Lamentations

Monday, May 24, 2010

I had the craziest Saturday this year, and possibly all my life. On Saturday, I had class, my band's gig, church service, and Faith's birthday celebration. The week leading up to it was the most intense this year, and I almost went insane over it. I had to do 107 sketches for class and a proposal, I had to practice all week for the gig, and I was in charge of doing the birthday video for Faith. I have never been that stressed before.

Regardless, that's not what I wanted to blog about today. I still owe a lot of topics, and I just added a few mentioned above for another day. What got me through all that was God. I barely prayed anything that week, yet there was still so many assurances from Him. That reminded me about the new church building.

Firstly though, a little background information for the non-City Harvesters. City Harvest Church in Singapore was started with just a small group of people led by Pastor Kong. They moved from house to house and eventually from banquet halls to banquet halls when they got bigger. Later on they managed to buy over the old Hollywood Theatre in Paya Lebar, which cost $1 million. It was raised over a number of years purely from the donations from the members towards the building fund. It sat about 400. After they outgrew the place they needed a new location, which they found at Jurong West. It was in the midst of the 1997 recession that time, and yet they still managed to raise enough money for the new building in Jurong West. Due to the recession, the materials were cheaper, which helped make a grand church costing $48 million, covered in titanium. This place could seat 2500 people.

Jurong West premises. It's covered in titanium.

It was during this era that I first joined CHC SG. Yet this place too, was overflowed after a few years. And we moved to Expo Hall 8 to fit the congregation, seating 8000 renting the hall every single week, while looking for a place we could find our true home next.

Expo Hall 8's interior.

We continued out building fund to raise money for the new location, and we found it in Suntec City Convention centre. This place would fit 12 000 members, and was located in the heart of the city, something we had wanted as we believed we could impact the marketplace well if we had our church in it. This place costs over $300 million to buy, which is a third of a billion dollars. They're currently in the process of raising enough money. They've done it so many times before, I'm sure they'll do it again. When we finally have our new church, I can be proud that a portion of my money, even if just a small amount, contributed to us owning the place. It has deeper meaning for me because my house of God contains my sacrifice.

The Singapore Indoor Stadium, which we book once a year for the church anniversary and the Festival of Praise

Now that I'm in Kuala Lumpur, I'm in City Harvest Church KL. CHCKL's the KL/Selangor branch of the City Harvest family. Previously, the church was moving from place to place as well, using small rooms and the such. Then they had their building fund and finally bought the church building we're using now. And next, they've managed to buy a much bigger building, at a timespan no short of miraculous for religious buildings. The approval and all were completed within a month. I know of other religious buildings and churches that wait years. And financially, I have sacrificed. This new building will have contained my sacrifice as well.

But one thing thats different is that I have blood, sweat and tears too. Physical labour has been a sacrifice. Some volunteers were needed to help do up some furniture and small scale carpentry work, and I volunteered during my holidays. Every few days I'd come over and help out Gordon, who was the only consistent helper apart from me and another guy. I'd saw wood, nail them and demolish certain pieces that we needed parts from. Sawing was quite painful for the ears as I used an electric saw which made a hell lot of noise, and carefully measuring all the wood pieces was time consuming. Nailing and screwing were no big deal. But my favourite was demolishing the wood. Using a hammer and just whacking the wood until it breaks? That's freaking fun! It did turn certain parts of my hand red after numerous whacks, but it was just downright enjoyable. I did get tired after certain times though. However, all I needed to do was think about a certain person, think of how I was screwed over in another country, and instantly, I had more strength (coupled with some anger from the memories) to continue bashing the wood.

One thing though, that really hit me when I was doing the carpentry was that we always picked the best and good woods. It reminded me of several passages in the Bible where it says people always gave their best offerings to God, from the best sheep, to the best gold, best this, best that. Although its used often in the context of financial offerings in church, doing the carpentry work let me see another side of it. We picked the good woods carefully, throwing away the rotten or weak woods. We chose the best to be used because we wanted the best for the house of God. Giving offerings and working through carpentry made me realize that we indeed should give the best to God, because why would you want to give Him less unless you really didn't care?

