ABS

Today is one of the days I actually experienced the "After-Break Syndrome". The one where you get very drowsy after a heavy meal.

Probably because of my quiet office environment (I'm contributing to the noise pollution now by typing on my loud keyboard). I was worse than a snail for the next 30 minutes after my lunch time. Goodness!

hUrt

The first sign of growing up is getting hurt.

And the tiny gesture really hURt me. I was left there sitting like a fool.

I did - some rock

On this lonely Wednesday night, some blogger decided that he had nothing to do, so...

Time Crisis

My movie tickets are SO gonna expire!

Hmm

So, time to hit the cinema again... Stephen Chow's CJ7 looks quite promising. The cute lil' critter... see already also wanna watch.

Sure beats some other movie banking on a certain musician's fame and some stupid unethical Gongfu sports (read: Foul play) storyline.

~

Today I started work at NUS. Today I had Japanese food for lunch again.

Today I worked like a snail 'cause of the unfamiliar workflow (Oi first day LEH!). The environment was conducive though. Everyone's quiet and undisruptive. And when they are, they're talking jokes.

Heroes 2

Heroes 2 was a breeze compared to the previous season.

Granted, it was a much shorter one (11 episodes as compared to the 21 in Season 1), but the pace of the story took on a gentler approach... both in the nature of the crisis (the virus outbreak as compared to the previous "exploding man") and character development.

Some people say the 2nd season is boring and others say it doesn't make much sense. Well I had to admit that it was nothing that could take me to the edge of my seat, but nothing too shabby either. Just that it was over before I knew it.

P.S. A visit to the Heroes NBC website revealed that about half the cast of main characters are musicians. Wow! And Masi Oka works for ILM!

Take - The - Time

Take The Time - Dream Theater

Just let me catch my breath
I've heard the promises
I've seen the mistakes
I've had my fair share of tough breaks
I need a new voice, a new law, a new way
Take the time, re-evaluate
It's time to pick up the pieces, go back to square one
I think it's time for a CHANGE!

There is something that I feel
To be something that is real
I feel the heat within my mind
And craft new changes with my eyes
Giving freely wandering promises
A place with decisions I'll fashion
I won't waste another breath.

*LOTS of guitar*

[Chorus]
You can feel the waves coming on
(It's time to take the time)
Let them destroy you or carry you on
(It's time to take the time)
You're fighting the weight of the world
But no one can save you this time
Close your eyes
You can find all you need in your mind

The unbroken spirit
Obscured and disquiet
Finds clearness this trial demands
And at the end of this day sighs an anxious relief
For the fortune lies still in his hands

If there's pensive fear, a wasted year
A man must learn to cope
If his obsession's real
Suppression that he feels must turn to hope

Life is no more assuring than love
(It's time to take the time)
There are no answers from voices above
(It's time to take the time)
You're fighting the weight of the world
And no one can save you this time
Close your eyes
You can find all you need in your mind

I close my eyes
And feel the water rise around me
Drown the beat of time
Let my senses fall away
I can see much clearer now I'm blind

~

Well... I guess in this week of an overdose of freedom, I kind of realised one thing, or rather, this nagging idea in my mind recieves a new confirmation - that having no time is really just a self-illusion.

There's actually a lot of time in any day, and the reason why time gets spent so fruitlessly comes from telling myself "I have no time for this anyway".

I have all the time in the world, and I can take the time to live life. I have to, in order to really live.

Tension in real life

The power of what some call "unresolved tension".

LOL... I guess it all comes from the very simple human nature called Curiosity. Curiosity over the future, over possibilities.

One day if there's a chance at trying this foreign cuisine you've heard about for years... and the chance slipped by, you'll find yourself craving for the first try even more. You want it, you want it and you WANT IT!!! Why? Erm...

God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit (yeah that fruit), and it took only a simple suggestion from the serpent to just have a try at it. Yeah that simple act of "disobedience" sort of caused humans to "fall". But who can blame them? That's not just a simple fist-sized fruit, but a ton of "what ifs". A galaxy of it, even.

~

I recently watched this film "Dan In Real Life", and far from being the simple family film I expected, I was brought through a rather fierce battle with unresolved tension.

OK put it in a simple way... you meet a lady during some random bookstore visit. You sort of hit it off, and exchanged numbers. Lady's attached, but it's a fair game isn't it?

Not quite! She turned out to be attached - to your brother.

