pics part 2: sam the faci!

have spent the holidays training to be a faci for the freshmen camp in a few weeks time... some photos :)

2-day faci workshop in school! this team was very nice to work with... nice people, fun atmosphere :)









3-day mock camp at OBS east coast (which i got home from yesterday lol)... now THIS was an amazing team... nice AND extremely competent. everything went super smoothly: broke many of the records for the games, built the team up through all the stages of development, and bonded really well in the process :) really awesome


we really DID wash out the competition lol. 4 minute timing for the barrles-and-beams raft activity! gosh! :)




playing silly games - camp staples :D


DA team

pics part 1: family back!

ok so my whole family has been home the past few weeks :)



the kids and their respective spouses hosted a 60th birthday party at raffles hotel for my dad :) i'm very proud of the video i made for him hehe







and cutest of all... my niece sophia came back too!! she's SO adorable :)









all of us also spent an afternoon at a professional photographer taking family and personal photos :) shall post some up soon!

dancers, a label, learnings and a journey

how many times must i say... it happened because the dancers just appeared out of nowhere and the banana trees just SPROUTED out of the ground and started swaying in the wind so i had no choice. duh.



well i'll touch on something i like to tell people, that happened very nicely for us: what is "being attached"? it's really just a label a guy and a girl give themselves to tell the rest of the world that both of them are "taken".

a relationship does not start the moment the couple call themselves "attached"; in fact it may be a long process that takes tears, sweat, and even some blood... :)



i've learned a lot about myself through this process. one lesson i learned was that i cannot be as adamantly unchanging as a i used to be, and that it's possible to change the way i behave and keep who i am - my beliefs and inward character - intact.



well, this was a journey i never expected would end up here. and i'm glad because where i am now is the nicest place i know. *smile*

what i feel now...

very happy and very blessed :)

doodles during finance class :D

this last drawing was done to a poem i scribbled in class, but lazy to dig the poem out now so here's just the drawing :D

mere hint

i now know one reason i felt that icy burden...

it's cos there's something there my heart wants so much, but it's not in the least attainable in the foreseeable future, and it's so vague and elusive that i don't know if i should even try

and the worst part is that this is something that i can't tell anyone, other than by elusive and vauge posts, like this one, that although only hints at it, is enough to get the burden off my chest for a while

don't read too much into this btw - whatever you're guessing is probably wrong. like i said it's just here for me to unload a bit of the burden lol

:)

frozen solid

i have this image of a hand holding my heart, but it's all frozen over. the hand and the heart: both frozen solid with icicles (well the ice things that hang from caves' ceilings) forming... as if the hand and heart were thrust into a -100 degrees winter and got frozen in an instant, and they are now just there, just like that. and the heart's trying to beat, but it's hard.

3 types of people in smu

3 types of people i've come across in smu so far

1. those who are really good at playing the stock market and don't brag about it
2. those who pretend to be good at playing the stock market and brag about it
3. those who really know nothing

just hit me very suddenly that i fall in category 3 :D

Tango con Amigos

It was a childhood dream come true. Dancing in a posh ballroom full of couples in suits and gowns, and little tables all around... With the lights dimmed and petals on the tables.


Like i said, posh.


The girl who braved walking around town with cuts in her foot to dance with me:


Perfomance by Javier Rodriguez and Andrea Misse from Argentina. They're... very, very famous. Watching them perform tango in the flesh is like watching Michael Jackson performing right in front of you.




Lovely :)

changing sam

just now a friend mentioned that my realising that people do change, is the biggest change of all

that's so true :)

i think i...

Just found the English translation for I Think I Love You... *mellow feelings*

It's very true, you know. Our lives are all like Korean dramas. It's just that we don't see things from the audience's viewpoint...

home alone: cooking dinner!

ok lesson 2: how i made tonight's dinner! ok so i stocked my fridge FULL of vegetables a few days ago and decided i'd cook something nice out of it tonight. a veggie meat dish and a veggie egg dish :D

1. rolled pants up. i'm a VERY messy cook.


2. ingredients prepared! i like to soak mushrooms in hot water for a long time so the mushroom smell isn't too strong :D deboned and sliced raw chicken thighs marinaded in soya sauce, sugar, vinegar, sesame oil and ginger powder... and a LOT of chopped onion for the stir-fry :D and that's bell peppers and spring onion :)


3. egg dish! easy! and healthy too... 5 egg whites, 1 egg yolk ^_^

turning it over chunk by chunk...


4. now the stir-fry. fried a whole lot of tiny chopped-up onion and garlic till the lot smells good, and i added some spring onion a mushroom at this point to get the flavour in the oil :) again, a healthy dish! lots of veg and olive oil!

next i put the chicken and bell peppers over the oil. some notion that the flavour will enter the chicken and peppers or something :D

whee!


5. final product!

and

home alone: building a cabinet!

ok today's lesson: how to build a cabinet you plan to use to store old books in your attic!

first, clean the place up! vacuum and wipe the dirt and dust away and do a good hard mop of the area :)


start building!



after some hard work and a few mistakes and frustration and etc, done!


:)

dreaming a future

perhaps one important thing i've been learning is that i can't live someone's life for that person.

we each have our own ideas of right and wrong, our own ideals and rules we live by, and our own relationships... each person is unique :) and because we are unique, many pieces of advice or ideals that work in a person's life my not work for another person.

we also each have our own dreams. dreams we either choose to chase or let die. individual dreams that are as varied as the flowers in a field. and this is the beauty of true friendship, relationships, and marriage:

that for a time, two people choose to dream a future, together.

meanwhile, i guess i'm content in this very big and empty house. content knowing that at least i'm chasing my own dreams, and for once content to simply watch as the friends around me live out their unique lives.

