Re-discovering html
All of a sudden, the light came on.

I could use html in my blogger entries!

(You were expecting something earth-shattering like I discovered gravity weren't you? wait long long) I used to do html in school a long while back but it is all fuzzy inside my head. It wasn't difficult - it was the simplest bit of the whole java course - but I can't even remember the programme that we used to input the data anymore.

But heck. I'm still young, I can learn it again.

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I was thinking about something important to say while putting on my socks today (I think they are pink) but I've forgotten what it was. It was something worth saying, unlike this bunch of bullshit I've been sprouting. I know one thought was that I ought to replace the sole of my shoes since they are completely worn out. Ask M how much it would cost and she said, "Very expensive, $8 a pair." That's my family for you.

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Watching the Sunset

One of my favourite songs of all time is "When God Ran" by Shaded Red. It is the story of the prodigal son -- how he squandered his father's money on his own pleasure, and how when he came down that dusty road in repentence, it was the first time God ran. It is a beautiful song to listen to, especially in a quiet office with a vibrant orange setting sun.

I don't feel like going home today. My friends said in jest today that you "never can tell" with me, and that I have many things that I don't tell anyone. I almost want to reply, "Yes it's true! I have layers and layers to get through." Shrek says he is an onion, not a cake or a parfait.

There is only pink left hanging in the sky. When the son returned to heaven, he said that he would not leave us orphans, but that he would leave us a comforter, the Holy Spirit. Dear Holy Spirit, where are you? Are you the wisps of pink left in the sky, about to disppear from my life?

Standing on the edge of quiet sadness.

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I think after a extended period of being bombarded with tragedies both big and small, the human being learns to shut things out, and concentrate on only that which is most essential to survival. Like the bombing in Saudi Arabia and Casablanca, what is that to us, except what we've already known already, that the world is a mess? Fundamentalists point to human sin and God's wrath; atheists point and say there is no god; and i can't think beyond the issue of where i should go to church this sunday.

I have church problems. Right now, I go to CE half the time and to W the other half. While W worked for a while - it was a timely break - i don't have the initiative anymore in me to keep going and sit alone in a church as i would sit in the movies. I have ideals of community, yet in reality i espouse isolationism in church. What will I do? I thought about going back to PL, but it is difficult to say the least, when all my friends have left. So glad that i have another 7 days to sunday again. another 7 days to hide.

i wonder how long adam and eve hid in the bushes before God found them out.

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Collective disappointment
We were so close to being declared Sars-free by WHO when they found a Malaysian man residing in Singapore with the disease today. Just hours away to that psychological label, and then we have to wait another 20 days, again. I only hope that the man did not get it from the community, and then he did not spread it further. Who knows who he has been in touch with? The goverment keeps saying that we are in this "for the long haul". Sigh.

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Hot

Went for a swim this afternoon with A and T and I am red. My chest is itchy from a rash because of the heat, and what I would really like to do now is to curl up in front of the computer and watch a VCD in a dark and air-conditioned room. I am tired of thinking and figuring out how to put presentations together. It can wait till tomorrow.

When people ask me what I have been doing at work, I always want to say that I've been really busy with this presentation, and tell them how difficult it is to fit presentation to music and narration; and then I feel stupid because it all seems so trivial compared to their work. Its very depressing. All of this for a book? I don't know. I'm not even artistic, but worse, I am sensitive too. It can wait till tomorrow.

Mother's Day today and I bought Gao Lak for my mum. What did you do for yours?

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There is something about blogs that capture the spirit of this age. It is a pullulation of information, emotions and opinions - but all of this is hidden behind a facade, an online idenity dismembered from the real self. Connection is everything. You are able to read the most intimate thoughts of an American girl living across the world in the sub-urban mid-west, and yet at the same time struggle to remember that the beggar sitting in the subway is also human.

I just entered this URL into for goggle to crawl though. It is a perverse attraction to be known.

But I'm not about to tell you what I think. smirk.

I had a conversation (one-way) with my colleagues about the meaning of fallicious reasoning concerning dandruff today. I was tired of being the butt of jokes, so I was lashing out at them. Of course they didn't know that I was doing so.

Cycled from Choa Chu Kang home yesterday. Gave me a high that night, woke up with aching shoulders.

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There is both fire and ice in me - the zeal of faith and the chill of doubt.

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The War has begun.

I find myself not knowing what to think at this time. There is a black and white sticker that I got from the Roman Catholic Church that I can't decide if I should put up on my window. Its says, "Make Peace, Not War".

Which captures what I want to say, but what if? What if it is true that war is a means to peace? But is it possible that a peaceful end may have violent means? What if the US is correct and that Iraq has the "weapons of mass destruction" (gosh do I HATE that word) and the intentions to hurt and harm? What if...

