Sunday, April 25, 2004
The Final Call
in a final guilty effort, i am now trying my best to push my friends from school into God's kingdom. actually it started with angie, inviting christine, then it sort of reminded me how i have not done anything meaningful these past 3 years. then all the names started coming up, people you have been in close contact with a lot, who have not known the freedom of dwelling in His presence.
went down to elim church for the victory family centre service today to support angie who brought christine, and boy their service was good! only not enough air-con though.. mMm .. kinda like a rock concert man their worship loud and stuff, but it was great. and the message definitely captivating and struck deep in the heart. they have a really blessed pastor ....God spoke the words He wanted christine to hear, and all of us as well actually, cos sometimes we forget what He's all about.
and ho ho ho i met my primary school best friend zhiyang AKA papergoat! i forgot that i might meet him there. he mentioned that he worships now at VFC, but i didn't know which branch, though i suspected there was a high chance of him being at the same one as angie because he lives at braddell, much closer than sjsm. wonderful stuff, johannan was also there. they both went back after service, so i had dinner with an extremely crazy bunch of people opposite the church at some zhi char place. had a good time man, they have a keen sense of humour, or lameness, as sometimes it degraded to.
it's kinda funny how 5 days before my onslaught of papers i'm being challenged to make a difference and bring people to church, but this blur of events has awakened the giant within and made me realise once again how much God treasures each and every one of us, and how selfish it would actually be to leave school without even making an effort to save my friends. it might be late, but God works whenever we are wiling to, so it's never too late! muahahha >:)
paN!cker lost it at 1:14 am
Saturday, April 24, 2004
He's Always There
When I'm alone the world is such a different place
Sometimes it's hard to keep the smile upon my face
It seems like I try so hard and still I let You down
It's taken so long but now there's one thing that I've found
When everything starts crashing down
When all I know falls to the ground
When darkness comes in I can't see
You're always there to rescue me
Just when I think that I have got it figured out
You open my eyes and let me see that there's no doubt
That You've got it all within the power of Your hands
It seems like the more I know the less I understand
When everything starts crashing down
When all I know falls to the ground
When darkness comes in I can't see
You're always there to rescue me
When all my strength had turned to fear
When I wonder if You're near
When I don't know how to break free
You're always there to rescue me
And I wonder if I'll make it through this darkest night
And I need to know Your strenght in me, gonna win this fight
I'm reaching out, won't You take my hand, show me to the light
I know you're by my side
It seems like I try so hard and still I let You down
It's taken so long but now there's one thing that I've found
When everything starts crashing down
When all I know falls to the ground
When darkness comes in I can't see
You're always there to rescue me
When all my strength had turned to fear
When I wonder if You're near
When I don't know how to break free
You're always there to rescue me.......
planet shakers - rescue me
paN!cker lost it at 12:38 am
Sunday, April 18, 2004
it is done
and that i can finally say with a great sense of relief. the emergency bells going off in my mind finally took a breather. life slowed down. the birds chirp again. the sun seems to radiate more warmth. projects are over, almost everything is over. the only irritant is erm, some overdue reports(one due by last wednesday actually .. o darnit). the PDA thing got up and working just in time man, really just in time, like half an hour before the presentation =P i admit i left it -really- late. joseph thought i was doing the program for dci(data comm. & internetworking) presentation! haha, then i enlightened him. "erm, no, actually tomorrow is not dci presentation. it's -final-, presentation." that means i didn't present much for DCI presentation, because there was nothing to show. if i could project my brain's thoughts onto the screen, that might have helped.
anyway, like gabrielle was saying, everything worked perfect. everything clicked at the end, even though we were very last minute. we didn't even rehearse our presentation role play one whole time. i learnt my part half an hour before the presentation. really, God was lending a helping hand. when i ran into problems, joseph troubleshot(is there even sucha word?!) very accurately i must say. he's really programming shen. with a few precise questions and maybe a few lines of code pasted to him over yahoo messenger(he was in office, only yahoo works thru firewall .. lol), he more often than not spotted the problem with the code easily and told me so. also, the program he did for IIP last year was a great help as well. i took quite a bit of codes from there. hehe saved a bit of time thru that.
tonight, i perfected(more or less) the code, just for sheer kick. it's so hard to get started, but once you have, it's hard to stop. i'm glad i didn't let the team down in the end. and boy, are we one kickass team! at first, i was supposed to be in charge of all things coding for our website. but knowing the sloth that i am, gabrielle ended up doing all the asp codes and getting the dynamic functions and linkage to database going. angie as usual, has great design ideas and is a mastah of dreamweaver. she came up with the concept and lotsa ideas for what to put on the site. she was also team leader, and collaborated with our client very well. as angie stated in her mail to the client, i am group jester. -_- and christine is assistant group jester, haha. all the late nights in canteen 1 won't be forgotten. escaping -out- of school by climbing over the gates won't be forgotten(we stayed till midnight). in the end, when you look back, it's always worth the trip.
