Sunday, July 31, 2005

:: Intrusions ::

school has yet to start, but they have conveniently packed my weekends and weekdays with all sorts of activities i never knew people would actually ever do.

suddenly my peaceful life has been turned all over. its such a big contrast from the staff retreat i just had with the Youth Guidance folks, where for three days i ate, slept, prayed, sung, played frisbee, read the bible (alot) and did lots of reflection. the tv wasn't even switched on through the 3 days we were there.

its like when you are trying to fry an egg sunny-side-up, but halfway through decided that you want it scrambled. u try to toss and turn the half-sunnied egg around the pan, and the yolk bursts and spills all over, resulting in a dishevelled mass of white and yellow.

i pray that my yolk will remain intact as school begins to get hectic. as i look at the many pieces of pamphlets, 229 new emails in my school email inbox, and increasing number of SMU-labelled merchandise lying around the messy house, i hope that my life may still remain simple.

simple is good. simple gives you space to think about the more important things in life. i like simple. and i intend to keep it that way.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

:: Scabby ::

i grazed my elbows during FOC and so i named my scabs "Scabby". Mummy Scabby is the large/slightly infected one on the left elbow, and Baby Scabby the little one on the right. i keep knocking my elbows into things so its hard for them to heal.. and if i use plasters, they don't dry up..

i have a bad habit of picking at my scabs when they become dry.. but after a few bleedings i have decided that this has to stop. henceforth, i will leave Mother and Son alone until my elbows heal.

it occured to me that my life has been like Scabby. the wound represents ourselves, while the scab represents God. as long as we're here on earth, we would never be able to be completely liberated from the sins and temptations of this world. whenever we sin, its as if we're picking at our scab, preventing the wound from healing. when we pick and pick and pick, the wound bleeds, and we fall into a state of regret and dispair, frantically trying to stop the bleeding with tissue, toilet paper, bedsheet, clothes, or any absorbant materials we lay our hands on.

these are the main scab-pickers of the 21st century:

• materialism
• me-ism (self-centeredness)
• humanism (we're our own and rely on ourselves or one another)
• hedonism (pleasure of the senses)
• subjectivity/relativism (that there are no absolutes. eg: moral absolutes and that all things are relative to one another)

however, one or two days later, a new layer of scab will emerge, once again protecting the wound from external contamination. everytime we let God down, He finds the grace and mercy to forgive us and lets us move on.

but sometimes i cannot control myself, and so the cycle goes on. if you pick at the scab repeatedly, the wound would not heal properly and thus leave a scar. ugly and permanent. by that time, it would be too late to undo it.

i think that whenever we fall and hurt ourselves, its not wrong to be angry or sad for awhile. what matters most is how we decide to react after that. the scab will definitely grow, like its guaranteed to, (unless you're diabetic lah) so we can either choose to pick at it and continue to expose the wound to the germs in the air, or we can apply zambuk to help accelerate the scab generation and rejoice in the fact that our wound is well-armoured by a wonderful brown little piece of hard skin called Scabby.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

:: Aftermath ::

ok, i like, just woke up. so scary. esp when i slept at 10 last night.

ahh.. finally home again. let me just give you a bruise report:

three large blue-blacks on right thigh. (low wall)
two grazed elbows, left one slightly infected. (also low wall. damn.)
two slightly grazed shins. (dragonboating)
skin-deep cut on right hand index finger. (from high elements)
sunburnt skin on face and neck.
surprisingly i have only one mosquito bite. thanks to sleeping next to an unknown person who put a mosquito coil between us. =)

Day 1:
lugged large bag and travelled to Bukit Timah campus. felt apprehensive but glad that sherine was with me. introduced myself to OG mates at carpark. set off.

played leadership-camp-ish stuff at CDANS campsite in bukit batok, including spider and low wall. felt quite crappy at the end of the day as i hadn't known the OG mates too well yet, and missed home badly.

