Sunday, May 29, 2005
"It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity - awakening within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime.
I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls' most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.
The great truth about life - and all relationships - is that even the greatest of loves may shudder beneath the shadow of eclipse. I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth, but in its wrinkled maturity.
Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds it fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion - one of loyalty and divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty deals that transcend this earth and time - while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing."
-Richard Paul Evans
In the past 3 days I've learnt that a little fall can't kill you. Neither can a big one. You just gotta get up, take a little rest, and you're ready to go again. In the course of the programme we were taught to lead climb. Basically it just means you gotta attach the safety rope to the anchor point at the summit of the synthetic rock wall yourself... in simpler terms, it just means that if you fall there's nothing to safeguard you.
(I've never had good impressions of rock-climbing since a bad experience in Sec 1. And its still a baffling mystery to me why in sanity did I chose this elective in the first place.)
So I was climbing this slightly inwardly inclined wall, and clipping on the safety rope at certain height intervals. After like a thousand years, when I finally reached the last anchorpoint, I was hanging on with my right hand onto a jutting rock, and with my left, reaching out to clip on the safety rope. Everything suddenly happened in slow-mo style... One moment I was reaching with my left hand to the attach the safety cord directly above me, and the next moment my right hand lost grip of the jutting rock and I felt myself pushed by gravity, free-falling through a height of 6m probably? It happened so suddenly my belayer didn't have time to react, and as I was gaining speed during the fall I felt myself suddenly stopped short of hitting the floor by a mere 10cm? I almost fainted lah. Thankfully my belayer was able to hang on to the rope in time, but not before suffering rope burns to her fingers.
I almost died from heart attack I tell you. When I was falling it felt as though I left my all internal organs up at the top where I was hanging while the rest of me fell. It was one experience I'll never forget ah.
But that didn't stop me from climbing. So for the next 2 days I continued to climb. The tiring thing about climbing is when fatigue sets in. Mentally, you want to go higher, but physically, your body parts starts to disobey you. Your fingers lock in a vice-like griphold, refusing to flex, your arm muscles cramp up and tightens so it becomes a hard lump, perspiration trickles down but you have no hands to wipe them away 'cause you're holding on for dear life. And I fell more. And there are variations of my falls. Sometimes you just fall a straightline path down, you land on your feet; sometimes throughout the fall you bump into the various jutting rocks on the wall, get a few bruises here and there; other times, you hold too tightly to the rope when you fall, and you get rope burns. But all in all, whatever the falls, small or big, vertical or horizontal, it can't kill you.
What's the saying again... What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.
Ha.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Anyways, today is, or rather, was just not my day. In the afternoon I lugged out the mini oven from the storeroom, meaning to bake cookies for my friend. So I happily followed the instructions and mixed the ingredients, and happily put the dough into the oven.
As I bent and watched from the window of the oven at my soon-to-be-cookies, dread began to replace excitement because, to my utmost horror, instead of turning "golden brown" as mentioned in the instructions, the dough began to melt! (for your information it wasn't supposed to melt). From a nice brown paste it just melted into what resembled a yellow blob of oil. As I wailed a wailful wail my mom came running into the kitchen, alarmed.
She took a look at the melted mess in the oven and asked, "How much butter did you add?". Well... not much, just one whole block of butter, as instructed. She gave me the look, which obviously just meant that I had done something wrong. Argh. I mean, how would I know?! The picture in the instructions showed one whole slab of butter mah! I was merely following instructions!
Apparently, there was too much butter. Wayyyyy too much. I was supposed to add only half a cup of butter, which translated to around 1/3 of the block of butter I added. Which means I added 200% more butter than required. I almost fainted. But there's no turning back, if you start a work, you gotta complete it. So I made a whole tray of mutated cookies, soft and mushy. So much for "golden brown cookies". But my brother likes it, so he can eat it all he wants. I don't think I'll ever touch a cookie again.