btw, our client happens to be none other than sean wong from sjsm! you heard me right, from sjsm. he's the sing singapore guy, in case you guys were figuring. and he owns ig's heaven, the company we did it all for. he came down for the presentation, we blew him away, and he's implementing our site as ig's heaven's official site. like wow, that's the greatest compliment you can receive, when the -school- project you do ends up being adopted as the official site.
things are looking to end on a high note, but it's not over yet. i want to end it on a reaaaaal high, by totally thrashing the exams! uhh well ok maybe not, finals aren't easy, but definitely a high B or A for exams will ensure my worst grade is the occasional B and the rest almost all A's or even AD !! I have high hopes for this project. i really hope we were one of the more outstanding groups. that's the only consolation i can get from an otherwise lukewarm three years.
paN!cker lost it at 1:18 am
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
the joseph factor
thank you thank you thank you!!! ig's heaven is all that fills my mind nowadays. i am feeling light-headed and slightly queasy and faint, due to lack of sleep, long hours staring at screens, and over-radiation from talking to joseph for way too long. my life would be -terribly-different in more ways than one if not for him. i might have pee'd in my pants a coupla times already. i might have reached all-new levels of phear by now. but i haven't. mind you, i'm still coding the shiz myself, and fear and anxiety play a large role right now, as the clock ticks away. i still don't know if i will make it in time, or if the program will come up with inexplicable errors to taunt me, or if what i have in mind can be carried out. whether or not i will make it depends on God's will and my mental strength to persevere through intense bouts of drowsiness and inclinations to give in to "oh, maybe a little shut eye will do me good.. just a little... no harm in that" before waking up a gazillion hours later to the rhythm of me-in-hot-soup.
my mind isn't functioning right, i want to sleep sleeeeeeeeeeeeep. argharghargh. by hook or by crook(if only man, if only), this dang thang has gotta be up and running by t-o-n-i-g-h-t. there's still a few other trillion things that need to be settled by friday, and i haven't befriended Time yet, for Him to be on my side.
sincerely forever in ohhhh-mighty-vb-programmer joseph's debt,
minime
paN!cker lost it at 6:34 pm
on a dark night such as this
singapore's utility bills just took a big plunge this day as an estimated quarter to a fifth of singapore went pitch black for slightly over half an hour. yes, i am one of the priviledged few in this generation who have not known a day w/o power, to have witnessed such a grand occasion. let me take you back to that fateful day(for it WAS a fateful day, technically it being before 12 midnight when it happened and so this being the next day).
i was high on power consumption, charging the pda, as well as having my laptop AND desktop on, trying to do everything at once as the reality of D-Day spurred me onwards. so then my mother summoned me to the kitchen to wipe up all the bowls and other assorted kitchen things, and so that i was doing, WHEN, all of a sudden, for no rhyme or reason, our house tripped, yes tripped over itself and stumbled to where it has not stumbled before. but of course i did not know that at first. my mother commented on the skyline, it being bright and all, and i moved over and caught a stupendous view of the bright night skyline over the rather dark ...... NO wait a minute! ...... REAAAAALLLLY dark neighbourhood! everything was off! e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g was off. and then it started to dawn on me that there was something special and cool going on, that it was not a normal trip, that things would start to get interesting from there.
as adrenaline started pumping and torchlights(i could even see those from afar) started flashing, i hurried around to get a view of everywhere from anywhere possible. our next-door neighbours came out, kindly gave us a few candles and chatted for a while. i could not believe what was unfolding before my eyes. singapore, a first world(or almost first world) country, was suffering a way cool blackout. awesome material to work with!
i finished putting away the dishes and all, and started to sweat profusely. as time went on, several insights came to us. well uhmm for one,
1. food in fridge spoil without cold air.
2. terrorists AR on us!
3. the night sky really is marvelous without irritating man-made lights.
4. people -were- bound to be trapped in lifts. lift emergency bells might not work, tho i mused that if they were really emergency bells, they'd better have their own secondary source of power. didn't hear much ringing tho, hope everyone was alright.
5. ok so lifts don't work, people who come home would either have to wait downstairs and mingle with the crowd, or climb the DARK, real DARK, stairs, home.
6. bukit gombak is hit, argh panic, don't tell me it really IS terrorists!
7. man! some engineer(s) or technician(s) are gonna have fried butts after this.