Just as we want to give the best of what we can to our loved ones, we also want to give the best of what we can to a very significant Loved One. More so when there's so many Bible scriptures on it.

CHCKL is going down to CHC SG tomorrow for Asia Conference. The pastor of the largest church in the world will be there, along with my pastor, the pastor of the second largest church in Asia, and other great speakers. It's going to be life changing.

And I'm probably going to get no sleep as well -.-.

Chronicled
1:22 PM

e l e g y

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A real man is a woman's best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down. He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day. He will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and forget regret. He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and give in to her most intimate desires. He will make sure she always feels as though she's the most beautiful woman in the room and will enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, invincible.... No wait... I'm thinking of alcohol.

Chelsea White

Chronicled
1:09 PM

e l e g y

Friday, May 14, 2010

Yawnz. Its 4am. I've got a class at 10am. I needa wake up at 8am.

Class starts at 10am. It ends at 6:30pm. What the hell! What kinda bloody class lasts 8 hours long, on a SATURDAY?! I mean, hell, my class is as long as a typical office working day! And it's on a damn Saturday! Seriously, even working adults get half days on Saturday!

Geez, and to make it worse, we need to show our corporate identity work and typography 2 work. I've got corporate identity settled since I just got it back recently, but I can only find a few rejected posters for typography. Zzz. Now what? I really can't remember where I put the research folder. I somewhat recall seeing it somewhere in my room, but my mom cleaned it up and now I can't find anything. When my room is clean, I can never find anything. When my room is messy, I know where everything is. Serious!

And why is it that when I don't care about something I see it all the time and when I need it I can't find it anywhere? It's a continued, repeating weird mystery of life!

Anyhoo, I just came back from a drinking session with Joseph and his friends, a professional model Carolyn, plus her girls Felicia and Kellie. Or Kelly. I don't know -.-. Lol. Just chilled out and drank some beer while shisha-ing at The Heritage. Pretty cool place although its pricey and they close at 2am, which is pretty early. The environment is very nice though. Played some cards and got to know them better, so it was quite alright. And Carolyn's freaking tall. Geez. Well, what can you expect from a pro model -.-. There's a height requirement.

Anyway, on Wednesday I joined the Genting group of Fei Yan, Shana and Aaron to celebrate Ai Li's birthday! Ajeet (from the Euphoria clubbing time with them last time) was also there. Anyhoo, we ate at Fish and Co. at One Utama, and Aaron and Ai Li were like super late. Lol, so Fei Yan, Shana, Ajeet and I were chatting and eating first. Had a really good time! And Shana finally told me her awesome joke! Lmao, Rapunzel! After the couple arrived, we had an even greater time chatting and stuff, and for me, catching up with them since apart from Fei Yan and Ajeet, I haven't seen the rest since the Genting trip back in March. It felt so long ago... even though its only been 2 months. But at the same time it feels like time flies since it's already nearing the midpoint of the year. Weird. Just plain weird. Either way, I enjoyed myself tremendously for such a simple gathering, and I hope all that talk about a drinking session with them comes to fruition. I'm expecting it!

Thinking of fun future times is nice. But its not helping me find my typo work. Zzz.

Rapunzel, oh, Rapunzel... won't you let down your hair so I can find my typo work?

Chronicled
3:39 PM

e l e g y

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Aye... I'm finally 21!

And you know what? It's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be. I mean, the other "age milestones" were much more major milestones when compared to what I can get when I'm 21.

When I turned 16, it was a big deal 'cause I could finally enter the pool and snooker centres legally (even though I snuck in many times prior). Trust me, it was a big deal that time. Also, in all the countries I've lived in, it's the legal age to have sex! How much more major can you get than that? When I turned 17, I was allowed to get my license and drive. And for the most major (in my opinion) 18, I was allowed to smoke, take alcohol and go to clubs and bars legally. And I could also finally go to an actual prison too. Plus, the biggest commitment (marriage) is legal.

