i'm glad i decided i felt okay enough to join my community for the fantabulous outing tonight! enjoyed myself with everyone tremendously! kudos to Alison & Aloy for planning everything and making sure we were all having fun and eating well and all! :)

had steamboat dinner at Marina South. omg, i really stuffed myself i think. ate a lot a lot tonight. and i think i just shortened my lifespan by 10 years. i ate A LOT of carsenogenic (i have like, NO idea how to spell this word, i'm sorry) food that was charred on the grill. i was too lazy to pick the black bits off and too hungry to wait, so i just ate.

before dinner though, was Mass at the Cathedral! attending Mass there was a mixed experience for me, though. on one hand, it was like so stuffy, and slightly uncomfortable cos the seats had rigid backings and the kneelers were solid wood. but on the other, i really loved the atmosphere of the entire place. it was so quaint. i loved the candles burning in their candle sticks by the altar - they looked like they belong in a castle or something. like those in the Beast's castle in Beauty & the Beast! and the pipe organ's pipes. omg, that was so cool. there were pipes all around the church. i imagine the people who attended Mass there even before THX sound system was invented already had access to surround sound every Mass when the organ was played. it was reminiscent of the Phantom of the Opera, i felt. the entire feel of the church.

so anyway. after dinner, some of us made our way down to AMK hub to catch a late night movie! Transformers! we caught the 2am show cos the 12.50 show was sold out by the time we got there. it was the coolest show i've watched in a long long time, i must say! although it wasn't on my to-watch list of shows initially, watching it changed my mind completely. i'm glad Carol and i decided to stay till 2 to catch it! it was good. you'd think that amid all the action and fighting, there'd be no tear-inducing moments, eh? wrong!! i was this close to crying a couple of times in the movie (although i must admit it were pretty silly reasons to feel like crying haha). it is NOT just a guy's show to watch. although all the machines and transformers may seem more masculine than anything else. i throughly loved the show. it was oh, so cool. no other word to describe it. shan't spoil it for those who haven't catched it by blabbing on about it! oh, and the girl was hot. the captain was hot. hot people make me feel more friendly towards the show overall. like how Jessica Alba is practically 90% of the reason why i faithfully made Fantastic 4 a show on my to-watch list every year for both the movies so far.

so yes, that would explain why i'm still blogging and this time of the night. 5.45am. actually, i'm waiting for my hair to dry out more before i sleep. the smoke from the steamboat dinner permeated my clothes, my hair, my entire being, so i HAD to wash everything out.

Wil keeps prompting me to rethink my decision to leave the core again, since the retreat and since i so stupidly-bravely claimed the gift of leadership for God and from God during the retreat, too. i'm kinda reluctant to think again, cos i thought that decision-making process was behind me and i could lay it to rest, finally. it wasn't an easy decision to make, cos i knew so very well why i was so adamant on leaving but i had so much trouble articulating it to the rest of the core in a way i felt comfortable sharing. in the end, it just ended up with me seeming childish, petulant, and ridiculously stubborn and even selfish. but i just left it at that because i couldn't find it in me to explain, and i also thought and think that it wouldn't matter what i said anyway - they wouldn't and won't understand.

it's not running away, is it? by not explaining myself, it's not being a coward, right? i'm just doing something i think will save everyone a lot of time and energy. rah. i really hate it when my effort to try to make things simpler for everyone is eventually misconstrued as childishness or selfishness, and results in people being annoyed with me for reasons beyond my comprehension - when really, what i really meant to do was to cut the annoyance out. even at the expense of myself and what i feel.

i think i should start being kinder to myself and allow myself to step in when my good intentions are taken and completely twisted and contorted into something beyond recognition.

i'm so reluctant to re-visit that thought, even toying with that thought scares me somewhat. i don't want to think about staying on in the core, i don't want to think about it. the year to come may be more than what i can handle and i may snap. as it is, i think i've been doing well the last few weeks. when things have settled down a fair bit and i'm less riled up and disliked. oh okay, who am i kidding. i know i can deal with the coming year if i put my mind to it. God has already said he'll help me, if i so decide to stay on. has already said he'll give me strength and wisdom to deal with certain situations, said he'll be with me every step of the way. but do i want to? do i want to subject myself to being the subject of immense dislike and annoyance for no other reason save that i am me? right, it looks ridiculous even as i type it down. how can i be disliked just by being me, right? trust me, been there done that, and it is as ridiculous as it sounds.

it is not right to hate someone just for who she or he is. it is just not right. sure, you can justify that feeling with a lot of "oh, she's so annoying and she says stupid things and does irritating things", but when push comes to shove, that's just not reason enough. i've never not liked anyone just he or she is exactly just he or she is, because i cannot find enough reasons to sustain the dislike. i always find something to like in the end. always always. so when i hear about people not liking someone simply cos she's herself, or when i hear someone doesn't like me simply because i'm me, i get so worked up. because it makes no sense to me at all. i believe it's ultimately a choice we all make to like or dislike a person.

ah well. i am starting to get irritated just thinking about it. shall stop here and read a bit before sleeping.


there's a song that's inside of my soul
it's the one that i've tried to write over, & over again.
i'm awake in the infinite cold
but you sing to me over, & over again.
so i lay my head back down
& i lift my hands and pray
to be only yours, i pray
to be only yours
i know now,
you're my only hope.

sing to me the song of the stars.
of a galaxy dancing, and laughing, and laughing again.
when it feels like my dreams are so far
sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again
so i lay my head back down
& i lift my hands and pray
to be only yours, i pray
to be only yours
i know now,
you're my only hope.

i give you my destiny.
i'm giving you all of me.
i want your symphony,
singing in all that i am.
at the top of my lungs
i'm giving it back.

so i lay my head back down
and i lift my hands, and pray
to be only yours, i pray
to be only yours, i pray
to be only yours,
i know now
you're my only hope.
*only hope/mandy moore.


i just realised this is a song from me to God.
sing to me of the plans that you have for me, over again.

i want to entrust all my plans to God, i want him to sing to me of the plans he has for me over again, i just want to feel safe in the knowledge that God has good plans in store for me even if it seems hard now, i just want to feel loved knowing that God likes me for who i am, likes - and so much more - even as people don't, i just want God to sing to me because i know he's there in music.

i am satisfiedly tired today. felt i spent a productive day - even though i spent a large part of the day in town. again. for the 10 millionth time. but well, the 2 hour tuition at night saved my day, i think.

you know, i think my period is coming soon. i felt supremely crampy a lot of today and felt my heart sink closer and closer to my toes as i felt wave after wave of the stupid cramps come at me. my body runs like clockwork! the last period i had was exactly 4 Saturdays ago.

okay, too much info maybe.

after today, i realised that i've been spending far too much and i really need to STOP. especially when i get paid for tuition come Monday, i need to make sure i save a substantial amount of that in the bank. and make sure that substantial amount STAYS in the bank. i'm despairing at my spending habits, to be honest. in the last week, i have spent...... omg, too much money. i bought 2 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of shorts, a top. doesn't seem like much when i put it like that, but it's a lot!! omg omg. what has gotten into me, i wonder. i'm shopping with a ferocity and vigor that's a bit new to me. and it's only been this week.

next week will see the end of my renagade shopping spree. i will control my money. i will not succumb to consumerism. i will not give in to my materialistic desires just because i feel so-and-so and feel that i have the right to do what i want. like i realise that a lot of the time when i'm pissed off or feel miserable or downright shitty, i feel like i have the license to do whatever i want to cheer myself up. like the last time someone pissed me off, i stomped into a shop and started picking out things i'd been wanting to buy for the longest time ever. i was this ready to just whipping out my atm card and just paying everything by nets. then this little voice in me stopped me from walking to the cashier and i said to myself: are you sure this is worth it? you might regret how much you're spending now when you get back home and have to explain your purchases to the parents. so yes. didn't get all the things i was so close to getting.

as i was waiting for the mrt to arrive today on my way to town to meet Mel and Chels, i began to think about loving a person, and loving love. being in love with somone, and being in love with love. how do i know whether i actually love the person for who he is, and not because i love the fact that he loves me? it's so easy to delude myself into thinking that i'm in love with someone for so-and-so reasons. but when i put aside a lot of my emotions, i start to introspect and question what it is i really feel. then i remember someone told me before, that if you can easily replace the person you think you're in love with and easily say "oh, i love him too.", then it's more likely than not me being in love with love. but if i take away the person and put someone else in his place, and i can't feel the same way about the replacement, can't bring myself to feel for the replacement the same way, can't love the replacement like how i used to love the other person, that's probably me being in love with the person.

i'm slightly scared of loving and being loved, now. it's such a powerful emotion, it's so easy to get sucked into the intensity of it all and just be consumed by the feeling. well, then i suppose that isn't love as how it's meant to be anymore, but love warped and twisted beyond recognition, into something we lose ourselves in. seeing so many people struggling in relationships around me, it makes me skeptical about being in a relationship myself, sort of. it makes me wary, makes me wonder like hey, how come always like that? i refuse to lose who i am in a relationship, refuse to become a different person for the worse, refuse to become too dependent, refuse - absolutely refuse - to be unable to function without the other person. it's so scary, being so totally dependent and reliant on another person. i don't think it's very healthy, either, anyway. i think what i need to keep doing is to keep taking steps back when i actually find myself in a situation like that, take a step back and evaluate my thoughts, my actions and words and feelings. introspect, understand why i think or feel or say things a certain way. and if i know it's wrong, stop me from going there again cos i know it's not right.

