The Lines on this Book

Cas says I walked out of a hallmark card.
Like Giselle.

James: Is there another side to you?
Ave: What is 'this' side that you see?
James: Happy, mature...
Ave: Mm...go read my blog haha :)

It's interesting what people think of me.

Cas says of the photo of me and her that it's darkness and light next to one another. I guess this light is actually pretty in touch with her darkness too.

My happiness is framed by the the worst wreckages of emotional grief you'll ever see. I feel deeply. Been on cloud nine and higher up, but also sunk lower than the gates of Hades.

I am frequently immature - when I'm with my parents.
If one can't be childish around parents, it'll be one of the saddest things on this planet.

Name me a revival

Wait...
This is actually for real.
Three revivals names the Azuza street revival, the Moravians and - get this - the Zinzendorf revival!

Cool ministry names eh?
Azuza...
Zinzendorf...
Close fight, but I think Zinzendorf wins :)

Post-its on What-nots

Referring to my post on 30 October 2009, I've finally found a name for this lovely genre of movies. They're called indie films, short for independent films.
(a footnote here: I used to think indie music referred to Bollywood music or something - think Slumdog Millionaire)

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Nicole K. said she likes my blog!
I'mma on cloud nine :)
*flounces*
Please do not bring me back down to earth yet.

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The milk tea I had for lunch is much stronger than I expected, which is the reason why I can't do half the stuff on my to-do list.
This is NOT a lame excuse. I am completely serious.
I'm as jumpy as a jelly-bean (though why I should think jellybeans are jumpy is beyond me) despite my best efforts to down my tumbler of water to drain out the caffeine.
Highly sensitive people (or HSPs) should NOT drink Japanese milk tea.

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Luxury food item: Jaffa Vienese biscuits from Marks & Spencer (who knew chocolate and orange would turn out so good?)
Happy food item: Percy Pig soft gums also from Marks & Spencer (do not get the piglets - they're harder and less yummy)

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Things that make me go crazy: nicely-printed paper and notebooks.
Actually, nicely-printed anything. Just discovered this lil' niche shop called 'wood would'. I'm not going to tell you where it is cause I don't want people flooding it. It wouldn't be a niche shop then. But if nice-printed paper products make you go crazy like they make me, you can drop me an email (email add attached at the bottom) and I might tell you. But only if you're convincing enough about 'make you go crazy' bit.

here it is: redliquorice@gmail.com

On Eve and Her Kind

"We are called to be women. The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that He wants me to be."
-Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman

Once again, I am inspired by her.
Little sparks of truth and inspiration embedded all over this pocket-size book consisting of forty-nine chapters ranging between two to five pages each.
Very concise.
With typical cut-throat honesty Elliot cuts straight to the soul. A perfect blend of wisdom and emotional honesty.
She is such a light.

Unspoken

Freeze-frames of pedastrians on skyscraper walls
Cars and streetlights, voices fall
A blur of smoke as the world rushes by
Another day has come and gone

You look at me with accusing eyes
Put me on charge for my silent lies
The words you needed to hear the most
I withheld, oh of only I had known

If you knew the path you were on
If you had seen what was coming when life is gone
If only I had told you so
Whispered His love before you had to go

There was the house of summer memories
Springtime cheer, joy, laughter, melodies
Us skipping waves, you called me friend
I didn't think it'd lead to this end

You look at me with accusing eyes
Put me on charge for my silent lies
The words you needed to hear the most
At the tip of my tongue, but then I froze

Bring me back to those innocent times
Bring me back before the final chime
Let me say those words you need to hear
Perhaps this time I'll overcome my fears

Didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to sound, but it'll have to do for now.

The Scapel in His Hands

There are three kinds of guys on this planet.
Guys that make me cry - in frustration.
Guys that make me smile.
And guys that make me cry - in gratitude.

The third category kind of a guy is so rare I've only met one in my entire life (though one might be quick to remind that my entire life consists of a month and a half short of twenty-two years). Well, I can only think of one offhand. He's really the reason why I'm blogging this post in the first place anyway :)

I like Eric Ludy's description of this kind of men - warrior poets. They fight like warriors and love like poets. There's something true about men like that.





I can't stop singing "I love the look that I see in your eyes when every morning you brush open mine...drawn to the steeples of whitewashed cathedrals where words that are spoken are to no avail | do you remember the day that I left yet you told me you loved me and helped me see that..."

