross side for some scenes. but i think i'll miss L. i'll miss his funny mannerisms and how he only eats sweet foodstuff and his hunchback. HAHA. yea.

then i went with jeromy to the mrt station and headed to novena myself. met ps sok hwee for mentoring and dinner at kk foodcourt. afterwhich, i walked to owen centre for cell. well, it was my first cell meeting with my new cell group. it was nice knowing Cassandra. =) heh. St Nics Choir is the guest choir for RVC's concert!(which i didnt know they were having a concert on the 11th?) heh.. yep. but i cant go..maybe i'll try going there after my workshop ends.
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choir today was quite okay. we ended earlier so the J2s can go home early to study. oh, we received the schedule for the whole year. there's alot alot of things coming up. whoah..i hope i have the discipline indeed to manage my time well!

alvin and the chipmunks is a great show!

movies!

2008-02-28T20:43:00.002+08:00

i have cravings for lots of movies this season! especially after i got this fantastic website where there's a whole entire list of movies you can watch! haha.. im just done with The Prestige. =) days ago, i watched I Am Legend and Blades of Glory. heh.

The Prestige is really good. i wonder why i didnt go catch it when it came out in 2006. perhaps i was totally unaware of it, or maybe i was having some exams of some sort at the time it came out? ahhh..excuses, excuses and more excuses. anyway, it was such a magical plot. well, you get to see what really happens behind magic shows all the time. then again, the endless fight between the two main characters are made so attention-grabbing. and the magic acts they performed were totally incredible. whoah.

haha..anyway, im intending to find some time to watch The Kiterunner, The Notebook and Sweeny Todd some day. haha..

by the way, tmr's Founder's Day! so we get to have half day and no lessons. but as choir is performing, ive got to reach school at 6.50am tmr. sigh.. thank God my mum has asked my dad to drive me to school tmr so i neednt go off so early. =D all the same, i cant wait for Founder's Day to end so i can go watch L Change The World tmr! heh.. decided not to go watch PS I Love You with isabel and nat but watch this other show with shirui they all before i go for mentoring. yep.

alright..i've been online for a really long time. haha.. need to go do my solitude and rest my eyes at the same time.

ORIENTATION 2

2008-02-24T18:25:00.002+08:00

i got posted back to ACJC :D anyway, congrats to all those who made it back there too! (shirui, so sorry you cant get a refund from me. heh. :p) for those who are still appealing back, i wish you all the best!

well, on wednesday, the reporting day, i was almost late lar. first, i woke up late but i still managed to reach buona vista at 7.05am like that. however, shirui made me wait with her for yanlin but finally, we just went in first. only stepped into the hall at about 7.26am? we had normal lessons on that day while the 2nd intakers attended all the talks and watched the videos of the ACsiana Quest from orientationONE.

orientationTWO really started on thursday. we got into our OGs once again. however, this time, some of our friends have left us while there were some new additions as well. matthew, chouyin, chenjie and bowen left AC. good news: chenjie managed to appeal back in after all! chouyin's still waiting.. anyway, the new friends we made are, sheryl, yanlin(from rv), dorcas(rv too!), joash, fangyi and marcus. they're all nice pple to talk to actually. =)

this time round, we didnt play alot of games. didnt get very dirty as well since we avoided the mud crawl. heh. played this human bowling thing on day one; a game where all of us stood on chairs and competed to remove as many chairs from the opponent team; buttslide! my all-time favourite!. after which, we just slacked around in the sunken gallery and danced the singles' dance for a while.

on day two, we played some simple games in the void deck before going to play the games that the OGLs have set up. we played waterbomb volleyball; tug-of-war(we won twice!); this soap game; waterbomb 'soccer'. spent most of the time actually sitting in the cafe, staring into space lar. haha.. then we had to go register our subjects. i have decided to take H2bio, chem math and H1 geog after all. decided not to take the risk of taking all H2s if not i'll probably just fail my As. haha..

in the afternoon, we went to settler's cafe at holland v to have OG dinner. you cant really call it a dinner actually. haha.. well, there were like 2/3 OGs there! anyway, we took this package thing and it's actually kinda expensive but oh well.. we ate some snacks, had drinks and played games like Uno Stacko and Taboo there. haha..

at night, we had our CAMPFIRE! it started off fine.. the campfire was lit and we watched the final skit of the ACsiana quest. but while we were all watching a slideshow brought by the Photog Soc, it started to drizzle! so we all dashed back to the bleachers and heeded instructions to move to the hall asap. then we continued from there. haha.. similarly, everyone got super high during the dancing part. haha...then si hui jingmin they all came to crash as well. at one corner, lemin, sihui, jolin and i started to dance our cosine75 class dance to the song 'move your feet' as it was last year's mass dance so they were playing the song. haha.. went home at around 10plus. yea..
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church today was fine.. yea. had worship duty today and my sister and terence woke up late! so we only reached at 7.40am? haha.. yar. worship was still pretty good despite the poor sound system today. Praise God! after service, i went to eat lunch with my parents at pekkio market and saw ethel's family there as well! haha.. then my parents drove me home while they went to IMM. i took a short nap before going to buy my ingredients for my cheesecake. =)

was just fretting that i dont have my cream cheese as they dont sell it at both shop&save and NTUC. thank goodness my sis will be going there later so i asked her to get it for me. yay..so i'll be able to make my cheese cake tonite!