what if, what if.

what if.




still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
still a little bit of you laced with my doubt.
still a little hard to say what's going on.
still a little bit of your ghost,
your witness.
still a little bit of your face i haven't kissed.
you step a little closer each day
still i can't say what's going on

stones taught me to fly
love taught me to lie
life taught me to die
so it's not hard to fall,
when you float like a cannonball.

still a little bit of your song in my ear
still a little bit of your words i long to hear.
you step a little closer to me
so close, that i can't see what's going on.

stones taught me to fly.
love taught me to cry.
so come on, courage!
teach me to be shy
cos it's not hard to fall,
and i don't wanna scare her.
it's not hard to fall,
and i don't wanna lose her.
it's not hard to grow,
when you know that you just don't know.
*cannonball/damien rice

i can't believe i spent the last 3 hours and 45 min talking on the phone! the lucky girl was Stef. haha. but yes, 3 hours and 45 minutes is rather incredible, but i reckon it's cos we haven't caught up in a long time.



had a good chat, amid the drama unfolding at home!



my parents' air-con died. which seems to have nothing to do with me, right? wrong. my mom told me to switch off my room's air-con (because apparently my air-con eats up their air-con's supply). so here i am, in Carol's room, and dad in my room, and Carol in mom's room.



i spent the last two nights sleeping on the pull-out bed.. in my room. yes, in my room. my mom conveniently moved over to my bed and kicked me onto the floor. i think my nose couldn't take it though, cos i've been having sinus problems the last two days.



come to think about it, my last week has been pretty packed. i'm going out tomorrow, again, and Saturday too. met Chels today, Tri the day before, and spent Tuesday cleaning out my table and talking to Chels in the afternoon. Monday with Tri. tomorrow with Mel and Yisi and maybe Chels. Saturday with zj, and maybe my sister. whenever my days get overly packed, i start to take a step back and wonder why. maybe i'm overthinking.



'tis a new feeling. not very nice. but the nice long talk with Stef staved some of it away. i think it's temporal.





5-hour phone conversations.



:(

had a fantabulous day with Tri again yesterday! watched Nancy Drew at Lido - long time since i've been there, it seems! ate a lot of pasta at nydc and was full till 12am! shopped at Far East and bought quite a lot of things. which i'm starting to feel bad about, since mom has been trying to get me to cut down on my spending.

think i shall start keeping accounts. like how i keep zj accounts, yeah, i'm gonna keep Kelly's accounts too.

then stayed up till 4am at Tri's place playing world of warcraft and just talking in her super single bunk bed! love my girl days with her cos we never run out of things to talk about and can talk about anything under the sun. and, i'm 100% me in front of her, which i really appreciate! no need to cover up some parts of me or tweak some aspect. she knows me through and through, sees me for what i am - and vice versa. sometimes, we don't even have to say anything and we already know what the other is thinking or feeling. ah, the beauty of real friendship.

meeting Chels on Thursday! another person i reallyreally enjoy spending time with. with Chels, i realise how we can be so alike, and yet so different. i guess we haven't been able to spend a lot of time with each other lately, what with all the camps she's had to go to and my own other distractions and doings. plus, we don't have the luxury of living near each other like Tri and i. but we'll work with what we have lah.

i've been best friends with Tri for close to 7 years now; and Chels, coming 4 years. looking back, i've been really blessed to have always had people i loved and who loved me with me at every point in my life. even before Tri. but as we all grow and change, the people we spend our time with inevitably changes, too. i really hope i won't lose these people i have with me now, even if i go on my next phase of life. and vice versa. the people we spend time with also changes and shifts with circumstance and life-stage.

okay, anyway, i'm gonna do some cleaning this afternoon to appease mom. clean, then nap. sounds like an exciting afternoon in store for me, eh. haha. it's a very relaxing kinda lifestyle, i must say. i won't have the luxury of such slothiness when school begins in about a month, so i am going to lap it all up now while i still can and feel the bones turning lazy in my body.

& yes, hello to you in Paris too.

came back from the zj retreat today. retreat was good, gave me quite a lot to chew on. i guess partly cos i'm moving on from one position in the community as a core team member to somewhere else in the community doing other things. i must say though, i'm not as confident as i make myself out to be regarding where i'm next called to serve in zj. where i am in my community now, it's gonna change in the next few weeks as i step down from the core and take my place as whatever else i'm gonna do. which sub-ministry to serve in, how i'm going to contribute to the best of my ability and capacity, what my place in my community is going to be or has been - so many changes. i should have the flexibility of mind and whatever else to embrace these changes as they occur, just take things in my stride.

oddly enough, even as i decided to step down from the core, i felt that there still is a large amount of unfinished business on my part. as if there's still a lot of me to give as a core team member and a lot i can accomplish in this role, except that i'm adamant on leaving. why the adamance? why the inability to look at situations unbiasedly, detached from emotions and based on functionality? i'm afraid that by stepping down now, it'll break my momentum in my growing into my role as a core team member. and that i'm stunting my own capacity to serve.

i guess it's a risk i have to take in deciding. trust that God will give me the impetus to grow again into whatever role i choose to fulfill at whatever point in time, that nothing is impossible through him and that i shouldn't limit myself. shouldn't - an ideal. but have i been limiting myself? oh yes, definitely.

a lot going on in my life right now, so much so that it's getting increasingly cluttered with a lot of thought processes and decisions and feelings. things ought to be straightforwarder now, right? ought to be - again, an ideal. i'm under a lot of pressure to make the right decisions, pressure from myself to decide, knowing that what i choose will affect others. at the same time, i don't want to live my life for others too. Edwina said in the retreat today that there always is a choice to be made between making a choice for ourselves, or compromising. i agree. but what she didn't really expound on also was that in compromising, we've also made a choice. to compromise our own desires and beliefs for others.

i don't want to have to keep choosing to compromise. because there isn't a better course of action to take, because it's the lesser of the two evils, because it's the course that will bear the least consequences, whyever.

but i also acknowledge that my decisions, whatever they may be, inevitably end up having an effect on the lives of others, however big or small. well, i mean the effect on the lives of others would depend then on the importance of the decision to be made. sometimes, i feel like i do things for others at my expense. even if it comes with the price of having to bear unwarranted judgements or hurtful perceptions, i grin and bear it. telling myself it's for the better, for everyone's good and so i should not be selfish. and it's painful when the effort to not be selfish or whatever comes across as being the total opposite. comes across as being totally selfish and bratty and incredibly horrid. it's so terribly hurtful, so is it stupid to keep grinning and bearing it? is it a noble but foolish act on my part to try to bite off more than i can chew and ingest?

God made me with human limitations. even though i like to proclaim that everything is possible through God, i think sometimes everything is possible through God only if he wills it. if God wills me to bear a certain load, he'll give me the strength to do it. but see, he'll give it to me. because it's what he wills, he'll help. but if it's not in line with what he has planned for me, i can only achieve so much, limited by my human self and capacity. and when i've taken on more than i can, i'll break - if it's not what God wants for me.

bleah i hate it when i go on my God tirades cos i always end up sounding like i'm putting God in a box. which i'm not, really. but i'm trying to put some order into my understanding of God and not just take everything in its messy chaos. maybe that's how i got God, at first. as too big, too messy, too immense for me to comprehend at all. like, i knew he was all these, but then because there's so much to know, i only scratch the surface for everything i knew. really, the surface. but when i start to sort out what i know and what i've found out about God, when i start to use my God-given ability to use my intelligence to rationalise things and put some sort of logic to madness, i know things so much better in my heart on top of knowing things in my head. i think the difference between knowing something in my heart and head lies in the really believing for yourself vs the other people truth. i'm always really glad when i start to feel the wheels and cogs in the brain machinery whirring because i feel that's when i begin to really believe, after i get through the entire thought process.

i am the sum total of my experiences. things that happened to me, no matter how significant or insignificant they may be to others involved; as long as they're significant to me, will affect me as i grow and add on to my person. maybe subtract, even? there we have story truth vs fact truth. as long as something's truth to me, the vehicle used to convey the truth to me doesn't matter. but when that something is retold to someone else, it becomes a lie. because the vehicle used to convey that isn't accurate, isn't in accordance with what actually happened. but to me, it's truth. so something could have happened to me and hence remains as my truth, no matter how it's told or what anyone does to convulate the story. but to someone else involved in the happening, seeing things from his or her point-of-view and forming his own truth, my truth becomes a lie and no matter how accurately i retell the story to him, it's nothing but a lie. ahh, i love war lit. was introduced to this whole concept of 'story truth' during Mrs. C's lessons, which Edwina brought up again during the retreat today. (and Chels and i had a 'ohhh we love war lit!' moment of ecstacy again for the 10th time since graduating from ac, then.)

a lot more to say but i shall keep it for another day. need to take the time to reorganise my thoughts and put them into words. words are my sand in my playground of life. i use words to give wispy thoughts in my head shape and a distinct form, like how a girl imagines a sandcastle in her mind and brings it to life using sand.