8. i can say i witnessed a blackout!
9. i'm sucha mountain tortoise. compared to in countries where blackouts happen every few hours, i really haven't seen much, and i'm getting all excited.
10. BUT, it IS exciting. i'm sure everyone who experienced this directly will remember this for a while, and i hope everyone who did, derived a little fun from it.
i enjoyed whistling into the night sky and well, vaguely communicating with one or two stray voices that the air carried back to me, as well as in the process attracting some neighbours out to their balconies and getting caught red-handed. alright, nuff mumbo jumbo, the sensation is starting to die off already.
paN!cker lost it at 1:07 am
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
how we're wastin' our lives
gosh, would you believe it, i spent the night finding a remote display software for the pda, so that the presentation works right on friday. and not just ANY software, freeware! i downloaded one which worked perfectly but it was just a trial so it kinda expired and alternatives had to be sought. the application is still taking its time, or rather, I . . . am taking my time, with 4 days to D-Day. when i read today's newspaper about some china student blasting his groupmates who only know how to play play play and don't know how to work, i thought it really hit home. oh deeeeear me.
anyway :( i played soccer today after coming back from a -very- short day at school(actually like 1700-1730?), and played with the AES(assumption english school) boys again. they are quicker and more agile than us, and they are only like sec 2 i think, but today we managed to put a lot more past them than they us. anyway they weren't really playing for real. BUT that's not the point. the point is so one of the cashew heights guys comes late on and replaces one who went back. so he was keeper for a few, while we were gleefully scoring tonnes of goals. the match wasn't even really exciting anymore. just a kickabout really. so the keeper wanted to play outfield, so we changed keeper. then like IMMEDIATELY he went in HARD on one of the aes guys and kinda bundled him outta the way against the fence(remember they are sec 2 and roughly half our size). to say the guy was pissed is an understatement. what happened for the next half hour i just cannot understand.
so then this aes guy is like "so u wanna play rough huh?", then he came from behind and tried a lunge at X(yea let's call him X). he failed and fell. that only adds to the humiliation so he was fuming after that. after that there was so much tension and all, everyone was silent and for the first time i didn't know how to play soccer. to cut a long story short, aes boy wanted to pick a fight with X, who really coulda beaten him to a pulp if he wanted to, methinks. but X just kept playing his game, even tho there wasn't much of a game left, and he just kept ramming in unfulfilling goals(everything at a standstill ....... duh) amidst the insults and taunting. methinks what aes boy wasn't happy about was that X refused to admit he played rough. finally X was like "since i play rough, you also play rough la, soccer is lidat what".
i couldn't believe it! you pick a fight because someone fouled you, rrrrrrrright. arghhhh, i was quite surprised cos X didn't wanna fight aes boy, only retorted a bit. that really really really really surprised me. i really expected him to be like "oh great lil puny smartass wants a piecea me" and go ahead to smush aes boy. i was thankful it didn't end bad. i tell you all this not just BECAUSE, but because these sorta things have happened a few times already eva since i join the dudes downstairs for soccer. they happen for a variety of reasons, but they all happen because of minor things, small things, things i never knew people could take each other to task for. and also what stinks is the way i fail to intervene, i wanna do something, anything really, but i don't know what and how to do it! it's not easy being a peacemaker i realise. it needs tact and a LOT of guts. so i always end up just walking around thinking of how to help, and comin up with perfectly helpful comments like "ai yo it's just a game la". i know if blows started to be exchanged i would prolly jump right in and separate them, but if there's just lotsa tension and nobody laying blows yet, i don't know what to do.
for now, i'm gonna hafta settle with twiddling my thumbs. = )
in the player: lighthouse family - lifted
paN!cker lost it at 1:12 am
Sunday, April 11, 2004
scatterbrain
yea haven't we all been there before? just that i seem to be more messed than most. there's just so many nitty gritty lil things to do, little assignments and tasks to do, stuff that's not stated in black and white in front of me, so with my pc and dandy multi-tasking skills, i set to work; unfortunately for me, it doesn't work out all that well. a string of things run through my mind to do, so i set forth by opening windows/files/folders/programs here and there, checking this and that, then after a while, when i've been to "distracted" and back, i sometimes forget why the heck i opened the window/file/folder/program in the first place. so i shrug, silly me, close the window and carry on with miscellaneous tasks, sometimes wandering over to "distracted" yet again for disconcerting periods, and as true as the world is round, the task i needed to do pops right up again, i smack my forehead in dismay and remember why i opened the window/file/folder/program a while back.