So now I'm 21. What does being 21 allow me to do? It just lets me watch the highest rated movies, like R21 and stuff. Plus it allows me to enter a few more clubs who's age limits are 21. That's it. That's it! I mean, sure, everything is legal age-wise when I'm 21, but these were achieved in previous age milestones. So yeah. 21 isn't the big deal people make it out to be. And I find it very stupid that I'm allowed to have sex and get married already, but I'm still not allowed to watch certain movies or to enter certain clubs. I mean what the hell?

BUT! It's a big deal to me this year 'cause I got to celebrate it with a lot of people. 21 is a big deal 'cause its the biggest celebration I've had in my life for my birthday since 2001. Or even bigger than that. Not to mention I received 194 birthday wishes on Facebook alone, and including real-life wishes and SMSes, there was easily over 400 wishes. Yeah, I actually counted. Forgive me, but it is my 21st. Let me be vain alright?

So yeah. This is the first (and probably only) birthday where I celebrated over a number of days. When I was still in Singapore, it was celebrated by my cellgroup back there, who remembered. Touched! I got a white shirt from them, with a skull design on it. It's got a skull, but its white! They think I have too much black shirts. Lol. Then when I came back, my cellgroup here celebrated my birthday as well. And they gave me a yellow shirt. Yeah, yellow. I've only worn yellow once in the last 16 years, and that was because I was forced to. My cellgroups both have the same spirit "No black shirts for Howe!". Aw man.

My yellow shirt. I wouldn't mind if the colours were inverted... lol

On Wednesday, my actual birthday, the Sunway Lagoon plan was cancelled so I ended up watching Kick Ass with Ivan and Ruz. Brilliant movie! Hell funny, exciting (especially seeing Hitgirl kill everyone), and an incredible score for the soundtracks. Though several are simply remixes of older scores, they still sound damn good. We had a meal, and a great chat before heading off for Left 4 Dead 2 and heading home after.

The next day I checked my results and passed everything. Hung around in The Joint with Miki, Justin, James, Eddie and Jovin, chilling, shisha-ing and making a hell lot of jokes. After Eddie and Jovin left we played a drinking game and did a lot of stupid stuff. A LOT. Like kissing, licking, and uh... I'll spare you the details. Heh, we also had "truths" so we learned a lot of private things about each other. After that we were joined by Wai Kwan, Ruz, Henry, Neal and Jonas and went to eat at Pasta Zanmai. Had a great time chatting, and I received more presents. Lol, I got a Monopoly (no, not the board game -.-) shirt from Miki, and a shirt with bacon and eggs from the others in Essenism. Cute! After having a meal where a fly dive bombed into my spaghetti and spending some more time taking pictures and hanging out, I went to church for cellgroup meeting where I had an official celebration this time, with the cake and all. During fellowship, I got to make a new friend, Daniel Wong, who's 15 years my TOA senior. He's 37. And I told him that Veronica Ho died!

Neal, James (with quite a face!) and I. Lol.

Wai Kwan and I. There was a Miki/Ruz version of this. Haha! But I don't have that picture -.-.

Group pic! Thanks a lot guys! Means a lot!

The next day the supposed celebration was cancelled so I just watched Iron Man 2 with Ruz, although Neal was supposed to join along. The movie's entertaining and fun, but the ending was just eurgh. Whiplash died so easily. Pfft.

Next day Miki and her mom took me out to Chili's at KLCC to celebrate my birthday, as well as thank me for helping Miki in her assignments. Lol, granted that, but I owe Miki a lot too. Had a huge freaking, filling, extremely nice meal before heading back home to do my OTP work. I brought my laptop down to fellowship 'cause I missed service, and continued my work there, unfortunately I wasn't very social as I was very focused on completing my OTP work. After finishing I found out that the discussions for Faith's wedding cancelled so I went there for nothing, wasting half an hour to travel down. Zzz. Luckily though, Kysern and Adeline, who I met when I was introduced to Daniel (who also went) asked us out to chill, so Ai Lee, Robenz and I had a great time just chilling out with them.