i shoulda thanked God for the gift of words instead of leadership when we did the exercise yesterday night. spent 1 hour reflecting and staring at the tealights after that. it was an ethereal feeling, just sitting in the dark and staring at the flickering flames dancing in the velvety darkness. brought me back to the time 6 months back at the ym retreat, when my drive to serve God was reawakened again by Edwina's team, too. there was this night when i sat in the darkness staring at dancing candle flames, acknowledging certain ugly truths that resurfaced in me and bringing my thoughts to life as i scribbled furiously in my journal. sat there for a long time too, just dredging up things i had to face and feeling my chest constrict as i finally said to myself yes, hello, you're still there. damn you, but hello anyway. not an easy feeling to deal with too often, i must say. last night too, was an exact replica of that night in January. lying on the floor getting hypnotised by the fragile light, feeling the first tendrils of certain thoughts tickling my mind again and having to finally finally acknowledge that yes, i know you're there - much as i hate to say hello to you, and finally bringing them to life and giving them solid shape and a reality as i scribbled just as furiously in my journal. it was surreal, and yet familiar and achingly painful.

it's true then, that we always try to run away from the ugly truths about ourselves even if we've come so close to acknowledging them in the face so many times before. that it's hard to see yourself for what you really are. the challenge after that is to still love myself for exactly what i am. today's last activity was a prime example - it seemed as though people didn't wanna face up to what they were or what their friends might've thought they were, precisely because what we see isn't pretty, polished, glamourous, PR-ey, or even remotely what we perceive ourselves to be. i struggle with that as a person even now, put 20 people struggling to embrace that reality for themselves together and inevitably, not everyone's gonna be able to do it.

i love my community, i love zj, i really do. i just wish we were all a lot more honest with each other in so many ways, top-down, left-right, all around. and open, too, to what we all need. i guess when we're all so emotionally attached to certain notions or visions or things, it's hard to remain objective and unbiased. same, for my daily living.

ah, God draws parallels in all aspects of my life.

it's 7.55pm.

it'll be 9pm in close to an hour.

i am sad-ish. but does that matter? i have a lot of things to do tonight, don't think there's time to feel even slightly sad or anything of the sort, anyway. and, silly reasons to be sad, anyway! i mean, it's just... nothing.

the next few weeks will be mine to lose.

2 things that annoy me to no end in the mornings:

1. the upstairs neighbour drilling and drilling and drilling at 9am in the morning. for what? i don't know. but evidently, whatever he was trying to make a hole in didn't co-operate cos it went on till 12-ish.


2. the upstairs neighbour kids running around like elephants for 4 hours straight. i'm beginning to suspect my bedroom's just under the kids' playroom or something.




went shopping yesterday after watching Fantastic 4 with Tri. i had a close call with my wallet yesterday! i lost it for a grand total of an hour. had to walk all the way back from Far East to Cine to attempt to look for it. luckyluckylucky the Cine people found it on the floor with all the money still inside! (that was a bonus)

spent most of my money on make-up yesterday. mascara, eyeliner, lipstick. there're still a lot of things i feel like getting before i go back to school, so i think i have to double up my tuition efforts. why the sudden need to shop, though? i wonder. is it a symptom for something? i wonder, too.

but whatever lah. i don't want to psychoanalyze myself anymore. i am what i am, i say. if i feel like shopping, it's just one of those moods. if i feel grouchy, it's also one of those moods. but to write everything off as 'one of those moods', would it be oversimplifying me? as Rachael Yamagata so succintly puts it, you simplified me down to slogans on the wall.

stop it, Kelly! stop talking to yourself. or you'll turn schizo sooner or later.


i have my eye on a bag and shoes already. let the saving begin!

rather much a lot on my mind today. i feel like taking a nap.

yawn. i am sleepy and want to sleep the afternoon away.

it's only 3.40pm. what the heck, i think i shall.

today was one of those immensely boring, dreary days.

coughing fit plaguing me still, though. ditto for the disobedient nose. decided to take a flu tablet to try to fight the virus or bacteria or whatever is making me ill. slept the afternoon away in a bid to shake the flu off, but woke up with my nose still feeling stuck and my throat dry and itchy. think i shall go to the doctor if the flu doesn't wear off soon.

read my old books today as i lazed in bed in the afternoon. re-read some of the Animorphs books i used to lap up as a kid some 10 years ago. i dunno why i'm digging up all these old books instead of reading some of the new ones i haven't touched before. nostalgia seeping in, i suppose. how the good-old-days were gone so fast, how burdenless i was then as i devoured book after book.

fantastical tales are meant for us to get lost in. i still do manage to lose myself in make-believe worlds every now and then, supremely reluctant to come back to the world i belong in. the world i reside in has its beautiful moments, but it also has its hurtful memories, and i am afraid of stumbling upon them once again. there is nothing like time to heal our wounds, people say. well, true enough. but wounds inevitably don't heal well - they tend to scar and leave their mark on you. my kneecaps have 3 scars decorating them now even as i type these in. those open bloody wounds i had all those years ago, they healed, but they also scarred. left those shiny, puffy, white scars on my body; sometimes black, ugly marks too. as i look as those marks, i remember how i fell or hurt myself and the memory comes back because the scar reminds me.

i don't know what emotional scars look like, but i reckon they work they same way as physical scars.

you know the song Drops of Jupiter by Train?

the man singing asks the girl he was singing to:

tell me: did you fall for a shooting star?
one without a permanent scar?

people seem to be scared of getting involved with people with emotional scars that don't leave them. it's always a point of contention, the emotional baggage that one carries and never leaves behind. sometimes, even the slightest fall leaves a scar on you. especially if your skin was pretty much unblemished up to the point of the fall; the slightest stumble scars you and leaves a mark there permanently.

i scar easily, physically. the slightest scratch or drawing of blood always leaves a mark behind. an ugly dark gash that sometimes heals white with time. i have marks from mosquito bites, blisters, shallow scratches. things that don't scar others easily because of the make-up of their skin - scars me.

i suspect emotionally, i'm like that too. scarring too damn easily. well, excuse me for living, maybe. some people don't get scars from mosquito bites, some people are unaffected by shallow scratches. non-issues to them. but these stupid things scar me nonetheless, and though i wish i wouldn't scar so easily over non-issues, i do. live with it, huh. yeah. live with it.

life's a lot better now, i shouldn't complain! ingratitude and being less-than-content is so not becoming. a lot to be thankful for still. i need to get my prayer life back in some sort of order again.

watched Shrek 3 with the family today at the new AMK hub. twas fun, at first! then it just kinda fizzled into one of those arguments between me and mom/dad over the camera (which i'd accidentally dropped). mom saw me dropping it from the corner of her eye and sounded the alarm - which alerted dad and resulted in him cussing and swearing at my carelessness. then he saw me holding my phone and started kicking up a fuss about the phone always being in my hands and blahblah.

i could feel my temper rising astronomically because i mean, come on, everything was going perfectly well and fine and everyone was jolly happy, until then. well, i mean, discounting the fact that dad found out i'd forgotten to lift up the handbrake while driving from home to AMK hub (he kicked up a minor fit over that, only, thankfully), it was all fine and dandy.

i think my temper made things worse a little though, so i must really hold my tongue and not bite back at the parents when they go on their rants. learnt my lesson this afternoon, so when mom went on her cleaning tirade and started making me get out of bed to watch dad mop the floor and go downstairs to bring clothes up - i just bit my tongue and did what she wanted. spare all of us the hassle of having to argue over practically nothing.

i'm not getting well. my sniffles are back and my head hurts and my throat tickles and the nose is stuck and i feel like just flopping on my bed and sleeping right now even though i'd slept the whole afternoon away already.

must be all the late nights catching up with me. sleeping for 3, 4 hours a night for a couple of nights in a row is no fun in the long run, i think. my eyes are puffy and swollen today as a result of the lack of sleep. rah.

and. there are ants in my room. bloody hell. i don't know where the heck they're spawning from, i don't know where on earth they've been marching to, i don't know why they just can't get the hell out of my room and leave my table and me in peace. i'm getting bitten all over and I AM GETTING IRRITATED WITH THE INFESTIMAL THINGS CLIMBING ALL OVER MY TABLE AND EVEN DARING TO STRAY TO MY LEGS.

get a nest, man.



i scare myself with my intensity, sometimes. how i can be so convinced about something, stubbornly clinging on even when i have more than enough reasons to jump ship. of course, when there're a million reasons for me to hang on to what i believe in, it makes the conviction seem more measured, more logic-ed out in my mind, more reasonable. but then there're the other times when my conviction is borne out of just one sole reason; that's when i start to cling on for dear life and even though i think i'm a little looney for clinging on, i do so, anyway.

i don't quite like the feeling of being annoying. i annoy myself with that feeling.

went for mass today with the family. realised i haven't been attending mass with them in a fairly long time - what with the weeks with YES running and me having to attend 6.15 Saturday evening mass instead of the usual 8.30am mass the family attends like clockwork and the recent weeks with one thing or the other cropping up.