WHY

2008-02-17T20:45:00.003+08:00

yesterday, nat sent me this particular song, asking me to listen to it. well, the melody line was pretty nice and sounded sad. but since i didnt have the lyrics, i wasnt very aware of the story behind the song. curiosity always gets the better of me and so today, i went to find the lyrics of this song..

Why - Nicole Nordeman

We rode into town the other day, just me and my Daddy.

He said I'd finally reached that age, and I could ride next to him on a horse that of course was not quite as wide

We heard a crowd of people shouting and so we stopped to find out why

There was that man that my dad said he loved, but today there was fear in his eyes

So I said Daddy why are they screaming?

Why are the faces of some of them beaming?

Why is he dressed in that bright purple robe?

I bet that crown hurts him more than he shows

Daddy please can't you do something?

He looks as if he's going to cry

You said he was stronger than all of those guys-Daddy please tell me why, why does everyone want him to die?

Later that day the sky grew cloudy and daddy said I should go inside

Somehow he knew things would get stormy, boy was he right

But I could not keep from wondering if there was something that he had to hide

So after he left I had to find out, I was not afraid of getting lost

So I followed the crowds to a hill where I knew men had been killed

And I heard a voice come from a cross:

And it said :

Father why are they screaming.

Why are the faces of some of them beaming?

Why are they casting their lots for my clothes??

This crown of thorns hurts me more than it shows, Father please can't you do something?

I know that you must hear my cry

I thought I could handle a cross of this size, Father remind me why, why does everyone want me to die.

When will I understand why?

My precious Son, I hear them screaming.

I'm watching the face of the enemy beaming but soon I will clothe you in robes of my own.

Jesus this hurts me much more than you know

But this dark hour I must do nothing.

Though I've heard your unbearable cry, the power in your blood destroys all the lies, soon you'll see past their unmerciful eyes.

Look there below see the child trembling by her father's side.

Now I can tell you why, she is why you must die.

POST VALENTINES+RAYs CNY PARTY

2008-02-16T18:16:00.002+08:00

valentine's day at acjc was so fun! i've never seen a school so enthusiastic and hyped about Valentine's Day! haha.. when i reached school, i see the school decorated with pink and red heart-shaped balloons. in the hall, every chair has a red wired heart on it, given by the 32nd student council. oh, to digress a lil, the day before was cross country and i actually ran for the competitive one. i got in 149th! haha..

anyway, so throughout the entire 14th feb, the void deck was blasted with song dedications by students. gabriel gave 1sd2 a dedication- lifehouse's You & Me. i like that song. =) then wensi and amanda went to dedicate one on behalf of kenneth gay clifford. heh. it's our class's inside joke. well, everyone were just busy giving out presents on that day. heh. i gave out ferrero rochers and the Dove choc(dont know what's the actual name lar.)

then after school, i went with yishi to vivo coz she owes me a v-day present. haha.. but after walking round for ages, we couldnt find any cheap and appealing stuff to me. so in the end, she treated me to mcflurry. heh. oh, i went to Page One to get stickers to decorate the yoyo we choir girls were supposed to give to the choir guys today. at the cashier queue, i saw Chen Han Wei! haha..

after leaving vivo, i went to kim san leng to have dinner with the rest of them before we had our final cny song practice. isabel and i gave out chocs to whoever was present. shalala~
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after school yesterday, i went to owen centre immediately to get ready for the cny party. well, reuben sprained his neck and couldnt make it last minute. oh well, so we had to do without the bass. anyway, my friends came! im so happy shirui and jingmin could come! of course, happy that joanna and mich can join in the fun too! haha.. yep. the entire programme went quite well i think? there were many newcomers so praise God! everything went well by God's grace but well..maybe the food was a little insufficient? nvm though, as long as pple enjoyed themselves. yea.

choir celebrated v-day after choir rehearsal ended today. the guys sang to us first, 'Dream a little dream'. the scene was so funny coz the majority were like holding scores in their hands! haha.. but it sounded not too bad. then it was our turn to sing them a song. we sang, 'In The Still Of The Nite'. oh man..you cant believe how mushy the lyrics are lar.. haha.. i couldnt help but laugh while i was singing. then it was the gift exchange time! the guys used socks to make pouches for us. rather thoughtful actually since they sewed the drawstrings themselves. yar. we gave them yoyos! yep..

went to buy my school uniform with shirui after choir. Bibi & Baba was damn crowded..we waited for a long while before we got to try on the sample uniforms they hung there. then the two of us went to eat something at macs before heading for home. yep.

just finished watching I Am Legend. gosh..it's damn scary.. sends your heart pounding. oh my gosh.. now i understand how come lydia felt so impacted by it after she watched it. haha..

happy cny to all!

2008-02-09T20:55:00.000+08:00

it may be a lil late but still, here's sarah wishing all a Happy Chinese New Year. you have one more day to enjoy yourself before you get back into the rigour of school life once more. =D

i shall start blogging about wednesday. there was ac celebrations on wednesday. well, the performances were alrite i guess. dance items never fail to capture everyone's attention; the q&a sessions were something rather frustrating because they are the ones that are taking so much time and we all just cant wait for the programme to end earlier. haha.. went back to rv for a while only. i collected my yearbook!! then about 10 of us cosinettes went to vivo to have our lunch together. we ate at long john silver and went to shop around here and there. at around 2.30pm, we all went back home.

got ready to go to my uncle's place for the reunion dinner. it's become a routine i guess, us going to his place on the eve, and then on chu er, again, my paternal relatives will come to my house for dinner. we had steamboat, something different from before. yea.. we left the place at about 9plus?

my chu yi was 'fantastic'. haha.. my parents and i didnt go anywhere to bainian in the morn and early afternoon. however, at about 3plus, we went to my brother's house. this year, my maternal relatives are all gathering at my brother's hse. heh. so we reached there first as usual and got ready some stuff. then my aunty came and brought the prawn rolls over. i helped out with the dipping as my maid fried them. yea.

finally, mag and xueer came. we decided to eat first before playing mahjong. okay, they were supposed to explain the game to me. i only played it like once, not knowing the proper rules actually. haha.. then before we started, we had to scheme on how to take out the table and the mahjong tiles from my brother's storeroom which was blocked by people sitting in front of the door. haha.. eventually, we managed to get it out. hehe. but ultimately, we didnt play much. oh, i managed to sell some of my fun-o-rama tickets. hehe. =)) THANKS XUEER for buying so many. as usual, we camwhored a little after many have left. then we also left.

went to visit my sis and bro's nanny on chu er. because of this, i forgoed to chance to go to ms dora lee's hse to bainian. urgh. my nanny wasnt at home so we couldnt go to her place. had lunch together as a big family at Thai Express at tiongbahru plaza before i went home with my sister. watched my Bull Fighting till my parents came home and i had to go help out in the kitchen.

i helped to prepare the fried bread dish. haha.. i dont know how to explain it lar. anyway, dinner was good i guess. haha.. oh, i think im kind of anti-social this year. i cooped myself in the room after dinner to watch my Bull Fighting. i didnt even realise my relatives had left lar! oh my..i felt seriously bad after i came out and saw that they've all left.

anyway, today has been a fun day! i went to meet yeun in the morn to buy her recycling bags. haha..the design's quite nice actually. then after that i took the train to yiochukang to go to lydia's hse. wanted to hitch a ride from shalyn from there but i had to wait so i might as well just walk there myself. got directions for lydia as to how to go up and just hanged around in her hse with joy. watched her cook and everything. after a while, shalyn reached. the 3 of them changed and we all went down. while they joined the guys in the game, i joined joshua and did some bio there.

then when everyone was done, we went up to have our lunch! watched The Hostage as we ate. it's a rather thrilling yet gross and psychotic movie. haha.. by the time we finished, it was 4pm. then at about 4.30pm, some of us watched The Westside Story. but soon, we just got bored. haha.. played a lil of icy tower before lydia started showing us videos that are funny. yar. then i left at about 6.35pm to meet my mum back at westmall.

we ate our dinner and i bought a hairband to pull back my hair during choir! =) then we came home. gosh, my feet are so tired now.. haha.. gotta go watch my Bull Fighting now!

who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

2008-02-03T21:10:00.000+08:00

i had a really exciting weekend! =))

yesterday, i went for choir in the morning. mrs tay showed us some videos taken with a scope. they're videos of the movements in the larynx when you sing. so both negative and positive demonstrations were given and it was simply amazing how those two vocal flaps work. now, im super scared im singing in the wrong way coz we also saw how singing wrongly can harm those two vocal flaps. then we just rehearsed the songs. yea.

then we were supposed to have section lunch outing together. at first, it seemed like the idea was kinda pointless since quite a number of j2 seniors couldnt go. however, in the end, they still went. heh. went to the foodcourt at holland v to eat. yep.

in the evening, i went with my mum to lot 1. however lot 1 is like ultra tiny and the shops there are really limited. so we went up to causeway point instead. wanted to look for another dress or top that's more colourful/bright but couldnt find any. bought my blue pumps finally! yay! then we went home after that..
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this morning, followed my parents' car as they fetched my sis to church. she led worship today. yea. then we went to the market to have our breakfast. after eating, my parents went back to church to attend first service while i went to meet up with some of them youths at kk macs to study. or rather, i would say i went to do my homework lar. yar.. i realised i cannot really rmb differentiation..haha.. but i believe my memory shall soon be refreshed.