Not Just Words

I think I'm a poem coming out of the mud.
And I think I shouldn't let anyone but God tell me who I am.

Divine Cathedral Halls

Daniel Loke

"In back rows of pews and
On the beach where waves lap gently on the shore
In grand auditorium halls
And spaces where summer turns spring into fall

I hear your gentle whispers of love and my name on your lips
The sweetness of your breath lets me know I am complete

Oh how I love the look that I see in your eyes
When every morning you brush open mine
Do you remember the day that we met when you told me you loved me
And helped me see that all your

*Shades of sunsets shine for me
Tainted glass I did not see
The pains of love etched into stone
My longing to call you my home
Winds are wild and deer run free
Bells chime joyous melodies
Miles of coastlines echo all
My longings to cushion my fall
Your longings that echo through the walls
Of divine cathedral halls

Of premature births and of the young one’s mirth
And unblemished hazel eyes
Of violins, guitars and songs
Of right and wrong, and beauty untold in the skies

Of science and wonders, of time and thunder, your heart romances mine
You came to court me, you chased and caught me
You have my heart and I find I am

Drawn to the steeples of whitewashed cathedrals
Where words that are spoken are to no avail
Do you remember the day that I left yet you told me you loved me
And helped me see that all your"

As of now, this is my favourite mood song, and Daniel Loke has just become one of my favourite lyricists!

"The Pursuit of God"

"Every one of us has had experiences which we have not been able to explain - a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in the face of the universal vastness. Or we have had a fleeting visitation of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick flash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins are divine. What we saw there, or felt, or heard, may have been contrary to all that we had been taught in the schools and at wide variance with all our former beliefs and opinions. We were forced to suspend our acquired doubts while, for a moment, the clouds were rolled back and we saw and heard for ourselves. Explain such things as we will, I think we have not been fair to the facts until we allow at least the possibility that such experiences may arise from the presence of God in the world and His persistent effort to communicate with mankind.”
- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Vinna emailed the CG this quote.
It's so deep it cuts.
It's so true I feel my heart hanging.

A. W. Tozer is such a genius, putting into words what I can't about those moments where I literally felt "a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in the face of the universal vastness".

It's good to know that there's someone out there who understands how you feel, who felt it before you did, who thinks weirdly like you do.

Running on empty

Fourth day of my alone-ness, and I'm about to have an emotional meltdown.
Never realised how unnatural it is to enter an empty office - "it is not good for man to be alone" is taking on a whole new meaning.

I feel...weird. Isolated. Disconnected. DIsenfranchised, almost.
It took a couple of emails to remind me that I'm still alive and have things for which I can move about purposefully. Don't know what caused me to switch on my laptop - possibly saving grace - but I'm glad I did cause if I hadn't, I probably would've crawled beneath my table and spent the day emo-ing away.

Yes, that's right.
Leaders are human too.
(Thanks Edwin, for reminding us all of this very overlooked fact.)

Xingqi and Chee Onn return tomorrow - Hallelujah!
I'm reading Joanne's email and it puts some blood back into my veins...helps me to feel my flesh and remember my human-ness.
After sleeping in for four days and popping my yellow anti-histermines, I'm glad my physical health is almost back to normal.
Now for the mental and emotional bit.

One thing I do know, is that I need to be on my knees praying a bit more often. There's always a million and one reasons distracting me whenever I try to do that - I know, it's diabolical. But if I ain't praying, I ain't got nothin' to run with.

Rainbows, ponies and stardust.

My eyes hurt from staring at the screen prolonged.
A lot emails to compose today - first to Nicole to tell her about Acts 29 (that's the pet name for our school outreach project for now), then to Mooks for the notes from our two hour long phone conference, but not before I'd spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out the best way to put PACE and shepherding groupings onto a document, and then finally, there is the gospel tract, which I must say, I am very proud of now that it's gone through a round of editing and I've put in two new pages and changed the cover concept :)

Oh-kaaay.
That's a mighty long paragraph.
It's 5.46pm and I'm taking a bus to toa payoh after this post to meet Belle. I hope 剪刀饭 has reopened by now! I'm so tired I can't even msuter up energy to be excited about our date, though Belle is totally lovely and I'm very happy to be meeting her, but it's all up in my head now, trickling very slowly down into my heart cause I'm slightly down with the flu. So glad I slept in the extra hour this morning.
Hope I recover before Xingqi and Chee Onn come back on friday.