staying out the last few nights after supper. i really could get used to this kinda life, you know. but at the same time, i'm also wary of losing myself so completely in this whole thing. on one hand, i think this could work out. i could make this work, i know i can. but on the other hand, another little voice in me cautions: are you sure you wanna make this work? are you gonna lose yourself while you're at it?

i don't want to have to do a complete 180degree change to suit other people. i'm mightily puzzled by how i'm perceived by others, sometimes. i don't think i'm stuck up, no i don't think so. i'm not prickly and hard to get along with - at the very worse i'm just not super friendly, but not difficult either. i don't step on others' toes very often, if at all. i'm mild, usually. i'm quiet when you first meet me unless i'm already with a group of people i'm already very comfortable with. i'm smiley enough. so what gives? i don't get it.

if it's something that's genuinely bad about me, i'd like to know what it is so i can change that less-than-desirable part of me. but if it's a general air of dissent, then what am i to even make of it all?

frustrated, everytime i think about it.

i'm getting a little too dependent, which is not good at all. i'm getting a little too expectant, which is even worse. i need to start grounding myself firmly on solid ground again first before i take off into some great somewhere.

i think i haven't really been praying lately cos i don't want to hear God tell me anything i don't want to hear. today at mass was a perfectly good example. when i was kneeling down and feeling God in me in the silence of my heart, i had an inkling of what God wanted to tell me and my heart started pounding like crazy. but i forced myself to calm down again and just listen. who knows, it mayn't be what i think it is. but when i made myself listen to everything through, i was mightily disturbed.

we'll see what else God reveals to me over the weeks. no point getting so up-in-arms over something i've just begun to take to prayer. something that came to me today again was that to love is not to be selfish.

such an oft repeated line, but extremely hard to enact.

it's so hard to love enough to let go, love enough to share, love enough to put your own wants behind the needs of others. when you love someone, you set them free, yes? even at the expense of your own immediate happiness, sometimes. when you love someone, you don't keep him for yourself even though that may be what you want. self-seeking, self-serving, too too selfish. makes me feel so thoroughly disgusted with myself when i realise how selfish i can be. just because majority of the world is like that doesn't make it any more right. it just means we're all wrong together. sometimes, right and wrong becomes dependent on the people in power. what suits them, they deem right - and the majority follows those in power precisely because they have the power. what goes against what they want to do, they deem as 'wrong'. twisted, ain't it?

sometimes, i feel a bit like one of those fat goldfish that someone has released from it's safe little goldfish bowl, into the rapid river, and i'm trying so hard to negotiate the currents that threaten to sweep me away and just over the cliff edge of the waterfall and into the whirlpool below. in my little goldfish bowl, i was too safe. too protected by the glass. too protected by my parents. i thought i was a normal fish, but when i found a way out of my bowl and into the waterways, others saw me as a goldfish. too stuck up, too high-and-mighty, too everything. but i'm still just a fish, i still think. i'm no different from any ordinary fish. i have fins. i have scales. i have gills. i swim, like all other fish. it's only the perceived colour difference that make other fish not like me so. do goldfish cry? or do they just wag their glittery, filmy tails sadly as they swim against the current and try to not lose their identity as goldfish?

today, i am one sad little goldfish because i am starting to wish i wasn't born a goldfish. i wish i were born a guppy or a mollie or maybe an angelfish or whatever, one of those more sociable fish that live in tanks with other fishies and not in solitary goldfish bowls.

i can't help being a fat goldfish. :( while i wish i were born a guppy, i also don't want to become a goldfish fixated on transforming myself into a guppy. because i'm not. i can't grow a pretty tail overnight and shrink my body and lose my golden colour. i want to be proud of who i am, but it's getting increasingly difficult when so many people point out the million-and-one things wrong with me but don't notice the other hundred things that are right.

hopefully i will wake up a happier goldfish tomorrow morning. i will not be selfish anymore. Jesus loves all fishes, goldfish or guppy. cling on to that, i will, and not be bothered by guppies or fighting fish or angelfish who dislike me.

if a picture paints a thousand words,
then why can't i paint you?
the words will never show the you i've come to know.
if a face could launch a thousand ships,
then where am i to go?
there's no one home, but you
you're all, and you've left me too.
and when my love for life is running dry
you come and pour yourself on me.

if a man could be two places at one time,
i'd be with you.
tomorrow, and today -
beside you all the way.
if the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die,
i'd spent the end with you.
and when the world was through,
then one by one, the stars would all go out,
then you and i would simply fly away.
*if/bread

spent the last 3 days in church, staying over with the worship team for con camp.

how time flies, i must say. sometimes you wonder how come 24 hours zips by so quickly that you don't even realise that the time is slipping away, so silently. how i wish i could hold on to some of the time that slips so surely out of my grasp, stop the clock from ticking and the hands from moving across the face.

all that'll remain tomorrow morning when i wake up is the distant memory and perhaps a normalcy that makes me wonder if everything was real in the first place. was it? even now as i sit here in the solitude of my room, i'm wondering if i imagined everything up. but the warmth in my heart tells me otherwise even as my mind tells myself to flick the switch that controls emotions in me off again for the time being.

i think i'll go with the quiet certainty in my heart rather than the noisy buzzing in the brain trying to convince itself of certain lies or half-truths.

to feel so warm in your embrace - that must be how it feels like to be in God's embrace. during pray over on Saturday night, a constant prayer i said for the confirmants was for them to feel the warmth of God's embrace, to stretch out their own arms to return that embrace, and know for sure that God loves each one of them so real-ly. to know without a doubt that God is their refuge and shelter and protection, and the safety and comfort of his embrace is real, tangible, right here right there. just a mere touch, and you know that you are much much much loved. how beautiful.

sometimes that certainty is too good to seem real and you plant seeds of doubt in your own mind to throw yourself off balance.

i am too tired to continue blogging. i shall go to sleep right now for the first time in a long time.


everything must begin right or it won't last right. i will see this through.

nothing, absolutely nothing, was what God said to me when i asked him what i should do.

that much was clear to me, so very clear. there so many things i could do - i'm rather ingenius. but for now, nothing will have to be something my ingenuity wrestles with.

to love God, to praise him because he's God and for no other reason - not just because he does good things for me or takes care of me - but simply because he is God, to receive everything he has done in my life with good grace and gratefulness even if it's not exactly what i want, to love God, that's what i'm slowly being able to do now with increasing conviction. it's a long long process, long long journey that ain't ever gonna end. i'm never gonna have enough of loving God, never ever gonna praise God enough - so i'll have to struggle till the day i die.

am i a confused kid, still? well, maybe. but that is inconsequential, completely inconsequential. i'll cut out all the knots if i can, but if some remain stuck in the ball of yarn, i'll leave it there and ignore it, pretending it doesn't even exist. if i pretend hard enough, it becomes true.

there's so much i need to learn from God, still. i still ask God to teach me so-and-so, this-and-this, everytime i pray.

teach me how to love the way you want me to, God. teach me how to be more like you to everyone. teach me not to expect anything other than good things from you, to take and receive. teach me to hold my tongue and be patient, lend me just some of your infinite patience, God. teach me to not want for myself but want for others.

teach me, teach me.

i woke up this morning with a bad stomachache. bodily dysfunction is becoming a normal for me - it's something that i start every morning with and end the day with too. a heavy head that pounds and pounds and pounds somewhere in the back of my skull, a stomach that retches as it wills - so many things wrong. and yet i don't feel overly disgruntled, either. i take things as they come and deal with each affliction one-by-one.


a couple of lines from Jerry McGuire that haunted me through the night as i slept last night.

you've got to be fair to her;
she loves you.
if you don't love her, you've got to tell her.

i pretended that the proposal by the car was real,
and that it might have just been a hypothetical.
- ididthis.
and at least i can do something about it now.



shut up. just shut up.
you had me at hello. you had me at hello.

went to Chinatown with pal today and bought a lot of little thingys. made our own necklaces! i feel so accomplished lah. i didn't know i had a hidden designer in me.

strangely though, i felt really terrible while i was out. like heavy-headed then suddenly light-headed then the feeling alternates. something must be wrong with me - even my menstrual cycle's a little.. hmm. think i should get myself checked by a doctor soon. my ears are perpetually stuck and that's making me feel scarily unbalanced about 90% of the time. perhaps it's some fluid imbalance in my ears or something.

several chats with several people got me thinking: would i allow myself happiness as the expense of those i care about? if i find happiness - but in that process of attaining that happiness, people i care about get hurt or end up miserable, would i really be happy? it's troubling me. i can't bring myself to allow myself happiness at the expense of those i love. even if the world preaches things about loving oneself and taking care of one's needs, etc, how can i feel good about someone else's misery?

it's so hard. i was asking God if it was right for me to be happy if it means that my friend is gonna get hurt. is that what he wants, truly? it can't be, right. we're all his children, he can't allow one child to get what she wants if it means depriving the other of what she wants and needs. that'd be favourtism and i know for sure God doesn't practice that. so how?

but then, in denying me of my own happiness, it'd come at a price too - someone else's happiness TOO, so how?

conundrum, conundrum. what to do?

it seems as though there's an opportunity cost for everything. gaining something inevitably comes at a price of something else. my happiness for yours. but wouldn't it be retarded if no one ends up happy and everyone's moderately sad together? lose-lose situation, if you ask me.

