Drained

Sigh, feel so inadequate sometimes. I guess i need to rant it out.. Had cg just now and i went for centralised bible study last night, which is supposed to be a class to prepare the cell group leaders for bible study within the cell group. Technically, i'm not the cell group leader but i attended the bible study. It was interesting to know the history in the OT but to actually comprehend it, i find it difficult. Well, during cg just now, prarthi asked me to answer the questions, kind of purposely la cuz she knows i went for bible study beforehand and may help her in starting up the discussion but i realised i couldn't articulate it, which means i did not fully understand the bible study. I copied down the answers but i guess i'm more like robotically taking down answers rather than understanding the whole picture. This applies to studies as well, i just want the easy and fast way. To be one of the leaders in pgp vcf, i find it quite shameful to have such shallow knowledge. Honestly speaking, i was quite embarrassed when i stuttered while trying to answer the questions. I felt quite bad la, going for centralised bible study but not contributing during cg. Then i get worried how people will judge me and stuff. I stepped out centralised bible study last night having this one thought that i'm feeling so uber inadequate to handle this. Even when we discussed our thoughts amongst the cell group leaders that attended bible study, i would feel my answers are all heading in the different directions from the rest, then i chose to keep my thoughts to myself. Yea, i know, this is bad. Towards the middle i think i started to feel a little out of place then i started to lose track. I am not saying that i did not enjoyed the bible study, just feeling inadequate when seated with the staff worker and the other CGLs. Yes, i know i have repeated the word inadequate many times but that is how i am feeling right now.

These few days have been quite emotionally draining, inadequacy aside, i guess there is some personal issues which takes up more and more of my thoughts. I kno

w it is very ambiguous but let's just keep it that way.

But all in all, keeping aside the negative thoughts, i'm fine lah actually. it is a good time to start exploring the bible, especially the OT and hopefully next round i'll do a better job :)

Goodbye my friends :( btw, the pic below with diana, if you realised, i editted away my chicken pox scar on my chest. So this is how i would look like without it.....

Loved

It's 11.21pm and i should be catching up with studies. econs so many graphs!! i guess i was taking this too lightly when i thought that econs is all about law of supply and demand. yikes. i may need my bro's help :O

Anyway, i thought that i might take a short time to summarize my awesome 21st birthday. muahaha. well, just like i said on facebook, really a HUGE thank you to those who played a part in making this so awesome. those who texted, fb-ed, who were too shy to wish me in public and said a small wish in their hearts instead, hahah. THANK YOU! orz *bows* i feel absolutely blessed to have people to celebrate with me although i am here in this foreign country.

It all started on wednesday night.

I knew it the moment when verene texted me to teach her science of music. Come on man, teach you science of music??? hahahh. Good try anyway. Better than the one i used on her - 'Can i get milo from you'. That was the worst excuse ever. The whole night i had butterflies in my stomach, too excited i guess. hahah, really! Then they finally came with the cake. Verene had to call me to press the lift for them. -.- hahah. surprise!! Verene, verene... now you know how hard it is to plan a surprise birthday celebration. Cannot beat your one lah. Surprise at the toilet. hehe.

The next day, wai san kindly treated me megabites :) plus a piece of chocolate truffles. Verene joined along. A simple meal but with great company.

I never thought that my fst friends would celebrate for me. hahah. This one is a bit of a surprise. After i finished my lab session, i realised shing yee was trying to stall me and i kinda knew they prepared something for me. hehe. Pam, kar hui and gaby baked banana cake for me! The way they assembled the cake was very interesting! I get to set up my own cake man! hahah. So fun right. Everything was homemade, including the chocolate sauce and the caramel. One thing i felt bad was that we had to celebrate in a rush cuz i have to meet wan ning and the rest at orchard.

I am really glad they came down to singapore. I'm not going to go in details about the stuff we did cuz there were too many!

Some highlights:

Universal studios - pon lecture for this :p but it's all worth it!

Sitting along the street in bugis drinking koi, observing people along the street, guessing is it called KOI or 豆.

I finally learnt how to play monopoly deal!! Very interesting indeed.

