Lamentations

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Happy new year! Long post! To start off, here's two comics I happened to see recently.

I think that's a pretty unique and realistic way of seeing the new year.

And this is pretty cute too.

Okay, so its almost the end of January already. But technically this is my first proper post of the new year. Heck. I owe so much posts and this is my first proper post? Hell yeah.

So, my new year's was pretty alright. I went clubbing at Mist with Andrew (not the Mensa one), and two of his friends. Yeah, four guys in a club with one Black Label. Good odds for drinking, but not exactly the most happening group. I mean, we had no females! Lol. Went dancing a bit and got to dance with some girls, and I met Estee on the dance floor. Quite a surprise, knowing her. Anyhoo, countdown was done in there, so basically I spent my last and first day of the year in Mist. Not my favourite club, but oh well.

Anyway, I ended up passing all my subjects, which is the norm for me, since I only failed Corporate Identity 2, which stands as the only thing I've ever failed in TOA. I'm still amazed, that I was one of the biggest slackers in secondary school, and in Dover ITE, yet I ended up in possibly the toughest college in KL. And I only failed one subject, by 3 marks -.-. Not bad for a slacker, I'd say =p.

So what's been up lately? Well, school's back on! And it's my final semester. I graduate from college after this. It's pretty tiring. I've got another advertising campaign subject, a project that involves designing and marketing for an actual client, corporate literature (basically corporate identity 3), and graduation campaign. I've been recruited as part of the marketing team while helping the copywriting a bit. Lots of exhaustion on my part. Just yesterday I had a four hour graduation campaign meeting, followed by a group meeting for the client, then a video workshop (I kept falling asleep), and finally again with the graduation stuff as I typed and completed the marketing letter. I haven't been this tired in quite some time! All the subjects are pretty tough. And important. Great. I have so much to do. A lot of people are telling me I shouldn't have helped the graduation committee, as I'm already busy enough with the final semester projects. Haha... I'll do what I promise to do, not what others think I should do. Plus, if I can never test how much I can take and do, it's not going to help me much when I start to work.

And as for church, we're gearing up for a new year and hoping to grow the cellgroup in numbers, as well as spiritually. This will be a challenge as it's going to take time and effort to know all the members; W31 have already known each other for years. For me, Ai Lee and Faith and the remainder of W19, to get to know them better is going to take time too. Things are going very well and it's been a pleasure getting to know all of them, but there's much more that it can grow to.

Also, two weeks back a pastor called Ron Choong came over to preach, and to share about apologetics. Yes, apologetics. This is the first time in my life I've attended anything church-related about apologetics. All my material and knowledge has always come from books, books, books and a few online websites. At long last, a subject and a specialist in the field I most enjoy in Christianity in church. It was two days, and I enjoyed the entire two sessions. There was lots of stuff I learned, much stuff reminded, and a few things that were extremely controversial. And I loved it. A few facts I learned: Baghdad was actually a major centre for Christianity. Imagine that. One thing he spoke quite long about was about Christian philosophy. About how it was derived from the Greeks, and their gods, and how Christianity adopted and adapted it to suit the Christian theology. Like the Greeks projected all their gods as in human form. Christianity took this and adapted that we project deities in this way because we believe that we project God's image. He discussed how despite having a pagan origin, it did not mean that our own philosophy was also pagan. He said that our own philosophy will shape our interpretation of things. Doctrines were not derived from philosophy but from revelation. However, philosophy was convenient to explain it well. Interesting stuff. He didn't mince words on the terrible stuff Christians did, but reminded about how much the world has benefited from Christianity as well. He also spoke about how the study of science can lead towards God, and how more and more scientists were finding God while being in professions that usually try and discredit God. After all, he said, The more people tried to disprove the Bible, the bigger the church grew. He also spoke about theistic evolution and how it was controversial only because many churches think it will discredit the Bible, but it in fact doesn't. Anyhoo, Here's a few notes from the sermon I copied down:

What is imperfect can come from the perfect, but the perfect can never come from something imperfect.

If you are not puzzled, you can't learn.

Real belief comes from doubting.

The best teacher is not one who knows the most. It is the one who asks the most questions.

It is so easy for theology to be corrupted.

God is more majestic than we dare imagine.

Also, while talking about the Greeks, he spoke about symposiums, and how they helped to forge strong friendships, social life and discussions of importance. In this current age, symposiums are like talks and the such. But back then, symposiums were actually drinking sessions. Hell yeah you read that right. Drinking sessions, regular and a strong aspect of Greek culture that helped to bond, and even discuss important things. Awesome. We need more symposiums!

As for friends, things are the usual: good. Yes, all my friendships wherever I go are always good. That's one thing I can be always thankful for. I make countless friends everywhere and have so many true friends. Friends I know I can die for. And vice versa. As I've said many times before, I always find it surprising that people say they have a small number of true friends, or that they never had any true friends till now, and that sort of stuff. Essenism has continued to be the only group that's still left and regularly hanging out from CD085-3. Slightly scattered here and there but the friendships are still strong. Symposium (its what I call the drinking gang, for now) continues to regularly go out all the time and chill out. One thing I remember that Ron Choong mentioned. He said that everyone needs a 3am friend. What's a 3am friend? Basically, its a friend that you can call up at 3am to accompany or help you if you're ever in a situation that needs it. One that you know for sure will be there. Basically true friends. But I find the term "3am friend" much more interesting.

Speaking of friendships, there's still a matter of solving the matter of a very good friend, after learning a very disturbing truth, that only continues to get weirder, and deeper, the more I delve into it. This isn't going to be easy.

Anyway, let's talk about resolutions! How did I do? Pretty bad. I utterly failed all my resolutions. Let me copy and paste my resolutions from last year.

1) Get a girlfriend. LOL, yes, serious! I've been single long enough. It's annoying. But it's beyond annoying when the girl you like already has a boyfriend. This is one resolution that's going to be among the most complicated.

2) Repair two friendships. I was looking back on a few blog posts and saw this was one of my previous resolutions that I actually managed to keep. The thing is, I can't think of any broken friendship at the moment. I'm on good terms with everyone, apart from certain people that weren't even friends to start with. I really can't remember anyone who's not a friend now but was previously. I hope this is a good sign.

3) Pass all my subjects. So far, I haven't failed any subjects yet, so just keep it up this year.

4) Finish reading the Satanic Bible and the Qur'an. Since I've finished reading the Bible long ago, I haven't finished reading any other scriptural books. It's just been bits and pieces here and there. These books aren't even close to the length of the Bible so I think finishing 2 is reasonable.

5) Improve on my apologetics. Eh, no, this isn't about apologizing. For those who don't know, apologetics is the defense of the faith. Um... like through verbal, intellectual, rational means. Giving evidence and proof and the such. How do I explain it properly?

6) Lift my 20kg weights every other day. I've finally brought my dumbells up from JB. Carrying it halfway through the country is no easy task with all my luggage you know. I tried lifting the weights the other day and found it was much harder than before. Heck, I need to train up again. I think it'll help for basketball too.

7) Play a sport once a month. Back in secondary and ITE days, I would've put this way higher -.-. Playing basketball every day was the norm. But in KL, with a serious lack of basketball courts and time, and with so much school assignments, it's not feasible anymore. I think once a month is pretty good, considering I played practically almost no basketball at all last year except for Emerge.

8) Go for a photoshoot once a month. Photography has become something I really like. I don't want the completion of the photography subject to be the end of my photography. I'm extremely good at dark and night shots, so I need to try other subjects. I don't know where I'll go or how, but like I said, I don't plan.

9) Clean up my room twice. Since I can remember, I clean up my room only once a year. It's very, very messy, but very clean. No dust, no dirt, but a fair amount of hair (my hair drops a lot) which gathers in one place because for some reason when I turn on the fan the hairs start grouping in a sort of circular shape, and it's very easy to pick them up and throw them away. So yeah. Twice a year. Start slow =x.

10) Pray somewhere exotic. Before I moved up here, I would always have the chance to pray somewhere apart from the usuals like church, home or some cellgroup gathering place. Like I've prayed at East Coast Park's beach. At Saint Andrews Cathedral. In Punggol, during a thunderstorm (I was outside, drenched). I haven't done that sinced I moved here; it's always been in church or home. So I'd like to try it somewhere new.

1) I haven't gotten a girlfriend yet. Last year it was very complicated involving 3 girls, boyfriends, moving to a far away place and incomplete stories. Heck. I've got prospects now, but that's about it. There still hasn't been proper closure yet.

2) I probably ended up having one friendship gone. With Khar Loo. We never solved it. I couldn't think of any friends to properly fix my friendship with. That's how good I've become at getting friends. So yeah. The only people I can think of fixing friendships with are people back in secondary school who weren't on good terms with me. Let's see how this goes. Last year was the first year I didn't fulfill this resolution since I started it.

3) The irony. I posted that, and I ended up failing my first subject. Thankfully, its only been one subject.

4) My reading has been totally irregular. I've been reading many, many e-books. I initially found them very hard to read, as it was so different from reading a normal paper book. Last year I re-read a lot of books I finished before, such as half the Animorph books, and a few other individual books here and there. I only finished one paper book last year, with 4 still unread and on my table (somewhere). I didn't get to read the Satanic Bible and Qur'an except for a few pages each.

