everything in
it's right place

but i've decided to drop the topic. arguing against your beliefs never do work. and of course, christianity in itself is 'the better story'. that's a reference to yann martel's book; having hope in something is better than having no hope at all. my religious life is one of those cycle, round and round things. like a sine wave (or cosine wave, whatever) that just goes on and on. and for now, that'll have to do.

i've decided to go on another of those determined bouts of bible study again. the last time i did that, it sort of turned out quite well. so i can at least understand what on earth it's really about.

also gonna start studying chemistry and some basic math again. i'm starting at easy a levels stuff first and hopefully by the end of the year i'll remember most of my organic chem. it's amazing how i can't remember a single thing related to academic work. not even the basic quadratic root or whatever formula! the x = b+- dunno what lah.

i'm too lazy to blog today lah. bah bah bahbahbah sldjfsdflkk,...,njj.....

ok i dunno why i've gone mad recently but i've been talking a lot of nonsense. hahahaha. sorry (should i be saying sorry?).

went to sonicfest yesterday, which was a christian music festival at fort canning park featuring local and international bands like planetshakers, sonic flood and surreal. the place was beautiful (i've not been there before, save for those primary school excursions). however i didn't really like most of the music. from a general point of view, i think christian music should be able to convey a message, a evangelical message. otherwise it would just be deemed as rock, or pop, or dance or whatever genre you want to call it. it would just be spewing out your own thoughts, feelings. and most of the local bands - i just don't understand what kind of music they are trying to create. i wouldn't really call it music. but not to digress from the topic...

back to sonicfest. i don't think anybody besides a christian would've gone by himself, unless he was dragged along by another christian. he'd probably die of shock. there were people raising their hands, closing their eyes, shouting at the top of their voices. people on their knees, people jumping like mad bunnies on rabies (do bunnies get rabies?) at one point i was jumping up and down like a mad bunny too, but it was probably more because hian liang wanted me to jump up and down like a mad bunny with him than anything else.

the atmosphere reminded me of a club. security checks, door passes, crowded toilets. perhaps more like esplanade's baybeats. so i thought it was a bit weird.

religion is believing in the unseen, the intangible stuff. and being merely human (is that right? merely human?), it's difficult to be able to do such things. don't worry, i'm always behind your back although you'd never see me, ever. you can feel me, see the things i do, hear me, but you'd never see me. that's just an analogy for what i think.

atheist probably laugh at me all day long. why do people believe in some of the things they do? is it just because so and so was brought up all his life on this same beliefs and reasonings, that he is just too accustomed to it to believe in anything else? sometimes it is so. sometimes christianity feels like it has so much meaning, sometimes it feels like it has no meaning at all.

i wonder about the tons of people who go to concerts and festivals just like this, who actually just like to listen to good music, but justify themselves by raising their hands and jumping like rabid bunnies. i think i'm just confused.

although in the end, i think it's much better to be confused than ignorant.

i'll stop here, will continue later.

usually no one posts comments, but since now there are people who do, i must celebrate this occasion.

there was once a chicken named Bob (no reference to mr brown). she hatched and grew up to be a hardworking chicken, graduating as a doctor from nus and became a specialist in sgh. she helped many people and laid many eggs, gave birth to two chicks named michelle and boblet. but one day the evil farmer Mr Pig came by and slaughtered her, selling her at the local wet market for a grand two dollars.

what does this all mean, infer, suggests? nothing, because not everything has to have a point. what does it mean? nothing in particular, because not everything has to have a significant meaning. it might suggest that the authour of the paragraph in question might have gone radically mad, but not really that he misses W or still hates X after Y happened to Z and (insert action here, i ran out of letters).

it can be noted that i am also terribly broke and any contributions would be welcomed. however despite this, i'm still going for this friday's sonicfest. sonic flood and planetshakers are going to be performing there. two really popular bands, however i've barely heard the first one and have never heard the latter at all. the entire ygone is going to be there. ygone is the name of my church cell group, a creative combination of the phrase 'youth group one' (!!!).

i also didn't notice that so(ooooooooooo) many people read or at least stumble upon this crap real estate that is my blog (maybe nowadays it's called cyber-estate?). interesting, that i never tell anyone about this. at all. spies!!!

i suddenly feel like playing dota. but i'm supposed to be broke (i have 49c in my ez link card, 5c in my wallet and $60 in my bank account, which doesn't have a working atm card). this is so no life.