HTHT all the way until 5am. Our so called "talk show". hahah.

Practically wandering along the streets in singapore, stranded on the singapore street, had to call verene for help but in the end cabbing solves all trouble.

And sunday, my cg celebrated my birthday at simon's place. Played gift trap and a game invented by shu may. So it goes like this, you are suppose to choose an alphabet and later on, shu may will reveal the question you are supposed to answer related to the alphabet you chose. So i chose Y in the first round and someone chose R for me in the next round. My first question was 'What is the one thing you said YES to God' and the second was 'What do you do when you REST'. After we knew how the game goes, the guys won't choose G and the girls won't choose B. haha. And i got a bag for my present! yay! Am looking for a new bag so this meet my need. Actually i chose it lah. Clara called to ask whether i want dress or bag. heh.

And lastly, last night prarthi baked brownies for me and we had it after cg. Very thoughtful of her :) Although she kept apologizing for the crumbled part when she tried cutting the brownies, but IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS! And it tasted great!

Twas a fabulous birthday :D the end.

Moonlight bathing

Jogging under the moonlight is nice! This is my first time running the track and the feeling is not bad at all! :D

And another camp!

Off to YA camp tomorrow! I am bad with packing. I think I took a good 2 hours to pack! haha. Purposely went to buy mask today. Apparently, there will be a girly bonding session in the camp and I received a sms from clara saying my group is the nail polish-mask-cornflake-icecream session. This is so not me! hahah.

Hence, the mask I bought. I bought a tube one, quite expensive if you convert to ringgit but I thought might as well buy a one that suits me and can be use in the future instead of those 2 dollars packet mask. Actually it was quite a hurry cuz it slipped from my mind and it only came across my mind at the very last minute. So I quickly went to guardian and scanned through everything that has a 'mask' word on it. At first, I thought a beauty advisor would help to save time. Wrong, totally wrong! That lady kept on promoting her product and when I asked about the price - 60dollars.

FORGET IT.

After 15 minutes of hunting, I spotted a pore cleansing one, okay finally what I wanted, grabbed it, pay! I was slightly stressed cuz I have a friend waiting and I was really paiseh to keep her waiting although I know she would not mind that much.

SO, I got what I needed and now, a good night rest and to prepare my heart for camp!

On the side note, Singaporeans just love acronyms.

1. ikr

What is IKR??

I know rightttttttt.

2. ttm

":(((((((( ttm...."

What is TTM?

To the maxxxxxx.

I have to google 'ikr meaning' and 'ttm meaning' to find out -.- But this is interesting and I believe there are more for me to discover. haha.

Adios!

I want to be a koala

Guess who designed this? :p Okay, it is not awesome and I am sure anyone on the street can come out with a cooler design than this. But I am glad it is done now. Could not upload the back print of the design though. Anyway, it is just a map of the location and some directions. Honestly, I am not thoroughly happy with what I came out, as you can see some parts are senget and the fonts could be way better but it is the effort that counts rite. You know what is the most tedious part? The colouring. Blame myself for not being IT savvy. No doubt if I use photoshop, this can be finished in half an hour. I still feel awkward seeing this design projected out during church service. Feeling paiseh.

Yay to my first design! I hope the design DO get people coming! cuz I am worried it is going to turn out otherwise!

On the side note, I bought my UNIQLO jacket, red. I am relying on it to keep me warm during lectures, in libraries and in exam hall! :)

Post camp

Camp was energy draining! But in a positive way :) I really thank God for a bunch of super enthusiastic group members. This makes being an OGL (orientation group leader) less stressful.

This is my first time volunteering as an OGL. Although i could have prepared and done more (was pretty busy the few days before camp so i didn't really read up the devotion materials and do some mental preparation. Please don't learn from me), but overall the experience was great!

I only met my co-leader, Charmaine on the first day itself. She is definitely better in socialising than i do. So, she is always the one filling in the silent gaps during group time. For me, I prefer one-to-one talk instead of group talk. I just feel more comfortable in that way. Oh yea, we called her Princess Jasmine - the one in Aladdin. Could be the eyes of hers, really exotic middle-east-ish eyes.

