the thing about dogs is..

they'll love you no matter what.

they smell better too.

:D

the thing about girls is..

it's not like we actually want the boys anyway.

we just like the attention.

:D

the thing about guys is..

me: first they shower you with attention, then they make you emotionally dependent on them, and when that's done, they disappear as quickly as they had appeared, leaving you wondering what the hell just happened..

a: at the beginning of a relationship, the guy is more insecure than the girl, hence he'll do anything for the girl lah...but once he thinks he's gotten her, then he'll start feeling more secure, then he'll stop showering her with affection, then the girl's turn to start feeling insecure pulak...

damnation.

:D

i think i'll go get me a dog. :)

actions and what they mean

it's not that i chose to do what i did. it's more like a natural outcome of who i am. i can't make myself do something while feeling as though i'm seriously compromising me. and if i did force myself, it'd be so pretentious you wouldn't want that anyway, would you? so there..i feel like i'm caught in a no-brainer situation. on the one hand, i could pretend and it'd seem like everything's dine and fandies but inside i'd be dying. on the other hand, i could do what i really wanna do and you might not like that at all but it'd be me and it'd be better than living a lie. so there.

bizzario

found out that 20-20 at church tonight was cancelled and i didn't even know about it. good thing i met luke in school. :D

hitting the library now. i wonder what'll happen later. i live these days in anticipation of the magical. *wink

noon notes

i just came back from my dv400 revision class and boy do i have loads of revision to do. :(
sigh.

hehhh...

i guess this is where i start working even though i'm hardly inspired by keynesian economics and growth theories.

i think inside, i'm indian. but if i'm indian then i'd like economics. i don't hate it, i just find it incredibly boring and tiresome. :)

my tutor's so cute though. :D with sideburns wan. HAHAHAa.

feel like skipping french. it starts in 5 minutes. maybe i'lll just go late or something. argh.

ok ok. relax relax. maybe i shud go sleep.

notes from dawn

im in the library. slept at 12 (super early) and woke up at 2 (cos that's my usual waking hour). tried to go back to sleep but was tossing and turning. gave up at 4 something, took shower, ate chicken and yoghurt and now im here. studying. :D (or not)

it's the second day of summer term. handed in first assessed essay yesterday. kinda nuts about my dissertation, still having trouble pinning down the research question. and then there's the exam prep.. which isn't so difficult i guess but i do wanna do well.. :) ahhh for wisdom!

god's been so good, as always. :D

sister is in amsterdam right now probably eating some magic mushroom cookies. but she'll be back later. woohooo. we walked from drury lane to tower bridge along the river thames and back some time last week. took us two hours, from 12:15 - 2am.. some 8km altogether. and i know the names of all the bridges from waterloo to tower: waterloo, blackfriars, millenium, southwark, cannon street railway bridge, london bridge, tower bridge. :D i dont even know why im writing this here.

anyways, am feeling so blessed beyond belief.. good friends, good food, magical moments (even if oswald chambers said in his reading today that we gotta work anyway even if we're not inspired... :D) and just enough money in the bank to keep me going. :)

oh, a song that was oh so inspiring which i heard in church and been replaying on my ipod ever since:

"Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky
and You know them by name
You are amazing God

All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees
as we humbly proclaim,
you are amazing God

Incomparable, unchangeable
You see the depths of my heart
and You love me the same
You are amazing God
You are amazing God.."

"Indescribable", by Chris Tomlin

super duper love. :D

Letter to Home

Dear Aunty ***,

I meant to write you earlier but keep forgetting!! I am well. Preparing for exams in a month's time while finishing up term essays and dissertation proposals due in 10 days. I'm in the midst of a 3,000 word essay. I've written 1,000 words so far. :) Gail was here a few days ago but she's now in Portugal visiting a friend (female:) whom she met while on camp in America last summer. Since portugal is a catholic country, good friday and easter are celebrated with much fanfare and so she left with plans of going up this mountain with her friends before dawn on Easter sunday for a sunrise service. hehee.. Me, on the other hand, will be stuck here in good old London, which isn't too bad a proposition i guess. Will be going to church at westminster chapel and then having an easter meal with some friends. Was so tempted to jump with her on the plane to portugal, if only the balance in my bank account was more agreeable. :)

oh i got accepted into the phd program in anthropology here starting this september. However, i'm still rather undecided about it and am keeping my options open for other schools. Although lse is pretty intellectually stimulating, yet the english system basically leaves you to your own devices most of the time and i think i prefer some sort of close mentoring, especially when it comes to undertaking such a long term project. So i'm setting my sights on Australia and the States as well..:D There's also the question of funding. i did apply for the usm fellowship program, but i have mixed feelings about the idea of being bonded for seven years teaching in usm. While it would be good to settle down and be near the old folks, i still haven't quite achieved my quest for world domination. heheh. no i'm kidding. i could live in penang and i would be quite happy at home.. but it all seems too clear cut and somehow i can't shrug off the feeling that there could be more out there. so we'll see.. :)

