just listen to me mew

(:

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I’m not shouting “I’m clean livin’.
I’m whispering “I was lost,
Now I’m found and forgiven.”

When I say …”I am a Christian,”
I don’t speak of this with pride.
I’m confessing that I stumble,
And need Christ to be my guide.

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I’m not trying to be strong.
I’m professing that I’m weak,
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I’m not bragging of success.
I’m admitting I have failed,
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I’m not claiming to be perfect.
My flaws are far too visible,
But God believes I am worth it.

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches,
So I call upon His name.

When I say … “I am a Christian,”
I’m not holier than thou.
I’m just a simple sinner
Who received God’s good grace somehow.

-Maya Angelou

We all need them to get our lives into order and keep it in check.

Without them, everything will pretty much be in a mess, go haywire and fall apart.

Unfortunately, they’re extremely easy to set but extremely difficult to keep.

Most of the time we bend it, making the boundaries bigger or smaller, with the justification that one should be flexible.

Sometimes, its a good thing to expand our boundaries, but other times, we suffer the repercussion and consequences.

Sigh.

For example,
How Michele will be late and have to take a cab down to meet me.
How Gina will just let out a loud burp and an equally loud “excuse me”.
How the three of us will get lost.

Haha. Two days ago on Friday, I finally had a chance to meet up with michele and gina. Was so nice to be able to see them again. We were, sorta, “inseperable” in uni because we did a lot of similar modules, especially me and michele who only did 1 module that wasn’t the same, so people just assumed “if you want to find michele, just find gina or kat” etc. So it was kinda like a “reunion” of sorts. Haha.

Given that I’m supposed to be a food writer and never been to botak jones, they insisted that we have dinner there. The interesting thing is that none of us knew where exactly in ang mo kio the shop was. Haha. Our brilliant plan was just to meet at ang mo kio hub and find our way. Well. In the end we did. Haha. But that was after a few phone calls, a wrong bus ride and asking the bus uncle as well as a random stranger at the traffic light. Haha.

Since it was my first time at botak jones, I decided to get the fish and chips. The queue was long and tables mostly filled with people eating botak jones (plus a lot of raves about it from friends) so expectations were a little high. Unfortunately, despite my hunger, the fish and chips failed to impress. It was dry, hard and kinda tasteless. Thankfully the tartar sauce was nice (saved the day!), the fries were decent (thanks to the cajun spices) and the coleslaw was one-up from KFC’s. Michele’s cajun chicken was pretty good though, tender and flavourful. But otherwise, I think the quality and taste of the food wasn’t enough to justify its $6.50 price tag. I rather eat the western food at hougang central. Haha.

After eating, I (no surprises here) suggested dessert. Haha. You can’t blame me! I was totally unsatisfied with dinner! (Although, due to sheer hunger, I managed to finish all the fish) We decided to go back to ang mo kio hub but as you can guess, we had no idea how to. Haha. So we just walked to the nearest bus stop, whiled our time away while waiting for the bus by taking the usual silly shots, boarded the bus which (surprise surprise) took us one big round. Haha. But hey! We eventually got to our destination!

Dessert was at Anderson’s but the apple crumble kinda sucks and the scoops of ice cream are so tiny. Haha. Oh well. We left Anderson’s at 10:30pm with the intention of taking the bus home but me and michele just had so much to catch up on and talk about we ended up chatting for the next one and a half hours sitting down at some random staircase near the bus interchange. Haha. Some things never change. And I’m glad it didn’t.

I miss those two and it was really nice to see and hear how’s everyone doing. It’s also nice to be reminded of friends that you know will stick by you when you need a shoulder to lean on.

So now, I’ve been left with the task of making sure us three girls meet up on a regular basis.

Geez. Probably one of the hardest things to do!

(:

I’m beginning to even doubt myself. Perhaps I’m just being too idealistic, too naive and too silly.

Is what I want just a pretty painted picture of blue skies and green meadows I have in my mind?

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems to be. Maybe there’s just no such thing. Maybe there is but it takes time. Maybe there is but I’m too narrow-minded.

I’m exhausted thinking about everything. It hurts too much. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a battlefield, knowingly, but without arms or protection.

I’m trying to listen, but I can’t seem to hear. Or so, that’s what I want to believe. In my heart, I’m pretty sure I know what I have to do…it’s just a matter of doing it.

In the chaos, in confusion
I know You’re Sovereign still
In the moment of my weakness
You give me grace to do Your will…

Just because my blog is getting a little too serious and too boring…

amanda and i with a gorgeous hilltop view behind

my long-suffering games com members - nat & amanda


me, fiona & stephanie @ the BOH tea plantation

eating ice cream in cameron highlands - cold weather + ice cream = doubly happy kat!

me & kenneth @ Bala’s Inn waiting for our scones to arrive!

fooling around with the “tv” nat drew for drama night - notice the height difference!

More peektures when I get them from my bro!

(:

Most of the time, we take things for granted that we don’t realise it’s actually God at work.