Funny that there was no alcohol involved in my 21st birthday, 'cause I was expecting that. Was supposed to have a clubbing celebration on Saturday night, but due to my OTP work and a bunch of the people not being able to make it, it was called off. Last year, Wai Kwan, Ruz and Kok Kin blindfolded me, led me around Sunway Pyramid and threw waterbombs at me. Lmao! This year, no pranks, no funny stuff. But it was a time of quality spent with my dearest friends over several days. Altogether, I had 6 days of celebrations. 7 when my mom and Uncle Ben celebrate it in a few days. That's like totally ultimate. Plus I never organized anything myself. Everything was done purely from my friends, from the planning to the gifts and arrangements. I did nothing at all. I'm truly, truly honoured.

I can only say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. My life would not be much of life if it were not for all of you. Many people say that they don't have much true friends, and that they can be counted with both hands. Then I must be the most fortunate guy in the world, because I've lost track of how many true friends I have. Always there for you, always there to listen, to help, to guide, to teach, to learn, to love. You know who you are.

Gracias =D

Chronicled
7:01 AM

e l e g y

Monday, May 3, 2010

Ah... back from my visit to Singapore. Had a brilliant time, even though it was messily arranged and very impromptu as compared to my previous visits. And it's the first time in a while that I haven't gone clubbing in Singapore when I visit. Although I was very close... heh.

So anyway, I came back to Singapore and attended Marsiling Secondary's 10th Year Anniversary, which was also a reunion. I'll be dedicating an entire post to this event with pictures and details on certain teachers. So nothing more. I just enjoyed it a hell lot to catch up with so many ex-schoolmates and teachers. Especially Ms Koeh!

Edit from December 2025:

This was in my drafts since May 3, 2010. Considering it's been 15 years and I haven't bothered to post, I'm just going to put in point form what I listed in my drafts. I'm kinda annoyed it's just left hanging there, lol.

I had breakfast with Debbie during my time there.
I met up with someone called Hong Qing. I don't... uh, remember who this person is at all. Sorry! It was next to the list on "Breakfast with Debbie", so it might have been with her?
I was gifted a present from my former cellgroup E458 in Singapore, since I was there for the weekend.
The magic gang played basketball, apart from our usual Magic: The Gathering sessions and drinks.
I went to the Esplanade with Eleanore Lim, her brother Juswin Lim and Jeffrey Teo. It was never official, but I always called them the Sembawang gang. Just hung around, had very deep conversations and took stupid, fun pictures around the area.
Played Starcraft II with Ryan (Zhi Wen) and Sebastian (Yusiang) at a cybercafe. At the time, it was out for just a few months! Had a hilarious catch up with them during our meal after.
Met up with Xin Mei, who, as of now, I haven't spoken to in well over a decade. But I recall it was a very nice chat about our personal lives and how she had been affected by her ex-boyfriend Bao Long at the time.
Went to JB to visit my dad and spend a few days there, before heading back to KL.

And below are pictures from the aforementioned Marsiling Reunion, from 15 years back. I remember impressing my teachers by knowing their full names. Pauline Joseph Ho Sook Kuen (my secondary 1 form teacher), Joy Li, Elizabeth Debbie Mosbergen, Neo Zhu Lin, Koo Kay Kee, , Dawn Woo, Dawn Lim, Dennis Toh, Koeh Yin Ying, our former principal Choy Chee Meh. Of course, all of us fondly remember Ms Koeh, lol. And for some reason I still remember their names even till now.

Was fun catching up with the ex-schoolmates and seeing what we had been up to, for, at the time, 5 years after graduation. Apart from seeing what they do on social media (if they have any, more and more have started deleting their profiles), I do wonder what some have been up to. I recall confusing Samantha for Zelia, which is doubly embarrassing because I had a crush on Samantha before. Also chatting with the teachers as alumni was much more chill and relaxed. Mrs Joseph mentioned how I was in much better shape than my wrist-cutting depression era. Mr Loke, the principal we last had before I graduated, joked that he had to follow rules and discipline, and not to blame him, he just wanted to keep his job, lol. Unlikely I'll ever be attending another Marsiling Secondary reunion unless I'm in Singapore at the right time, so this holds a special place in my heart.