The days are longer with summer coming up and it isn't so cold now. It has been a rather long winter apparently. i can't wait for the time when i can walk out of the building in flip flops and shorts. London is so pretty and colourful in the spring sunlight.. i enjoy walking in the parks especially on the way to church.. ducks, daffodils and cherry blossoms erasing the dreariness of winter. :D so lovely.

As of now, I'm planning to go home in mid-July for summer.. i miss Asia. England and europe is too sterile for me, despite all its comforts and conveniences. i think i've had enough of post-enlightenment culture. My manglish, malay and tagalog are getting rusty.

But, as you are probably aware, everything is quite subject to change when it comes to me. To be honest, i'm not too bothered.. am trusting God to open up opportunities for where he wants me to be. Perhaps i should be more concerned, but i'm not. hehhh. At any rate, don't worry and I'll keep you guys informed!


Love to all,

grace.

three memorable happenings

today, I.. (or rather, yesterday)

1. celebrated my first sader (Jewish passover) organized by my neighbour, E, downstairs in the common room. Around 30 of us - different nationalities, religions and ethnicity - reclined on our cushioned sofas while reciting and reminiscing the psalms, songs and stories of how the Eternal One delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt. It was quite the experience.. especially the part where we poured a cup of wine for Elijah and stood up to welcome him in. :) Oh, one more thing.. great food. :) nothing much can beat chocoloate coated macaroons and braised beef.. eaten separately of course. :D

2. wrote the introduction to my 3000-word assessed essay on poverty and it is lookin good. :D I'm starting with shakespeare and ending with harun al-rashid, with a bit of einstein in the middle. God, help me, help me.

3. got engrossed in edward said's book "reflections of exile" today at the library. Good stuff i ordered myself a copy from amazon.co.uk. A quote that he quoted:

"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his."
Hugo of St. Victory, a twelfth-century monk from Saxony.

What he meant by the perfect man estinguishing his love, was that he now looks at every new place in a fresh way full of possibilities, without carrying with him the baggage of some nostalgic dream of "home" to compare and contrast his new land with. :) cool eh.

said is da bomb. and he writes so clearly as well! just too bad he's dead.

hero

Can you win battles without wounds? Scars are the true mark of a hero.

Can he who follow have no wounds, no scars? Should not the way of the servant be as the way of the Master?

i should use flickr but does it matter? :)

me and d, with henna on my hair and dripping... :D

joel lying on grass and sighing

found the end of the rainbow while cycling with ayu and joel at cam. :) the pot of gold was the moment itself :)

tea and scones

me so fat! :) diet starts tomorrow!!

some more pictures

joel, giving music to ayu's love song

sculpture of jesus, at salisbury cathedral

i love my london buses

So these are what humbugs look like. finally, after reading about them in enid blyton and biggles storybooks, i have a substantial image to take over where imagination previously ruled

welcome to scotland :)

some pictures

cakes at borough market.. thoroughly fattening.

me, before the haircut

ayu, writing a malay love song :D (It's true!!!)

me and lee, the night i made him a farewell turkey sandwich after he woke me up to say goodbye before flying off to the states for good

me at stonehenge. wonder what the fuss is all about. just a bunch of stones. :D

new weblog entry

wow i just realized i entered only three posts in March. No wonder my ratings are down. I'm kidding, I have no ratings. So for those who faithfully check up on me, this is a summary of what I've been up to lately:

1. I'm now on easter vacation. Five weeks of bliss and it's entering week three and I still haven't revised for my exams but here the holiday ends. Two weeks of gallivanting is more than enough I assure you. On Tuesday after Ayu leaves, I will hit the books. :D

2. I got accepted into the lse phd program. woohooo.. but no funding just yet so those of you who'd like to invest in my education, drop me an email. I'm still looking for money though and am quite sure that it'll turn up. And if it doesn't, i'll still believe the best is yet to come.

3. My exams are in May and June. I'm thinking of going home for summer for a bit, especially if I'll return here in september for next term. Don't know yet. So many plans, don't know how.