So after that I rushed down to Suntec to catch Star Wars Episode 3 with my friends. It was crowded and packed there because it was a Sunday afternoon, and it didn't really help that we were a big group of 22 people. In the chaos and probably also in the aftermath of the cookie catastrophe, I lost my movie ticket. That was the last straw. It threw me into confusion and despair. In the middle of the crowded space I overturned all my pockets, poured out everything from my bag, but still churned out nothing. I wanted to pull out my hair in frustration right then. But thank goodness I had friends. If not for them I'd have been bald now. And they managed to smuggle me in too because we were a big group of 22, and just nice the ticket auntie was quite muddle-headed.
Rahhh. All in all it was a terrible Sunday.
Just not my day.
So many choices, so little time. And I didn't know it would be so hard, to stand by the road I've chosen. But God didn't say it would be easy.
This, coupled with brain-juice-sapping Math Lecture Test which accounts for 10% of the overall grade (which might just determine whether I get retained or not [!!]), SPA, Project Work and various minute but irritating things known as tutorials, made it an awful week to get through.
I feel my energy depleting at a rate which outpaces my ability to replenish it. It's not just physical tiredness of sleep defiency, but mental fatigue as well of exceeding your mind's capacity to accept and process the week's happenings. I feel like stoning and walking around without acknowledging people because that too requires effort, but it's hard not to return a smile when you get one, no matter how lousy you feel, and its impossible not to laugh for even a day, 'cause there's always something to smile about.
I immerse myself in the company of friends, for what reasons I cannot fully determine... To avert periods of solitude? I don't know, but I find that sometimes, (hmm okay that's an understatement. probably most of the time) when I'm by myself my mind tends to wander, especially growing tendrils around things I should not be thinking about anymore, making it stubbornly lodged in that intangible space.
One road. One choice. One outcome.
I got this excerpt from the prologue a novel I'm currently reading - The Letter, by Richard Paul Evans. (In case you find the author disturbingly familiar, he is also the author of The Christmas Box, a superb book, I say.) And I think its a very good read because as I flip through each page, I gain new insights into what's truly important.
So I share with you all this short but beautiful passage, and hope you all gain from it as I had. :)
~
I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls' most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.
The great truth about life - and all relationships - is that even the greatest of loves may shudder beneath the shadow of eclipse. I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth, but in its wrinkled maturity.
Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds it fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion - one of loyalty and divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty deals that transcend this earth and time - while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing."
-Richard Paul Evans
writing at 10:10 PM
Saturday, May 28, 2005
In the past 3 days I've learnt that a little fall can't kill you. Neither can a big one. You just gotta get up, take a little rest, and you're ready to go again. In the course of the programme we were taught to lead climb. Basically it just means you gotta attach the safety rope to the anchor point at the summit of the synthetic rock wall yourself... in simpler terms, it just means that if you fall there's nothing to safeguard you.
(I've never had good impressions of rock-climbing since a bad experience in Sec 1. And its still a baffling mystery to me why in sanity did I chose this elective in the first place.)
So I was climbing this slightly inwardly inclined wall, and clipping on the safety rope at certain height intervals. After like a thousand years, when I finally reached the last anchorpoint, I was hanging on with my right hand onto a jutting rock, and with my left, reaching out to clip on the safety rope. Everything suddenly happened in slow-mo style... One moment I was reaching with my left hand to the attach the safety cord directly above me, and the next moment my right hand lost grip of the jutting rock and I felt myself pushed by gravity, free-falling through a height of 6m probably? It happened so suddenly my belayer didn't have time to react, and as I was gaining speed during the fall I felt myself suddenly stopped short of hitting the floor by a mere 10cm? I almost fainted lah. Thankfully my belayer was able to hang on to the rope in time, but not before suffering rope burns to her fingers.
I almost died from heart attack I tell you. When I was falling it felt as though I left my all internal organs up at the top where I was hanging while the rest of me fell. It was one experience I'll never forget ah.