And during this big family gathering, you had all the chance in the world to see her face everyday. Pinch.

And see her getting intimate with your brother. More pinch.

All could have been forgotten if, say, you procrastinated in giving her a call after parting at the bookstore. But this girl is now under the same roof as you, and you clearly see that she cannot be yours, as if she herself held up a signboard with that statement or something.

That's only at your level. She herself showed visible signs of - is that the word - wanting you as well!

Dai Pinch!!!

And she's not happy when you tried hooking up with that other lady, clearly just for the sake of it.

And then you had to go and sing that love song for her!

I won't say much about the ending, just that I didn't emerge from the theatre bulldogging about sad sad singlehood. Nuff said.

"I love her. I love her I LOVE HER!" - Dan

Well that might have been love... given their personality it wasn't surprising that they attracted each other. I was rooting for them throughout the entire show, in fact. Ultimately, still, I had to admit that it was the tension - that carrot-before-donkey kind of setting - that amplified the desire so much more.

~

Unresolved tension is indeed powerful, but it's never a promise, only a suggestion. Never an answer, only the question.

The girl you might have gotten to know more,

marry, and divorce.

The gadget you could have purchased before it went out of production,

and then give it a 0.5 star rating 'cause of its lack of functions...

After all, life never did turn out quite as expected, did it?

Such tensions are still, in the end, best to be addressed. I say that as I've seen the monsters which unaddressed emotions and issues can evolve into.

But...

I still believe that being a man means knowing how to say "No".

Anyway, I'm nodding off now, but it's been a good evening. Or morning. Or "--------inggggg".

Feeling less emo now. More relieved. The power of conversations. Wow.

Re-birth pains

I'm glad, somehow, that I have the previlege of getting in touch with my friends' lives through blogsurfing... beats going on for hours around totally unrelated sites anytime.

Most of us, in the prime of our youth, in our growing pains, are facing problems by the day... getting disillusioned and frustrated with things, people, situations and systems, or maybe just pissed that today really WASN'T your day.

With a tinge of regret.

More than a few of us out there are in the process of self-discovery, maturity, integration, actualisation, whatever-you-call-it... and no one can really merely dismiss us for whining.

There're a few facing the exact problems as mine, and I really wish I can talk more with them about... life? Some self-help group like the "Alcoholics Anonymous"?

"Hi, I'm Isaiah and I'm a social disaster."

Haha.

One writer I've been reading recently applauded the use of the term "Inner Child" for our subconscious mind. It's really like a child, like a spoilt brat, calling out for more, more and more. For people like me it's my inferior complex. Some people would try to help... try to get you to stop listening to the I.C. Others will show you contempt and put you down, and no thanks for that.

I really can't express my thanks more for even the slightest encouragement.

Hmm.

Been reading C.S. Lewis' takes on how putting one's focus on Heaven makes more than a few Christians trailblazers and history makers. While I totally agree with his views and hold them in high esteem, I realised the stark contrast between the period of time (Sec 4) when I was totally immersed in my faith and my wild fantasies (in a good sense) about the coming eternal life, and the present time where I rarely set my focus on the Kingdom and instead worry myself over issues like singlehood (very often) and ended up crying out to God about singlehood being "worse than death".

Don't get me wrong. My faith in Christ is real, and I totally believe in justification by faith, and the like. What I realised about myself is that while still being the person I was during my conversion (childish, introverted, self-centred, etc.), I put all the attention on my faith (which isn't a bad thing in itself at all) but neglected self-development.

Though I shuddered after reading the accounts of what I'll call "loners-in-Christ" (total hermits I-don't-know-what-you're-doing-all-these-time-praying-at-home" kind of people), I realised that they might have been people who interacted and immersed themselves in society enough, and mature enough to decide for themselves the lives they wanted to live (though I really can't agree with the "no secular books and music" part). Me? I was all against being a Medieval monk myself, but the "alternative activities" I engaged in were nonetheless done alone.

I don't blame my faith, as it clearly encourages me to get to know people more (Phillipians 2:4), but I always kept it as a desire in my heart, and surprisingly I was able to face myself and God guiltless when I clearly haven't adressed this desire.

And while recieving my encouragements and guidance from God's word regularly I didn't give myself a chance at self-discovery, a chance at trying very hard and failing. Yes, they say the Bible is a mirror that tells you the stuff you need to know about yourself, but I clearly couldn't know much if I spent the time all alone.

