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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
this post is dedicated to the one whom i love. and directed to the ones i love. it is a cry, it is a jab in desperation, it is not a happy post. no one said i am a happy person. and i have school at 8 tomorrow. argh!
to the one who found me when i was lost, when i was searching for meaning to my life, i thank you that it was You that called out to me and wanted me. me, probably one of the most vile creatures that walked this earth, and you wanted me. words couldn't express how happy i was then that You, the creator of all, all holy and pure wanted me. Father, now i come to you as someone who has lost all hope in finding the happiness that has probably eluded me since i have come to know you as intimately as the past few years. possible heartaches and suffering appear to be at the door of those whom i hold dear. all this because of money. i am starting to wonder why we have money in the first place. it seems like one of those things that can either make or break a man. for You, in the form of Jesus said the greed for money is the root of all evil. but now money appears to be tearing those i hold dear.
Father, you once told me that you would never put me in a situation where i could not bear the consequences. now it appears that i am at my wits end and have no idea what to do anymore. many times things appear to be ok, but it is for a fleeting moment. is this one of the ills of this fallen world i live in? i know this pain that i am going through cannot be compared to what you have gone through, the humiliation, the suffering, the angst, the torment you had through Jesus 2000+ years ago. in fact, i believe you are still suffering pain and sorrow for millions of people have rejected you. and yet Lord, i hope you will take this cup away from me, but by your will it be done. i juz pray that through my suffering people will see you in it.
Lord, if it were possible, i would take their pain and sorrow all onto myself for their happiness. You know who i am talking about. for the longest time i have prayed that they will come to know You as i have known You. that is because i believe that when they align their wishes with yours, then almost everything would be ok. Father, i am your instrument. do with me as you will. like i said before, by your will be done, not mine but yours.
Father, you have heard my pleas, both on my blog, in the shower, before i fall asleep. talk to me like before. i miss your voice, and most of all, i miss being able to talk to you and converse with you. i know this is the outcome of me drawing further away from you. i want to draw close to you, Father.
You are my God, and I will give you thanks; you are my God, and I will exhalt you. Psalm 118:28.
actually i wanted to type Psalm 118:24 because of the small printout i saw in shihui's wallet and it was quite uplifting, but by pure accident, i typed 28 but it turned out that it makes more sense to me. thank you God for taking over my fingers.
Speakth at... 11:07 PM
Monday, September 18, 2006
stumbled across this. kinda brought tears to my eyes. hope it would to you too.
One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the
other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space
between each name.
Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student
on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had
said about that individual.
On Monday she gave each student his or her list.
Before long, the entire class was smiling.
"Really?" she heard whispered. "I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!" and, "I didn't know others liked me so much." were most of the comments.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again.
She never knew if they discussed them after class with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose.
The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on. Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student.
She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature. The church was packed with his friends.
One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin.
The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her.
"Were you Mark's math teacher?" he asked. She nodded: "yes."
Then he said: "Mark talked about you a lot."
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
"We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times.
The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.
"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."
All of Mark's former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home."
Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album."
"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary."
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her purse and showed her frazzled list to the group. "I carry this with me at all times, " Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: "I think we all saved our lists."
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be.
So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are
special and important.
Speakth at... 9:21 AM
Sunday, September 17, 2006
alamak! looks like i really need to go to school to wack my books, otherwise i can't get any work done. readings, or anything. sigh. help!
am getting fat too. sigh, haven found the motivation to run. hope i can do so tmr morning. if i can wake up that early that is. hah.
and i dunno wat made me sign up for 50m and 100m fly!! its been sooooo long since i swam those strokes competitively. die lah... how now? but since i gave my name to amanda for IFG, might as well go for it, at least i swim, slow never mind rite? hee, i hope...
anyway, would like to say that Vanessa Anne Hudgens is HOOOOOOT!!!!! yeah! she stars in High School Musical, and i am so so so so so so blown away by her.... she is so sweet... haha.... and she has lovely eyes..... and she's 18! whoa!! haha, ok, shall not say more...
going to slp already. zzzzzz
Speakth at... 11:37 PM
Monday, September 11, 2006
yeah, work is kinda killing me. somehow i know i must study very hard, but yet i can't seem to bring my brain to follow what i wanna do. it is just so difficult to start the brain going on studying. sigh.
my msn is down. i dunno if it is because i have too many contacts on it or my program is already dying or something else. i do hope the msn support centre will get back to me on my problem. i feel kinda handicapped without my msn. it feels so weird to get on my laptop but being unable to get round to msning.
anyway, rop camp juz ended. and i would like to apologise to the ropers for the harshness they have endured from me. i guess i was kinda hard on many of u. i am sorry. firstly to tylor, sorry for aggravating your back problems. to xinyu and shuning, sorry for causing one of you to get an asthma attack, and the other hyperventilation. i dunno if both of you got asthma or not, but still sorry for it. to everyone else. i apologise for shouting, for putting you guys down, for causing the blisters to appear on your feat, for causing you guys to carry your bags over your heads for that period of time, for making all of you frustrated, for making all of you doubt yourselves though there really isn't anything that you should doubt, for having all of you bear with my arrogance throughout the activities i conducted. to everyone's toes that i have thread, i am sorry. i would juz like to say that i did as i did, i was as unfeeling and as callous as i was because i wanted to give my best to all of you. i hope you have learnt as much as yourselves as i have learnt about you guys, and i do hope that the 27th MC will be one great MC. the o comm for rop did as we did because we were fighting against time to bond you guys as quickly as possible and as strongly as possible. would like like to remind you guys about what i said after the run i conducted, "individually, all of you are weak and imperfect. as a group you are not perfect, but much closer to perfection then you are individually. work with each other to hide each other's imperfections and to be as perfect as you can be."
well, thats all i wanna say. i enjoyed and hated rop camp. i enjoyed it for the people i have gotten to know better then in the past, for the people i have not known but have got accquainted to during the camp, and i hated it for the muscle sores and allowing the devil inside of me to be unleashed.
now i juz need to get back to study mode. and please let my msn be alive again!!! argh!!!! i miss MSN!!!! but i miss my OG more. Taiwind and Tau Sa. sigh... i muz get out of my anti social mode... ernest, where have you gone to?
