A need to intercede

Pray:
- that the 21 South Korean hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan be released unharmed as soon as possible
- for Mr Hamid Karzai and his government officials as they negotiate the release of the hostages, that a peaceful resolution will be reached very very soon
- for the hostages themselves, that they will experience God's nearness and comfort, and that He will sustain them physically and emotionally
- for the bereaved families of the two male hostages, that God will comfort them in their time of mourning
- for the Taliban, that they will respect the value and dignity of human life, and cease the violence immediately

Public transport grouses

1. Pole Huggers. People who claim 'pole position' all to themselves, wrapping their arms and legs around the handrail (the vertical type) with no regard for other passengers who are struggling to maintain balance with nothing to hold on to for support.

2. Traffic Stoppers. In KL, the right lane on the escalator is the fast lane (Yes, it says so on the signboards next to the escalators!!). Or not - if you're unfortunate enough to get stuck behind someone who's either inconsiderate or ignorant.

3. Bouncers. In the case of getting on/off LRTs, instead of stopping you from getting in, they stop you from getting out. I don't understand why! It's simple reasoning, really - people have to get out first before more people can get in - the carriage doesn't have an infinite volume!
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On a separate note, my Spanish Word of the Day email today tells me that the Spanish word for 'mosquito' is... 'mosquito'!

mirage

foot's on the pedal
but who's in the driver's seat?

no I'm not color blind / i know the world is black and white / try to keep an opened mind I just can't sleep on this tonight / stop this train I want to get out and go home again / i can't take the speed it's moving in

stop this train
- john mayer

cornered.

and the only way out is up.

A long hiatus

Can't quite put my finger on the reason why I stopped writing here. I suppose it was really a combination of many things, not least the fact that for the longest time I just felt plain fed up of thinking up 'clever' witty things to say. This blog had become somewhat like a thorn in my flesh - at some point I told people I was just going to get rid of it forever or at least take it off the net even if I don't delete the blogposts. Yet at the same time it'd become my comfort zone, deleting it would be like throwing away an old blanket or my favourite (grubby) pair of gloves. And at the same time, too, I didn't want to leave it dormant for so long. Having a blog can be tiresome that way.

But what do you know? -here I am writing again. Because I am bored and jobless at work, for lack of a better reason.

Since I'm still struggling to recover from this prolonged writer's block, a quick update will do: I'm now back in Malaysia, interning with Accenture but based in ACNielsen in PJ, whiling away the hours til my conscience deems it "okay" to leave the office. We watched Transformers yesterday, me, Eng and Jin. It was good fun, because/in spite of the fact that there was sooo much profligate destruction! Oh and last Sunday we saw Vacancy, you know, that thriller starring Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson. I actually screamed twice in the cinema, can you believe that? After all the training I'd gotten watching Korean/Japanese/HK 'horror' flicks with Barathy and Justine, you'd think I'd be able to take a few scares but nooo... Apparently I was squeezing Eng's hand so much the blood couldn't circulate properly, haha. But anyhoo. Tomorrow I will be going back to Bentong for the weekend, I foresee more couch potato (in)activity. Channel 76 here I coooooome!

Still

Hide me now
Under your wings
Cover me
Within your mighty hand

When the oceans rise and thunders roar
I will soar with You above the storm
Father You are King over the flood
I will be still and know You are God

Find rest my soul
In Christ alone
Know His power
In quietness and trust

-Reuben Morgan, Hillsong

N/B= The song is on my sidebar, above the tagboard.

To whom do you turn?

At the end of it all, when nothing anyone can say or do can change a thing, turning to Him in meekness I once again find peace and comfort.

What does it take to learn a lesson about God?

Through imperfection, I see how perfect He is.
Through weakness, I draw upon His strength.
Through crushed ideals and dreams, I see that only He holds the future.
Through rejections, He accepts and approves via Jesus' sacrifice for me.
Through insecurity, He loves more than I can ever conceive.
Through periods of spiritual drought, He satiates.

Can I just say, nothing satisfies like the Lord.

Lighter boots

In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated), the 9-year old narrator-protagonist Oskar uses the phrase "heavy boots" to describe feelings of depression/nervousness/sadness.

Some things that gave me lighter boots this past week:
Gorgeous sunshiney weather
Kellogs' Crunchy Nut cereal with strawberries and bananas in milk, every morning (=
Molding rabbits out of plasticine
Plans for picnicking-cum-studying sessions in Hyde Park during Easter hols
My "Poem for the Day" book from Sook Meng
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The average person falls asleep in seven minutes, but I couldn’t sleep, not after hours, and it made my boots lighter to be around his things, and to touch stuff that he had touched, and to make the hangers hang a little straighter, even though I knew it didn’t matter.
- Jonathan Safran Foer

Comforthings

My duvet.
Mommy's homemade cornflake cookies.
Alan crooning Donny Hathaway in the shower.
White roses.
The heartwarming sight of a child nestled in a beanbag, sucking her thumb contentedly whilst listening to a story on a pair of headphones.
Raindrops softly falling.
Friends who care enough to not be afraid of being naggy. (=
Hugs.

2006

And memory was not madness was it, not even when the remembered past piled up so high inside you that you feared the files of your yesterdays would become visible in the whites of your eyes. Memory was a gift. It was a positive.

- Salman Rushdie in "Shalimar the Clown"

God with us

Advent and Christmas this year has been speaking loud and clear to me about one thing in particular: That God is with us. That He became Man, dwelt amongst us, and continues to be with us whether we are conscious of it or not.

Genesis 26:24
God to Abraham: "Do not be afraid, for I am with you"

Genesis 26:28
Abimelech king of the Philistines, to Isaac: "We clearly saw that the Lord was with you"

Genesis 28:15
God to Jacob: "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go"

Exodus 3:12
God to Moses: "I will be with you"

Joshua 3:7
God to Joshua: "I am with you as I was with Moses"

Jeremiah 1:9
God to Jeremiah: "For I am with you and will rescue you"

Acts 18:10
God to Paul: "For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you"

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel - which means "God with us". Matthew 1:23

A very simple message, really. But how often it is that I forget, and live as though the battle was all mine to fight.

And you know what an even more amazing thing is? Not only that He is Emmanuel, God with us - but He is also Christ the Saviour who rescues. You know, (hypothetically speaking) I think if God wanted to reach the cows and rescue them, He'd come as a calf. If He wanted to reach and rescue... I don't know.. kangaroos... then He'd come as a joey. Likewise if it was the penguins he wanted to save, I imagine He'd give the uber-cute Mumble a run for his money.

Wonder why He came as a baby. (=

The world through Rainbow-tinted glasses

Today Nour said of my watch which has several multi-coloured straps: "Look, it's made of rainbows." Imagine if we all could see the rainbows in the insignificant everyday things that we so often overlook...

Portobello

So I took that long-delayed stroll down Portobello Road.

At sundown, the pretty pastels of the little terrace houses fade into a pallor, their pinks and lavenders and blues barely distinguishable against the sombre greyness of the night. I love the understatedness of the designs of houses in Notting Hill Gate, each unit a single monotone - dull and uninteresting on its own - yet so pleasingly quaint when set in a row of other similar ones. Such charm in such uniformity.

A whiff of yuletide, a clattering of silver baubbles. Pretty pots of poinsettia blooms line the curbs of the road. It's Christmas in Portobello, where no bright lights scream Christmas greetings inyourface, and the liveliness is subtle, not loud.

Portobello Road in the evening is intimate and unimposing. The road winds meanderingly; climbs and descends in turn. We are transported from Parisian to Persian settings in a matter of a some yards, vintage cowboy boots to Venetian masks, bone china to rustic earthenware, feathered quills to rickety rocking horses... Portobello Road, like much of the merchandise the majority of its tenants offer, is immortal in its own right.

The things they say..

Some of the things that were said to me during my first two sessions volunteering as student mentor at Fox Primary School in Notting Hill Gate:

1. Grace, after studying my teeth: "You've got GIGANTIC teeth... they're like, the size of dinosaur teeth."

2. Celeste is one of two Chinese girls in my class. Said Alexandre: "Are you Celeste's mommy?". To which I laughed and said no. To which he asked again, "Are you a mommy?"

3. Max, a kid with a learning disability, as he hobbled towards me on a pair of very weak legs, smiling and with arms outstretched: "Mama". As if that wasn't enough to melt me, he wrapped his arms around my legs.

4. Nour, a little boy with the sweetest smile: "I love you". With a hug.

I'm really beginning to think that this bunch of 5-year olds are actually doing volumes more for me than I'll ever be able to do for them.

Good morning, Monday

Lipstick on my teeth
Perfume in my eyes

My hair out of place
My socks mismatched

Yesterday reverberates
Still in my head

Fuzzy wuzzy dizzy ditzy
Nippy in my skinny tee

I'm running late
Hot chocolate burns my tongue

But oh, it's Monday morning
So tell me, now - what's new?

Never really know

Is it in mere facial features - a flawlessly shaped nose, two almond-eyes, a chiselled jaw and cheekbones? In the way you knit your eyebrows as in deep contemplation, and the creases in your forehead as you frown at a careless thoughtless remark? The way you throw your head back and laugh to yourself; at yourself? Or that stray wisp of jet black hair that stubbornly escaped the path of my fingers running through your hair.

In a room filled with fifty people of all shapes sizes colour and creed, what is it that sets you apart from the rest?

Perhaps it is in the way those brown eyes light up when you smile. And the delightful crinkles at the corners of your eyes that so endear you to me.

Disclaimer: Purely fictional. (=

Nightshift: Part II

11:30pm, Ronnie Scott's. Jazz and Australian Shiraz-Cabernet. A scattering of a hundred warm red and orange lights - presumably Mathmos. Black-and-white pictures wall-to-wall. Dancing fingers, bopping heads and tapping feet. A jolly old white-haired man croons a nonchalant take of "That old feeling" as the metallic brush rhythmically swishes on the snare, light and silky.

5:30am, Guan's room. Soft, restrained strummings on the Takamine. Damien Rice, Goo Goo Dolls. Snuggling under the duvet. And the night slowly gives way to morn.

For you

Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him - "I will remain true to God's character whatever He may do". (excerpt from "My Utmost For His Highest")

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Job 13:15

The Prayer of Jehoshaphat

2 Chronicles 20

O Lord God of our Fathers, are You not God in heaven, and do You not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in Your hand is there not power and might, so that no one is able to withstand You? ...for we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.

And thus saith the Lord:
"Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's."

"In the train of a Conqueror, it does not matter what the difficulties are, I am always led in triumph." - Oswald Chambers

Nightshift

11pm, Zhon's room. Oriental-themed. Japanese paper-lantern lights, bamboo-themed wall decor. A strikingly out-of-place Van Gogh. Taboo.

2:20am, Jin Rong's room. Zen. Minimalist interior. Dim, smokey ambience, and a fruitiness wafting in the air. A shimmering, fluid sun. Chill-out music.

4:15am, my room. Complete darkness except for my laptop screen. Nina Simone.

Nothingness. Nobodyness.

Pensive. And unusually wide awake.