I have been reading about the just war theory as espoused by Ausgustine and then later by Aquinas in The City of God. In The City of God, Aquinas refutes certain positions commonly held by pacifists even today. I have fragments of it in my brain right now, but I'm too lazy to write it out.

I wish it didn't have to come to this :(

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In memory of a one-eyed fish
It is always sad when a fish dies. Granted that the yellow one-eyed fish wasn't my favourite pet, its still sad to see its stiff floating body.

Weird enough, last night I dreamt of my yellow one-eyed fish and twerp. I was trying to create this new fish tank concept where the yellow fish was in its own bowl in the middle of a larger tank which held twerp. Twerp is my orange-striped paradise. But the yellow one got out into the larger one and the two of them started going at each other. Interestingly, it was the yellow one going after twerp (usually it is the other way around) and what's weirder, it suddenly changed into a luo han in mid-chase, and a very handsome luo han at that. Maybe it is the vengence of a fish.

I have another sick fish with me. Its a fighting fish, my colleagues actually. I feel so nurturing when I crush up the worms for this fish. It lies at the bottom of the tank all day, and it can't swim straight. Think it has some fin rot too.

"My mother is a fish" - Faulkner

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human technology
Friedman, in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, shows a picture of a Jewish man placing his handphone on the wailing wall so that a relative on the other side of the world could say a prayer at the wall.

My father and I, when my grandma lay dying, placed a handphone by her ear, so that my sis could sing to her and say goodbye from a different continent.

When I leave my house in the morning, I bring all my friends in my pocket.

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Icewine
Grapes are left on the vine well into the winter months. The resulting freezing and thawing of the grapes dehydrates the fruit, and concentrates the sugars, acids, and extracts in the berries, thereby intensifying the flavours and adding complexity to the wine made from it.

Genuine icewine must follow VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) regulations that prohibit any artificial freezing of grapes. The grapes are painstakingly picked by hand in their natural frozen state, ideally at temperatures of -10 to -13 degrees C -- sometimes the picking must be done at night to take advantage of the temperature. Yields are very low, often as little as 5-10 percent of normal.

The frozen grapes are pressed in the extreme cold. The water in the juice remains frozen as ice crystals, and only a few drops of sweet concentrated juice is obtained. This juice is then fermented very slowly for several months, stopping naturally.

The finished icewine is intensely sweet and flavorful in the initial mouth sensation. The balance is achieved by the acidity, which gives a clean, dry finish. The nose of icewine recalls lychee nuts. The wine tastes of tropical fruits, with shadings of peach nectar and mango.

Icewine is winter's gift to the wine lover: one of the best-kept secrets of the wine world that garners gold medals in virtually every competition in which it is entered.

The greatest of international accolade for Canadian Icewine was bestowed on Inniskillin 1989 Icewine at Vinexpo, Bordeaux, in June 1991. This wine, judged by an international panel, was accorded the fair's highest award, Le Grand Prix d'Honneur.

Excellent stuff. :)

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When I sing this hymn, there is the tremendous irony and wonder -- I am the great unfaithful singing about the great faithful. What if the faithfulness I know of God includes his faithfulness to send me to hell? Will he grieve for me?

Great is Thy Faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest.
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

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Sarah Gaw, 25, one of the lucky ones who managed to get an overseas education without being straddled with a bond or debt, finds herself home free, but ironically directionless. "What would I do for a career," she thinks, even as her friends scheme about getting out of their bonds.

Gaw, the older of two sisters in a traditional family, was a regular, run of the mill student who did resonably well in the usual good schools. Perhaps one of the best things in her educational path was getting into the Gifted Education Programme which gave her the tools to think. She had her university education in a small liberal arts college and graduated with a major in English and Religion and Philosophy. The year was 1999.

2000, she spent in the United States cleaning toilets, cutting grass and helping a youth and international ministry in a small town interdenominational church. Today she is presently employed by a large Protestant church as a Researcher cum Powerpointer cum Sitter downer in front of a computer.

She knows she cannot complain. She has fish, friends, family and a salary to count on. Her friend, Tan Ah Lian, also 25 and in the same directionless state, reminds her about the people who do not have degrees in these tough times. Apoova Ali, another peer, though a doctor, slogs many a night on call and corned beef sandwiches. This is the lot of life, perhaps what a book aptly calls the "Quarterlife Crises".

Yet what bothers her most is not the job or the money or the direction, but the pause in her life of faith. She reasons that with faith, one can see flowers in dunghills; without, there are cracks in the mansion. It is not the lack of a career but the loss of the belief in God's destiny for her life that rattles her cage.

But it isn't the end of the story, at least not yet. And as long as the story isn't over, there is hope yet.

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Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps everything.
Gregory of Nyssa

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