Caught up with quite a few things to do, I couldn’t join the girls earlier at 2pm for the Sisters’ Retreat. I smsed Estee and she told me about worship and workshop happening later at 7:45pm. But by the time it got to around 5pm, I was just so “nua” and lazy to go all the way down to church (this is serious laziness speaking here, since church is just a straight bus and 15 minutes away). Then, we got a call from my cousin Dennis who said he was popping by. Hmm, I thought to myself, excuse not to go because I’ve got visitors!

Initially, they had only planned to stay for a while as they were due for dinner at home at 7:30pm. Interestingly, they decided to stay till my dad came home at around 7:15pm. And that’s when Dennis offered to send me down to church.

Honestly, if he hadn’t offered, I think I would have been perfectly contented to stay at home and justify it with some crappy reason. But thank God Dennis came because I had a good time with my two nieces (laughing our heads off at Mr. Bean and talking about Hannah Montana, Cory in the House, Zack and Cody, iCarly and the Jonas Brothers) and of course, the free ride down to church!

I also felt apprehensive about going for the sisters’ retreat but those worries were quelled the minute I got there. I haven’t been to YF for the longest time ever and was worried about not being able to talk with the younger sisters. Thankfully, Amanda was there and the younger sisters were so sweet, talkative, funny and friendly. Strangely enough, I felt like a big sister! Haha. Definitely not in terms of size though. :p

We had a good, albeit short, time worshipping God together with our beautiful voices, embarrassing ourselves while playing games and listening to Stephanie share during the workshop. She shared about emotions and how even Christians (and not just hormone-raging teenagers) have trouble controlling their emotions. I couldn’t agree more with her…

It’s truly amazing how much God loves His little children.

Take me for example:

In all honesty, going for the church camp was just a chance to go for a holiday, survive the message and discussion sessions and have fun (which is hard not to do with Amanda as my roommate). This is pretty much the mindset I have for every church camp. This time however, God had plans for me.

Disclaimer: At this point of the post, I think its going to be a pretty long entry. It also contains some rather personal sharings. Possibly, it might be one of the most wordy, emotional and honest post you’ll get in a long while.

Back to our usual programming…

I’ve pretty much been a christian all my life. My parents are christian and brought both my brother and I to church since we were born. There was never the feeling of persecution or difficulty going. In fact, as time went on, especially during the teenage years, actually wanting to go (and by this I mean, whole-heartedly wanting to go to church) became rare. When you saw me in church, it was more because of routine and for my parents’ sake (and of course, so that they wouldn’t nag). My parents, being the nice people they are, didn’t force me to carry on going to YF either and I finally stopped when they stopped asking me about it. Don’t even bother to ask me about QT. I can’t even remember when was the last time I did it faithfully and regularly.

This year’s camp theme was “Complete in Christ” with our speaker being Mr. Kenneth Wong (yes, I know, he shares the same name as my brother, but spare it, it’s such an old joke).

Interestingly, as sleepy and tired as I was, a lot of what Kenneth Wong shared left as impact on me. Many questions about how I have been living started whizzing through my half-dead brain.

To me,
Being complete in Christ means my identity is in Him. And this means chasing after him instead of the material things of this world which will die, fade away and be forgotten.

Being complete in Christ means communion with God. And this means knowing Him through the daily reading of His word, praying with thanksgiving and being still before His presence.

Being complete in Christ means serving Christ as our master. And this means we have to get our relationship with Him and those on earth right.

Being complete in Christ means having union with Him. And this means keeping my body clean and pure for Him as He is blameless, sinless and pure.

Sadly, the truth is I cannot answer an affirmative and confident YES to any of the above.

I have been chasing after things of this world.
I have not been spending time with my Heavenly Father daily.
I have been impatient and compromising in the relationships I have.

So what do I do now?
It’s scary just thinking about it, even before typing it down because I know the changes I have to make.
And we all know that change is difficult, requires lots of perseverance and necessary strength from God to make it. Perhaps, a little pain, tears and adjustments thrown in as well.

As difficult as the road ahead is going to be, immediate or otherwise, seems, I don’t think there’s anymore time for me to be in the state I’m in.

I’m reminded of the kid’s song “Life Without Jesus is like a Donut”. I remember hearing it once when I was a really young girl from the Donut Man video series and it has been stuck in my head all these years. Never would I imagine that all these while, God was reminding me of how empty I really am, because as and when, this song would always pop up in my head.

It’s true isn’t it. A donut is sweet, with pretty coloured toppings, frosting and other yummy stuff. It also looks perfect, round, soft and smells oh-so-good. But thats just the outside. Inside, it’s hollow, empty. Worst, it’s actually imperfect with a hole being cut out.

Now I have to find that cut-out.

When Benny led “Be Thou My Vision”, I teared. For those who don’t know, its a hymn:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

For the hymn-writer, Christ is his vision, thought, light, wisdom, dwelling place, weapon, dignity, shelter, treasure, ruler over all.

Pretty much everything in life yes? All aspects of His life, what he needs, he finds in all in Him.
I don’t even think I can claim half as much as what the writer so confidently declared.

