I thank God for the mountains
and I thank God for the valleys
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through

For if I'd never had a problem
I'd wouldn't know that God could solve them
I'd never know what faith in God could do

- Andrae Crouch

even though i can't even begin to explain how disappointed God must be with my life, i feel like at every point when i sense impending doom, failure or just complete disarray, that when i'm locked in the toilet crying, that God puts a hand on my shoulder.. and suddenly it's not that bad, not that bad when i know that if i'm knocking at the door of trial and suffering, soon enough i'll be shutting it behind me. no matter how alone i become God is always holding my hand, even when no one else is. for such consolation i think i'm really blessed.

Ploper Engrish

Was looking up if there were any announcements for my new modules, and came across some announcements leftover from last sem in one of my mods. Most of the announcements were scoldings and criticisms, but quite spot on ones I think. Really specific to Singaporean students: 
"However, some major, very serious, problems remained.

The single largest one is that almost all of you, even the very good students, cannot write English correctly. You make mistakes with prepositions, your subjects and verbs don't agree, you don't know how to use the apostrophe, you confuse your tenses, and so on. From students at supposedly the best university in Singapore, this is, frankly, an embarrassment, and I was sufficiently irritated this time to penalise it in a number of cases.

I noted this issue in my previous comments, and most of you ignored me. So let me now point out that if I were hiring, and I received job applications written as poorly as some of your essays were, I would instantly discard them. So, this is an issue that goes far beyond your grade for your student paper; your poor writing will damage your future professional chances and reputation if you don't make serious efforts to correct it. University is your final opportunity before you are forced to expose your naked prose to a cruel and unforgiving world; if I were you I would be looking to remedy my flaws via the Peers programme in PS and the workshops offered by CELC as well as by my own efforts in purchasing a thesaurus, a grammar book, etc"

This is honestly an amazing feat Singapore has managed to pull off. It's a level 3 module, which means he's criticizing TWENTY-TWO YEAR OLDS. Of not being able to write an essay in correct English. Something that should have been mastered AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS AGO. I don't claim to have an incredible command of English but there are certain things like basic grammar that should be under control by now! And the problem goes far beyond "YOUR" VS "YOU'RE". I know there are lots of Americans and Europeans or whatever who also struggle with correct English but for all the pomp and "quality" our education system boasts, surely the standards have to be higher? Neither do I think we can blame Singlish for this, because tons of people incorporate Singlish into their everyday usage and STILL manage to articulate themselves well and rightly when the time calls. I'm really not sure what to blame, perhaps a wrong approach to learning English in primary schools, or incompetent teachers. But the problem DEFINITELY lies in primary school learning, perhaps a little into secondary school. Also, there is no question about it, but we definitely have to encourage reading more. I can't even begin to explain how much reading helped to improve my English! I know some people grow up in Chinese-speaking families, and there is obviously nothing wrong with that, but where sometimes parents are unable to give proper support to a child's education, surely that is where the school must step in even more. Understandably not every child will be naturally adept at English. And even though bilingualism is all very important nowadays, and Chinese is incrementally becoming more essential, English is still the very core language to speak and understand in the developed world. And he is undeniably telling the truth when he says you would be hard-pressed to find employers who would hire people who don't know where to place their apostrophes. Unless the situation has become so dire that even employers themselves don't know when someone has a good command of English or not. This is really a first world problem (haha) but a problem nonetheless. 

As it goes the nights are all crumpling into one long stream of moonlight. Nothing really stands out anymore as if they have made a choice to become inconspicuous, fade into the stretching of time. I don't exactly recall much of what has happened the past few days. Neither do I feel like it is important to. It is only important to know who I spent it with and was I happy. And I think, I know who I spent it with, and yes, I was probably happy for the most part.

What does stand out, dancing anomalies in Butter Factory, instead of the usual body-waving-hair-tossing-booty-shaking dancing sometimes we would bust out the robot, or the wiper, or anything-but-sexy moves. So much unpretentiousness, no need to seem to be the sexy girl the club harbors. Just fun, just laughing. Do what makes you laugh.

What else? I fear my own flaws will overtake me, which is fine. If you let a piece of paper burn on its own it will simply turn to ashes, and all that other people must do is simply sweep it up. But if you let a piece of paper burn on a pile of papers... everything will still turn to ash, but what a big pile it would be. I sense myself stirring a pot of trouble and its fumes creeping beyond my control. Milk says, once you've spilt me you can't put me back. The lesson is not not to cry about it. The lesson is, don't fucking spill the milk. I think I can only pray that what I have given is enough, and now I must learn to shut my mouth and wait. As long as my anxious heart beats within the cage of my bones, hopefully, somehow, things will be alright.