5) I think success in this one. I continued to read in depth about it, and kept reviewing and reading the books I finished on apologetics. Not to mention chats here and there with skeptics, and it's helped.

6) Fail. I lifted weights like once a month. Lmao.

7) Utter fail. I only played basketball three times last year. All friendly matches, none involving strangers and challenges.

8) Utter fail. I only went for a few photoshoots, and thats because I brought my camera along for other purposes. Penang was probably the only proper shooting I did.

9) I cleaned it up once, and moved to my sister's room, since her room is more cooling than mine. If you count moving to her room, then I've succeeded.

10) Done. Prayed in Penang. Kinda short though, wasn't a very strong prayer.

So yeah. Pretty bad track record. I'm not making any resolutions until later. And that's only if I'm told to.

Alright. I think this can cover a bit for a while. I'm having a symposium tomorrow. Woots!

Chronicled
9:16 AM

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Monday, January 17, 2011

Been obsessed with Far East Movement's "Rocketeer".

Here we go, come with me
There's a world out there that we should see
Take my hand, close your eyes
With you right here, I'm a rocketeer,

Let's fly
Up, up here we go
Up, up here we go
Let's fly
Up, up here we go, go
Where we stop nobody knows, knows

I'm really loving these lyrics. Mainly because they're so suiting to something I felt last time. When you're stressed, with emotional problems, with financial problems, with family problems. Whatever the cause, so long as something causes you a lot of issues, people will either deal with it, or ignore it. I deal with them, nearly every single time, but I must admit there's times where I just wish I could fly away from it all. Just get away from all your problems, leaving them behind. Very, very few problems can be solved by running away from them. And normally, they're only solved due to ignorance on the other side. But how easy it is for us to just ignore it and hope it'd go away! We wish we didn't need to deal with things. We wish that things would go our way, making things so much easier. Yet as we have learned in life... things don't always go your way. Frankly, they rarely do.

I hear so many people saying that they loved life as a kid. Where everything was provided, and they never had to worry. All they did was play, get in trouble, make friends and eat and sleep. So simple, no responsibilities. You went to school just to play games and learn simple things. You learned how to share, how to deal with other kids, and how to manipulate your parents and teachers. No, wait. That last part is totally self-taught. Kids have a freedom that we all enjoy, that we all would like. That we all used to have, and for countless people that have brought it up, it's something they want again. Where they could just live life any way they wanted with no responsibilities. It's how we were raised, and its how we would like things to be. Yet we can never go back to that stage. But the fact that we all want to, shows how much we want to get away from all our problems, all our responsibilities, everything that we have to take care of. We want to be little kids again, doing anything we want without a worry.

Suicide is one way of running away. You end your life, you have no problems to deal with anymore. Yet, as I mentioned in a previous post, it is selfish and stupid. But temptations do come, and I empathize. But then again, I have to make a case that flying away from all your problems does help, if its not done eternally. Ignoring issues forever isn't going to help, but I think getting away from it all for a while helps. And trust me, I've gone through that before.

I remember when I had a really bad time with the whole ignorance era of E458, I took a break from Singapore, and came up to Kuala Lumpur to visit my mom. It was mainly to visit, but a strong factor was to just get a break. To get away from it all. That was also a factor that led me to staying in Kuala Lumpur for much longer than I planned to. I did feel so much better getting away from it. But yet I had to deal with it when I came back. But the rest, the break from it all, allowed me to deal with it much better. We all need sabbaticals. We all need rest. We need to know that we aren't machines who can continually deal with crap over and over again. Can we deal with it for a long time? Sure. Can we deal with it eternally? No. There's a limit, no matter how small or how big, your capacity is. No one's got infinite patience. And I need my rest too. Trips. Outings. Chill outs. Days just sleeping. Resting. Enjoying. Little things in life that are so essential but so often ignored.

There's a reason why Jesus said He would give us rest. Because He knows we need it, sometime in our lives. Some of us need it more. Some of us need it less. But no one can deny they'll need it somehow, somewhere, sometime. And during those times, we'll take a break, and fly away from all our problems. Just to get away from it all. Perhaps, truly, somewhere where nobody knows.

At least... for a while, anyway.

Chronicled
2:15 PM

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Monday, January 3, 2011

Ever wondered what it would be like if the Scourge were in a chatroom?

Yeah, random. I know. But click on the following links and take a look at these "chat logs". They're freaking hilarious!

First, second, third.

Lmao. Here's one more thing to make you laugh.

Chronicled
1:53 PM

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