There’s no way I can change anything that happened in the past. But the only way is in His direction for the future.

Pray for me won’t you?

I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
and wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
More and more I need you now,
I owe you more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
I gave up not so long ago
So steal my heart and take the pain
and wash the feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak,
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
the sin-soaked heart and make it yours
take my world all apart
take it now, take it now
and serve the ones that I despise
speak the words I can’t deny
watch the world I used to love
fall to dust and thrown away
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
so wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
so steal my heart and take the pain
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
take my world apart, take my world apart
I pray, I pray, I pray
take my world apart
-jarsofclay

I really should be blogging about something more substantial and less frivolous (like my recent press trip to club med ria bintan. then again, a holiday post is rather self-indulgent isn’t it.) but I can’t help it.

One thing always leads to another and it all started with me surfing coach.com. Haha. Pretty things to buy aplenty but alas, the bank account will not allow for such over-indulgence. (anyone going to the states?) And then I surfed on over to amazon.com, then to toryburch.com, then to vpost.com.sg, then to charlotterusse.com, then to Mandee.com and random Taiwanese auctions.

Ok, so here comes the super frivolous and dare I say it, expedient, part of my post. Anyone out there wanna order from these websites toooooooooooooo?

Especially charlotterusse.com which has adorable stuff at relatively cheap prices. For example, a dainty little plaid blouse is USD$19.99 (about SGD$28 according to xe.com). With the sale going on at the website, take 30% off and its USD$14 (about SGD$19 again according to xe.com). $19 for a top isn’t too bad right! And if more people order, the shipping cost can be split, making it well worth it (i think. heh.)

Alright. Enough of this weightless talk. Anyone who’s interested leave me a comment yar. I’m still checking out shipping prices from vpost and CGW and Borderlinx to see which works out to the cheapest.

Heh.

Pictures of Bintan in the next post! Promise!

(:

Saturday night was pretty fun and hot hot hot!

Us girls from the office were supposed to meet at 7.30pm at city hall but not so surprisingly, everyone was late, except, surprisingly, Lili. Haha. When I arrived at about 10minutes late, she was already there. Shiqi said she was “on the way”, Karen was still at the Esplanade after her rehearsals, Charmaine was on the way too and Tracy totally forgot we were meeting for dinner (despite being the one who set the timing, according to Lili).

After all the waiting and indecisions over dinner, I finally got to put something in my tummy at about 8.45pm at Cedele. Not very fantastic food actually. The focaccia was lovely but the chicken was crumbly and dry and my avocado was a measly 2 slices (as you can guess, I ordered the chicken and avocado sandwich). To make matters worse, the iced tea was left un-syruped but we, including Charmaine and Lili who also ordered drinks, were too lazy to walk over to the counter and get the syrup. Haha. How lazy could we get…

But all the time wasting and passing had a good thing come out of it - JY was about to cab down from Orchard to meet me! Yay!

Mel was fantastic during the dance. I’m not exactly being biased here, just ask anyone else. I think she was the most into the dance, most intense (you should have seen her killer expression!) and appeared to have the most passion for it too. But ok. Perhaps it helped that she does have Spanish blood and is ang mo. Haha. The other dancers were Japanese and locals, so I guess it seem relatively strange to see them doing such a forceful and sultry dance. And overall, kudos to all of them from the dance class!

Unfortunately, I had to leave early (it was already past 11pm) as I had church the next day. Also, it was my turn to teach Sunday School. The teaching went ok, despite my disrupting cough and Uncle Alex handing out Prize Giving photographs to the kids (which I got too! Sadly, it’s also my last…) which was really PRAISE GOD! No doubt I was nervous, especially about potentially teaching the kids wrong things about God and what the bible passage was saying, but thankfully all went well. I did stumble here and there because really, I’m not used to talking to small kids much less teaching them. I found it tough having to think of ways to phrase and structure my thoughts into a sentence that 3 primary 4 kids could understand. Well. One lesson down, 5 more to go!

JY came to church to meet me after class and it was fun just hanging around before we left for lunch with my family. Glad that we managed to drag my brother along too. Initially JY planned to treat everyone to Carl’s Junior but interestingly enough, my mum wanted Cafe Cartel. Haha. The menu has changed considerably since they first started, but more or less remains the same in terms of what sort of food they offer. Not too fantastic though, considering the prices, but not that bad or inedible either.

Since we were at Marina, we just had to stop by Gloria Jeans to pick up a cup of $2 coffee. Haha. So cheapo. But honestly, for a non-coffee drinker like me who would not pay $5 for a cup, this $2 gimmick really works. Then again, I’m sure it works for most bargain-hunting Singaporeans.

Oh and I also picked up a pair of shoes from Primavera! Bright and cheerful in yellow, perfect for spring!

Anyway, enough talk and on with the peektures!

Mel and her husband, Cuong

My (un)lucky draw stub.

Ladies dressed in an assortment of colours and polka dots!

Finally, after waiting for an hour, Mel’s performance starts…

(: