I am not awesome. Really.

I wonder how many of us have spent Christmas alone. Or at least with people who you don't know. Most of us, I think, dread at that very idea of spending what is deemed to be the most joyous of all holidays alone. Some can't even fathom what that must be like.

I was at a friend's wedding and when I arrived it was about the time when the bride was going to come out of the venue (it was an outdoor wedding). You see everyone chit-chatting, looking all smart and sharp for the guys and the women were all looking wonderful in their bright dresses. Everyone was waiting for the main event.

And then the announcement was made. The bridal party is ready and the ceremony is about to start. Everyone took position and stood up to welcome the bride. The music begins to play and as the bridesmaids slowly walked to the altar, eyes are staring at the door patiently waiting. I stood at what I would describe as the best position for this particular wedding. Way at the back, the tree branches stooping low, relatively shorter people in front of me. Framed by the branches and the people is the groom and he smiles at the bridesmaids knowing what is to come next. Finally the bride enters and everyone starts whipping out their cameras, iPhones and the rare iPad and starts taking photos of the bride. This man here did no such thing but instead took a mental image that would be etched in my memory.

The groom's face shone with delight.

I was first introduced to this idea of watching the groom at a wedding after I watched the film 27 Dresses. I've only really watched it for the eye candy that was Katherine Heigl but I've also brought back a concept that I did not consider at all from the film. Watching my friend beamed as his wife walked down the aisle was magical, as stated in the conversations in the film. And like the film, just when everyone looks at the bride, I turn to look at the groom. And true enough, just like what Jane said, I saw pure love.

In the three weddings that I have been to since watching that film, I did just that, to stare at the first reactions of the groom as the bride walks in. All three of them were wildly different but they all say the same thing. I may have been desensitised by almost being surrounded by dresses while living with my sister and have her bride-to-be clients come in and out for fittings. I would like to see, in being a groomsman, what sort of things the groom goes through in the weeks before the wedding or even the day itself though I never was a groomsman. There's always been a lot of care around the bride which is fine but I would like to see some sort of the same care for the groom as well. We seem to have this idea that the groom will be fine, that he is "man" enough even in the face of his own wedding, whatever that means. But if it is anything like the last three weddings I've been to, the man is hardly tough as nails but a deeply emotional person who weeps in joy at the sight of his partner.

Dusty Springfield and Nat King Cole speaks of the look of love is in the eyes. And I think you don't have to look further than the way the groom watching his bride walking down the aisle. It may be that I may never experience this myself but at least I know what it looks like. And that's perhaps all I'll ever need to know.

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Also, there is no way a groom will not get teary when this is playing as the entrance music. My friend certainly did. I mean I would bawl my eyes out too if I were in his shoes. Excuse me while I curl up in a corner somewhere...

Lots of things flooding my head over the past couple of weeks. Some good but mostly self-reflective.

During a recent trip with a couple of high school mates to Sydney for a very short stint, it still amazes me that though most of us went on our own separate way, we still act as though we are still in high school. I don't think that many would still be in contact with their own high school mates a decade down the road especially with a whole class. I think it is because we came in at the right time where the internet kicked off with a blast and various social media and messaging tools were available at our disposal. This is on top of the fact that most of us were in the same class for at 4 years in high school, which means we were pretty much are our own little village.

I can't help but wonder when I go back at the end of the year, will I still be accepted back into the group? For too many years have I missed out on the lives of these wonderful bunch of people in pursuit of my own agenda. Yet there is folly in my pursuits and all the things I have set out to achieve since I've left high school has failed to bear fruit. And many people thought that I have the necessary skills and the willpower to achieve something that most people wouldn't dare dream of. But it's those very things that will prove to be my undoing.

I'm sure all of these things will not matter in the grand scheme of things, perhaps I will be accepted in the end. That as time goes by, I may once again get to know the friends that I once knew.

Perhaps what's left of this year and the next is the season for rediscovering friendships and relationships.

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On another recent trip to Rye, I am once again in good company. But it also was a time of great reflection not only as an individual but as a whole group. It was brought up that our group is very quiet, which I would beg to differ considering some of the previous groups that I have been in. But when a friend stated that we still lack the sense of ownership to the group, it suddenly made sense. In fact it was kind of a piercing statement when I heard it. Many times that I was physically present but not there and sometimes I can see others do that as well. And because of this lack of ownership with the group that a number of issues came up that has been going on that I was not aware of ever since I've been in the group.

Perhaps I didn't understand what community meant. I've always thought that at least we should be doing stuff together, which I do, but it's not sufficient. Community implies relationship and not simply a gotong-royong (working bee). Pro-activeness has never really been a strong attribute of mine but based on the discussion that we've had at Rye, it's about time I do something about it.

Perhaps what's left of this year and the next is the season to be pro-active.

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I sense another tectonic scale movement in the lives of others. Which means I'm going to set a timer before I channel my energy elsewhere. Nothing personal, just that priorities have been shifted and it's most likely not mine.

Perhaps what's left of this year and the next is the season for packing up and move elsewhere.

It's been awhile now, partly because I moved again and have been internet-less for weeks. Not to mention that I have a long list of to-do things from work. But more importantly, I have to catch up with all the cat videos ever since I got back my intertubez.

I don't normally follow any elections which is a behaviour I'm trying to change but the recent US presidential elections kinda caught my attention a bit. But it wasn't the politics that I was interested in but the predictions made by one Nate Silver. He is a statistician who used to work out the career trajectories of baseball players based on a whole heap of data. Only recently he turned his attention to politics, employing the same techniques he used in his previous work. He predicted in 2008 that Obama would win the elections and the correctly called who would win in 49 out of 50 states. Now in the 2012 elections, he also called that Obama would win and not only that he was given a ridiculous 90% chance of winning over Romney. Again he has already correctly called 49 states with Florida still hanging (though he is most likely going to be right).

You can imagine what happens in the Romney camp when they heard that he called Obama to win the elections. They all say he does not know anything. Ironically, Nate Silver correctly predicted wins for the Republicans in other state elections and has praised him for that. I'll comment on this a little later on. Back to the story, virtually most pundits call this election to be a 50-50 race so for them to hear that Obama has a 90% chance of winning the election, most people dismissed him. Of course that doesn't matter now considering that Obama has won. Post election and pretty much all the pundits who slammed him for "bad" predictions sheepishly said that he was right.

On a slightly related note, when the technician came over to our place when we needed that telephone cable to be connected, I was talking to him. You know, about how long he has been in the business etc etc. One of the things he mentioned that the way things work around there has changed quite a lot. It doesn't matter how many jobs you do but as long as you press the right buttons and that's how you get paid, he said. He further commented that it's a stats driven world now.

The point from both these scenarios is that of the technician that came in to install our phone cable, it IS a stats driven world. People still have this idea that statistical predictions are pretty much synonymous with voodoo especially when they correctly predict something seemingly complex with a very small error to boot. Take for example Hurricane Sandy that hit most of the East Coast of the US. Statistical data combined with sophisticated weather models helped predict the trajectory of the hurricane down to within 50 miles. The only thing that they didn't quite get it right was the intensity of the hurricane. The gap between what scientists can do (with statistics included) and what the general public knows about them has gotten larger. And as what I can gather from these two scenarios, even if the public generally accepts that it is a stats driven world, it is viewed as a negative thing. They have resigned to the fact that "voodoo" now powers the world instead of what they would view as objective, measurable and somewhat naive data.

You don't have to go far to see that stats do indeed power the world. Apart from the elections and Hurricane Sandy, things like SEO, data mining for more effective targeted advertising, supermarket aisle rearrangements, behavioural economics and more. All of this is to tap into the subconscious behaviour of a collective and leverage on that. And it only can be done via a powerful grasp of statistics.

I once had a lecturer that said, we are now moving from the continuous age to the discrete age and it is only with a strong grasp of statistics that we can start to understand the strange phenomena around us. Mathematics that started in the 1700s all the way to about the early 1900s all had the idea that things in nature can be described as a continuum, everything is smooth, predictable and contains only one answer*. From the 1900s, we get things like quantum mechanics , statistics, probability, data communications and modern economics where there they don't work with exact answers^ but trends. And even then, it's trends given the right data and assumptions. It will take a long time before we get our head around the fact that statistics is a powerful tool to use and more importantly how to use it properly.

I did say I was going to comment from an earlier paragraph. Despite all of this, we as humans still practice the method that we accept what we want to hear. It is usually from the lack of understanding about the underlying process or just plain ignorant about the data. After many thousands of years, we humans still have the same problem, pride. Even as we advanced as the most technologically advanced species on the planet, our moral compass is still ultimately flawed.

*this is not technically correct but it is the general view
^again this is not technically correct but you get the idea already

It seems that most of my content these days are almost solely generated by conversations with friends. More interestingly it's from friends who I've hardly talked to or have distanced myself due to whatever personal reason I had in recent times. This is probably a good thing and at the same time perhaps stoking the fire a little bit.

After a long conversation on a crummy weekend, busy trying to explain the economics of my actions and feelings, uncovering old wounds and unveiling plans of a seemingly uncertain future, I really am more complicated than I portray myself to be. I am also more brutal than I think I am when it comes down to cost-benefit game. Too many variables, probabilities and weightages to consider. Trying to make the most rational decision based on current trends is my goal because that is how you play the cost-benefit game. What I have seem to gather from a long string of conversations is that often times it's the one irrational decision that actually give rise to the benefit. I cannot and still cannot stomach this because that is not how it works, or so I thought. How can doing something irrational bring the desired benefit instead of the rational? Ironically I have been reading books from a behavioural economist who sees some inherent good in being irrational while nodding my head in agreement.

Also from my conversations, it made me recall all the people that I have talked to, who at one stage or another, said that they could see themselves live the life I live now. With the exception of people with a degree of separation greater than 2, I remember I've never believed they could. I was right, not a single one of them did. For a kind of sanity check, I look to the few people who have never said anything and living the life, though I admit their reasons are quite different to mine. Although it is not really the case, but they give me some glimmer of hope that though I may not get everything I want (last time I checked, not even one) but I trust that something good will come out of it still. This includes not owning a hedgehog. This. Is. A. Big. Deal.

In short, I am safe and afraid with a dash of pathetic. In the words of the Lethal Weapon series, "I'm getting too old for this shit".

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I'm still not used to like hearing the phrase "It's good to see people doing well and moving on". It implies certain things.

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4 more DVDs to finishing 28 films in 28 days. And it is only fitting to end it with, you guessed it, 28 Days Later.

Though a lot of friends don't like it but I think Julie & Julia is a rare kind of film. I would even go as far as advocating engaged couples to watch this during marriage preparation. The reason should be pretty obvious. Plus French cooking.

I really should start cataloguing my watched films.

Kinda excited for the next couple of months. We're looking into moving office again after an explosive year, I'm moving again after slightly under a year of hermitting, first iPad dev project and lots of other things. Funny how lots of areas in my life is moving on but the few that I really want to move does not.

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I am super late to come to this realisation but Tina Fey is now my current person to ogle at. After reading this article and watching Date Night and Baby Mama recently, if such a person were to appear in front of me and said "Hi." I will stammer like a broken record and make a complete fool of myself though I have always done so and still do. She is super funny, wonderful person and like the article says have a low view about her appearance but is absolutely gorgeous on all accounts. I'd like that.

Another one to chalk up on the list of weak-knees-us (see what I did there? Weaknesses? Anyone? No?)

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Today is an example on how a two-man band with proper layering is better than a 5-man band with no layering.

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Someday I will run out of excuses to make. When that comes round, I'll take a bow and just disappear. It's better that way. But I hope that day never comes.

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Correction: people are having really good things going on for them. There's probably no such thing as asking for more contentment (you either are or aren't) but I can try.

For many moons I have long contemplated about what is the point of going through so much strife during my PhD years. What good can come out of it? And every time I had to explain to people why my PhD failed, I revisit this question at the end of the day after the said conversation is long over. And though I have made my peace long ago, it still sometimes hurt to hear myself talk again about it. Bonus hurt points if one person mentions the line "So, in the effort of saving one, you ended up losing both". I've asked God many times then and occasionally now, Why?

I recently went for a series of talks organised by Ridley College on answering some of our generation's toughest questions and I have to say I was glad that I went for all of them. It was pretty much post-ski trip outings except instead of slaloming down snow capped mountains, it's slaloming through a mine field of tough questions. The one thing that I found to be quite unique with this series of talks is that it's not trying to make Christianity the superior option by beating everything else down. It uses, I think, a more effective way, level the playing field and post the invitation. As I sat through the rest of the talks, all I could think of is this is what the phrase "defending the faith" is really like. This is probably one place where the age-old term "the best defence is a good offence" doesn't quite apply.

Hopefully in the coming days, the recordings of those talks will be up because there are too many things to get a hold on in just about half an hour each session. Not only was it the first real attempt to answering some of my questions satisfactorily but it also answered some of my other questions which I did not expect to be addressed. For some, it helped lighten my burden I've been carrying this year. For most, it was a great refreshment. And what happens after that was good fellowship, something that hardly came by in the past couple of years.

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I came back yesterday to find that my past two posts went up by 50% in readership in one day. On the slowest day of the week. I nearly fell off my chair because of that. Then I realised that my headlines may have something to do with it. Ish.

This week was probably one of the hardest weeks for me emotionally in recent times. Just when I thought getting out of the massive project last week was going to give me rest.

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I count myself as extremely fortunate to have met people who I would classify as seriously awesome people and call them as friends. I wonder from time to time what did I do to deserve this of which I can clearly answer with a big fat Nothing. And sometimes that worries me.

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It seems that no matter where I go and who I am with, there is always something to remind of my struggles. I'm not sure if that is a kind of taunting/accusation where I screwed everything up and this is what I could be having if I didn't or an imperative like that of a far superior boxer knocked you out and asks you to give up and don't come back and you are going to accept it as he walks away in dramatic style. This reminder is a slow and painful one to ride out and usually by the time it actually lingers out, another one comes in. It's enough for me to hit my head on the wall several times a day.

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Making new friends is a phenomenal task for me to do. Because often I have to break into already established groups and the amount of energy I need to expend is tremendous. Some groups are easier to break in than others of which I can say it has been easier with the current group. But there is another problem that I have to deal with which actually involves everyone and obviously more so for new people, letting them in my space. Because I am always afraid of what they might find. Heck, I don't even let some friends in.

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You know what is the worst thing about personal change? That by the time you act on the change, it's past the window of opportunity and whatever benefits that comes as a result of the said change becomes futile. 

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Film. I need to watch more films. I also need to watch more films alone.

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I once mentioned to someone that there is a John Mayer song for every occasion. So far that hasn't been wrong yet. Born and Raised has encompassed even more and has certainly encompassed some of my things recently.

Another round of conversations led to another common theme albeit a little on the depressing side. This one is hardly talked about because there are so few of us who actually experience it on a non-trivial scale, unlike how the interwebs portray it. Also I don't think people think that such things will ever happen to them, but if it does, it often becomes catastrophic. 

Had dinner with some friends and like all conversations, one thing led to another until we arrive at the question, would you rather live a long life but mostly faced with solitude especially towards the end of your life or live a short life but have your better half/family/friends by your side all the way to the end? Like any kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks question, we have our initial beliefs and then list the pros and cons and see if our initial beliefs is the best compromise. Initially, I would have voted for long lonely life any time. In fact I even stated that if I had a say in how I would die, I would go alone. But now I am not so sure of that any more.

Exhibit A: the peer. Being the only child, this friend of mine accurately stated that once you get past a certain age, the time that you can spend with other friends become less and less. For one, you do not make friends as fast as you used to. Two, friends move around, change relationship statuses, increase family size and so on; priorities have been shifted on a tectonic scale. Three, work? And four, in the case of my friend, family will wither away just as time with your established friends wither away. And so effectively, living a short life is essentially "cutting your losses" or taking the deal from the bank in Deal Or No Deal. I've always been a fan of the cutting-your-losses technique and so it doesn't surprise me that this had me gravitating towards a shorter life.

Exhibit B: the never married aged man. After hearing stories of a man who has found himself down the lonely narrow path, showing all the signs of mild depression, I can't help but wonder that that is what I might look like when I am that age. With no family left (that I know of), close friends gone distant (both physically and relationally), there's very little that's left on offer. He was thinking about uprooting to a quieter place and my guess is to escape the environment where there's so many people but no one there. There was a brilliant film I watched, though the name escapes me now, that throughout the course of the film you can see how he slowly but methodically loses it, like a train wreck in slow motion. Very scary thought. I'm not saying that the man in question really is losing his mind, it just makes it more susceptible. Even that's scary.

After the conversation, I've been somewhat challenged by my choice. But of course the question that I brought up in the first place is a silly one to begin with. It's not like after I made a choice that my wish will be instantly granted. It's just a hypothetical question. But what should come out of this is how do we deal with loneliness especially to those who are suffering from the harsh reality of loneliness more than others. For some, it is a cross that they will have to bear for the rest of their lives and for others, will be a temporary thing to be exchanged for something else. Some will require more external sanity checks and it is important to figure out who actually needs them.

On a related note: Besides the benefit of current experiences and questions, I wish knew how to speak Hokkien then so that I can talk to the elderly in my family, particularly my dad's side. There were so many women who had lived well past 80 years, some outliving their husbands by more than 2 decades and most of their children have moved interstate or overseas etc. and I would like to ask them how did they do it. One of the many things I regret to this day.

A string of conversations with people (some with copious amounts of cocktails) has given me more insight about the struggles of living a Christian life. Many are in a position that I have been in for years and still looking for answers. Many of my concerns also brought out in the open, showing me that I'm not the crazy one. But more importantly, I've learned to ask the right questions to others, which in turn are questions directed at myself as well. I think it is about time that we actually learn to set aside time to talk about how's the spiritual life going. I think that many of my concerns, whether it is my own or towards others, come from the fact that we/I don't exercise the "support" in being a supportive Christian group. I also think that sometimes we like to think of the illusion that we are supporting but really it's just to cover what is above the surface. I know this is a problem of mine (among many), which I can say I've been quite convicted of, and based on my conversations with others, it is also a problem of theirs. I also know that the solution cannot come 100% from my own will to make things better because history has a track record of this not happening. It's fine balance to find but even just the act of trying to find that balance without swinging to resort to our/my own willpower is half the battle won.

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Portal 2 co-op mode is like a huge trust exercise with some bits of confusion and hilarity thrown in for good measure. Highly recommend playing it (with a friend of course).

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It's very much worth watching the actual video. It is awesome.

My favourite song in the album.

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You know what? It's still hard. Very hard to do.

I had lunch with a good friend of mine and it was a seriously overdued catch up session. We meant to do the usual catch-up-y things, like asking how are things, how's work etc etc. Which we did but it quickly moved into conversations with another common ground. Over the next 1.5 hours we went on essentially asking the same question, "What happened?". Various areas were covered under that question like ministry, our personal lives and so on. Even though it has been a long time since the last time I saw my friend but I feel that we've pretty much gone through the same experiences, with a slight difference in flavour between us.

I can't really say much but the things that I got out of our conversation was that it was ok to show anger as long as it was for legitimate reasons and that there is a time to know when to cut our losses. Oh and I should really meet up with my friend more often. We say the darnest things sometimes.

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...maybe a Martian.

2012 is turning out to be a great year for science. Earlier this year we found the Higgs boson, further sealing our understanding of the standard model of particle physics (plus more in the future perhaps) and now an incredible Mars rover landing on a planet that takes twice as long for a signal to come back to Earth than it is to enter Mars atmosphere and land. Many people back in the 60s remember the space program and anyone who has a decent working memory back then and is still alive today can tell you exactly where they were when we landed on the moon. Some will even tell you that it was those events that led them into science. Today is one such day for the younger generation. Never before since the late 60s has there been a truly remarkable feat of space exploration until today. I hope that people will look back to this moment to finally realize that this was the sole event that stirred up the young people to go back to science and why the hell it took us so long to get there.

If you didn't know what was the big deal about this Mars landing, we basically sent a mini laboratory complete with a mass spectrometer, a drill, a frigging laser that vapourises rocks, a nuclearized version of a car battery, enough sensors to make your futuristic car look like a cheap oven thermometer and all this within the size of a Mini Cooper. Into space and on Mars. And we landed that lab using a parachute, retrorockets and a skycrane. With everything fully automated because by the time we get a signal that it has entered the atmosphere, the rover would have been on the ground (either in one piece or several thousand) for 7 minutes already. And it only cost less than a movie ticket per American resident. If your 5 year old kids don't think this is super cool, God knows what is. I don't need to emphasize this any more but we badly need something like this. I hate to see science and math being dumbed down further knowing that it is because of those two things that got a laboratory to travel more than 350 million kilometres for eight months and land it within a 12 by 3 kilometre area virtually without human guidance.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constraint to be
Let thy goodness, like a fetter
Bind my wandering to thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for thy courts above

Lately, I have been listening to a lot of speeches and interviews from a scientist who has been gaining a lot of my respect, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You may recognise him as the guy in the Badass Meme. He speaks a lot about how I felt about science when I was a kid growing up and how the space program inspires many to be scientists, engineers and mathematicians and why the NASA space program is so influential in this area. He also sometimes speak about the education of children to develop the skills necessary to be interested in science, which of course goes right up my alley of promoting STEM education.

I was clearing out my room when I decided to look through all the cards that I have accumulated since I came to Melbourne from the box that used to house my iron. Still remember most of the people who gave me those cards though most of them too have grown distant from me either because they have moved back to their home country and/or gotten married and have their own family.

Three observations from these cards:

1. I have received more cards from one person than any other in the box. I think of the many times that I have distanced myself from this person in light of the thoughtful things that were embedded in these cards makes me feel bad. Perhaps I should do something about it. Who knows, perhaps it might also point me to the right direction when it comes to other people in general.


2. Even though majority of these cards essentially say the same thing, there were a small handful that steps out of the normal. One had this to say:
   

   As you continue to find your feet in this world, I hope you won't forget the inherent benefits of being a jack of all trades: versatility. Sometimes it's an advantage, and paired with your diversity of knowledge, I'm sure something good will result. Take a compliment and bask in its warmth once in a while, hey?

   
   This always makes me feel a little better because as some of you may know, I am extremely harsh on myself, and still am even now. This is the only card I have received from this person but it's pretty high up my treasured list. There are very few friends who see the uglier sides of me but say things that, firstly aren't mere sugar coating or sweeping under the carpet type statements and secondly with honest and truly encouraging. Person in observation 1 is also another such person.


3. Some of my bad habits are also shown without people thinking that it's a bad thing. Another card had this to say:
   

   Really really grateful for all your help. And for your inability to say "NO" =)

   
   That was probably my biggest weakness next to being incredibly self-critical. I have, since then, learned to say No more often though sometimes with much pain. I'm sure when I read this when I received the card I didn't care too much about it. I can't say the same, reading it again now.


4. Bonus: the key cards mostly came from what I would label as my most glorious year, the year I killed myself in honours. 

O God, keep my tongue from evil and my lips from deceit
Help me to be silent in the face of derision, humble in the presence of all.

Open my heart
Open my heart
Open my heart to Your Torah

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
Be acceptable to You, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer

This is just part of a Hebrew prayer. The full translation of the prayer goes like this:

O God, keep my tongue from evil and my lips from deceit
Help me to be silent in the face of derision, humble in the presence of all
Open my heart to Your Torah, that I may hasten to do Your mitzvot
Save me with Your power, in time of trouble be my answer
That those who love You may rejoice
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
Be acceptable to You, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer
May the Maker of peace in the high places make peace
Descend upon us and upon all Israel, and let us say: Amen.

How often do we pray like this? We read prayers like this all over Psalms and yet we don't really know how prayers like this were prayed. This song just might give a glimpse as to the attitude of a Jew who constantly look to God, asking God to keep him holy and to be receptive to God's word. Briefly looking through other Hebrew prayers and you can find lots of things to learn about prayer in general, how to pray and the inward attitude towards prayer. There's lots of things that we can learn from the Israelites and I suspect one of them is prayer.

It was perhaps no coincidence that my role and circumstance in this year's July Camp was exactly the same as back in 2009. Doing the things I love in the hopes of distracting me from something else. And in both cases, the outcome was also exactly the same, limited success. Again, I am now left to searching for something, someone or some group to confide in. As usual, I may find it but as history has shown me, it is most likely a temporary solution. There are many descriptions I can give to describe my current state and how I feel but let's not go there.

There are other limited successes that I've come to enjoy in camp and that would be my very slight contribution to one of the Bible studies when I had some free time. I hope the result of this contribution will lead into something that the next generation of Bible study leaders to bear in mind. Because I think we've never really tried stepping into the lives of the members when we are doing Bible study. General widespread answers yet unwilling to share our struggles with one another which I think creates a deeper impact. Whatever happened to edifying God's people? I certainly hope that we do this more often, I didn't understand this when I was Bible study leading last time and so I hope that others will learn it while they still can. It's not a book club meeting, it's a support group meeting.

While I continue to search, it may very well be the case that what I am called to do is like that of a friend I recently got to know. He has uprooted himself many times for short periods of time to go to different parts of the world making some kind of an impression during that short time and repeat. Whatever the answer is, may I see it with such clarity in the days, months or years to come and not to feel insecure every once in awhile. Everyone has a choice of at least two lifestyles (and I'm not talking about the good vs bad, holy vs unrepentant), this would be one of them. I'll leave it as an exercise to figure out the other lifestyle. It is either one or the other.

Thus, I am making a decision to give myself one more chance before I close the door myself. I might as well try and save my energy for something else. Because it is becoming absolutely tiring to be in this state, waiting. Absolutely. Tiring. After this, no more*. 

It is well.

*Unless the Almighty intervenes. God's sovereignty always comes first. 

The cartoon geek in me just squealed like a little schoolgirl.


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There's a difference between wishing and wanting and I realise I do more of the former. A lot more. Even some of my wantings are in actual fact wishes. Wishing is when you want something but are reluctant to put in the work but still get it, either instantaneously or some time in the future. Wanting however has a certain drive that pushes you to obtaining it and you know that sometimes it is not going to come cheap.

I look at things and people pass by and I say to myself "I want to have that" but I think what I really meant by saying that was "I wish I had that". And then I just leave while that want decay into a wish which decay into nothingness in a span of half an hour at best. That might explain why I have so little things (besides the fact that I have lived in tiny rooms for most of my life here in Melbourne). Because my wants barely survive the next hour for me to act on it. I also do not have a reminder system set up to remind me of these wants which means I forget until the next instance comes along and the cycle continues.

This also explain why I am so bad at making decisions. By implication, to decide on something, you need to want it, not wish for it. Since I have hardly exercise my right to obtain a want, I will respond with something that reflects a person with little to no wants, "Anything/Dunno". Most of the time it is either something or nothing. There is no anything. By choosing Anything/Dunno, I gain nothing. I reckon that this single word, whether uttered in public or within the confines of my conscience, is the main cause for most of my griefs. I was talking to my mum about my parent's recent trip to Eastern Europe and she mentioned that we might do a family trip at the end of the year and she asked me where would I like to go. My head says things like Japan but what came out of my mouth is quite typical of me. Yup you guessed it, "dunno".


I think this stemmed from the view I used to subscribe when I was young, to want something is bad. Want, to me, was associated with materialism/greed/covetousness. And for so much of my life, I've devoted myself to living the pseudo-minimal life and perhaps a dash of kiasuness thrown in just for good measure. Something like a city kid but living the life of a monk which is kinda oxymoronic. It was great because I learned to not care but comes at a cost of regret. A cost that I feel a bit of a pinch at this point in time.

Someone needs to teach me to express my wants and not for me to suppress my wishes. Otherwise it might be the death of me. Death by boredom, mundanity and/or loneliness.

There are two things that have been constantly reminding me over the past few weeks

1. God is sovereign
2. His grace is sufficient

Sayangku jangan kau persoalkan siapa di hatiku,
Terukir di bintang tak mungkin hilang cintaku padamu 

Malay can be such a poetic language. A bit late for me to realise this but at least I got there.

After having drinks with the colleagues, I've met someone who shares the same interest in all things funk, 70s disco, jazz and motown. And not only that but he gave me a whole list of Melbourne funk inspired bands and albums to give me earworms for the rest of the month. Thank goodness! I told him that I am a bit of an obscure person. An Asian dude who loves (at the risk of sounding racist) black music. He laughed it off as well. Loooove funk.





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I'm starting to see it happen a little more often in the 2pm service in church. That there's a little more emotion injected into our singing. Finally! I get excited when the song list appears on my email on the weeks that I am playing either bass or drums and attached to it are Youtube vids which are either a different/contemporary arrangement of very familiar songs to us or "new" songs that speaks truth in volumes in both music AND lyrics. More often than not, I actually think about the songs more than I normally do if it brings certain level of emotion through the music.

We have a tendency to have a lot of songs to be of a reflective kind and musically as well. But there is a difference between being reflective and being solemn, and I think it is more of the latter that we do a lot. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly a place for being solemn in our songs. But if we want to be truly reflective in our songs, we must also not be afraid of showing emotions. For example in the Psalms, a large portion of the Psalms are not happy happy in fact it's often the contrary. Yet David pours it all out to God trusting that he is sovereign and will prevail. He reflects on the character of God in the midst of all the struggle and pours it all to God, trusting that he will do what is right. From the Word in Song conference that I went to not too long ago, the song leader mention people come into church and they may have had a great week while others may have quite the opposite. Yet when all of them sing the same song, pouring out their emotions through their singing, you get to see a bigger picture of what worshipping this mighty God looks like. Sometimes I'll hear song leaders or even pastors say to the congregation to leave all your worries and cares outside the church and just come to God. God is not some North Korean dictator who executes you if you are not feeling happy in his presence. He is very much interested in the struggles that we have and bring it to him, like David. So I cringe whenever someone says that, even more so if I'm part of the music team. I'm glad though that it doesn't happen much.

I was particularly encourage by my housemate's song leading and also his choice of songs today. It was very reflective, emotional but not without substance. Not only did he gave the music team something to listen to over the week to familiarise ourselves with the songs, but I often find myself singing it from time to time because I had been thinking about the words, feeling it, and just worship. I hope that we continue to move in that direction for our Sunday services. Because if it is anything like how I experienced it, the words don't just remain inside the walls of the church or on a Sunday but echo through out the week and we don't treat God like a once a week catch-up brunch session.

I'm slowly becoming fine with my current situation after having lots of time alone, contemplating and slowly getting rid of the excess baggage. I speak fewer words, looking elsewhere, not looking anywhere. All to drive me back towards my emotional baseline. Just need a little longer.


Lately I've read several good articles that seem to revolve around what I feel right now about life, love, relationships with others and having children (I kid you not. Heh, kid.). It is as though a flare was shot through the sky indicating that perhaps my thoughts are not unique. That non-uniqueness is very much appreciated. 


I have spoken a couple of times on the first three things before intermittently before but never really on the last one. I may not look like the kind of person to want children but to the few friends who know me might tell you otherwise. Even fewer will tell you the exact configuration of children I would like to have if I can have it my way. I remember having one conversation among a very small group of friends a long time ago asking questions regarding having children. Although we were all still young and very single then we still searched ourselves to the best of our ability to say whether we might be a good parent. Which on hindsight, I realise, is actually a rather pointless question. Even most parents cannot answer that with full certainty. I remember giving my answer as I would probably not be a good one, despite replies from my friends saying otherwise. Fast forward to today and I would still give the same answer as I did so many years ago. But I'd still do it.


Most of advertising work by trying to sell you something most often a useful product. But selling you a lifestyle probably makes it even more effective because people can imagine themselves taking on that lifestyle and will feel good about it. It's kinda like that with me on parenthood. Seeing my friends with their children, the joy (and the struggles) it brings, the new relationship created between parent and child and all that jazz portrays a lifestyle that I can imagine myself in. Whether or not it becomes a reality is a separate issue. There are times where I will hear of some people who can think of no worse thing than having children and I will be completely baffled by it. But that would just be a difference in lifestyles and everyone is entitled to have their own.


Perhaps I feel cluckish now because I'm seeing lots of friends who are expecting and some I am expecting that they will be expecting soon. Because I wonder how does that feel be in that position. Overly joyous yet scared, in a good way. It may very well be that I will never know. So all I can do is imagine. And for now I'm fine with that.

Today has been a day wrought with thoughts. So many things to think about, so little answers. So many big issues, so little solutions. Went to the Word in Song conference on learning and dealing with some of the issues in the music ministry and it has been highly insightful. Though I really wished I could go for all of the workshops but my head would have exploded so kinda grateful for that. One thing at a time, plz? Even on learning on church band dynamics, it contains a whole lot of stuff to make the music ministry that much more effective. The hard part is that it is based on certain assumptions made which our church does not do and so it is very hard to leverage off these great suggestions without these assumptions. How do we steer the current music ministry in the right direction is a very big hard question and I (or rather we) have some solutions, whether or not people take the solutions seriously is a completely different matter. This is where I should have gone for the other workshop on how to choose an appropriate music culture and how to change. That would give hints to tackling this problem, though it might mean it would pose even more questions back at us. Next year, next year.

It has been a good week relaxing, vegatating, doing nothing, staying at home over the public holidays after the completion of the intense 7 week project and it is also good to know that the approval process was pretty swift. Now the project is going to be launched on Monday. It is the first project that I have sat in from start to finish so I guess that is a big achievement. Now to a new project.

The more I've thought about it, the more the analogy kinda makes sense. Emotions can sometimes be analogous to laws that govern the movement of massive (as in, having mass) objects. Except emotions do not have mass and neither it's an object. Shut up. 

Given my recent events, it has become clear that emotions have such a thing as inertia or momentum. It will keep going in one direction unless something else comes into the picture. This is the first law. Love or hate someone and you will continue doing so unless someone steps in.

The change in your actions is directly proportional to the emotions you have and it is in the direction of the person in question. This is the second law. What you will do (or willing to do) for a person increases as your emotions towards the person increases.

And of course, the one that does not need to be rephrased, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is the third law. There will be reciprocation of your actions based on your emotions but the consequences are not necessarily the same. Yeah I admit this one is a bit fuzzy.

So no analogy is completely air-tight in its argument. But I'd like to think that my hypothesis is true. Not exactly scientifically measurable but I guess you have to take it by faith.

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I was talking to a friend and he said that the ability to read non-verbal language is both a blessing and a curse. I haven't given it much thought about that statement but it is starting to be one of those that is becoming increasingly true as I ponder on that.

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7 weeks of intense work and I finally have a little bit of time to rest. And then back to tight deadlines again. And more reflecting.

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I'd imagine it was going to be hard.

Yes, it was. Yes, it is.

Hermit mode, on.

The past two weeks was filled with thinking and emotional wrestling (a lot more than usual) given the current state that I was in. I got side tracked a bit during Easter when I went up to Belgrave for a couple of days. There was a lot of great insights from the book of Esther and John (plus Hebrews) and its current relevance in our world. There were even some instances where some of those insights were directly related and applicable to me in my current situation. Still need a lot of thinking and reflection on it for me to unpack what it means. The seminars this time round were really good since they are drawing on the key phrase from Esther "for such a time as this" for this year. I also watched ABC's Q&A program where they had a debate between Richard Dawkins and the archbishop George Pell as a follow up from Belgrave. George did a decent job at shaking Richard's arguments off but he stepped on a couple of pretty deadly landmines. Could have been better.

But when I do get back at my own issues, it's been tough trying to think about it. To the one person who talked to me about it, thank you for listening to all my rubbish talk. I still feel like shit but I thank you for making me feel slightly better even if it was only for a short period of time. More importantly, I appreciate your boldness, something that I think I find lacking in my current circles. I wish more people are like that, myself not sparing.

This is turning out to be harder than I initially project it to be. I am trying to muster every ounce of restrain to not act like an ass. And I don't think I am handling this particularly well. This might take awhile.

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This is just genius. My brain can barely process how wonderfully crazy this is. Perfect reminder.