and so the morale of this warped story is that many things that need to be done, find themselves un-done. and when i realise that somewhere in future's timeline, either the deadline is really close, like in-your-face-please-panick-now, or the deadline has passed so it's more like yeah-take-it-right-back-and-soak-it-up-big-boy.
deja vu everyday. it's time for good oL trusty pen and paper. forget technology, it only makes you a scatterbrain.
paN!cker lost it at 12:36 am
Saturday, April 10, 2004
and there was much rejoicing
deadbeat. but it was a good, if not anxiety-filled day. you gotta understand, till the day the final presentation's over(AKA coming fri), i'm just gonna be drowning in cold sweat, and i imagine my groupmates as well, one by one all day. kicked off the day with an early trip down to church for the Good Friday service. then headed over to mandai columbarium to pay respects to my grandpa. so then all da relatives decided to meet first somewhere in braddell near my uncle's old home, before going. my father was quite peeved cos we coulda gone there ourselves w/o meeting, but my uncle wanted to shift ONE person over to his car cos it had some space or something, so then there were lotsa inter-car exchanges through the wound-down windows, + throught wireless communication devices like handphones, and it was all good, in the end anyway. so the 3-car entourage made its way to mandai in much grandeur ...rrrrrrrright. :)
so we got there and i had a horrid time; the amount of air pollution going on there was astounding. i went to the wrong level, and got caught smack in the midst of lots of people, and lots of burning things. i could barely breathe. after failing to find my grandpa's slot, we realised something was amiss, and proceeded down to the much airier 2nd floor, which was a considerable improvement in air flow to lungs, lower CO2 levels etc etc .... we lunched at a restaurant in bendemeer, which is preeeety close to my old school, then adjourned to my uncle's house in yio chu kang. auntie, dear kind auntie, went out with some others to get the durians. we feasted with glee, then sadly we had to leave cos of my night engagement.
on the way, we stopped by at a wake. one of my father's friend's mother had passed on, so we paid respects there too, a short prayer for God to take care of her soul, even if she may not have come to know Him. so then they are sharing and i find out uncle david has a son who is taking care of the family business, developing strategies and all, doing e-commerce websites for the company and many other things. i thought, " oh no, i'm like in BIT and he probably owns me in all areas business AND IT." shameful shameful moment, take time to reflect on much time lost, chris.
finally, we got home and i showered to get rid of the ashy smell and dirt. then almost immediately we left again, my father sending me to church of our saviour for the much-anticipated highlight of the day! it was godspell! the musical i found out was fully booked a few days before, but miraculously boon had 8 tickets! great stuff, and the queue outside just about said it all.
wow, blew me away the musical did.... the first part was rather hard to catch, but it got real interesting real fast. the cast were -really- pro, great voices, great acting skills, great dancers, great God-given talents put to great use. i loved every moment of it. the musical was set in a skatepark, and that's where God appeared and shared with all of them all the parables in Matthew, verse by single verse i think. the last part was a winner, a leaf straight out of some magician's book. it's when they were wrapping Jesus' body up after he'd been crucified and died and were in mourning, then when the music picked up and they began singing love live Jesus, they pulled the cloth away and there was ... no one. then the guy playing Jesus came out the door at the top left and everyone was like ... woah totally how did that... wait a minute, what!?? how the!? i enjoyed myself tremendously, and it took my mind off work for a while, and it reminds me who to look to for strength to pull through these last few testing weeks.
paN!cker lost it at 12:35 am
Thursday, April 08, 2004
our semi-conscious mind
i slept a tad too much testerday, which was a tad too much. and boy was it strange, dreamt of a gazillion things in the process, which reminds me how powerful our sub-conscious really is. everytime you sleep, you enter a world where you have no control at all, where the sub-conscious takes over and does with you what it will. and i realise, at least with me, my sub-conscious gets the most active when i'm teetering on the edge between here and there. like when i'm just about to fall into a deeeeeeeeep slumber then a million things zoom through your mind at the same time and the weirdest things happen. the same goes for when i'm coming out of deep sleep into reality again, or when i'm kinda awake but i try to force myself to oversleep. that really sucks, you just end up feeling really tired from all that trying.
paN!cker lost it at 3:22 pm
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
a silver lining
in every gloomy situation, there's a silver lining. in this gloomy situation, there's joseph, a God-sent. he's da man, man! here i am struggling to recall the long-gone days of VB, and there he is happily holding my hand and guiding me like a lil child. it's real cool to have friends like that, looks like ima make it after all. may i have many(not TOOO many) a happy day of programming.. cheers!
paN!cker lost it at 1:30 am
Monday, April 05, 2004
respect!