Day 2:
did high elements in the morning. (oh man i can't believe i did it! thank God for extra strength.)
trekked for 2.5 hours with all my belongings to chinese garden campsite. oh man i haven't been to that place since kindergarten.

at night, we all held candles and did a star formation at one of the fields. quite fun lah.

Day 3:
my favourite. we had to make our own raft and transport a cookie back and forth thrice. it turned into milo in the end. and i tell you, river deposits were our worst enemy. everyone had mud, gravel and some shells in their shoes.

after that was dragon boating. and then a little survival hunt.... and...

watergun warrRRrrRrrr~~~ yay our section won through sheer grit! the other team kinda played dirty and many of them were eliminated cos they broke the rules. the honest triumphed!!


so i came home, had a good bath, applied zambak and the ammeltz ointment all over my aching body.. and woke up for lunch.

haiyah. why london got bombed again.

i need sims 2.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Dear Mr Durai,

hi, it's me again! do you remember me?

i saw you in the newspapers again today. they say that you are quitting. is it true? your colleagues are all quitting with you. were they also guilty of installing gold taps?

so what are you going to do now mr durai? did you save up while you earned those dirty dollars? i sure hope you did, you might need to live on your savings for quite awhile.

greed no more in future, mr durai. and.. let this be a lesson to all who has intentions to sue SPH next time. just don't. they will really smack you left, right, center, and humiliate you with two-page spreads and one-sided word-for-word transcripts of courtroom interrogation.

mr durai, i suggest you take your family and yourself out of singapore for awhile (on economy class please), take a short vacation, convict yourself of what you've done and come back to start anew. what you've earned in three years is the kind of money some NKF donors will never even get to see or smell. you should be ashamed. but of course i never thought you were a lost cause. you're a smart man mr durai, but an extra dose of integrity never hurt anyone.

peanuts? i highly doubt so. $600,000 may be peanuts for the CEO of a corporate organisation, but when its the people's hard-earned money you're talking about, no amount of contribution you have made to the NKF warrants that kind of pay. if you're sincerely true to the visions of the NKF, that is to help the needy and easing their burdens like any charity organisation would aim to achieve, you should just be paid enough to live comfortably. talking about leading a non-profit organisation while living luxuriously off the people's money.... it's almost like a double life you're leading.

let me tell you who are the real kind of helpers in this world, mr durai. missionaries travel far out to obscure lands to preach the Gospel to the lost, set up their homes among indigenous tribes and stay there for years to do their work. most leave with the mental preparation that they would never return home, some martyred. they live the simplest of lives, with one and only one goal on their minds - to do the work of God.

your staff may say you've given your all to NKF, but you haven't met the missionaries, who don't even reward themselves or boast about what they're doing. they are the people i admire, and they are the people who purely want to help. they are the people who are too good for this world.

so mr durai, before my letter turns too hostile, i do hope you'll take this abundance of time (since you're unemployed) to reflect on your actions... and bank account, toilet, parking lot, boarding pass stubs....... and start learning to like economy class plane food.

peace out.




still a caring citizen,
jean

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

:: Dear NKF... ::

Dear Mr Durai,

i saw your face splashed over the front page of the Straits Times this morning. they said that you sued SPH because they said something bad about your company.

they also said that you earn $600,000 a year, and also installed a gold-plated tap in your private toilet in your office suite. the tap is $990? i can buy so many things with that.....

mr durai, i write in to you because so many are complaining about NKF now. they say that the organisation is very dishonest and not transparent about how they use their money. they say that you shouldn't have installed a gold tap for your office. why must your tap be gold? will your hands be smoother if you wash your hand under a gold faucet? i think i should try one day.

mr durai, i am very curious. last time on NKF, the number they told us to dial is 1900-112-6868. but when i turned on the tv the other day, they said that the number is 1900-112-8888. mr durai, i am very confused. i heard from some people that the 8888 line is so expensive. is it $41.60? equivalent to eight calls? my mum's colleague thought that it was $5.20 a call and dialled that hotline 3 times, only to find out that she donated more than $100 to NKF.

