in absentia

hanging around today
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just wasn’t the same anymore without the usual
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I shall be a bit strong in what I write in this post about something
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but I guess you’ve to know, ever since I decided to drop off my feelings about you
I’ve learnt a lot...
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it still makes me very sad though
hearing about clubbing
being yelled at and pushed at
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even though through this apparent mask of apathy and disconcern
and apparent ‘interest’ for someone else
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sigh
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you said
“you have eyes for nobody but petrina”
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but that’s not true
I always cared for you in a strange way...
always watched out for you...
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and I guess everything still hurts me the way they did...
just less because I choose not to let them hurt me as much
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if you read this
you might hate me for posting such stuff publicly
but I don’t really care if you hate me anymore...
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I just want you to hate what God hates... somehow...

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I wish I could change the influences and things that happened
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the past and the present
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but it was never meant to be my concern
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as tim told me before
about how in any r/s (friendships/BGR/family)
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we need to let God do His work in His time
and simply commit them in prayer
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A true heart

Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?
But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.'
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean’.“
(Matthew 15:17-20)

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reflecting upon this short passage for the bible one thing thing makes me wonder
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is it enough for us to simply hold fast to not speaking vulgarities, not saying lewd jokes, not doing acts of immorality
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but here is the scenario I’m placed in...
I hold fast to the ideas of not swearing, not cracking lewd jokes, and not participating in orgy fests of peering over semi-porn magazines/Real porn
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but that doesn’t mean my mind does not get corrupted by such influences in army
pretty soon I find myself thinking sinful thoughts, swearing in my head whenever I’m annoyed or irritated...
and it occasionally sometimes comes out of my heart into the mouth... except I mince it up
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F*ck - AFFF
KNN- kana sai
LJ - cock
CB - cheeese
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and I also know I’m not immune from thinking lustful thoughts and stuff....
while being friends with a number of girls helps a lot that I respect them enough to not want to think about it
but it seems to be repressed at one side just waiting to jump at me

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Jesus said it was not enough to simply do the outward actions and deeds
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but like what He said:
”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.“
(Matt 23:25-28)
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But being a Christians starts from the inside first, being transformed into His likeness from the inside-out
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so no matter what culture we get exposed to
it is important to learn to guard our hearts and minds and not become influenced, not just in our actions but in our hearts too

A weird dream

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it was meant to be a chartered bus ride... like those we took from BB HQ to Perak for primers challenge
one of those long distance ones
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but somehow the bus seemed empty except for you and me
sitting next to each other...
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and after that Kenneth suddenly appeared and laughed
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and I woke up ....

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subconsciously
I still miss you a lot =(

Counter-culture

deciding to reflect upon my army experience so far...
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after talking fair bit about how we get exposed to a culture we don’t feel comfortable in and stuff like that
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in a sense of being placed in a palce of godless culture

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I remember day one.... in the bunks of Leopard coy of BMTC sch 2
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while we introduced ourselves to each other... largely JC students of different backgrounds
we still retained the sense of identity as such... JC students, polite conversations
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till we got introduced to 3SG LKY (no it’s not Lee Kuan Yew, leopard people would know)
and the warren officers
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very soon we realised what army culture was about
a culture opposed to the very moral values the christian faith believes in
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I need not elaborate about the numerous vulgarities and lewd jokes, references, and posters splattered around the Plt office
but pretty soon, most of us began to lose out identity as polite JC students
and became assimilated into the whole culture of everything.
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which brings us back to an important point I guess
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As christians, we are told to be salt and light of the earth... (matt 5:13-16)
and we cannot hide our light (stand aside and try to blend in)
or lose out saltiness (assimilate into worldly culture)
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which is the who danger of many of us immersed in various places with cultures opposed to our values
we end up sacrificing our values for the sake of gaining acceptance
and end up being too comfortable in a godless culture
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in the same way Lot was comfortable in the culture of the Sodomites and choose to live among them
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but then again it doesn’t mean we end up isolating ourselves from the rest... a mistake I made over the past 2 months while in Jurong camp.
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it is possible, as I learnt in sembawang
and after Sean spoke to me about it
to be able to work with and even create friendships with people even in a godless culture, without sacrificing our own moral values
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simply as Jesus put it
‘In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven’
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an idea of putting in your best in everything
showing a good testimony, so that we may make a difference in a different culture.
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an idea of being for people when they need it
just like how Jesus would reach out to a world of sin and depravity
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absence makes the heart grow fonder...

you know how they always say friends come and go
life eventually forces friends apart... even best of friends
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but again it all depends on how willing one is to hold on
a 2 way thing
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even as one of my closer friends left
and the other prepares himself to leave too
I left here alone
I wonder if we’ll still be able to keep in touch always
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since you’re always on my mind...
and I really miss having you around to talk to most days
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its so stupid that I only realised something much later than I should have
but does it matter?
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the idea of trust... even if life seems so uncertain
I need to learn that
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if He truly holds my hand
and wants me to know that I need Him more than anybody else
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learning to trust in Him
and Love Him above everything
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they say absence makes the heart grow fonder
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but its a long time...
many things could have changed by then...
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I guess, only to trust in Him...