then we went for 2nd service at 10.30am. today's sermon was on having professional margin. everyone brought a symbol of their work to consecrate it. haha..nat, isabel, joel lee, ben and i all surrendered our calculators. heh. =D the sermon was really good. the testimonies were absolutely fantastic.

after service, jeanette and i were like trying to sell tickets. haha..i sold my fun-o-rama and she her NOL tickets. lol.. im going for NOL with church pple. =) anyway, then after that we had the basic personal discipling before going for lunch at kk foodcourt. went back at 2.30? to start the prac for cny party songs. First Day is not easy to sing. at least the music is there already. we need to brush up on the vocal arrangements. yea.

at 4.35pm, the few of us who were going to catch the 5pm show with the others were like trying to flag a cab. in the end, we managed to get into one at 4.55pm? lol.. the 5 of us, reuben, jj, jk, xuan and i managed to squeeze into a cab. reached The Cathay at 5.05pm i think? then we met the others and went in asap. we watched Shattered. although others seem to say it's like not nice and everything but well, it's quite good i guess. the plot's got a very unexpected twist at the very end. and the entire show just loves to keep you in suspense. haha.. after the movie, we all went home separately. yea.

oh man..gotta go complete somemore homework later on..

2008-01-26T18:11:00.000+08:00

well, ac gave us j1s an off day yesterday for us to celebrate and rejoice or moan bout our misery. whichever it was, the most most important purpose was actually to give us some time to think through about the school choices before we submit the JAE application.

anyway, after getting back the results on thurs, some of us 4C`07 pple headed to vivo. most of them just stayed at carl's junior to have their 'lunch'. huimin, jingmin and i just walked around, trying to find huimin's bro's bday present. then while we were looking at shoes at Converse(jingmin wanted to), yvonne suddenly tapped me from behind. she was at starbucks with fungmin and another friend. yea. oh, i forgot to mention that at carl's junior, i saw cynthia! my og mate. haha..she's out with the other malaysian scholars. yea.

after a rather fruitless walk, we went back to carl's junior and i found that masu left first without me. fine so i went to toys r us with shirui, huimin and changlok before going home. the rest wanted to go to jolin's house to k songs. however, through reliable sourse(jingmin's blog) i found out they went to shirui's hse in the end. HAHA.

so i just used the com at nite?? yep.
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yesterday, i invited yishi, huimin and masu over to have a movie afternoon. went to rent the movies with yishi. we rented, The Covenant, Step Up and Stomp the Yard. =)) since masu and huimin were going to be terribly late, yishi and i just watched The Covenant first. then we waited to the two girls to come before we watched Step Up. however, as it was already 4 plus to 5 plus.. i didnt watch much. i had to send out emails..print songs..blah.. then bathe and eat. didnt really watch some parts of the show in the end. yea.

at nite, went for cell. was supposed to be there at 7pm but due to the heavy traffic, i reached there at only 7.32pm? i just regret not taking mrt sometimes. haha.. so we managed to practise efficiently. oh well, Raydio is always efficient! heh. by the way, it was vision nite last nite. yea. we had welcome as usual. wacko using chinese names/surnames. it was fun..haha.. worship was really good. hey, i dont say this coz i led it but because you can really sense God's presence moving among us in the room. then jj brought the word. whoah..the first video he showed us was super disgusting to me. well, i never ever listen or watch heavy metal music/vid. then there was a second video that was ultra freaky and scary. it just sorts of sends chills down your spine. but they do make us reflect alot. yep.
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had choir practice this morn and i had to hurry down to owen centre for worship prac. although i wasnt on time, i was in time. haha.. so now im home. haha..

i guess i'll probably do my JAE tmr? haha.. i need time tonite to write down on form A first. heh.

With Deep Gratitude.

2008-01-24T19:52:00.000+08:00

And my heart is filled

with gratitude and thankfulness

my heart will sing

sing of your kindness

And my heart will praise you

O Glorious Jesus

I will extol, I will exalt

my precious savior

Indeed, i'm totally overwhelmed by pounding waves of gratitude right now. I am still very much unable to get over the fact that seems so like a dream.

at the hall, everyone were waiting anxiously for the clock to strike at 2pm. (alrite, i was lying. the clock in my school wont strike at any hour.) well, mrs chak first came to explain about the procedures of JAE at around 10 minutes to 2. following her, ms ek was invited to announce the number of pple who got 10/9 distinctions. then if i heard correctly, 38 people scored ALL distinctions(A1/A2).

FINALLY came the time for us to stand up, queue in front of our form teachers and receive the results slip, Form A, JAE booklets and some Explosion Mag. haha..i was so nervous as i stood there, slowly inching my way to ms tan. she passed me the slip with form A covering the results so i waited till i've gotten all i needed to get and then i slowly shifted the papers to look at my results.

BOOM! i saw all 'A's on the column that shows your grade alphabets. i was so excited about it already. I was shocked because i never expect my ss/elit would get an A! and then i shifted the paper further and whoah..i see it was a ONE for it even! that really took me by surprise! haha.. so my results were actually pretty good! all glory goes to God! it wasn't me who got the 7 points. i didnt do it alone all by myself. God was my source of strength as i studied and it's Him who gave me the wisdom and ability to get such results. if not, tell me how i could get an A1 for my ss/elit? i've never gotten an A for this subject ever, even with mod, it wouldnt be easy to get it too! so it's definitely God working behind the scenes. no doubt about that. =)

i was worrying over bio but hey, i got an A1. just kinda disappointed that i didnt get my much expected A1 for chem. sigh. but oh well..nvm then. God's blessed me alot in the O's and i should be grateful for everything He's given to me! =)

yea..so im going to stay in ACJC. set. altho i can actually try for HCJC as i'm given the scholarship thingy but i think i'll only be able to go to the arts stream there. and probably the competition there will be very tough since many are so smart and intellectual. haha. plus, i have no idea what cca i want to join at HC. lol. im going to stay in ACJC!! =))

alrite..i have no time to blog about any celebration i had after today. need to get ready songs for tmr's worship.

TIRED.

2008-01-22T20:40:00.000+08:00

i came home super late today. it's my first time (i think) to be reaching home at 7.30pm without going anywhere else after school. i had my first alto sectionals today. i have to really get used to singing low notes now. when it's mid-range, it's still alright but well, it do gets tougher when i sing those really low notes. heh.

enough about that! i had my first bio H1 lesson. urgh, im the only one taking H1 bio in my class. wad a sad thing it is. however, it's always good to make new friends. i made friends with qiaowen today. after bio, we had MASS PE. gosh, it was so strenuous alrite. i cannot do crunches lar!! i was about to die when we were only halfway through it can. sigh.. after my last round, i was about to puke okay. i want to swim!! haha.. or just run 6 rounds non-stop.

well, GP was kinda interesting. we took this vice-chancellor's quiz thingy for fun. and i scored a very nice 18/55. haha.. there's so much general knowledge that im so not aware of. i need to seriously read more newspapers and beneficial magazines eg. The Economist. haha.. geog tutorial with ms leow was basically just having a round of introduction. yea. next up was chem practical. whoah, i really gave almost all my prac skills back to mr chen man. haha.. i was so lost in the lab. haha. lastly, it was math. yep then just waited for sectionals to start.

oh yes, O'LEVEL RESULTS ARE COMING OUT ON THURSDAY!!!! my vp made the announcement this morn to just inform whoever who dont know.(but im sure everyone knew it yesterday..heh. news spread super fast.) one bad thing: we still have to go do school on thursday morn and will be only released either at 11.30 or 11.50 depending on our timetables. one good news: we have a day off on friday!! =)) gosh.. i pray i'll not get negative shocks..

1sd2

2008-01-20T16:45:00.000+08:00

we have officially gotten news of our classes on wednesday. im in 1sd2, together with my og mate, cynthia as well as fellow rvians yishi and winifred. =) if yishi stays on in ACJC, then we'll be classmates for 6 years! haha... anyway, here are some pointers about my class:

my class is a completely mixed up class with all sorts of different subject combinations. but the bulk of us take bio.. yep.
there're 3 sarah-s in my class and 2 amelia-s. whoah.
my form teacher is our class's chinese tutor. gosh, im glad i dont have to take chinese after getting back my o's results. however, i hope i'll be able to get an A2 or at least a B3 for HCL.
the guy to girl ratio in my class is about 1:3. heh.
there are many DSA students in my class, about 6 or 7?

i think so far, these are some interesting things about my class. yep. i hope we'll get to become a bonded class in time to come.
-

well, went out with shirui and shiangming after school on friday in the end. shiangming and i were actually accompanying shirui to Sim Lim Square to buy her ipod nano and then to bugis street to shop for her cny clothes. then i went to cell. i hope i was okay for cell. terence wasnt there so i had to shoulder the entire job of facilitating the cell lar. yar.

on sat, went swimming in the morn with shermin and jody. then went to school in the noon time for choir welcome tea. im in alto! have i mentioned it before? oh well..after that, i boarded the train with some these 2 choir seniors. yep. oh, and you wont believe how many times i boarded the train after that. headed to ps first to look for my mentoring book. i found it like finally but it was rather expensive and there was only a copy left. so i decided to go to campus crusade to find it. when i reached there, it was 6pm and on sat, they close at 5pm. URGH. so i was thinking whether i should search novena's trumpet praise or just buy the only copy left at ps. so in the end, i went back to PS and then took the train to novena to go to deeben's hse.

