Gosh... its been so long since I last wrote in here. Guess there were just too many things that needed to be done. Like laze around after my exams, run around meeting people, playing really lame computer games (read: CM4), or lese just the lethargy of not having written in a while...

But here I am once again, wondering what sense can I pour into such a place as this.

Exams ended. Have met up with quite a lot of people already, am pretty impressed with myself. Yet someohow a cloud still hangs over my head... Its only a few days more till the day I broke up with Grace for a year. And I really dunno what to make of it. I guess as much as I tell myself I'm over the relationship, I still feel a lot of unease at the fact that we ended up so abruptly, and without much in terms of a resolution. Am I wrong in not trying more?

I saw her on sunday in the Youth Service, and she somehow was right behind me on quite a few occasions, and I found myself very deliberately (and literally) turning my back on her. It seemed like what I wanted to do then. Yet after I go home, I wonder if it would not have been batter to just look her in the eye and pretend to smile. You know, work towards a resolution, instead of this tense awkwardness.

Shit man. How lame can I get? Even Paul's obsessing over 2 girls. Here I am, still letting my ex wreck my thoughts when I shd be out enjoying myself, going for movies with hot babes, going to 5566 concerts with my dream girl... (oops... too much details... Grins)

Well, tomorrow's another day, so they say...

Wake up, Peng.

Its been a day of shocks... next to Paul's Catharsis that he so obviously wants to talk abt, but which I refused to give him airtime, in case he ends up making too much of it in the end. Grins.

Ah well, but since this blog is all devoted to my babblings, my whinings, my grindings, a place where I get to shamelessly flaunt my self-obsession, here I go, listing the things worth whining about that's gone on in just this one day alone.

Started this morning where I had to improvise when I realised I couldn't screen the video clip for my church service today as I expected. Then I had a chat with Lishan and realised she was in a much worse shape than I had thought. Then at cell, the numbers were ridiculously small, and Der Biao went into a whole big round of sharing abt his life - which I won't mind, if I could see where he was alluding to. Yeah, he was leading worship. Weixiu led a bible study in record time, which prob is worth a bigger shock than anything else. Then I learnt that the new Net-Buddy that Der Biao got to know, and is having "very interesting conversations with" is non other than Meisen!!!! And now he's all interested in reading up more about sociology!!! Then I also pretty much confirmed that Der Biao's after Serene. He was obviously looking for a reason to go to Simon's house, really really obviously. Grins.

Doesn't stop there - I then got to learn that there is a really strong chance that Annie might be interested in me. *faint* Muahahahaha... was thinking - how abt I put Annie and Der Biao together? Grins. Hiak hiak... Then I took a cab to get home, only to leave my wallet on the cab, with my matric card and all!!!! Sigh... Good thing I got it back.

Whoo hoo! I now have abt 3 hours left of time to study before my paper tmr, and I sure feel like I might as well go jump in the Singapore River. Shit man... been having non-stop nightmares EVERY NIGHT that I'm gonna screw up everything and end up busking in those MRT tunnels.

Ah well. Just needed to let off some steam. Oh, its Weimin, Enhan and Enqi's birthday today. All on the same day. Cool huh? Grins. Hope thoe two are gonna have a good time. Their r/s ain't doing particularly well also.

And oh yeah, prob gotta pray a little for Paul and his Board Interview tmr. If he fails, I get less free rides home. Hahahaha!!!

K, back to mugging...

*chugs my mug of coffee*

Grins.

Couldn't resist that.

Had dinner with Caleb last night, where we spent some time just catching up with one another, and I think I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I always thought him to be one of those really rare people ard that I feel is the real thing. Its always rare to find such people arpound, those whom I can just sit ard and feel like I can trust him to say what he really means.

We were talking abt relationships, and how we both are a sucker for all the wrong kindda girls. Those who are cute, but have very little else to offer. We were also just sharing abt our failed relationships, and the condition of the church currently. I shared with him how I seem to have failed in everything that I've been doing so far, and how sometimes regrets are inevitable despite what pple say to encourage me.

Before that I was with Paul, who I guess was feeling rather down. He was telling me he was pretty much certain abt going into jail. Sometimes I really dunno how much to believe of what he says. Or how much to read into what he says. Dammit man, he's increasingly becoming the woman in the relationship. I think guys were meant to just sit ard, chug beer and tell jokes, and pretend that the earth's still spinning perfectly fine, and our lives are all getting along real well.

Grins. Speaking of which, I think Priscelia Chan's really pretty. Been seeing quite a bit of her on TV lately, and thinking that she actaully looks really amazing, at least on screen. Ah well. Since I'm thinking abt imposibilities aka Michelle Chia, I might as well spread my net ard the area...

Grins. After all, Paul's pining for a girl that is impossible to get, simply cos he's too big a wuss to ever tell her straight, so we can both sit ard and think abt the impossibilities.

Impossiblities... Possibilities...

Dammit man. I'm really talking absolute nonsense tonight. Good thing no one knows abt this blog...

There was a lot that went through my mind in the last 36 hours or so. Marcus' dad passed away, and I only received word yesterday afternoon that the wake was in the evening. I cancelled my dinner appointment and went down, and it more or less expectedly turned into a class gathering.