But that didn't stop me from climbing. So for the next 2 days I continued to climb. The tiring thing about climbing is when fatigue sets in. Mentally, you want to go higher, but physically, your body parts starts to disobey you. Your fingers lock in a vice-like griphold, refusing to flex, your arm muscles cramp up and tightens so it becomes a hard lump, perspiration trickles down but you have no hands to wipe them away 'cause you're holding on for dear life. And I fell more. And there are variations of my falls. Sometimes you just fall a straightline path down, you land on your feet; sometimes throughout the fall you bump into the various jutting rocks on the wall, get a few bruises here and there; other times, you hold too tightly to the rope when you fall, and you get rope burns. But all in all, whatever the falls, small or big, vertical or horizontal, it can't kill you.
What's the saying again... What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.
Ha.
writing at 2:19 PM
Monday, May 23, 2005
What is your greatest fear?
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Marianne Williamsonin
~
Such a beautiful passage, don't you agree?
writing at 11:36 AM
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Anyways, today is, or rather, was just not my day. In the afternoon I lugged out the mini oven from the storeroom, meaning to bake cookies for my friend. So I happily followed the instructions and mixed the ingredients, and happily put the dough into the oven.
As I bent and watched from the window of the oven at my soon-to-be-cookies, dread began to replace excitement because, to my utmost horror, instead of turning "golden brown" as mentioned in the instructions, the dough began to melt! (for your information it wasn't supposed to melt). From a nice brown paste it just melted into what resembled a yellow blob of oil. As I wailed a wailful wail my mom came running into the kitchen, alarmed.
She took a look at the melted mess in the oven and asked, "How much butter did you add?". Well... not much, just one whole block of butter, as instructed. She gave me the look, which obviously just meant that I had done something wrong. Argh. I mean, how would I know?! The picture in the instructions showed one whole slab of butter mah! I was merely following instructions!
Apparently, there was too much butter. Wayyyyy too much. I was supposed to add only half a cup of butter, which translated to around 1/3 of the block of butter I added. Which means I added 200% more butter than required. I almost fainted. But there's no turning back, if you start a work, you gotta complete it. So I made a whole tray of mutated cookies, soft and mushy. So much for "golden brown cookies". But my brother likes it, so he can eat it all he wants. I don't think I'll ever touch a cookie again.
So after that I rushed down to Suntec to catch Star Wars Episode 3 with my friends. It was crowded and packed there because it was a Sunday afternoon, and it didn't really help that we were a big group of 22 people. In the chaos and probably also in the aftermath of the cookie catastrophe, I lost my movie ticket. That was the last straw. It threw me into confusion and despair. In the middle of the crowded space I overturned all my pockets, poured out everything from my bag, but still churned out nothing. I wanted to pull out my hair in frustration right then. But thank goodness I had friends. If not for them I'd have been bald now. And they managed to smuggle me in too because we were a big group of 22, and just nice the ticket auntie was quite muddle-headed.
Rahhh. All in all it was a terrible Sunday.
Just not my day.
writing at 2:33 PM
Friday, May 13, 2005
So many choices, so little time. And I didn't know it would be so hard, to stand by the road I've chosen. But God didn't say it would be easy.
This, coupled with brain-juice-sapping Math Lecture Test which accounts for 10% of the overall grade (which might just determine whether I get retained or not [!!]), SPA, Project Work and various minute but irritating things known as tutorials, made it an awful week to get through.
I feel my energy depleting at a rate which outpaces my ability to replenish it. It's not just physical tiredness of sleep defiency, but mental fatigue as well of exceeding your mind's capacity to accept and process the week's happenings. I feel like stoning and walking around without acknowledging people because that too requires effort, but it's hard not to return a smile when you get one, no matter how lousy you feel, and its impossible not to laugh for even a day, 'cause there's always something to smile about.
I immerse myself in the company of friends, for what reasons I cannot fully determine... To avert periods of solitude? I don't know, but I find that sometimes, (hmm okay that's an understatement. probably most of the time) when I'm by myself my mind tends to wander, especially growing tendrils around things I should not be thinking about anymore, making it stubbornly lodged in that intangible space.
One road. One choice. One outcome.
writing at 9:36 PM
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