I realise our group did not face any trouble about members being shy. I even think that I am the most shy among them all! -.- apa OGL ini. Alright, when it comes to preparing a skit or presentation, I am not that kind of person who has lots of creative juices flowing out. The skit, the bonding games on the first day, the heart-to-heart-talk (HTHT) questions and topics were all contributed by my members!

On a personal note, i think my heart feels for those who are the quieter ones in the group. Maybe I am like that too? hehe. There was this petite freshman guy Clement who was really quiet. FYI, he is only 40kg, imagine that. I wonder how he survived through army. I was afraid that he felt out of place in our group, especially when everyone was so responsive. But as the days passed, I can see him open up more and more. He even shared his life-changing experience with us - how a hardcore gamer transformed into a guy who totally overcame that addiction, something which I am very happy to hear about.

Though sometimes there are moments where I could not really understand the things they were talking about, such as Singapore issues, which obviously I do not know a single thing about. But it was interesting also to listen to their experience, especially army :)

Hoping for a good day ahead! Meeting Stephanie later to seek advise. Please please please make it a fruitful one.

Updates

Latest update: I found a job at the chinese library as a student assistant. Since there is not much to do in the orientation due to the small numbers of freshmen, I were not much involved in their activities. So for the past one week i was actually more occupied with my CF stuff. Funny right, I came back early planning to help out in the malaysian orientation, but it turned out that I was more involved in CF stuff. Alright, back to the job at the chinese library. It was quite unexpected how I got this job.

The story was, since we never landed our feet in the chinese library, my friend suggested we visit that place and at the same time borrow some books to kill time. So there we were, overwhelmed by the number of CHINESE books and jakun-ing about the japanese books there. Well, it is called chinese library but somehow, you can find japanese books there. Then, while we were waiting at the counter to borrow our books, the lady just asked whether we were interested in working part-time. Being quite desperate for something to do to make the early trip back more worthwhile, there is no reason to say no. Ptl, God knows I need this. haha. 6dollars per hour is not exactly a lot but I guessed it's sufficient to thrill me. The taste of working and earning money. Although there are jobs around uni which offer higher pay like 8dollars per hour. Then said, I must be contented with what I was provided. So, yeah :)

The job was so-so lah. Not really exciting. But the aunty was really nice. Brought us to tour around the library, to other places not accessible by students. What I did today was tagging the old books, basically old (really really old) school magazines. Very simple, just shift the books using a trolley to the comp, scan it and tag it. Yes, simple! But imagine doing this for 7 hours O_O haha.

VCF freshmen orientation camp is next monday! Looking at the schedule, there's a lot of group time, which means bonding time between the group members. The add on, the wonderful thing is, I volunteered as the group LEADER! Plus I have yet to meet my co-leader. To lead, facilitate, create bondedness within the group. This is going to be a huge task for me. But yeah, as someone said before, if you're uncomfortable with the situation you're in right now, then you're doing fine, on the right track. However, if you're feeling comfy and chillax, then something is wrong. So, I think what I'm feeling now is normal.. (?) I shall not say much about FOC, I will leave it til camp ends then only I update whether miracles happened and whether I did a fantastic job. haha.

A few things in mind:

1. Call up the remaining 2 group members tomorrow morning.

2. Thank God I managed to come out with a design (hand-drawn woohoo! what to do, me no IT savvy) for young adults evangelistic meeting. I'm glad they 收货 la cuz I was quite concern my design looks unappealing to them. Since they like it, I am happy.

3. Finish up budget tomorrow! Deadline on Sunday.

4. Go cook my ba zheng and go sleep. Exceeded my sleep time advised by doctor, which is 12.

5. I need to constantly run through all the things i need to do cuz i scared i forgettttt.

6. Yes, pass my chem notes to charlotte

I'm expecting to tire myself out after saturday. Since I'll be in sentosa for the whole sunday (have to leave at 5, 6am!!!) and monday is camp, til thursday. SO, all the best to me.