i won't allow myself to think anything other than what is happening. anything beyond what is physically happening before my very eyes is untrue because it has yet to happen. and so, i will not allow myself to hope. too often have i hoped and hoped and hoped, only to find the hope cruelly crushed and cold reality seeping in torturously.

sometimes i do or say things with the very best intentions behind them - but they inevitably end up distorted or misinterpreted and the good intentions don't count for nuts. and i have to put things right again. think before you speak, Kelly, think.

when i see people around me hurting so bad from unreciprocated love of any sort, my heart just breaks for and with them. i know how it feels, i know how painful it is, i know, i know. i know how shitty the feeling is, how overwhelming it is and how it cuts so deep, makes you feel so raw and tangled up at the same time, how unbearable the pain is until it no longer is sharp but tapers off to a dull, throbbing ache that's perpetually there inside. i know, i know, and i just want to cry for you who feels all that crap. i want to take away the pain and just let you feel the joy of having that object of affection love you too. it's amazing, that feeling, of knowing that the person who you've been wishing will love you too - loves you. it's so liberating, so comforting, a thousand times better than the unreciprocaty. but i think i need to face up to the fact that i'm not anyone's superhero girl, i can't make the worlds of all those who hurt okay again.

i know, darling, i know. oh how it hurts, how it stings, how it cuts. i know babe, i know. it hurt me before, it stung me before, it cut me before. it's one of the suckiest feelings in the world and if i could save anyone from that kind of agony, i would, i really would. even if it's at the expense of my happiness.

i wish i didn't know how it hurts so, then i wouldn't be bothered so.

i don't want to be selfish. i really really don't. there has got to be a way.


i hate myself for hurting you.

expectations are a scary thing. they lend so much hope but then again when they fail to come through, you're completely crushed by the weight of the expectation that falls over your head.

i'd rather not anymore, thankyou.

no expectations about ANYTHING, Miss Kelly Ang. no more, even if the horizon's so rosy-like and seems like tomorrow's gonna finally come.

am so oddly awake, and yet not really awake. didn't get to sleep much last night, which i reckon will make my flu drag on longer than it already has.. - 5 bloody days and counting! what kind of stupid bacteria lurks for that long inside me?

my ears are so annoyingly stuck and my head's fuzzy! ohmygoodness my left ear has finally unstuck itself.

going to the airport tonight to get Tri - she's coming back from Hong Kong today!

i was young, but i wasn't naive,
i watched helpless as he turned around to leave.
and still, i have the pain i have to carry
a past so deep that even you could not bury it,
if you tried.

after all this time,
i never thought we'd be here.
when my love for you was blind,
but i couldn't make you see it.
that i loved you more than you'll ever know
a part of me died when i let you go.

i would fall asleep,
only in hopes of dreaming.
that everything would be like it was before.
but nights like this, it seems, are slowly fleeting
they disappear,
as reality is crashing to the floor.

after all this time,
why would you ever wanna leave it?
maybe you could not believe it.
-that my love for you was blind.
but i couldn't make you see it.
that i loved you more than you will ever know
a part of me died when i let you go.
*blind/lifehouse

after my feverish dreams of the afternoon, i woke up to realise: maybe i don't need this all after all.

maybe i can do this - without.
maybe i've been barking up the wrong trees all this while.

i dunno why, but although my memories are still the sweetest thing to lose myself in, i don't know if they ought to remain just that - memories, and nothing more. not something to yearn for, not a possible maybe, just something that happened, and happened, that's it. not gonna happen again.

amid the sniffling and headaches of the day and all the time spent in slumber to shake off the flu i'm nursing, it just seemed as if everything - everything - is inconsequential. like it all doesn't matter anymore, whatever has happened and will happen. if it doesn't, bully for me. if it does, bully for me too. i'll take things as they come, i'll live in the now of everything and enjoy living while i'm at it.

i'll spend time with the people who matter, the people whom i can love right now right here. i'll not concern my pretty head with what i could be doing, but just busy myself with what i am doing.

last night as i was talking to God just before falling asleep, he told me everything was gonna be okay. yes, everything. but whether okay in my terms or his, i don't know. but you know what? i don't care anymore. i'll just trust that the okay God has planned for me will be okay for me too, and hence because of this certainty that all will be well is the prevailing wind of the times, everything else becomes inconsequential as a result.

i need to shake my flu off asap, i can't breathe properly and i fear my nose is gonna drop off soon.

i am falling sick. whoop-dee-doo. maybe it's all the late nights kicking in.

my head's fuzzy and my nose's runny and my cpu processing speed is way low today. i feel like a pentium 2 only, today. i have zero inspiration to blog, zero motivation to move, zero motivation to do anything other than laze in my room. i guess being ill does give one a license to cut oneself a bit of slack.

heh, what slack am i talking about? i've been cutting myself plenty of slack ever since shaking off the shackles of studenthood the last day of exams That 30th of April.

that weekend was a memorable one, in so many ways you can't imagine how so.

i'm starting to get lost in my memories again these days and i'm not sure i want to shake myself out of my reverie anytime soon, cos that memory is so much sweeter than the present. and then, there are other memories i lose myself in too, for precisely the same reasons. it's odd how i can flip through the photo album of my mind and pick out the memory i want to relive - and do just that. everything else around me becomes inconsequential and just another something that happens; the relived memory claims me completely and i give myself up to it while it lasts.

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tired of being alive, sometimes. how i wish i could fall asleep for as long as i want to and never get up till everything's back to the normal i recognise and not the normal i'm forced to embrace.

today/yesterday/lately has been one of those periods when i wonder at who i am, really.

see, THIS is the result of my days blending into each other. days become periods, periods become times, and i don't have a clear sense of what happened when anymore.

i'm rather tired of putting up such an emotionless, empty front - or is it even a front anymore? the oddness has translated into a normal already and i can't decide whether that's a good thing or not. the only good i can see out of everything is that i'm not moodswinging dangerously anymore or losing myself in depression. i never want to go there again, nevernever, and now that i've picked myself up and found some sort of equilibrium again by pulling layers and layers over my eyes and locking up my heart somewhere a la Davy Jones, do i want to turn back and confront the root of it all? i don't, i so desperately don't. and yet, i know that if i want to find me again, i have to reach back down inside and get in touch with the emotions i've so calculatedly thrown out of my life to preserve any shred of sanity left in me.

i don't know if i can go through the turmoil again without just losing it and booking a one-way flight to Finland to just live out the rest of my life with the reindeers in Santa Claus Land. i don't know if i can go through the turmoil again without losing the people i have left in my life who i now hold so dear and yet paradoxically, end up pushing away too, cos i'm petrified of holding on to them too tight.

when you hold on to something too tightly and it's wrenched out of your grip cruelly and irreversibly, the blow is that much harder to bear. i tell myself i've stopped clinging on to people, stopped expecting anything from people, and yet i wonder how much of that is true. when a dull ache throbs somewhere in the recesses of my chest, i remember how it's like to get hurt and i realise i haven't rid myself of feelings yet, that i'm still warm and weakly human.

i don't even know what i'm trying to get at, what i'm trying to achieve. am i trying to become some calculated being that doesn't feel on impulse but rationalises everything before allowing it to translate into a feeling? or am i trying to prevent that 'person' from emerging from me? sometimes i think i'm trying to become that being, other times i think i'm trying not to become that person.

too much activity in my brain behind-the-scenes for my liking.

sometimes i think i'm a private person, sometimes i think not. sometimes i think i'm open to sharing my feelings with others, sometimes i think not. i'd like to know something concrete about myself for a change, thankyouverymuch, not just vague concepts of self that fluctuate scarily and change depending on the situation. i don't want to be a weathervane that does an about-turn when the wind changes direction. i want to stay in the same direction even when the wind starts to come from the opposite side.

this whole concept of closeness, of being 'close' to someone, is becoming increasingly alien to me as i'm increasingly alienated from more and more of the people i once considered 'close' to me. it's become a hypothetical ideal to have, something that was an opaque part of my reality once but is increasingly becoming more and more transparent as time passes and the horrid, bland blah-ness of being a close stranger becomes an existence by itself. i know things have to be this way, but i also know it's my choice whether or not i wanna hang around and hang on to this all.

why subject myself to such an unpleasant reality and existence when in another life, these would just be horrid shadowy concepts at the back of my mind and elicit an "oh dear, that kinda life would suck - that poor girl." response from me when confronted with such a hypothetical. i'd like such an existence to be a hypothetical, not a reality. already in my present existence, i'm constructing certain thoughts and beliefs to exist as a backdrop in my new reality so that i mask the effects of certain emotions or situations. it's like wrapping a horse's feet in sacking to soften the clip-clop of the hard hooves on the ground - the hooves still hit the ground whether or not you wrap them up in sacking, but when you do, the noise is reduced considerably and you can pretend away the reality of the horse putting down it's feet onto the ground because the noise isn't as jarring and is significantly softer.

i suppose i do a similar thing with myself; i wrap myself up in something or the other so that when certain things happen to me, it becomes less real to me because the impact is lessened considerably.