But the word of the Lord remains

looking beyond what you see now
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to what He can do
and what He has promised to do, to give us a hope and future
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So in a sense
being connected across 12 thousand kilometres isn’t that difficult
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and friendships made might drift away
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but if the Lord wills it
it will stay
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I’ve behaved rather irrationally the past 2 days
since the morning of Friday
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but I guess yeah... time to discard the old facades I tried to make up
or the thoughts I tried to force myself to think
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I guess it is true then...

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but I guess no matter how
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words on a screen
even spoken words transmitted over electronic signals
or visual images over computers
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nothing is the same as being physically present
and being able to smell, and touch
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I guess in very much the same way
God doesn’t simply give us words from a bible
or audio visual miracle impacts like the works of his creation
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He comes down and touches us
like the way Jesus touched the leper
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because simply hearing or seeing is not enough for God to truly say He loves us

I must have spent

about close to $360+ last week
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$250 - studio charges
$50 - Tcc
$60 - cab fares to Orchard and Changi
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sigh
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I’m broke
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and broken too =(
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sigh =(

tearing down the space

extreme sadness
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to the point of
=’/
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do I have a right to it?
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sigh = /

at least not till we have to say goodbye...

they say guys shouldn’t cry
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but why?

pink room, pink tiles

it seems that everything works by Newton’s 3rd law
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Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
For a force there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.
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the more I try to move nearer, the further it moves away
the more I try to break apart, the nearer it goes
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forces working in opposite direction

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I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my resolves
if this keeps on
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but having spent so much time these few days in peoples company
it seems that I’ve forgotten that I didn’t want to care
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and its not on her behalf
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I said I’ve let go
but no one ever said letting go involved flinging it far away
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so does it mean it’s still is allowed to float around and taunt me?

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on the other hand
if I let time take its course
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God will know what to do right?
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it seems like I wanted to say it myself
and attribute the words to someone else instead
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I’ve built so many facades over myself
I dunno who’s the real me now?
only you 2 know
but even so I’ve never revealed everything to both of you eitherway
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because I don’t know how you would respond...
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being in uncomfortable circumstances
I just don’t know how to feel about it...

Differences

when we comment about things of the past and present
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like gummy bears in SMU orientation
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but what makes me think I should trust the person who made my NS hell for me?
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he talks a bit about what happened after the February of 2007
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about some things not worth mentioning which XL never told me about...
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in the past I guess
but he concludes
“not the kind of person you would want”
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I drew my conclusion for that a few months long ago
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just another reason to not regret that choice?
even though it was just the past
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but I should not judge a person... only God can
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but I still hope and pray
that one would make the right choices in the end...
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He moves on
asks about somebody else
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and eggs me on to do something I told myself not to do
I give my reasons
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he stills brushes them off...
“LDR” he says
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somehow it also strange
when he implied ugliness of the latter
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i was really mad
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when Lei said the same about the former today
I didn't really care as much
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I wonder if that says anything about myself...

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to the world
the immediate gratification is a important thing
satisfy the carnal needs and desires
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but I know the God has placed a time and season for everything
and He makes everything beautiful in His time
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so I guess in His time He will provide
So is there a point listening to a person I labelled an accuser(satan), now tempting me?
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Darling dear me

people change overtime
for the better, or for the worse
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so do I
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the choice of words one uses can have impact upon people
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somehow, like it was a dig against what I used to be
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because it reminds me of a time where I used to think my world revolved around you
and merely being addressed in such endearing manners would mean a lot
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for now, I simply go into defensive...
because I took so much pain and trouble to convince myself that you were not worth it
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that feeling hurt because I felt that the things you did, the clothes you wear
are what God hates...
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and I don’t want to go back to where I was before...
besides, I never really meant much to you anyway...

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little drops of sarcasm and indifference to the stupid jokes cracked
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now that you somehow have concluded that I’ve ‘switched targets’ from you
and now am ‘terrorising’ someone else other than you
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its easy to laugh it off, because it definitely wasn’t like the way it was with you
except a little awkwardness at times, there is always a limit to how close a friend can be...
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but somehow like the harry potter in Half-blood prince
the emotion that calls itself jealousy sometimes manifests itself it ways I cannot understand
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I can trick and persuade my intellect...
but I cant trick my emotions...
sadly
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I cannot become too attached to either one of you
since both of you will be going separate ways soon
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moving on to make new friends and life on a whole
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but I still want to spend as much time as I can with you all while I can
because you both mean a lot to me... as precious friends I have poured my heart into...
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and someday, even if we never see each other in this life on earth
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I pray, we will stand before God in the day of judgement righteous before Him
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and worship Him together and thank Him for the times He has blessed us with