Foto Friday

Time to bring down the Christmas tree.

Time to return to mundane daily lives;

and remember to find joy in daily living.

Foto Friday

Children.

One thing I am envious about them- their innocence.

One thing I can no longer possess.

Frustrations

One after another, they come! However I think that certain incidents have been the way they had been long before I felt the frustrations toward them. When you are not in the mood, I believe, you would not be able to accept some things that you used to accept before. In other words, your tolerance level drops.

I am frustrated over many things for the past few days. Things happened, followed by more things to happen. It's like all of a sudden the whole world seems to be against you. Besides that, the whole world owes you an apology! I understand that many of the things I feel are not true, and I am going to be alright as soon as I calm down.

Mother noticed that my acne has gotten worse, today as I was driving. The amount of stress and pressure I face is written on my face. Well, hope I get a clearer complexion soon.

Learning. To be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

Humbled

By the painful lesson I had to learn. A failure unexpected, thanks to my apathetical behaviour prior to a simple skills assessment.

Yesterday I took the assessment once more, as my second attempt. Praise God, I passed with excellence, not that I want to boast about how good I was; but both the examiner and I agreed that my performance was good. Next, results for another assessment- Human Bioscience practical test, came out today. As announced in the lecture theatre, six students in the lecture group attained perfect scores. That is 30 right answers for 30 questions. The lecturer mentioned that two persons from my tutorial group were among those who achieved perfect scores. One female, one male. Again, I am not boasting, but everyone in the tutorial group, I believe, knew that the male student mentioned was unlikely to be anyone other than myself.

"All thanks and glory to God," was my immediate response that came to mind. I later paused and pondered: where has that cheeky and proud spirit gone to? Usually I would smirk slightly(but secretly) whenever my so-to-say achievements go public. In the past there used to be some form of pride, the kind of "I am better than many of you" attitude. Of course, many of you may not have noticed it since I am such a successful hypocrite.

Today, I received a piece of good news with a different response.
Am grateful. Am proud; and am humbled. I am happy.

Learning humility; knowing God is with me.

Foto Friday

These are the Oreo boxes I collected over nearly a year.

Now they're all thrown away.

Waking up

Does your life revolve around schedules and plans? Are you giving your alarm clocks power over yourselves? As for me, setting tomorrow's alarm is practically a must-do daily. At times, a single day may require more than one alarm ringing time.

Whenever I get to rest my head, 'what to do next' and 'at what time' are essentially the questions I am forced to ask myself before really resting.

This sucks. Haha! Hi, Joel. Welcome to Earth.


Well, it's a Saturday night. I go to church tomorrow. Therefore I need to fall asleep in time in order to get adequate rest for the next day; so no drinking tea tonight. Besides that, I have to wake up on time otherwise I would be late and in turn break a promise made to a friend- to meet up at the train station before walking to church; so no alcohol tonight.

Looks like 'what to do next' and 'at what time' control more than just my alarm clock, they also have a say in my diet! Or fluid consumption, for the matter. Welcome to Earth.

Good night, and have a good week ahead. Don't forget to make good use of your alarms and planners, maximise your efficiencies!

Foto Friday

Have I lost the joy of reaching Your heart,

with the guitar You placed in my hands? 

I remember a lot of things; 

I now see a lot of detached emotions. 

What has happened?

Humility

Attention: Teaching in progress
The learning topic is as stated in the title above.

Humility is a lesson God is teaching me now, I know it. I also know that it isn't something easy to embrace. But one should practise it nonetheless.

I am good at some of the things I do, within certain social groups in which I possess memberships in. In other words, I am better in certain areas when compared to some of my peers. Not that it made me a snob though. The advantage of being better has its disadvantages as well, ironically. Nobody is perfect, I just happen to be found in a place where many of my peers tend to look up to me, they know who to turn to when in need of sound advice; at least I innocently believe so.

Pride comes before fall. I knew my pride had been given opportunity to grow, thus my guard in turn went down. I knew today that I had become too laid-back. And God needed to allow me some failure lest my character diminishes any further. Now, looking back, I am able to identify a few near misses where I almost fell, in the past. Well, now I know they were lessons to learn. Alas, people don't learn when it doesn't hurt. Those near falls before weren't enough to teach me the lesson of humility, apparently. Thus justifying what happened to me this day.