and Pun was right - i have been praying supremely hardly for a certain thing every day. i only just realised what it was that i've been praying for so hardly (i don't quite think there's such a word as hardly in this context, but who cares), and he's right, i have been praying every night and everytime i pray and talk to God. but i don't pray for it consciously, it just shoots itself out of my thoughts and to God without me constructing the thought or thinking: okay, tonight i will pray for this and this again. the realisation that it's been surfacing in my prayers without my invitation or conscious effort just saddens me some more because it's made me even more aware of what's going on deep inside me, still.

but strangely enough, i'm not sad sad, but just quietly sad. there's a difference between them two. quietly sad is when i just acknowledge that sadness in me, entertain the emotions that well up in my heart momentarily, and just throw sand over the sadness to bury it in me so that it's still there, but all anyone sees is the golden sand. sometimes when the wind blows the sand away, a bit of the sadness resurfaces and i catch a quick glimpse of the chest where it's stored - then when the wind blows sand back over, it's covered again and just as quickly as i saw it, it disappears again. i know it's there, but i can't see it and that's fine with me for now.


i worry i won't see your face light up again
even the best fall down sometimes,
even the wrong words seem to rhyme
out of the doubt that fills my mind
i somehow find that you and i collide.
i'm quiet, you know
you make a first impression
i found i'm scared to know i'm always on your mind



when i close my eyes and allow my mind to freefall into the exact moment where the waking and sleepy world starts to blend into each other and i find myself crossing that line, i realise that everything's jumbled up, and the messy, confusing pictures play themselves on the screens of my mind's eye. A becomes B and B becomes A-and-a-half and everything starts to look odd, and yet i don't want to leave that bizarre cinema that replays my life in strange variations. this is when the wrong words start to rhyme and you, i and you start to collide.

days have been blending into each other lately, i suppose it's the monotony of the bumming days setting in.

gonna be rollerblading and promoting some Nivea deodorant tomorrow at Raffles Place. ha perhaps that'd break the monotony of life a little? i dunno. i'm starting to just exist a little, which i resent. i need to live man, not exist.

maybe i'm getting a little restless here.

i'm super tired today - which might call for a celebration of some sort cos i mean, i haven't felt tired tired in a long time. since i haven't really been doing anything for the longest time, so i mean, no cause to be really tired. but today, i'm ready to fall into bed and sleep.

this is such a useless, random, mindless post i don't even know why i bothered blogging in the first place.

just spent the last two days at Chelsa's place!

movie-marathoned and had girl talk and pal time and though poor pal was sick, she made me feel much at home. :) MOVIE MARATHON AGAIN!! we should watch more 'scary' shows to build up her resistance and heart so she won't be so scared of them anymore haha.

since getting home, have been reading the book i borrowed from her. Geisha of Gion by Mineko Iwasaki. i realise the geisha books i read always make me introspect. their lives are so complex and multi-faceted, layered with endless layers of silk, damask and emotions. i feel a bit like that sometimes too i think, so reading about them always makes me take stock of me a little more.

sometimes i think i love people and getting to know more of them, other times i think i detest people and don't wanna know more of them. sometimes i think i love talking and being outgoing and just being in the centre of attention, other times i feel so painfully shy and just want to stay in my own corner un-noticed. paradoxes that plague so many people i think, so why make such a big deal of it?

everyone's universe isn't really that small and uncomplicated when you think about it. it's an intricate world where emotions are intrinsically linked to each other and inexplicably tied to others, where when you unlock one door, you're in a room with many things - and another locked door waiting to be unlocked.

the power of prayer in my life is very very real these days, and i thank God for not taking away that beautiful blessing of being able to talk to him still. stuck in the midst of days where people all don't seem to understand what i'm talking about and i'm so unsure about my ability to communicate with anyone at all, i'm so thankful i'm still able to communicate with God and that he understands me through and through. it gives new meaning to this line in Heart of Worship:

you search much deeper within, through the way things appear. you're looking into my heart.

words are a vehicle to convey what's in the heart, and words sometimes appear uglier, harsher, harder than the feelings they're meant to personify. there isn't always a word to describe the gamut of emotions a person can feel in his lifetime. sometimes you feel love but the love is tinged with hardness because of circumstances; sometimes you feel hate but that hate is intermingled with love too. some feelings have hints of others layered within them, others are complete oxymorons that exist side by side and exist as a feeling.

God understands exactly what i feel without me having to try to put it all into words. he can see through the hardness of my words and see the softness of the affection lurking behind, he can see through the harshness of what i say and see the true intention behind the seemingly reckless petulance of certain things i say. he sees through the veneer of toughness and can see how i force myself to be hard to cover up the rawness and vulnerability of certain things i feel but coverup, too.

and i'm so so so thankful for that. God don't need no communication lessons. God IS communication.

go take some communication classes please. until then i will not even try.

is it cos i speak french or cos it comes across as chinese?

bloody frustrating to have to repeat myself over and over again trying to get myself understood but failing miserably cos afterall, communication IS a twoway thing and it won't work if it's entirely onesided.

till the happy day when it seems less like trying to teach a cow ballet and more like talking to a child, i'm through.

the world of warcraft server seemed to hang on me while i was playing, so i just quit and have decided to turn in a good one hour earlier than i usually do. slept at what, 4.30am yesterday? madness lah. i need to retune my body clock back to normal hours or else the wrinkles around my eyes will never go away.

the parents are both trying to get me to stop bumming around this hols and take up an internship or something. prolly gonna be trying for sph cos dad emailed his friend who works there and i was told to submit my cv and then sit for a written test thereafter. or something like that. Chelsa said that En's supremely stressed out interning there. i do hope i don't die prematurely if i do manage to nab that internship. am not looking forward to spending my hols tearing my hair out over article datelines, actually. AND. i do hope i get paid slightly more than 3 dollars an hour. Carine said that the last time she interned there, that was what she got. 3 dollars an hour is child labour, period. it's what McDonald's pay their part-timers. which is why i haven't ever tried to work at Macs over the hols, incidentally. no way Jose.

i think i'm worth more than 3 bucks an hour. even the last brainless job i did at the Eunos place paid me 6.50 an hour, and that was after the agency deducted their fees. if they hadn't, my pay would have been 8.50 an hour. not too bad for such a brainless, mind-numbing admin job. it's not that i'm condescendingly pronouncing admin jobs as brainless or anything - i'm just stating a fact. my brain felt like it was turning into mush the 3 months i was there. no challenges at all; i had to challenge myself to type faster and faster and file faster and faster, just to keep myself awake and on my two feet.

what else have i been doing this hols? oh, i've been taking Housework 1101, it seems. i've been learning the art of Housewifeship - washing endless rounds of laundry, mopping my room floor everytime the dust from the shelves fly out and make me sneeze until i want to die, folding clothes, cleaning out my room, cooking lunch for myself every single day i'm home, making my bed and keeping my room clean, washing the dishes and scrubbing pots and frying pans - i hate it all but i figure i ought to do them without complaining. it's not fair for other people to have to clean up my mess, i just realised. nor is it fair to expect my parents to do the laundry at night when they've come back from work tired out like anything.

maybe i'm learning how to be a better daughter through this all.

i guess the past few months have jolted me out of my little fluffy fairytale world where people wait on me hand and feet. i'm not better than anyone, i don't deserve more attention or more pampering just because i like it, i'm not so supremely enchanting that people can't bear to be away from me for more than a minute. i'm just me, not irresistible, not a princess - just me. i shouldn't expect people to be enchanted by my fabulous self all the time and feel crushed when that fails to transpire and the reverse happens instead. the actual fall back to reality is always so much more painful than peering through the clouds and thinking that reality hurts but hoho i'm happy up here where i am.

no more confusion, no more whining! :)

and seriously, i should like to give myself a slap or two if i could slap the me of a few months back. what was i doing, wallowing in pity and messing up my own life like that? things that made zero sense to me then make complete sense to me now, and rah i can't believe i was so hardheaded and difficult to shut up. i think we only truly understand someone else's perspective if we're made to go through a situation that forces us to see through that particular pair of glasses and experience for ourselves the entire thought-process and rationalization-process as we muddle our way out.

it's like how head knowledge about God becomes heart knowledge.

we can describe God, as we've learnt about him, in so many ways. we can describe his goodness, again, as we've learnt of it, in so many different instances in the bible. but there's that - all we've described is what we've learnt about God by other sources, there's no first-hand experience in all we've said. therein lies the crux of it all, the first hand experience is crucial in really understanding God and being convicted of his presence. without that first-hand experience, God becomes a faraway entity we worship because he's supposed to be good and all that, not because we truly know why and because we know he's great and worthy of all praise.

similarly, i realise that understanding things from someone else's point of view, understanding the reasons for the person doing or saying certain things - if you've never experienced a situation where you are in a position similar to the person, you're very unlikely to be able to truly and fully grasp where he or she is coming from. oh sure, i can parrot his explanation back to him if he asks me if i understand where he's coming from and why he's doing certain things or thinks a certain way - anyone with a decent memory and half a brain can parrot. but it stops there. i don't understand why, i just reiterate what he says and take it as fact-truth until i can make it my truth. the first-hand experience where i'm made to think and feel like the person is what changes my mindset entirely; thereafter i'm totally able to see why he said and did things that i raged against and spat fury and sulphur and brimstone at out of sheer frustration at my inability to understand why he was doing such un-understandable, stupid, hurtful things.