met reuben and jeanette waiting at the bus stop too so i just joined them and headed to deeben's place together. so the whole night, we were basically either playing cards or abalone or for some, risk. some were in the room dont know playing wad soccer thing. yea.. then at 9 plus, we cut the cake and played wacko instead of spin the bottle and saying something about deeben each. heh. yep. then that's all. my dad came to fetch me home at 10plus. yep.

church service was fine. had to play for chinese service again at the request of othniel. yea.

lectures, lectures, and more lectures

2008-01-15T19:19:00.001+08:00

alright, so it's getting kind of boring to keep going for lectures. there isn't much work to be done yet. or maybe i should just start doing my maths and chem tutorials and not spend all my time watching coffee prince/heroes. haha..

anyway, GP lecture today was more of a introductory lecture. and so will the two other GP lectures for this week. when school officially starts, we shall not have GP in lecture style but in tutorial format. yep. chem was basically a re-visiting of stoichiometry and acids, bases & salts. yea.

bio lectures are going rather slowly. today's lecture was quite boring, i should say. or perhaps it was just my sleepiness that overwhelmed me. still, im happy that i take bio instead of physics. i cant imagine myself discussing random errors and calculating uncertainties, going through concepts of a current in a magnetic field etc etc etc.. haha.. i would rather study about the structures and functions of the organelles of living things and of course, GENES. =) however, if i do want to know bout genes of viruses and bacteria, ive got to take H2 bio which im not doing currently. hopefully my o level results will allow me to be able to do 4 H2s and of course, if that's what God wants me to do.

i spent my breaks in the library reading agatha christie's A Murder Is Announced. i was just left with a couple more pages before i had to rush to geog lecture ALONE. yea, nobody i knew was taking H2 geog apparently. my oh my, i thought i was late for Mr Lynn's class. but i wasnt. and one more thing, it wasn't his lesson. we did human geog with mdm nooraisha who was just as interesting. sat with chua jia min. whoah, i met her when i was searching for a seat and we just said 'hi' to each other, asked if there's any empty seat and there, we ended up making friends. =)

well, got a chance to get home really early today. heh. alrite, i shall go try doing the maths and chem tutorial now. need to get started on my work someday. pastor says NO PROCASTINATION!

untitled.

2008-01-13T16:54:00.000+08:00

i seriously have no urge to blog these days. i think it's ever since i stopped the daily-blogging thing last year and went to a weekly-blogging basis. haha..it's a good thing anyway rite?

we started our lectures-only week on friday. it shall carry on till the end of this friday. then we'll know our classes and start having proper school with lectures+tutorials. im feeling kind of anxious to know who's gonna be my future classmates. and with the nearing of that is also the nearing of the release of results. as you all reading my post would know, there've been several rumours as to when the O'level results would be released. some say it's 28th, some 25th and an rv teacher told my friend that it's coming out on the 22nd. that's rather fast isnt it? again, the inside of my is fighting this invisible mental war. i want to just know it quickly but yet, im afraid of getting it back. however, i will keep praying and trusting God in whatever His will for me is.

as for yesterday, i went shopping with my mummy! not actually very exciting tho. we went to queensway first as i wanted to go buy a pair of school shoes. since i have this $10 converse voucher, i wanted to use it on a pair of shoes from there but there werent like any nice ones. so in the end, we went to look at the other sports brands. finally settled in for a pair from adidas. it's white with some parts that are aqua blue. =) was choosing between that pair and a nike one which has a gold tick(their icon of globalisation). yea..

after buying the shoes, the both of us just walked around in the hope for finding some tops to complete my cny shopping. instead, we walked into this shop selling baby+toddler clothings and bought a hat for adele. haha..whereever we go, we always come back with something for her! but afterwards, we went into one shop to browse through the clothes they had. tried some and many more that were introduced by the sales-lady. she dresses real hot and so taiwanese can. haha.. the other sales-lady around wasnt that extreme, more mild. yea. managed to buy one top and a peach vest from that shop. i love that vest. =)

then my mum wanted to go to her friend's boutique all the way at Roxy Square at kallang that area. so we took a train down and another bus ride before reaching the place. so while my mum was fitting the whole array of clothes her friend suggested to her, i sat in the store, watching that small-screen tv that was showing some ch 8 old drama serials. LOL. ate laksa at Roxy Square before going back home.

went to westmall for a while to take a look at the shoes but well, there weren't any navy blue (preferably patent leather) pumps! sigh. bought subway home for shermin and that ends the day.

church today was rather good. sermon was on setting financial margins which is rather applicable even to us youths i think. since, we are after all students and dont earn our keep so it's better we know how to use our money wisely. and well, since my allowance has increased(tho it's still rather miserable) i should tithe more. yep. oh yes, i just got my atm card. but it doesnt bare my name. aiya..i regret letting my dad decide to take the card on the spot. nevermind then.

alrite, after blogging, ive gotta bathe charlotte, watch 1 or two epi of heroes before going round to read my notes. hehheh.