I guess funerals are the time where one is forced to consider one's mortality, and inevitably for me, I recall what left such a deep impression on me at my uncle's funeral recently - that ultimately, its not abt how much I've accomplished, but how many lives I've touched. See, there I was feeling so sorry for myself that at 25, I've got nothing to show for my life. Yet I remembered at the funeral was that what I wanted to hear at my eulogy, was not what I've accomplished in my life, but how many people can go up and say how I've made a difference in theirs.

Ironically, class gatherings are also the time where we sit around and catch up, inevitably a time where we assess how 'successful' some have become over others. So there I was, in that setting, and feeling the sheer irony of it all, that two such polemical paradigms could exits within the same act of being there for a friend in need.

I also got to meet Serene, one of the first girls I really felt bowled over by. Never did have the courage to speak to her in school, cos she always seemed so out of reach for me, even as a friend. This was the first time I even had a conversation with her, and she still had what it takes to really take my breath away. Of course, given the whole situation, it was wildly inappropriate to be pursuing that train of thought there, so even then I never had a chance to say much to her. Didn't allow myself to either. But yeah, it was one of those things that made me go home with a sense of wistfulness, wondering how things could have been. She just broke up with her boyfriend of almost 4 yrs just 5 days ago, to add insult to injury. Hehz... *shrug* C'est la vie...

I just returned from watching The Passion Of the Christ. Passion. The same word in the Latin that is translated as "suffering". And what the movie portrayed was pretty much that. One cannot help but shed at least a tear while watching all that Christ went through. Everything from the sheer physical pain, to the rejection by those he loved, and the scorn of those who never had anything to do with him, it was a movie where you really just had no words to speak right after it ended. I always thought I had a comment or two abt everything, yet the show left me totally speechless for some time after it ended. Literally. I walked out of the cinema with my cell in silence, my mind whirling with so many thoughts. Interestingly enough, by then there was very little emotionalism left, just the sense of tiredness at having watched something so graphic, and knowing that every bit of what we saw was true. And a recollection of all the thoughts that had gone on in my mind throughout the 2.5 hrs that the movie lasted.

I guess with the communion coming up this Sunday, there couldn't have been a more apt time to watch it, at least for me. Lotsa food for thought. Esp since I'm leading worship.

My pastor just suddenly broke down in her email to my cell group, describing the stress that she was going through, the fears she had, and the weight of all that she's feeling even in her personal life. I felt a little awed, actually, in the context of my church, that a pastor would be willing to open up to a cell with her emotions and her fears. Its either testament to the fact that she really is quite different from all the other pastors in my church, or else testament to how extraordinarily stressful the youth ministry is right now.

I'm not thinking properly now. Its already 2, and I still haven't prepared worship. Gotta wake up in 6 hr's time. Better go now.

Can't believe its been more than a week already. Time certainly flies when you've got a lot on your mind. Last week was when Ravi came to town, and its been a time where I had to go back to some of the thoughts that shaped a big part of the way I looked at my faith, and to reflect on how far I've come since.

He spoke on a topic abt "Recapturing Wonder... Living Life To The Fullest", and I think that may have proved to be the most apt topic for me in a long, long time... Last time he came was 4 yrs ago, right before I've started NUS, and where ideals were again raised up within me, seeing university life as a chance at a fresh start after the dreariness of NS. Little did I expect that 4 yrs down the road, I'd have become so disillusioned, and so blind to all that I had held up not so long ago. I was set wondering what had gone wrong. Was it cos of my failure in my relationship? Was it cos of my dramatic failures in my studies? I think its neither. I think it actually is because in my 4 yrs of blind service to God, I've forgotten to take time out for God. I looked at my journals that I've started and abandoned over the past 4 yrs, and realised that I've not been able to keep a consistent quiet time of more than 2 months, before I'd drop the practice again.

So much for relying on God in all my 4 yrs.

Couple of weeks ago, before Ravi, I wrote abt cynicism and how I believe that ultimately it has to do with the fact that I allowed the vission of this world to cloud my vision of God. Something Ravi said really caught me. He said - "The only way to transcend the physical and the sensual while retaining their essential features is to bind them to the sacred." What he basically meant is that the only way for the things we see ard us, what we label as "reality", can only be overcome if we acknowledge that its real, through the perspective of God's presence and God's greater reality. I think that's what I allowed to happen to myself. I've learnt to see things detached from God's reality. So I construct for myself two sets of "realities", one where God reigns supreme - that's what I preach on the pulpit on sundays, and one where the axioms I proclaim on sundays inevitably falls short - what I espouse in my everyday life.

Maybe that's why my whole week goes by in such confusion and depression, and I find myself unable to experience the joy of the Christian. I can appreciate the long-suffering that a Christian goes through, and even the fulfillment that results from my faithfulness, but somehow that joy has always managed to elude me. And if joy is supposed to be central to the Christian faith, then I shd be having a different experience from what I'm having now. Its one thing to have someone say how nice a person I am, yet I think its a totally different thing for someone to tell me that they see the joy of the Lord in me.

Think this thought shall stick with me for a while...

Pondering...

Reflecting...

Praying...