Yinky gave me a DVD yesterday on Mother Teresa! Whooo-hooo! She rocks! That's both of them - Yinky and Mother Teresa, haha! Had the worst meal at MOS ever - seafood rice burger tastes like blanded cardboard and the milkshake tasted gross after it melted. Jeanne cheated my feelings about the seafood rice burger! Ok actually, I think we just have very different taste.

You know that feeling when you make a prediction about something which you actually don't want to happen and it really happens? Yeah, it's that feeling, and I'm feeling it now. I could do ten consecutive backflips down the stage and he'd probably still not notice.

I had red bean soup for lunch.
And a bite of bread leftover from breakfast.
I want a really good dinner.

5.53pm.
Hope the teddy bear is staring at me.
You're so innocent, Hope, and so carefree.
I wish I was like you.
Well, Hope isn't all that carefree honestly, because he's stuck sitting on the tissue box on my office table where I left him, and he can't move until I decide to move him, but I can imagine a teddy bear heaven where he'll get to run free in a really, really big grass field in breezy weather and a cornflower blue sky overhead, tugging on the string of his colourful paper kite.
Maybe that's my heaven - the one I dream of.

Tap, tap, tap.
Trying to figure out how to end this post.
Hmm...how about a cliffhanger?

Junkyard Letters.

Wow. It's been two months already.
Fingers hover over the keyboard and...zilch.
Nothing.
That's a sign that I've been doing too much, or not blogging often enough to capture the moments.

I think it's the latter.
How do you capture those moments anyway? It's not like I can whisk out a laptop and internet connection when I'm sitting by the pool at 11pm and thinking through the day, or when I'm on the bus and a really epiphanical thought hits me.

Will we remember any of this in a thousand years to come?

Maybe it'll be like Joshua Harris' dream, where there's drawer after drawer in a filing cabinet in a large room in heaven where all our memories will be stored, including all the smart and stupid things we said, as well as all the things we never said.
And then I'll be able to see just how many people have read my posts, and know how accurate my feelings are cause about right now, I feel worthless. I bet if my posts were books they'd be the kind forgotten on a really high shelf in a dusty corner in the book store and one day, when they're clearing out the shop, they'd discover the existence of my posts-books and then...
I don't know.
Maybe they'll laugh as they remember what was written inside, or be curious cause they'd never read it and the books look really quaint, with the yellowing-pages, old ink and dust. Or maybe they'll throw it out for recycling without a second glance.

I really, really, REALLY like Donald Miller.
Maybe that's not too accurate. Let me rephrase.
I really, really, REALLY like Donald Miller's writing style.
I mean, I wouldn't actually know if I liked him unless if I met him in person, right?
But he's so honest, honest in a way I've always hope to be but realised I've always fallen short because I'm too busy embellishing my thoughts with fancy words that would have swirls and prints all over if you transposed them into a picture that by the time I hit 'publish post', I've glossed a layer of shine over all of it.
Myabe God is teaching me how to be honest.
Like, honest as in "through the heart" and not "from the heart".
Lil' C said that when commenting on Mark and Chelsie's dancing (the "Bleeding Love" one by Tabitha and Napolean, who are, incidentally, a really awesome hip hop choreographer-couple) and I've not had anything else make so much sense to me before.
Maybe that's slightly exaggerating, but what I'm trying to say is that dancing through your heart is so important a truth that it can be applied to so many other things in life, such as writing.
So back to this writing business...

I was standing along the corridor on the second level of Bartley, and there was this wind blowing down it. It was still and quiet, with the sound of the kids' voices coming through the wall, and it felt so peaceful. I stayed there for a bit because it was one of those moments that needed to last a bit longer than the usual moment, so you stop moving and stay in there until you feel it in you to move on to the next one.
It made me feel...alive.

So yes, getting back to this writing business, perhaps I should just put in the quote from Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years here.
"Sometimes I'm tempted to believe life doesn't mean anything at all. I've read philosophers who say meaningful experiences are purely subjective, and I understand why they belive that, because you can't prove life and love and death are anything more than radom happenings. But then you start thinking about some of the scenes you've lived, and if you've had a couple of drinks, they have a sentimental quality that gets you believing we are all poems coming out of the mud."

That's exactly how I feel.
Except that I don't need a couple of drinks to get into the sentimental mood. I think HSPs (highly sensitive people) kinda just create these moods themselves, or else they just swing into it.

My post title doesn't even make sense, but it just came and in a weird sort of way, it feels right.