paN!cker lost it at 9:27 pm
i am the walrus
i like winston. he's got a good head on his shoulders and he seems to have it right with God, with studies, and with sports. It's all good, as they say :) of course it isn't -all- good, no matter how "right" we get with God, there will still be heaps to go, but if anyone should have a mentor or role model it's gotta be winston IMO. his simple and direct message today strikes home to the heart. what exactly do we live for? why do we do what we do everyday? is this it? yea, that's it? are we clawing through each day just to pass it by, or do we have a real purpose about our lives? the point he brought up that struck me was that when you start asking yourself these questions, then uh huh, you know it. you're searching for something more to life than mundane uh, mundanity. and even for christians, if you're not living with God day-by-day and doing His will, then you're probably still struggling with that void. hmm, now wait, wouldn't that be MY story? = )
owell, still finding my calling, don't really feel compelled into any particular industry of work, it'd be great if we didn't hafta work, if we could all just share the resources and what God has given us and live happily ever after, but i'm just idealistic ehhh? hehe anyway i will have 3 years to figure that out, gotta love NS :) can u imagine people actually working just to benefit everyone around them and not for just themselves? if everyone did that the world would be a much brighter place. everyone still working in specific industries, but for free and because of sheer goodwill. haha, that would be funny, because then it would mean sin is absent, because when sin is in da house, we have what we have today.
cell today was weird, or rather, uhm, cluster. we didn't even progress to cell, just kinda remained in cluster mode and took reaaaaaaaallly long intro'ing ourselves to the sit-in bible college lady, isabelle (i hope thats how u spell it). at least we all know a bit more about each other now :D i met kelvin at the holland v carpark!! what a small world, i thought then. we confirmed the soccer at 5pm, before goin to delifrance. then we all made our way home. i went with vik in 74 because i needed to pass an mrt to top up mine and my mother's fare cards. just one of the things ya gotta do when u don't have a maid no more; i appreciate maids more and more everyday. later on, i got on 184 bound for home, and by golly i bumped into sarah and evelyn goin to beauty world. the world is smaller than small. taking approximately 5 steps further, kelvin(yes the same kelvin) stuck out an arm and got my attention. hmmmm! rrrrrright, meet him at hv, then meet him on the same bus home haha! bigtime, it's a teeny world we live in. chatted with him some, then chatted with him A LOT as we stood at our house bus-stop since we were trapped by the pouring rain which takes no prisonahs. the yucky thought of no soccer disturbed me some, then that yucky thought came true. eventually we made it out because my parents were comin home and gave us a lift.
the rain stopped, but still there wasn't gonna be soccer, so i thought hey, i'm a wee bit tired, i'll just nap a bit. so i napped a bit, and woke up at 10:30 ..... mMmm. that's why i still function at a time like this.
i wonder when i'll actually get down to the vb application. hmm prolly kill myself tmr getting it done, i forgot all my vb commands. the demo of the thang is this week, so by hook or by crook ima get it up and working, or have my head on the line.
paN!cker lost it at 2:09 am
Thursday, April 01, 2004
ISeekYou
i love icq. whee.... just found that out. i've been using the icq 2001b version since don't know when(probably since 2001 would be a good guess), even when newer versions came out. somehow my laptop and desktop shared the same condition in that they just pretty much suck at opening newer versions of icq. i would have to wait only like 20 minutes for the danged thing to open up, so i hated icq and stuck with 2001. but today surprise surprise i downloaded icq 2003b and it works perfectly! yay for that ..... anyway the old icq screwed up my contact list a bit lost a few contacts i think ....
damn, the final leg of the project is underway(2 weeks and counting down) and the heat is ON. and it's not helping that my maid went home on saturday :( weird that i don't miss her much, guess there's not much time to do that right now. my mum is stressed out man, she's doing the majority of the work, and when i get back i hafta help with the dishes and folding of clothes and other menial tasks that don't seem menial at all anymore... haha. it's just so easy to take for granted everything that has helped make our lives easier, stuff that we don't even pay heed to, that we didn't even know existed, until they are taken away and we're left floundering.
my maid has been here for 16 years, and stands a good chance for the "Longest Serving Maid For One Employer" award, had there been one =) she's bathed me, fed me, put up with my whims and fancies, temper tantrums, and to me she has become a friend, not just a maid. when all this project crap is over maybe i'll have time to let the reality that i may not ever see her again sink in. or maybe next time i'll fly over to philippines and visit her family! oh well, the housework is gettin' to my mum, and she's not doing anything really useful everyday now thanks to household maintenance. hope something good comes up soon. we can't live like this, forever picking up after ourselves and nothing else. hah
paN!cker lost it at 3:41 pm
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