note to self: reply to 'beckys' penpal email. this becky's from america; she used to flip burgers and clean ceiling fans. i 'met' her 9 years ago and we correspond regularly via email (i email her once a year/two years). somehow all of her letters always seem to be about the same thing (see below), so sometimes i wonder if becky is really a person or a computer.

everything is in cycles, from the days and seasons and the weather to the routines and people's moods and events in a person's life. get closer to this friend, further from that friend. feel like running all day, feel like not running at all. sometimes it just seems like i'm living for myself. what's wrong with that? isn't everyone like that. it sounds wrong, though. everyone's supposed to be nice and friendly, helpful in a certain way but not too helpful in many other ways.

some people i just wish i could get along more easily with. some people i'm really more than thankful for that i get along so easily with. some people i miss a lot and some people i miss a lot but don't want to think i do. and some people i've just given up on. which is sad because 'life' isn't about giving up, is it? it's about fighting and struggling and never losing hope. but sometimes people just get way too tired for that. why struggle so hard, facing the probably impending failure when you know that you can just sit back and rot, saving yourself some wasted breath.

just so we could sit here together and look at the sun go down, maybe never come up again. and if it does from the wrong side of the sky. you know that you're not the person you used to be when your hair is standing on its ends and people walk on the ceiling while the sky is falling. let's just be cynical and pretend that we have neither hope nor will for anything good.

so this is also one of the things that goes round and round (and perhaps makes no sense[to you])

yeastless factuality. a phrase that i'd never forget. just finished reading 'life of pi' by yann martel, a novel about an indian boy, turned a castaway after a boat and it's shipment of zoo animals sank. was talking to kai-lyn about it, because the ending is really absurd in the sense that it lacks certainty to it, giving no concrete finale. and she gave me the most academic, thought-out answer that i've heard in a long time, since enlisting in army.

my usual group of friends around me would usually reply with phrases such as 'yah hor, sucks man'. but she had to say 'i think the added cruelty of the last part is that it sounds all the more realistic to our cynical minds'. woah! 3 big words (for me, haha!) in a single sentence.

however the next day i returned to borders (to kill some time, as usual) and browsed somewhat unnecessarily through another copy of the book, this time with a reading guide. and noticed so many wonderful tiny and some huge things that you would never notice unless you really took notes. and it gave the story a new depth. so now i think that it's one of the best books i've read, ever since milan kundera's 'immortality'.

yann martel's was more readable, though.

life seems to be back to it's dull form nowadays. it saddens me to find out that phrases such as 'first blood', 'dominating' and 'owning' have such significant value to me. ahh, the curse that is DotA...


aside: a funny incident. ok fine, perhaps not that funny. went to shima japanese restaurant at goodwood hotel for a for dinner this evening. a sumptious hot plate buffet.

after a while noticed a (really, rather) pretty lady sitting behind my brother; she had a relatively good looking guy sitting next to her too (that was her brother and i'm not gay). but at a closer glance, lo and behold, it was LAUREEN LIM. looks like she lost some weight too. (haha sorry). thereafter, i promptly dispelled all evil thoughts in my head and sunk it back into my plate.

bah.

haven't slept for 43 hours. so was really blur today as a result. dozed off on the (10 minute) bus ride back home from camp, and miraculously awoke at the correct bus stop. but didn't get off, i was just stoning in the seat! sheesh. so got off one stop later at coronation, which isn't really that far off fortunately.

the national day rehearsals have improved ten fold; today i actually thought that the show was interesting! for a moment. during the interludes and breaks, the sound crew played some retro-ish music which got me subconciously nodding to the beat. and a bit more. which was really hilarious (i wonder what it would've looked like from a third person's point of view). hopefully i'll be ok tomorrow morning.

searching for more rnb songs now too. strictly rnb, not hiphop or whatever nonsense clubs like to play nowadays.

heh just too tired. zzzzzz

so it didn't turn out that well, after all.

electrico was pretty good. too bad we didn't get nearer the stage. had to watch from pretty far away instead outside the fenced up area. and the bass guitar cut during their last song, so it was pretty sad that they didn't get an encore in. the next band playing at that stage was 'copeland', an american band of whose songs all pretty much sound the same. but their sound was pretty good, albeit a bit dull at times.







now you seem like a stranger, hanging on the fine line between earth and sky. and somehow, i really miss you. say something, please

i thought this was a cute thing to say. and he tells me this after he comes back from lunch with his ex, just before he leaves yet again to meet kat.

managed to do my run. but was slacking quite a bit. ok, slacking a lot. ~7.5km, 36minutes (i've not reached the level where seconds matter, yet heh). somehow my legs aren't tired at all, but my lungs were struggling a bit due to the sore throat.