"I need Thy thunder, O my God; Thy music will not serve Thee," said John Donne.

Sigh, had I listened to the gentle whispers, this failure may not be necessary.

Toys

A friend of mine was kind enough to remember me when she had free movie tickets. A few of us went to watch the Tintin movie last week.

As Christmas draws near, I want to remember a few friends from back home too. Took the opportunity to do some shopping, conveniently, as we were still waiting for our movie. At that point of time I specifically had a dear boy in mind- an eight-year-old whose improvement in academics was plausible; he even received the Model Student award in his primary school, I found out from the proud grandmother. Very happy for him and had been wanting to give him something since his birthday, which was a few months ago!

What would an eight-year-old boy want? I was eight years old before and I knew where to find his gift.

Stepped into ToysRus for the first time in Singapore. I was told by my friend that I looked like I saw heaven! Or as if Moses stood on Promised Land. The store was huge and full of toys! Fun stuff for almost every age group, especially below 12. You name it, ToysRus has it. At an instance, my senses brought me to where the boys' stuff were. There were figures from Star Wars and Transformers, and of course many other stories as well, but I was concentrating on these two. I felt like a little boy once again, mesmerized by the quantity of the toys and wishing I had most of them. Looking and choosing, looking and choosing. In the end I realised I was there for a boy, not myself. Picked up an Autobot suitable for the kid's age and got out of the Promised Land toy store.

Growing up, I used to play with toys too. Not only that, I remember vividly even talking to some of them! The children's department or toys section must always be visited each time my family went out shopping albeit the fact that many times our trip to the supermarket was for groceries. Shopping meant looking at and sometimes owning new toys. Mom and dad didn't earn big money. We were okay financially but we weren't bathing with milk and using dollar bills as tissue paper. However, as children, how many would be aware of social classes? All children know to do is play together; some are taught to share and take turns whereas some might behave a little ill-mannered. I was a child, like many others, who liked playing and ever open to receiving new play objects.I was a boy who would sometimes pester my parents for the latest Lego or action figures. Unfortunately, or fortunately, most of my wishes weren't granted. Just as life is yesterday, today and forever; on Earth, most of your wishes don't come true, and they shouldn't lest there be chaos all over the world. So, I wanted many things which my family couldn't afford. Nevertheless my sister and I had ample toys to play with, thanks to being born much later than most of our cousins. (Dad is the youngest among ten other siblings!)

Sister and I played with lots of hand-me-downs. But dad and mom would occasionally buy us new toys. I remember crystal clear even till today for wanting a Robocop so badly that I kept asking mommy for it for my tenth birthday. (Tears are building up in my eyes now as I ruminate on this) That wish came through; it felt like the happiest day of my life back then. Now it feels stupid to have wanted a Robocop so much. Haha! Now I find toys practically useless though they were once the greatest treasures. Mommy and daddy didn't have money to splurge on play items that were practically useless, but they still bought us new toys once in a blue moon despite having abundant sources of used ones from our extended family. By the way, I kept asking for so many things from my parents but never paused to think about how they might have felt each time they had to reject my request. Sigh.

Love means sacrifice. Now, having long grown up from being a naughty boy, my eyes are opened. To how much of a rascal I had been as well as how much my parents loved me and love me still. Amazing how feelings are able to mix, not something Rocket Science can explain- I feel bad, yet loved.
Love means giving even though you might never receive anything in return. Parents have no way of making sure how well will they one day be treated by their children, but that cannot stop parents from loving.

I am grateful for having enjoyed a good enough childhood; happy that my parents are still alive and well. This blog post was not meant to make myself or anyone cry like the way I am brought to tears now, just some thoughts as I bought a toy for a little boy.

Foto Friday

It isn't easy, life isn't easy albeit it was meant to be.

How nice if life was easy!

Decisions are tough to make, no best solution.

How nice if decision making was simple!

Let go. Of sources of dilemma.

Bid goodbye to unnecessary pain.