after every episode where we make mistakes and we look back, we always tend to say: "i'm never gonna make the same mistake again."

i guess with the past, nasty experience behind us and under our belts, we expect ourselves to rid ourselves of the very same character traits that gave birth to our mistakes in the first place. after all, if i attack someone out of anger cos my temper just flew off the handle, it's because i'm supremely hot-tempered at that trait is probably so deeply ingrained in me or i wouldn't allow myself to lose my temper cos i know i'll lose it all. and blahblahblah. round-table argument.

so i won't make lofty proclamations that i'm never gonna make the same mistakes again. never is such a bloody long time and it's so final. i know i'm gonna make the same mistakes over and over again, precisely cos i know very well who i am and what are the traits in me that give rise to certain actions. like my inability to exist peacefully in a middleground that i don't like - i like extremes, even if it's a nasty one. my impulsiveness, my sheer stubbornness - all these traits i'm very well-aware of now. but i can try to temper them, i can ask God to send his sweet spirit down and make me a more gentle girl than i was made, i can do all these to try to avert myself from making the same silly mistakes over and over again.

i try and i try.

my mother keeps telling me i'm not demure, sweet, gentle etcetc enough. i used to roll my eyes in total annoyance whenever she started on that, cos i knew she was on her "oh you're never gonna get married like that, boo-hoo, poor me - i'm never gonna be a grandma" rant. i know what she means now, though. it's not a purely feminine endeavour to make oneself more gentle, as i once thought. make the fire more gentle, temper the fieriness a little to make it manageable - that's what i think gentle is now.

i think why i do more housework now is also to make me a better person. doing things you don't like always ends up changing you somewhat, cos it's a constant struggle. the more you hate it and the more you tell yourself to keep at it even though you would rather climb Mount Everest than keep doing things like that - the more it knocks you into shape and moulds you as a person. knocks some sense into you also, i think, as it has into me.

plus, my mother seems to have stopped her "you're never gonna get married the way you are" thing ever since i started being more house-friendly.


i'm hungry. i'm gonna miss suppers next sem cos the parents will never let me out to Geylang to eat those suppers during term time. my mother thinks girls who stay out till late are loose (ah pal, that's where i heard the "loose" reference! - girls who stay out late are loose, bah.) and my dad thinks that girls who stay out late are likely to get knocked over the head by a spade and raped and left by the drain to cry their eyes out or die. those optimistic views my parents hold don't bode well for my future attempts to try to wrangle one or two late night suppers at delicious food places. gastric! i shall sleep now and hopefully my stomach will get the hint and stop churning and trying to digest itself from inside out.

i've been hooked on world of warcraft lately. my night elf has been killed so many million times but i can't stand not being good at a game so i keep at it, and some more. onward to all of Teldrassil!

my room's a lot more inhabitable now, i'm proud to announce!


oh and i'm craving crabs this week.

random post from the random thoughts of my random mind today.

two things i realised while cleaning out my room this afternoon.

1. our old email addresses reflect our old selves from the year we created the address. how we wanted to portray ourselves, how we saw ourselves, how we wanted others to see us - all channelled into the email addresses we created for ourselves as children on the cusp of adolescence.

take my email address, for example.

cold_image@hotmail.com.

i chose the address for myself when i was in primary six or sec 1, i forget the details already. why cold image? i don't know, but i think perhaps i wanted to portray myself as more aloof, more ice-queen like, more cold than the honey-sweet girl-next-door i thought people more than often saw me as. image, perhaps cos i wanted to seem like there was more to me than what meets the eye, like what people see of me could just be an mirror image and not the real me. so i channelled that ideal me into my email address, wanting people to catch on to what i thought was ideal.

now come to think of it, it was pretty darn silly of me to choose such an email address, and even entertain such thoughts of trying to appear a certain way in the first place. but but, i'm not alone in my silliness, and never have been. :)

i think almost all teenagers go through a phase where they try to create an image for themselves that they think will work for them through life. some try to create a fashionable persona, others try to create a goody-two-shoes character, yet others try to fashion a too-cool-for-thou attitude in the hopes of attracting other similar kinds of people to hang out with. adolesence without like-minded people is a lonely period and does nothing for one's budding self-esteem. every child seeks to carve out his or her place in the world, seeks to find out his or her 'true' identity and more often than not, this 'true' identity is created by oneself anyway.

people are such terribly fascinating and complicated beings.

okay. as i said, two things i realised while clearing out my room just now.

2. the process of cleaning out rubbish in my life to make room for the Holy Spirit to enter my heart and bring about her welcome changes is going to be, and is terribly, terribly painful, tiring and backbreaking.

i nearly died several times while cleaning and throwing stuff out today. the dust really nearly killed me. my eyes were swimming and tearing from the abhorrent dust attack. it felt like the dust in my room was waging world war 3 against me and my body, and i felt like i was on the losing side.

how a huge organism can lose against tiny, millions of dust particles is quite beyond me. but maybe i answered myself already - there are millions, trillions of dust particles. any single one capable of incapitating me by making me sneeze, sniffle, cough and tear.

anyway, as i was saying.

the process of cleaning out my life from all the dusty memories, habits, hurts and loves is going to be similarly excruciating. that much, i can see already. i'm gonna be knocked flat on my back several times while dusting, throwing and cleaning - like how i was today after a mere hour of looking through old things and throwing them out.

it's also emotionally painful to throw old things out. the longer i look at them, the longer i hold on to them in my hands, dust and all, the less i feel like throwing them out. i think the process of emptying out all the unnecessary rubbish in my life is gonna be the same. the longer i spend revisiting old memories, the longer i spend lost wandering in them and losing myself in the emotions of the moments; the harder it's gonna be ultimately for me to let go.

my strategy today was to just chuck and not look. after all, i rationalised with myself, if i'd spent 7 years not needing to even look for certain books/notes/gifts/files/whatevers, then i probably will not need to look these up ever again. so why spend hours poring over them? just throw.

if i stop to look at what i'm throwing out, the probability of me throwing it out dips to subzero levels and then, the clutter in my room will never clear.

so. same thing for my life as a whole. i ought to just let go of certain hurts/memories/events in my head the moment i get hold of it and not get lost poring through them. just hold and throw. or else, i'll never have room for the Holy Spirit to work her gifts and blessings in my life. similarly, the incentive for me to clean out all the trash in my room is so i can fill it up with more recent things i own instead of letting the shelves be cluttered up with files from 1999 and books from even before that.

i had to resort to wearing a surgical mask to fight the dust or i'd not been able to chuck out the 6 bags of rubbish that i did.

my side table in the midst of being cleared up. i finally transferred all the books on the floor onto the table - and now i can actually see more than a few square feet of my lovely parquet floor.

my table after my first attack yesterday. i can finally finally see the glass of my table instead of endless silver earrings or pads of testpad paper.

and. the bags i'm having trouble with. which to throw, and which to keep? such a bloody headache. i can't even imagine the trouble i'll have with my clothes and shoes when i start on them next week.

people do not put new wine into old wineskins. otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.

Matthew 9:17

there seems to be a Bible verse to match every thought in my head! i gotta clean it all out or the new wine won't be preserved well. i wouldn't want my new wine to burst out of my old wineskins, would i? new wine's as the name suggests - new wine. new. new wineskins to hold the new wine. a new room to keep all my new belongings. a new Kelly to contain my new life in God.

being held hostage at home to make sure my room gets cleaned up is not such a bad thing after all.

ooh, and i must say that i think typing when my nails are short is much easier and more satisfying than when my nails are long. i hate the feeling of my long nails scrabbling on the keyboard and the clickety-clack sound of it.

random point of interest.



i'm rather obsessed with throwing things out of my room now. think it's the feeling of throwing vestiges of your old life out, material things symbolising a large portion of my life.

out with the old, in with the new!


it's a lot like how the Holy Spirit works in my life, i find. when i want the Spirit to come into my life and make changes in it, i need to throw out old pieces of me to make room. old bad habits, old sins, old things i cling on to for the blind comfort they bring - they all must go. there's no room in my heart for God's spirit and my own human transgressions to exist side-by-side. something's got to give, and i want the something to be all the old stuff i'm hanging on to, cos it's time to give them up.

i've been wrapped up in me for far too long, making life difficult for others as a result of this obessession with Me. how could i have forgotten that the world doesn't revolve around me; it never has and never will? how could i have been so caught up in my own misery that i failed to see the suffering of others around me? it's true, then, that people are essentially selfish creatures. we long for our own well-being first, we long to set matters right for ourselves right - sometimes at the expense of others. okay, so maybe i shouldn't extend the "selfish" tag to EVERYONE, cos it's me i'm talking about here. so i quit generalising. but i've been thinking a lot lately, and i realise that a lot of my own hurt was self-inflicted. i imagine things to be a certain way, and refuse to quit thinking of things that way, partly cos it'd require me to acknowledge a faulty judgement on my part, partly cos i hate to admit that i'm wrong. hate it, simply hate it. i never realised how much i hated to admit it when i'm wrong until very recently, when i had been forced on several occasions to really take stock of my choices and thus forced to realise how wrong i'd been.

pride, my dear girl. it's the ugly head of pride rearing itself in me. and i thought i'd quashed that demon some time back. some things, they just never really leave you eh.