Speakth at... 10:53 PM
Thursday, September 07, 2006
think it has been some time (well, monday to today isn't really that long but it does feel long enough) since i last blog... well, a couple of things happened, such as i am slowly catching up on my readings. since at least leanna and i are splitting up our workload. that much is easier.... hope that this sem i will be able to pull up my abysmal cap score to a higher one, and hopefully bring it nearer to second lower, and if possible second higer honours score, so that i can stay on to do honours. i mean i really wanna do honours, though it is more for pragmatic reasons. its coz i wanna be a PE teacher in the future, and the pay for honours students is significantly higher compared to degree holders. so i do hope to get my honours. pls Father help me through this. may all the mistakes i made in the past be corrected this semester. help me achieve my As and Bs please.
another reason why i wanna go on to honours is because i wanna go for SEP. i mean it is a good deal, paying the same school fees to go overseas and live in a foreign place and juz bask in foreign culture. though accomodation and flight tickets and the basic necessities to living have to be borne by me. but to live as they live and to be one with them is juz something that i have always wanted to do. i hope to take advantage of globalization and see as much of the world my Father created before i go back home. i wanna see the world as it is and not as some bourgeoise tourist juz there to take advantage of the poor nations and to have them smile back at me juz because i pay for something they are offering me.
which is something that i wanna talk about next. why the hell do we have to put up a 'show' of smiles for our visitors coming for IMF by smiling all the time? muz we come up with a campaign to get singaporeans to smile? by campaigning doesn't it mean that as we are, we are not able to smile from our hearts and have to be encouraged to smile? i seriously think there is something wrong with the way that we are approaching this IMF thing. seriously man. it juz feels so wrong. any takers on this? bet there are. so many people i know are like saying how stupid this campaign thing is. kudos to our wonderful government eh?
anyway, am starting on running training with my new found running partner shihui since yesterday. yeah, she signed up for the 21km run with stand chart and needs to train for it otherwise she would die, and yes she would die if she juz went ahead and run without proper training. so she has enlisted my help to go for runs with her on wed and fri. and in a way it is good for me coz my running sucks eggs and i really need to improve my stamina and speed. this is a good reason for me to get out of the bed and go for runs in the early mornings. otherwise i will juz choose to lay in bed in the mornings and not exercise.
here is a picture of my running partner
i need my $400 bucks from the SAF man. i need to get gold! i can do it! i hope... shit... 914 is something i have never achieved even during my NSF term. but i do wanna get that $400... so come on ernest! you can do it. u juz need discipline and commitment to go and run ur 10km religiously for a period of time. who knows, you can get that 6 pack abs that has always evaded you.
now why am i talking to myself? i have no idea... sigh.....
anyway, i will add a pic of a Japanese chick i took with anders, terence and myself. we all thought she looked like ayumi hamasaki. even the japanese dude that took the picture for us said she was a cutie... haha, great minds think alike man!
finally i can add the pictures
Speakth at... 11:05 PM
Monday, September 04, 2006
well, this is hopefully gonna be a real short one...
went for the joint Hyugo Summit thingy where students from all over Hyogo prefecture in Japan came to NUS for a tour of our wonderful campus. to cut things short, the program wasn't as happening as i thought it would be, the people were juz fantastic. all friendly and stuff. and i mean i have gotten to know a couple more overseas friends. i hope that when in the future i bump into them or something, we would remember each other. and it also helps that i have learnt somemore Japanese words, and somehow utilized my rusty japanese which was sitting at the back of my brain collecting dust. overall, i enjoyed myself a lot, and really felt sad when i had to leave their ship. sigh. now terence and i have made a resolution to sign up for the next trip when the next batch of Japanese students come down on their ship to Singapore again. WE WILL MAKE IT ON BOARD! it was so darn fun! and the food looks just so wonderful. and i mean i tried their sake in this wooden box thing that somehow made the sake taste a lot better. and for the first time i tried asahi dry beer. its not to my taste, but the feeling of trying a japanese made beer was juz so good. ok, i have typed longer then i had intended... will end off with a pic of two of them.
Maki and Takako
of coz i cannot forget about Kohei(a really nice dude, though we can't really talk coz out of 10 words he says, i can onli understand like max 2 of it. need to improve my japanese!), Jyun(a damn funny guy lah!), Naoko(a realli cute chick who's really tall and speaks rather good english!), Remi(cute gal with the typical big eyes and chubby cheeks but a rather quiet person. maybe its bcoz we can hardly communicate), and Aki(now this chick is CRAZY about Britain man!).
Speakth at... 11:12 PM
+ ernest tan
+ singaporean
+ gemini
+ rat
+ attached and in love
+ university student
+ biathlete cum waterboy
+ sporty
+ fun loving
+ exercise freak
+ friendly
+ impatient
+ Christian
+ water polo
+ swimming
+ running
+ chatting with friends
+ eating good food
+Road Bike
+Harry Potter 7th Book
+Aasics Gel kayano shoes x3