Le Petit Prince

This passage, right after the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, has explained the confusion with which grown-ups treat his drawing. Although it is a picture of an elephant inside a boa constrictor, many adults see that it is a hat. When they find out what it actually is meant to be, they discourage him from drawing:

"So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable. 

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them. 

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
"That is a hat." 

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man."

I love The Little Prince. I remember a drama production put on by Act3 when I was young, and my brother was the Prince! And the one line I remember him saying, "That sheep looks too sickly." He wasn't a very good actor at all now that I think about it, but it was fun watching that. And the book is lovely... when I'm better at French I'll read it in French, the way it was originally written and meant to be read. But this passage really can make me cry. It really shows how wrong the world's got it. He says he would bring himself "down to his level", that all that great knowledge, expansive wisdom about golf and politics and business is beneath knowing about boa constrictors and stars. When he speaks of it from a child's point of view (or rather, ex-child) the essence of it is clear and simple. A child hasn't been tainted by the atrocities of greed, the love of money, the need for power. A child, very simply, follows his heart, and does what makes him happy. And so with such a straightforward, unbiased method of function, a child makes a very good example of how to live, and how to live happily.

4.15am, spent 3 hours talking about nothing in particular. Time flies when you're talking cock, haha.

Debating whether to get a new Macbook. My current Macbook has this bitch ass pixelated column of random colours that change everything I whack the screen, right down the right side of it. Woman at epicentre said it would cost me $900-$1000 to repair the lcd screen. Might as well buy a new one, right? Sigh stupid laptop

Last night Gus managed to lock himself out of his house so he stayed over, but being the extremely well behaved couple that we are, I went to sleep in my sister's room while he slept in mine. Small things like these pay off with gaining my parents' trust, I think. That even though I didn't ask them for permission to let him stay over, we made sure that we weren't in any compromising situations. Of course, if your parents are the kind that are fine with that then lucky for you, but mine aren't. And as long as I'm living under their roof I have to follow their rules, which is fine by me. Still! It reminds me of languorous days in Australia where everyday was just play, and play, and play... sigh I miss it a lot :(

Pictures!

Roy & Shaun's 21st: 

Sean's 21st:

Swee Choon Dim Sum for supper!!! I love that place

If a man can bomb Oslo, dear, dear Oslo, that I once dreamt of visiting because you harbored a friendly people, and a reputation for being untouched by the cruelties of a waging war and its spawn, the spawn that infiltrates not through a steady ascend over treacherous terrain nor through airplanes flying to their deaths, but through the look of one man's eyes, a picture on the Internet, a message ingrained in the pieces falling off the edges of a cube that can scarcely keep itself together, an Arabic tongue and the promise of righteousness, dear Oslo, you and your Nordic neighbours who managed to crouch in a corner and yell your support, who, in the midst of all this terror, managed to retain some semblance of safety and security, I was impressed by the indifference many bombs and guns treated you with, with your minimal action and backseat position, your extremely desirable HDI rankings and social democratic regimes, you were the place to be, to be away without being in the crosshair, dear Oslo, that I once dreamt of visiting, how you managed to keep at bay the result of a farrago of ideologies and opinions trying to assert their superiority, how you managed to fence yourself in and others out, dear Oslo, nestled in a corner of a splotchy mess on a map, did you ever imagine that you would be terrorized by a right-wing extremist and Christian fundamentalist who seemed like an okay guy in the cafés and the bakeries? Did you ever imagine that your peace would last forever? A man who was one of your very own, blonde hair and blue eyes, sans any middle-eastern features or turbans adorning his head, just a man who looked like your neighbor or your colleague one time or another, did you ever imagine that crouching in a corner served you no good when the evil blossomed from within yourself? Dear Oslo, now that your peace has been destroyed, so is mine, my peace of knowing there are places that the world cannot touch, cannot hurt, but, dear Oslo, now you will also go down in the books as a casualty of a burgeoning number of disgruntled minds and unsettled hearts and you have taught me now, that nowhere is safe anymore.

Someone Like You

Watch the first then the second. Quite genius, I think. I like the idea of doppelgangers, the idea of glimpsing yourself outside your own body, of understanding how people look at you from beyond yourself. You'll have to watch it a few times to understand more thoroughly the message of the music video, but it's quite worth it. Also, the song is really beautiful :)