we all say we don't judge, but i think it's one of the hardest things to do, to not judge at all. all of us do, to a certain extent. spoken or unspoken, the judgement's been made in our heart. when spoken out loud, you're judgemental. when left unsaid, you're hypocritical cos you don't say what you mean and do the exact opposite of what you think. but is it, really? it's near impossible to stop our thoughts from forming; sometimes, it seems as though our thoughts have a mind of their own, even. but i guess when we fight against what our first judgements were and labour to rid ourselves of them, it's effort enough and God recognises it and will send his spirit down to help us as we desire to change our hearts. it's all in the desire ultimately, isn't it? with the desire comes the impetus to change, and then from there on, God can start to work.

in the Gospel of Luke it says,
stop judging, and you will not be judged. stop condemning and you will not be condemned. forgive and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6:37.

and then a little farther down, it continues with:
why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
Luke 6:41.


which pretty much sums up my entire reflection. wrapped up in my own selfish world of hurts and sufferings, i pointed out everything that was wrong with everyone, pointed out all the hurtful things others were doing unto me - but i didn't realise the stupid things i was doing to others either. let the judgements stop here, and i guess all other judgements or condemnations that occur from here on aren't within my locus of control anymore. i change what i can within my means, and the rest, i leave up to God and his gentle Spirit to touch, rock or whisper as it likes.

after spending about 13 hours of Monday sleeping, i think tomorrow ought to be a more productive day. it'd better be, or i think i might sleep my entire holiday away.

was reading my Bible before my afternoon nap and the entire letter of James as well as chapters 10 and 11 of the letter to the Hebrews struck me particularly.

i was looking up this verse in Hebrews:
faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1

when i found this verse i had highlighted before during one of my previous readings:
you need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised.
Hebrews 10:36



and it stuck with me the rest of the day. it was a in-my-face sort of reminder not to whine and complain about whatever i'm stuck in, not to complain that God doesn't fulfill what he promises. after all, endurance is needed to do the will of God, most probably because the will of God isn't a piece of cake to carry out. it's prolly even the hardest option to execute out of all the available choices, and without endurance to see the choice out to its end, i won't see the fruits of the choice.

it's not cos God wants me to wait and wait for something for nothing. well, perhaps i still think that God doesn't give us what we want straight off cos he isn't a genie. he doesn't grant wishes with a puff of smoke and at a snap of the fingers. oftentime, we treasure our gifts more when we are made to wait for it. when we have to cling on to the hope that something we want so very dearly will happen, we end up holding what we get even dearer and it becomes all the more precious to us, by virtue of the fact that we weren't given it on a golden platter, just as we wanted it.

things become all the more precious if we're made to work for it or if we've spent a great proportion of our lives wishing it would be and doing everything in our capacity to get it.

i think God operates on that basis. he gives us what want not immediately, but after some time or effort spent hoping and just having faith, so that we can love it better.

i digress, though. endurance is required to receive what God has promised simply because endurance is required to see our choices through to the end. i can't possibly receive what God has promised me midway while doing what i need to do in order to achieve that. i can't possibly receive what God has promised me if i give up doing the exact thing that is needed in order to bring that thing that God has promised to fruition. because if i don't perservere and endure with doing his will, then it's no one's but my own fault that i am unable to receive what God has promised.

it's like, if i know i have to cut celery and carrots and prepare the beef for some delicious beef stew - and i give up cutting the carrots midway through preparing, i won't get to enjoy the beef stew i know i'd be able to enjoy if i'd seen the entire preparation process through. it may be tedious, it may be tiring, but it's necessary for the beef stew to come to be.

and the verse i was looking for so very nicely reminded me again for the umpteenth time what will help me endure and press on even though i may be so-very-tired of chopping celery stalks or marinating beef: faith. it is, after all, the realization of what is hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.

and so i resolve to keep peeling my carrots, sick of carrots or celery as i may be. i know the beef stew waiting for me at the end of it all is worth the effort and mundane vegetable-peeling.




so i lift my eyes to you, Lord
in your strength will i break through, Lord
then i'll see beyond my Calvary one day
and i will be complete in you.

if Jesus already saw all the sins i was gonna commit from 3000 years ago in history and still chose to die for me, then who am i to say that i'm unworthy of his love? who am i to say that God shouldn't love me because i'm such a terrible sinner? oh, you foolish child. you don't tell God what he should do with his love or forgiveness. it's not yours to dictate.

though i still simply cannot understand so many things, though i still feel the pangs somewhere in my chest when i think of some things, though i still tear up every now and then and wish it would all revert back to the days of yesteryear - i know i will come out of this fine. stronger, somehow. dunno how, but stronger and a better person, for sure.

i recognise how it's ultimately my choice as to how i let things affect me. do i get stumped, and stay stumped? or do i struggle to get up in the hope that one day i'll stay up longer than down? while i may have my days when i wish i could just disappear (okay, scratch that. it's not days. it seems like periods sometimes), just hide away in my make believe world - i also have my days when i want to get up onto my own two feet again.

i asked God to show me what love is again. cos i seemed to have forgot what it means to love and be loved somewhere over the weeks. you know what he showed me? my daddy waiting up for me until 1am last night at the door. i called home after Phantom to tell dad not to wait up cos i was gonna go for supper with Tri. so imagine my surprise when i saw a figure slumped over at the wooden door when i got home. it was my daddy, sitting there waiting for me to come home.

to me, that said much more than any money gift could say. it's like how sometimes i tell God not to wait for me while i go explore the wide world and gallavant around a bit. then when i go back to him expecting to have to find him cos i'd already told him not to wait up, i find him waiting for me at the door, waiting to open the door and welcome me home.

God teaches me much about love through my daddy. dad waiting up for me to come home even though i already told him i had the house key and not to worry, waiting up for me till 1 in the morning even though he has to work tomorrow morning and get up early to wake my sister up for school - that's love.

it's true, how they say God loved us all into existence. my parents loved each other greatly and i came to be as a result of that love. my child is going to come into existence because i love my husband so deeply.

so with the knowledge that God is waiting for me, slumped over in fatigue from the waiting, at the door - how can i not want to come home and embrace him? in my previous post, i said people disappoint all the time. i guess it was said out of frustration and a deep hurt that won't go away so quickly. but on the other hand, people also lend hope all the time. when you see how much you're loved by someone else, it gives you that much more hope about the future, it gives you hope that you'll find love like that again in your lifetime somewhere. it gives me hope that i'll find someone who loves me as much as my dad loves me, the way God wants me to be loved.

when the music fades,
all is stripped away.
and i simply come.
longing just to bring something that's of worth
that will bless your heart.
i'll bring you more than a song
for a song in itself
is not what you have required.
you search much deeper within
through the way things appear
you're looking into my heart.
i'm coming back to the heart of worship
and it's all about you
it's all about you, Jesus.
i'm sorry Lord for the thing i've made it,
when it's all about you,
it's all about you Jesus.

i'm coming back to the heart of worship.

watched Phantom of the Opera last night with Tri and it was real good. i love the Phantom's voice. really smooth and lovely. then stayed over at her place.

i miss the old days. i really do.
i miss me.

haven't been eating well the last few days. don't think it's a conscious act on my part, i just lost my appetite somewhere.

you wonder how many times you can die inside, you wonder how many times you can give your heart away only to have it thrown back in your face. then you wonder what's left of you inside, you wonder when it'll all stop. stop feeling, stop hurting, just stop the time for a while and there's no need for heartache or tears in that frozen time.

people disappoint me. even those who you thought wouldn't ever hurt you, even those who you thought would never make you cry. in the end, they're all the same. they hurt each other inadvertantly in so many ways, it's inevitable. people disappoint all the time, humans disappoint all the time. why? it's easier not to care then, it's easier not to feel then, it's easier not to love then.

love. i don't know what it is anymore. i don't know what it is anymore. i haven't used that word in ages cos i don't know its meaning. without love, we're but noisy, clanging bells with nothing inside. i feel just like that - hollow, empty. perfectly noisy. and yet, i don't quite feel anything either. it's queer. it's really queer.

i need to snap myself out of this, i want to snap myself out of this. but on the other hand, all i want to do is stay in this feelingless, empty world i've created for myself. where there's nothing but doing and no feeling. i want to stay like this for just a while more. cos here, the hurt's muted, the pain's fuzzy, the ache's not so tangible. i know if i go back, everything'll become that much more real and i don't know if i can physically take it any more. my body seems to be shutting down already, not eating well, not sleeping well. i can't do things i usually don't have a problem with. i get lost on roads i've not gotten lost on since driving. i'm scared, i really am.

i don't know who i am. i'm sorry. i don't know who i am anymore.
let me stay in this self-made world where reality is fantasy and reality isn't real. let me stay in this safe vacuum where i don't feel, don't get affected by people who disappoint time and time again. i'm just a girl, just a girl. i can't keep getting up, can't keep getting completely knocked out and revive myself pronto again straight after.

don't judge me, please don't judge me. i felt too, you know? i'm not asking for much, am i? all i want is to be left alone for a while. where's my mind? where's my heart? where's my voice? so much on my mind, yet no words at all to put it all into. all messed up, all in chaos.