start of proper school life

2008-01-10T22:12:00.000+08:00

i had my auditions for choir yesterday. i was so nervous about it okay. choir auditions is like one of the top things im afraid of. as much as i trust my potential and God, i still fear. however, im glad the auditions didnt turn out that badly lar. the teacher whom i was so afraid of meeting-i got her as the one auditioning me.

alrite, so i sang my school song and my, i felt it was so terrible. my sound was like so airy and the song sounded choppy as i kept running out of breath. hey, solo-ing rv school song is not easy. i tried to remember what the teacher told me during acjc dsa audition and tried to push out my sound. yar, anyway, i was kind of scared when i ended the school song badly. but they continued with the auditions nonetheless.

they tested the vocal range next. normal warm-ups kinda thing. they went high first and then low. i overheard the pianist asking whether i was an alto. haha.. see, im always mistaken for an alto. then the last part was where they played a particular tune and i had to sing it again. i think i was quite accurate for it. =) lastly, they just asked some questions and there i was done!

and whoah, the person called me about 5 times altogether last nite coz he couldnt reach me. i was at church for the cell intern training thing. yep, i finally answered the phone and he informed me that i got through the auditions!! YIPEE~ i am retarded. i need time to soak into the joy of it. so it's like i was still calm and all that during the phone call but after that, i was so happy alrite!

next sat's the welcome tea! and jiamin's in choir too! =)

as for today, we chose our subject combination. i chose H1 bio, H2 chem, maths and geog. if my O'level results are 8 or below, i shall change my bio to H2. yea.. it's more useful in the future. but actually not if im really intending to take up Psychology in Uni. lol. yea.

lectures are starting tmr and spilling over to next fri. then after that we'll know our classes and have tutorials+lectures. yep. oh yea, i mentioned i signed up for photographic society. but looks like i wont join it anymore coz i dont intend to go for the welcome tea. i wanna go home to prepare for cell at nite. yea..have this want to go vs dont want to go feeling. but well, i have decided. maybe i shall join geog soc as a 2nd cca instead. jeanette's the vp! haha.. =)

ORIENTATION

2008-01-07T22:04:00.000+08:00

orientation had been extremely crazy. we did almost everything to get ourselves dirty. got starch thrown at our hair and clothes, soaked in murky waters, sat on starch and water bombs, slid on soapy benches, went down on all fours in muddy grounds, squeezed papaya with our butts, sat on lemons etc etc..

the day we got soaked in water!

YES. that's how fun and dirty the games we played were! haha.. but, the games was just to enable the OGs to better mix with each other. the forfeits were exciting too. lie on the track/grass and get water poured over you or just roll over the soapy ground and more! haha..

all covered with mud!!

besides those games we played, during our own OG time when we are waiting for our turn to play the games, we would sit in a circle and play this very very interesting game. eh, i'll try to name it-mmm ji ji game. haha.. it's very fun okay! we should play it in cell. heh.

oh, saturday was very fun! we played some games then we went to the cca exhibition. of course, i signed up for choir. and someone just called to inform me about the audition. it's on wednesday for me. ahh! i need to nurse my hoarse voice! anyway, not to sidetrack, i also signed up for photographic society. heh.. in the afternoon, we had OG outing at taka's Seoul Garden! damn ex lar..$21. LOL. campfire at nite was super fun! the video clips were great and whoah, during the mass dance, everyone went out of control man! yea..

on the bus ride there; at seoul garden!

before campfire-less nite! <3>overall, i enjoyed myself thoroughly. =) i will stay in ACJC i guess. heh.

ACJC

2008-01-03T21:19:00.000+08:00

i had no time to blog about my first day of school yesterday. had to rush home to bathe and leave the house again for worship directive meeting. well anyway, the first day wasn't so bad.

i met some few of them, shirui, shiangming, yishi and huimin at buona vista mrt station before walking to the school. so it's like i saw jeanette at the hall! haha. yea and subsequently during yesterday and today as well. okay, every morning, the ACchoir will sing the national anthem and school song acapella on stage. cool? and then we'll have devotion sharing.

so these few days, the program goes like this: in the morn, we'll attend talks first. yesterday was Discipline talk. man, acj has so many rules okay. rv is so slack compared to theirs. today's talk was about the subjects and academics. tmr's will be about student development and such.

after that, for yesterday, the OGLs then introduced the 4 clans to us all. we had our OG time then. my OG's rather quiet i guess. but at least, we are cooperative during games. heh. yea. the OGLs are nice pple. haha.. yep. so we played games and had mass rally where we cheered and stuff. the cheers are interesting alrite and the rebuttals are even funnier. haha.. im in the clan Joaquim(Wa-Kim) and in the group Mountbatten. yepyep..

games today were much more mad than yesterdays'. yesterday, we only played 2 games where we had to deal with starch and papaya pulp. but today, everyone were soaked in water+murky water+starch+chilli sauce(maybe)+soapy water. haha.. went home all stinky and dripping wet. but despite that, still went out to eat with shirui, bingyang and changlok who both came from aj to meet us at JE.

oh..one more thing to mention. our mass dances are super challenging. haha.. it's no more the sundance or bollywood dance you see in rv okay. rv's mass dance are totally urgh. i wonder why they dont ever dance that hiphop dance we did for ACES day in 2005 lar. but although the dances(a singles dance and a couples dance) were not easy, i enjoyed it lar. haha.. it's rather fun. heh.

alrite. i shall just blog it brief and short. heh. whatever we did to get ourselves so dirty shall just be up to your own imagination. =)

I RESOLVE TO...