mr durai, if another 8 people do the same thing, and fall for the same trick, you will be able to buy another gold tap! why didn't you tell them that the call was so expensive? those people who watch the show from mid-way will be so confused because they dunno how much that call actually costs. when their phone bills arrive, they will feel hurt and cheated. how can you hurt these generous singaporeans like this?

i am so sad. i don't like people who use such underhand means to obtain donations. i'm sure the patients would not like it either. they want to know that the organisation that is helping them has obtained the funds through honest and righteous means. by displaying 1900-112-8888 as the main hotline with insufficient warning that the call is equivalent to 8 calls, you are in fact being a very very bad person!

also, please find another male host. that Chao Qi Tai guy talks too much, and acts as if the public owes NKF money. he's acting like a loan shark, and looks as though he's ready to hang a pig head at any household which has not donated anything to NKF. i thought that donating is a voluntary thing? why he so kan cheong? i thought NKF very rich one.............

anyway mr durai, i feel that gold or not gold, a tap is just used to wash hands and wash face and maybe brush teeth. no need to make until so expensive one. if you didn't install the tap, maybe one more patient can get more help. wouldn't that be even better?

mr durai, i hope that you will give your actions serious reflection. it is making everybody very angry. but i also hope that NKF will once again become the honest organisation that we once knew. =(





a very caring citizen,
jean

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

:: Dysfunctional ::

national day is just around the corner.. as singapore approaches its big 'ol four-o, its once again time to take out that dusty flag chucked away in your bomb-shelter-cum-storeroom and hang it for the world to see..

that is.. unless the RC hasn't beaten you to it yet.

year after year the number of people who hang out their flags for national day are diminishing at an alarming rate. as a result, RCs have to intervene, injecting some reds, whites, rows of little triangular flags, banners on lamp posts. not to forget lots and lots of fake enthusiasm, that's a key ingredient. they usually would decorate the most prominent HDB block in the neighbourhood, i.e the one that faces the main road, and one in five triangular-flag ribbons will let itself loose, fly in the air and get entangled in a nearby tree like a helpless kite.

so apart from the reds and whites, how else can you know its national day?

1. when loud planes zoom past in the sky in a V formation. its really cool actually.
2. when the guys in army start complaining about having to be in the contingent.
3. when people start getting involved in NDP activities such as the performance or ushering.
4. when primary 4 or 5 kids tell you excitedly that they will be attending the preview.
5. when the same primary 4 or 5 kids come one day and show off their latest NDP goodie bags.
6. when you see the ancient "Stand Up for Singapore" and "Count on Me Singapore" mtvs on tv.
7. when you see the to-be overplayed NDP theme song of the year on tv, in mandarin and english.
8. and then, you see that there are people who still hang their flags left-side-right till this day. i don't know how to forgive them for this blatant error. mostly because i don't understand how anyone can make this mistake in the first place.





well, onto other things!



ant update:

well the dearies have been doing well. i've still been visiting them whenever i walk past the fence.. the new nest is quickly growing in size. those are some hardworking little fellas we could learn a lesson or two from. they seem to be favouring the UV-protected nest lately (the one sprayed with black paint), and i realised their butts are actually translucent under the sunlight. they have really huge, striped asses. cute. keep mobbing guys! you're doing great! ganbaru yo!!!

Sunday, July 03, 2005

:: What's in a name? ::

ok i feel so bad. but i'm not doing anything wrong right? i mean.... putting someone's censored namecard on my blog like that.... someone tell me if i actually can't ok.. i don't wanna get sued! so scared.....


but... but....


i can't help it.


here's why.

Descant

Will your anchor hold
In the storms of life?
When the clouds unfold
Their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift
And the cables strain
Will your anchor drift,
Or firm remain?

We have an anchor
That keeps the soul
Steadfast and sure
While the billows roll
Fastened to the Rock
Which cannot move
Grounded firm and deep
In the Saviour's love

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