8 months ago, i ran along the same route, and stopped a third of the way along it then proceded to walk all the way back. so today i'm quite contented :) i'll run this route once more then extend it to serene center/ farrer next week.

somehow the osim tri felt like the cumalative effort of running this same route four times in a row.

i've been sleeping so much recently that it's becoming unproductive. sleep to rest, sleep to pass the time, sleep to drown the sorrows, sleep because i'm lazy, sleep for the sake of sleeping!

this time i'm sleeping to pass the time. these days it's been raining cats and dogs, so i wasn't able to go for a run. it's amazing how incredibly lazy i've been, especially now since there's no triathlon and no risk of embaressment and no heartache of wasting $75 for nothing. and the sianness of camp coupled with it's ever enticing swimming pool (it's cleaner than running?) renders whatever thoughts of going running absolutely useless too.

so, since i'm home today, i'll go running. to the beat of jay chou's yi lu xiang bei. if you run in time with the time signature (foot down on the main beats) it gives a good pacing. haha previously i tried lifehouse's undone too, which was fine, but some songs just make you die faster. ok, this is redundant.

chris, you'll go to jelita, down sixth avenue, past chinese high and hcjc to SPC and back home. run to serene center if you've been slacking during the run, do not pass go, do not collect $200

been swimming a bit recently. trying to follow terry laughlin's total immersion book which my brother passed me. press your bouy, reach for the wall, swim on your sides, unweigh your arms, don't forget the arm catch, rotate rotate rotate. using the pool's lifeguard at my camp to be my 'spotter' of sorts. he was in the same platoon as me during bmt!

checked out their forums as well (www.totalimmersion.net) and a couple of other websites. count your strokes and not your laps, or so they say. so i've started at 25m laps (because 50m makes me lose count, definitely). managed to lower it down to 10-11 strokes at best for 25m. is that good? i've been reaching my leading arm so much i think it's gonna fall off.



when people are in the midst of their youth, they think that love is like the holy grail. but it's enlightening when you realise that people five, ten years later are still feeling the exact same thing. maybe comforting? let's drown together. no, not really that. sometimes people think that getting their partner to say 'yes' is the final goal, but then you'd realise that after that comes a whole lot of shit as well. and they'd realise that maybe going that mile wasn't really worth the effort, and you're left off where you were before. no, even worst and in deeper shit, actually.

all these tales and thoughts of love. well suddenly everyone's talking about their so called love life, or lack of it (or the lack of a real one when you're living the so-called fake life).

spent a few hours last night uploading most of my songs to my iriver player. left out the jazz ones and the really boring old ones because they're not really my type anymore. now this one only has 5gb, which i think is more than enough considering i listen to less than a hundred songs regularly. and after i get bored of that set, i don't really listen to them anymore. like, ever. except for the few outstanding ones.

maybe i shouldn't have bought it this month, though. no time for regrets lah. anyway.


it must be me. is my writing not good enough that i have to depend on body language and vocal tone to effectively say what i mean? probably our mentalities are just so varied and far apart from each other that it's so hard to grasp what i say; maybe we just see each other from different perspectives. so much for communication (no, why not just throw it out the window).

somehow (as if saying somehow gives this sentence a more ambiguous quality) it affects me quite a bit. you know that feeling, when you have to dig up things to say to someone, just because you want to say something? at times it feels like that. like i don't really know you at all. and maybe i don't.

(as much as i dislike/hate/despise/totally detest the word)
whatever.