Verse for the Day

"For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ."
Galatians 1:10

Check out the verse for the day!
Completely relevant.

I think I try to please men too much.
Try too hard to win their approval.
Life boat syndrome.

Maybe someday, it'll be like it was in the Garden of Eden, and I'll only let God tell me who I am.

God on My Pedestal

A completely casual utterance of Wingardium Leviosa in the office yesterday led to a long conversation that resulted in some very enlightening conclusions.

I hesitate to use the word 'enlightened', because it gives connotations of nirvana, Buddhist enlightenment and whatnot, but I couldn't find a better word for it.

Basically, it was a whack over the head and the loose bulb that had been flickering finally came on.

I realized humanism has a form of godliness, but actually leads down the path of destruction because it is the worship of man as god. Which is pretty similar to all that stuff I've been talking to daddy about (he presenting the side of Buddhism, of course).

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many hungry you fed, naked you clothed, homeless you sheltered, lives you changed, or how much of humanity you saved if all of that was done with man as the end goal in mind.

Christians do all that, not because man is the greatest, but because God is, and naturally when you love God and worship him, you will come to love the people He loves too, see them through His eyes and value them as He does.
The key difference being that you do NOT worship them ie. place them on the highest pedestal, which is a really sneaky tactic the devil uses (just look at the numbers who have fallen prey to it!).

I have to confess, I was one of them.
Which explains the highly confusing situation I found myself in.
I had God and humanity both on the same pedestal, though in Christian reality love for latter flows out of love for the former. Unfortunately, the tricky line was something that eluded me for a bit.
Thank God, thank God, THANK GOD for helping me to learn that through an unexpected conversation.

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone."
- 2 Timothy 3:1-9

You Only Live Once

YOLO stands for you only live once.
How utterly cool is that.

Kevin Goh has a long lost brother called Kevin Thio.
Wahahahahaha :)

Ps Daniel Chua gave me a biggish card today with nice swirls inked over it and the words "We are God's MASTERPIECE - from Ephesians 2:10" nciely inked on in colour-changing tones.
Lovely with a capital L.
And also very touched by his kind gesture.

I work with really awesome poeple.
Chee Onn is a totally fab boss :) he's steadfast and really knows his stuff and is super efficient, but non-pushy and also kind and fatherly.
And how else can I say "I am really thankful Xingqi is around"?
The very fact that I've got someone to share girl stuff with is reason to rejoice :) on top of that, Xingqi and I get along well so that's the icing with the cherry!

Caleb comes through the door - he's long and spidery, just like Yi Min.
Oh boy.
Was hoping he'd be not-so-tall but guess that's not happening.
2 minutes to practice starts!
Gotta zip!

His and Hers

I wrote this a long time ago and forgot all about it!

曾经想过，如果我是道明寺爱上的杉菜，那该多好。
不过，现在终于明白，尽管道明寺很好，自己毕竟不是杉菜。
也只有像杉菜性格如此般强烈的女生，才能够改变像道明寺般的男生。

扮演别人，能够扮演多久呢？
一个月？两个月？
或许吧。
一辈子吗？
不可能。

现在的我，不再希望自己是杉菜，也不希望道明寺爱上我，只希望做回我自己，然后，等待会爱上陈语嫣的人出现。

因为每个女孩都有属于自己的道明寺，就有如每个男生都有属于他的杉菜。

Muse for the Day

Edwin Beh's chinese name is Ma Yi Sheng, translated to Beh Yik Teng!
How cool is that!

Sunshine, Cabbage and Zombies

Life is noticeably alot happier when you're not focusing on your own emo feelings and just being thankful for the myriad of reasons to smile each day.
I really ought to make it a point to not blog when I'm emo, or at least, not only when I'm emo.
It's good to turn the blinds and allow a bit of sunshine to get into the room - ahhhh, breath of fresh air :)

Muse for the day: this really interesting game Boon Kiat was playing in the office. Basically you plant an assortment of plants to stop the zombies from attacking. You've got the sunflower that gives you sun-credit to buy plants with, cabbage that shoots -what else- cabbage at the zombies to kill them, nuts of two diffeerent sizes to block the zombies with (they take longer to eat up the nuts than the seedlings), pumpkin fenders and a weird, ghoul-like looking sack that squashes the zombies (an immediate kill, valid for one-time use).
I'm still amazed that someone came up with a game where you kill zombies with plants.
Almost makes you wanna roll your eyes and go, "But of course, why didn't I think of it?" but honestly, I have to say it's quite clever :) And the graphics are quite cute - uh, well done. Makes me feeling like playing!

Lunch at Ministry of Steak with Xingqi, Boon Kiat and Kevin, who was most kind to treat us, ending off with original frolick topped with fruity pebbles :)

Did you know: Hannah Loke has never tasted frolick!

It's 3.22pm now and Mooks is waiting in the room-with-the-green-couch. I'm not even halfway through my to-do list yet.
Work work work, Ave!
Geum Jan Di - fighting!

Cough Syrup and a Little Love.

Puzzled over the sudden occurrence of a coughing fit late at night, I ran through the day's menu in my mind: sarpino's pizza, instant yuan yang (that's the official name for coffee-tea mix in chinese for you), mummy's mixed rice and tonic soup with black chicken, wolfberries and black beans.
I saw no loop-holes.
Could just be a sign from my body to work less, more rest (unintended rhyming there, sorry if it sounds bad - I couldn't resist :).

Yanked my very unwilling self out of bed and trudged over to the kitchen in search of Woods' cough syrup. Thank God for peppermint flavour. About to down the spoonful with some warm water when dì (that's younger brother in chinese) came into the kitchen.

"You got a sore throat?"
"Nope, just a cough."

And that was it. No Academy Award winning script there.
But his voice betrayed concern, if he'd attempted to hide it in the first place, that is. I trudged back to bed in a considerably much happier state.

It's little things like that that really go for the heart, know what I mean?

Welcome to the desk job :)

Reporting on the situation in Room 02-15.

Items on desk (left to right):
Hope the teddy bear sitting atop my Gold - Harmony tissue box;
clear glass vase with two stalk of gerberas, left from a recent meeting;
Dave's copy of Living Your Strengths on top of a stack of papers, including freshly photocopied pages out of Jim & Casper Go to Church;
telephone (working at looong last - we can call out now!);
two extra-large post-its (我似乎已变成便利贴女孩了！);
air freshener nicked from the satellite office (no, no satellites in there, just stationery and a very handy all-purpose printer);
used scented candle, courtesy of Cas (unfortunately wasn't very effective in getting rid of the carpet smell);
chocolate digestive biscuits (and everyone say hooray!);
my almost-completed sign-up form for the Epic, the Tim Elmore conference;
anti-bacterial hand gel, influecned by Cheryl Hoe;
stack of namecards tied up with a yellow rubberband;
a really gi-normous pink and purple heart-shape lollipop from Shukun;
an NTUC plastic bag and three clean ziplocs;
the desk top and keyboard and mouse.

I LOVE MY DESK!

And even more so, I love the people I work with :)
Chee Onn is a terrific boss, Xingqi is a wonderful colleague (it's nice having a girlfriend you can click with), and Boon Kiat is dependable in his own quiet manner :)

Not to mention the cool Bartley people a few doors down in the satellite office (like Shaun, who treated Boon Kiat and I to pizza today - Sarpino's rocks! It beats every other pizzeria I've had so far) and the SV muggers (those dear, dear kids...haha I sound ancient calling them kids; they'll probably kill me for that).

My first paycheck is due in about ten days' time.
No hiccups there, I hope.
After my recent splurge on Erwin McManus books, my bank account is precariously balanced (think wobbly and on tenterhooks).

And I'm still wondering if this blog is of significance. I mean, how many of us actually achieve Julia Powell status in our lifetime?
Sometimes you wonder if anyone's listening and in the event that there isn't, if that's an indicator of your lack of wittiness, personality, humour or whatever.

Whoever would've thought the a blog could be a feed-off site for egos?
And something inside me is resisting the urge to roll my eyes and go, "I feel soooo loved."
I mean, not that I'm not (I know Yinky and Joylynn and Roomie love me), but just how much love is needed for a person to feel loved (as in, the fully, completely, totally lost-in-it, feet firmly planted on ground sort of knowing you're loved)?
That's where I get stumped, and you know what?
It still comes back to God after a long round of rambling (474 words of rambling, to be exact; yeah I counted using the word count on microsoft doc).

Insatiable need for love.
That's you, me and everyone else living on this planet.
And no thanks, I'd rather not go through a gazillion reincarnations to attain enlightenment (or nirvana, or whatever it's called).
It's waaaaaay better to know that you're loved.
Full stop.
No strings attached.

It's good to know that you're loved :)