Now that I'm trying to expose myself to the world I don't want to forget the source of my spiritual nourishment. That's about my whole point.

I will still whine to God and people about my current state, and I concede that some of my very atheist readers (actually I'm talking about only one person) wouldn't even read beyond the first half of my post, and that I'll make even more emo posts after this. However, all of you who can figure out my unspoken prayers and are helping me, really, thanks.

What goes from here?

ORD loh!

Finally it's my turn... besides being relieved that I have a good replacement (stop worrying, Chris!) and also that my office can finally have some quiet (:P), I was also quite touched by the ORD messages (for recorded messages, that was the first in the office, I think!) and the gift...

A Behringer XENYX 802 mixer

Very grateful for the grading too. If not anything else, it's you guys giving me a fresh start.

Other things are better left unsaid, else it defeats the purpose.

Anyway, the initial taste of freedom (read: unemployment) was good, but for a review on the first free working day, I'd say I can sleep a bit less. Freedom is bondage, and bondage is freedom.

After I've set my stuff in order (when was the last time I tidied up my house?) and unearthed my JC lecture notes in Chemistry, I'll then go back to contributing economically to my country. Until then!

Battle of the Keys (from Youtube)

I . don't . know . what . to . say

Earworm

Nowadays I like to listen to one song just repeatedly.

The last few weeks was Z Chen's 重返寂寞 ("Back to Loneliness"). There's a lyric inside I really like a lot.

若命运只想拿个梦 敷衍我太长的等候
那大可不用美丽到让我 以为这次心动会有什么

I just love the way it brings out the disappointment of someone in the wait.

Now it's Jay Chou's 我不配 ("I'm Not Worthy"). I love the tune, but I don't exactly like the interlude (Mi Do Ti So Mi La is so common!) and his gibberish pronunciation isn't helping either.

But it's still playing on my computer now for the past n times.

Amazing

It's amazing how I can not take care of my own emotions and be so self-centred, at the same time.

Pricey discovery

An article on My Paper caught my attention today.

A research in some institute in California shows that the same kind of wine with, different price tags on, tends to induce different levels of pleasure in the drinker. Same taste, at a "higher price", results in even a higher activity in the brain's pleasure centre, detectable by brain scans.

Wow.

I myself have come to see that everything is really value for money... in clothes and devices for everyday use. Greater price means greater effort put in engineering and styling, study of the market, etc. , basically everything behind the launch of a product.

But do I, on certain occasions of looking for quality, fall into the trap of equating price to quality? There are things that one cannot save money on, but are there times when I simply let the price tag do the talking?

Imba

It felt like a suicide attempt. Jon and I were just having fun playing badminton when we suddenly had this crazy idea of playing doubles. Against Dad and his friend.

Those who come regularly might have an idea of the prowess of Dad & company.

So the passers-by got to see more than pure power-packed action from the court smack in the middle of the sports hall. They got to see the camaraderie, the fighting spirit, the sweaty smiles of 2 Spartan shuttlers, who got so elated after breaking the 5-point (OK now we sound really pathetic) barrier. Of course, the ratio of the scores was too inhumane for publishing.

The Real Threefold Amen

On a lighter note, this morning during service I was sitting beside Danny. At the end of the service when we were singing the Threefold Amen (basically "Amen" x 3), and Danny started harmonising the higher part (he's from worship team after all), and seeing that I started to harmonise the lower part together with him, so with the main melody it really became 3 vocal parts. The guy sitting in front of us 还真有耳福！

Fresh

I guess when people say they want to have a fresh start, I always thought that it could be done easily.

And I never thought of myself needing to start afresh anytime in my life until I was made to ask myself "Where can I go from here, in this shape?"

Learning so much about my flaws and acknowledging them is one thing... I can't do this alone.

Friends around me that are so used to the submissive pushover that I was... it takes a whole lot of personality makeover for me to actually bring this message across that I want to start taking care of myself from now on. But for now I can really use some support.

Ja.

Yatta De Arimasu!

Goodness...

I was watching Heroes out of curiosity (Jon was introducing it to everyone) and also wanting to see Hiro Nakamura do his trademark "Yatta!". To my amazement, when the camera cuts into his office (Heroes fans would probably recognise the clock), I caught a glance of...

"Kero?"

I really was quite shocked.