2008-01-01T11:07:00.000+08:00

alrite, this year, i really really want to set resolutions that i would i would i would follow.

1. Be a better daughter; i've got to really honour my parents more. i must stop all bad thoughts about them and speak to them in nice tones even though i may be feeling terribly irritated at them(or about something else).

2. Play songs without having to look at chords-memorise chord progressions!!; it'll help in my playing! haha..

3. Compose a song; haha.. im going to challenge myself this year to write a song. yep.

4. Excel in all my exams this year; i must aim not to get any sub-passes-pass everything!

5. Finish reading the New Testament by my birthday.

6. Hear more from God and listen out for His voice and direction to guide my in my purpose of this year 2008.

I guess i shall just end here. hopefully, i'll be able to fulfill what i've resolved to do.

2008!!!!

2008-01-01T10:38:00.000+08:00

WHOOPEE~ It's another new year! isn't it truly amazing how time passes you by. i can still remember myself setting those resolutions for 2007 last year! things about not using the comp and practising piano and blah... i guess only the blogging part was rather heeded. the rest - *shakes head* haha..

i'm seriously too lazy of blogging my reflections for the year. all i want to say is that i thank God for everything. He's helped me pass by my last year secondary school like a breeze. although i still didnt achieve super duper fantastic results for those tests and stuff, i know He was there when i studied and when i attempted those papers. and not to forget HE was really beside me through all my O'level papers! so no matter what results i get in the end, i just want to surrender it all to God! if they're good, i give all glory back to Him because if it's not for Him, i wouldnt be able to obtain them. if they're so-so, i still give glory back to Him for still being by my side. perhaps He has greater plans ahead for me. yea.

one more thing, I thank God that He's enabled RVC to clinch the Gold With Honours. you won't believe that it's possible for us to even think otherwise. but yes, we were that afraid of not being able to get it. i was. but at that time, i did pray and asked God to just help us all to do it. and lo and behold! =))

indeed, the year of the unusual rings true! im sure this year 2008 of empowerment will indeed be shown to all of us!

The Call

2007-12-29T21:37:00.000+08:00

the title of this blog post is the title of this year's youth camp. i just came back today from the 4 day 3 nights camp. and right now, im aching all over. haha..

well well, it was a very fantabulous camp. the main idea of the sermons was about discipleship and willing to be the salt and light for Christ. it's all rather applicable to us. all of us had managed to gain quite a lot from God through this camp.

besides the strong presence of God that managed to make us all feel so good bout the camp, the games we played were really fun too! on the second day afternoon, we had the telematch. my team consists of lydia tan, shermin, joel lee and jon. anyway, we didnt really do quite well for the telematch section but at least, we enjoyed ourselves. we had the lowest points then! but heyhey, thanks to joel lee i guess, we managed to 'fan bai wei sheng' and got a second overall! the prize was $10 HMV vouchers.

then on friday afternoon, we all headed to changi village to play the Amazing Race. my group was quite suay can. when we found where our first stop was and tried to find our clue, we realised the clue was missing. and really, some clues dropped from the signpost and got swept away by the current in the drain in front. we took so long to search for our clue and finally found it at the very end point where large mass of leaf litter and bacteria had already colonised the clue. urgh. but then, it was still very fun lar. haha.. we didnt win any prizes this time. got in 4th. but maybe if joel lee was there, we could have won something? he could have run faster to get the clue. haha.

after the service that nite, we played this 'underground church'. it's too complicated to explain everything here. basically, it's a test of our faith and to let us know that in reality, by saying YES to God may actually cost us our lives. the process of it was very interesting as everyone is trying to act and all that. then sheng is the poor guy can. nobody believes him. christians dont believe he was a christian too and thought he was a spy. meanwhile, the spies were also cynical about his claim to be a spy.

well, after the game ended, suddenly, i LSed. so i had diarrhoea and so did lydia lee. we werent the first to have it. JK and i think don had it. JK's was rather serious. as for lydia, i realised when i woke up in the morn that she left in the middle of the night. mine was still alrite. i think right now, it's okay already. i LSed about 7 times altogether lar! felt super weak in the body today since i had my whole body aching from the race the day before.

yep..so that's about it. oh, it's still a mystery as to why we all had diarrhoea. we just cant figure out what food was it that caused us to have diarhoea. sigh..