:(

her number, you mean. argh.

on a side note: have been really too damn lazy to exercise now. spent the entire day (from 8am to 6pm) sleeping today. managed to wake up for lunch though, but didn't even manage to complete a page of the book ('life of pi').

spent the evening getting owned at dota.


was supposed to meet up with emily initially, as she just got back from australia yesterday. but the dumb woman spent over 12 hours sleeping (all the way till 6pm. just like me!) and when she finally called me it was a little too late to go out. maybe i was just lazy to plan to go out.

as everybody in my company was having their own plans, i soon resigned to going back to the bookstore. but then someone said a surprising thing: "don't worry, you have so many friends to go out with, i bet you surely would find someone soon". i find it pretty interesting that someone actually could say such a thing to me, at that very moment in particular. sometimes it just feels that things are relly the other way around.

everyone just wants to feel loved. to know that someone's there to tell them that they're not alone in the midst of solitude; to push them on in the midst of struggle and turmoil, that you can do it when you know you can't. but the fact is, everybody surely has someone who cares of them. it's probably more like that they just don't want to think that way.




should've gotten her number, right? chris, you're a dumbass. repeat after me, "dumbass".

yes

but everyone has their own faults too

and their own weaknesses

so maybe just concentrate on the good things we have

and focus a little more

and one day we'll get there

came home after guard duty this morning and slept the entire day. was never so tired for a really long time. and i guess i'm going to be just as tired tomorrow too. currently debating (at 4.30am) whether to go to sleep for two hours or just surf around. either way, it's gonna be a really tired afternoon tomorrow! (or rather, today!)

went for quick lan session (dota with the sonnies. it's getting a bit... out of control?) then headed down to indochine for estelle's so called birthday party. i don't understand how anyone can enjoy their party when they're running around doing all the administration. maybe she considers seeing how many of her friends turning up as enjoyment itself. hmm.

anyway it was a night of 5 minute friends. i mean, you meet this person, exchange greetings names and handshakes and proceed to never see them again for the rest of your life. interesting in a way. the way that you can talk to so many strangers, small talk that is of no significance at all, really.

met marcus and weiming there. also met rajiv, jane and nathaniel. and wen. and leona. and a new girl named natalie (which marcus stole away from us :/ sneaky buggy). and another group with shu en and cheryl. and a really creepy girl called yismay (really?!) who was so dao and stoned but ended up smooching with some stranger guy next to us. huh?!

note to self:
unimelb dentistry 06 intake

eh gotta go to yishun junior college tomorrow apparently. to meet some 'motivators'? zzz. hopefully they'll be nice and friendly.


zzzzzzz

i think i'll have to buy a new mp3 player. sigh

this is probably the worst disaster to ever happen in recent history:

i spilled a gnc tumbler bottle worth of water on to my ipod.

there was water flowing out of the ear phone jacks and the charging port when i picked it up. and there's water between the lcd and the screen. and it didn't respond when i pressed the buttons. but then again maybe it was out of battery? so stupid me decided to plug in the charger to see if it was really spoilt. guess now i know it's really spoilt.

chucked it into the dryer cabinat for my dad's cameras. i'll check it again tonight. hopefully it works. otherwise i'll have to invest in a... zen? i've decided that i really need a radio. really.

sigh

had youth day games today. but muscles were a bit aching still (so were lincoln's: he took part too). didn't really play much but had a bit of fun throwing/splashing/shooting water around. bex's is really cute haha. ygone wanted to go swimming after that. hian liang didn't tell me! or maybe he forgot. he always forgets to tell me anyway :/

didn't really feel like swimming initially. and i didn't have my swim stuff. but my muscles are still so sore, so i decided to jump in after borrowing some dunnowho's swim trunks from the boarding school. the dumb guy tied dunno how many knots in his trunks, took like 15 mins to untie it. but the swim was relaxing. less of a swim but more of just splashing water. valerie, nico and sherwin joined us as well. then went for makan at dover, then back home to zzzzz.

the days are just flowing again. no, that's not the word. it feels like they're trickling by, without meaning nor purpose. i know that it's not the way it should be, but not everything is always the way it should. the only thing to look forward nowadays is to go running. or swimming. or sleeping. or the weekend. and the next. or someone. or someone. or someone. or sleeping (i had to put 'sleeping' in again, because i don't want 'someone' to sound like it's the most important or the most lacking, the way many people like to save the best for last and have their last words lingering on your mind).

zzzz (sleep your troubles away. don't disturb anyone while you're at it)

eh, it was quite bad. managed to finish (of course, i'd kill myself if i didn't) but that's nothing to boast about. the swim was so crap, because for some reason my mouth just absolutely detests sea water. but it's actually a lot easier to float. and the bike. cramped my left calf. but it was probably the best split of the 3. and the run. cramped every other single muscle there probably is to cramp.

basically: arghhhhh

the only consolation: i only trained for a month for this event. which just by being able to complete it (taking into account my level of fitness!), i would consider a Very Remarkable Event :P




p.s. can you see the optimist in me???