4. I am settled at a church, finally. It's called westminster chapel and it's near westminster abbey, parliment cathedral and the westminster methodist center. lol. And st. james park. Groovy music, lepak people, power message and intimate gatherings.. what more could i ask for? and, a good friend who lives in my building goes there too. AND, it's within walking distance through one of the prettiest parks in London. :)

5. Two friends and I drove from lancaster to scotland through the highlands and along the coast. it's b-e-a-u-tiful. I think i now understand a little more why Braveheart and Rob Roy would fight and die for their country.

6. I saw Phantom of the Opera the musical with J. totally groovy.

7. My sister's coming to visit next week. *groan* hehehhe.. :D

8. My dissertation topic got approved and I met with a member of the faculty who gave me great advice for a topic not written about much. hallelujahhhh!!! haha.

9. I have three essays to write. I just wrote one. I now have two more. It's some volunteer work which can be so uninspiring sometimes. But sometimes just gotta plod on no? :P

10. Oh and I have one graded term paper to write. I think I'll work on that Tuesday. Time flies. Unbelievable. sigh.

chocolate

"I love how the Gospels start, with John the Baptist eating bugs and baptizing people. The religious people started getting baptized because it had become popular, and John yells at them and calls them snakes. He says the water won't do anything for them, it will only get their snakeskins wet. But if they meant it, if they had faith that Jesus was coming and was real, then Jesus would ignite the kingdom life within them. I love that because for so long religion was my false gospel. But there was no magic in it, no wonder, no awe, no kingdom life burning in my chest. And when I get tempted by that same stupid Christian religion, I go back to the beginning of the Gospels and am comforted that there is something more than the emptiness of ritual. God will ignite the kingdom life within me, the Bible says. That's mysticism. It isn't a formula that I am figuring out. It is something God does."

Blue Like Jazz, donald miller

woohooo.. :)

fancy smanchy cambridge

:)

It is very pretty here. Went punting on the river with J, Ayu and D. Man that was tiring and scary, especially when D almost fell into the river. The funniest part was when this other boat hit our boat, and its punter fell backwards, not into the river, but into another boat that came up behind them. Hilarious. At least he didn't fall into the water.. that would have been quite something, as it's still a little chilly outside. :)

J is as lawak as ever. Seeing him in default surroundings sure revealed stuff about him that we somehow suspected but never did quite confirm, till now. "I see your true colours.. shining through".. and that's why i love you. la lalala... hahah.

but when all's said and done, i still think lse is da bomb in terms of facilities (fantastic), frills (minimal but enough to create some form of "tradition" with which comes along again, some form of school spirit), convenience (it takes 5 minutes to get from one end of the "campus" to the other), location (london at my fingertips), quality (well..it isn't too bad, really) and people (the whole world is at lse). I couldn't think of any other place where I would be happier in England than in good old London. :)

ok so enough raving and that's about as school-spirty as I'll ever get.

***

Here's something I read from J's book called "Blue Like Jazz", wherein the author donald miller akins following Jesus to jazz. His preface reads: "I never liked jazz music before because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the BAgdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. but that was before any of this happened."

That being enough to grab my attention, I just had to leaf through the book. Now this guy, he writes with magic. :)

On Worship - The Mysitcal Wonder
I read a book a long time ago about Mother Teresa. Somebody in the book asked her how she summoned the strength to love so many people. She said she loved people becasue they are Jesus, each one of them is Jesus, and this is true because it says so in the Bible. And it is also true that this idea contradicts the facts of reality: Everybody can't be Jesus. There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. But I think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don't make sense to our heads. Love, for instance; we believe in love. Beauty. Jesus as God.

It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality, or it would not be reasonable.

When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe. Eternity, for example, is not something the human mind can understand. We may be able to wrap our heads around living forever (and we can do this only because none of us has experienced death), but can we understand what it means to have never been born? I only say this to illustrate that we, as Christians, believe things we cannot explain. And so does everybody else.

I have a friend who is a seminary student who criticizes certain Christian writers for embracing what he calls "mysticism". I asked him if his statement meant that he was not a mystic. Of course not, he told me. I asked him if he believed in the Trinity. He said he did. I asked him if he belived that the Trinity represented three separate persons who are also one. He said he did. I asked him if that would be considered a mystical idea. He just stood there thinking.

You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.

I was talking to a homeless man at a laundry mat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to math we defile the Holy. I thoguht that was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at math. Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.

:)