:)

best tango video i've seen

2.5 small stuff

1. really have something against people who twist ideals to justify their actions, and don't see that they're doing so. it's not a matter of whether their actions are right or wrong, it's the way their heads seem screwed on backwards: it's almost "my decision must be correct, so i'll make sure my ideals are twisted to justify them". but well... *shrug*

2. spent a LOT of money on furniture! love investing in my home :) 3 cabinets for storage upstairs and a coffee table for my own room. lovely :) in the process of installing everything, shall post pictures soon!

2.5. oh and i did well this term :) by my standards anyway :) given how relaxed i was haha

HUGS TO EVERYONE

(btw i've not been checking my mail much these days so sorry if i don't reply you)

no matter the situation

spent some time last sunday just sitting on a little stone stool by the fountain at suntec's sky garden, staring at the sun setting over the skyline, reading a new book and writing in my journal.

it's always nice to retreat into my little heart where it's less confusing and more quiet. :) i may be changing, things around me may be uncertain, but i know i can always retreat into myself and simply rest while talking to god.

i've learned a few things the hard way recently, and one of the biggest lessons is that security and peace is always there, no matter the situation.

*peaceful smile*

cute pictures!

The Bear himself in some of his usual spots!




Let's just say my new glasses turned out pretty... odd.


:D


Just bought this jigsaw! Converting a portion of my room into a jigsaw area!

... man overboard...

... just remember to tie a weight... yeah, that's tight enought.

even more random pics!

hey i've not *just* been muggin k? a man must eat...


yes, i like my school stuff as colourful as possible.


cutest cookie ever!


my glorious new squash racket. bright frame with even brighter grips. the 4-15 scorelines are history


VJ class gathering just a few hours ago!

Amazing Speech: I have a Dream

me:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

chefs playing monopoly!

awesome LTB group reunion at my place! wish i had taken photos!

again i tried to improve on my hainanese chicken rice, and again something went wrong. rice had way not enough salt this time grrrr

and had the most crazy monopoly game i've ever played.
the bank auctioned property worth $600 and someone paid $10k for it because someone purposely raised the bid...
someone accidentally mixed his money with the guy beside him and they decided to form a merger...
lots and lots of alliances and agreements...
and the same guy who got conned into paying $10k tried to play the raising-bid trick on someone else, and ended up having to pay $9k for a property worth $2k... lol!

yeah fun times. should have taken photos sigh

happy to be an introvert

after some soul-searching about my character, i've finally found something today.

that after the craziness and rara-ness of this term (on my part), when it comes down to it, i'm still an introvert inside... and very happy to be one.

happy to retreat within myself and find solace, happy to hide from the world when i need to, and still be able to be crazy when i want to, and a close friend to the important people in my life.

it's nice

Education in Singapore

Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein

This is something that educators in Singapore have not quite grasped. Singaporeans, like most Asians, tend to be goal-oriented and tend to take the easiest possible path. Educationally this translates into students who merely memorize for the sake of the exam even if they do not understand the concepts, and teachers who teach methods and rules instead of concepts and reasons.

This isn't a bad thing in itself, if success is premised on exam results and mere memory power, but it is not. Certain ideas in business and accounting must be understood first because these principles can be derived after understanding the underlying concepts. Why does understanding lead to success? Because real-world problems are not going arrive in standard exam format, nor will they be framed in your teacher's or professor's style. Real world problems depend on understanding and applying, not memorizing. This is also the reason why Physics is extremely unpopular in Singapore. When teached from an exam-oriented viewpoint, Physics is degraded from a subject the simplest conceptual framework possible, into a subject that has students memorize endless lists of formulae.

So this leaves only one reason that students take the exam-oriented studying route: the education system. I think many people would agree that it is a given that our Primary and Secondary and to a large extent, Junior College systems are exam-oriented (I am speaking about the GCE system here, I know nothing about the IB system), but I have discovered that the same problem appears in our tertiary institutes. In my institute in particular, the framework for a truly conceptual and stimulating education is avalailable to professors and students, but things are slowly shifting to the "memorize for exam" route, and meanwhile SMU students have locked themselves in a prisoner's dilemma in studying effort.

In the end it is about change. Smelling the educational roses along the road is not something Singaporeans are used to doing, but there is a general push in that direction, with the oblgatory counter-pushes and eddies. The change is slow, but the country is changing nevertheless.

He said, "Go and tell this people:
"Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'" - Isaiah 6:9

the last day of the term!

been an interesting day!

1. discovered that people who actually need to use 2 answer booklets for the biz law exam exist. goodness.

2. broke my glasses for the gazillionth time! this time it was while wiping perspiration on the threadmill. yeah. don't ask.

3. attempted to drive in the rain without glasses. key word being 'attempted'. lol!

4. have 2 new nicknames. sttmjr and BGP

5. gossipped about people who beat round the bush and girls' crushes and attached people and ex- and non-ex- boyfriends! i really feel like a BGP LOL

pooey got so much stuff i wanna blog on but guess that has to be all for now :D

Summer Fling

Wrote this for a friend over MSN. We were talking about her picking up a summer fling at a bar... comments from her below haha

Summer Fling

It was a quiet night in a quiet bar. John had just been lamenting the emergence of a solitary mole at the tip of his nose. It was, in fact, what led him to a quiet drink in a quiet pub at the edge of town.

"Perhaps," he thought, "the alcohol can drown the mole. I think moles drown in alcohol. Or maybe they don't..." The bartender peered at him quizzically, and john realised had been talking out loud.

At that very moment, the door of the bar creaked open slowly. He could make out a figure in the doorway, silhouetted by the lights of the night. The figure was a woman, holding what looked like a club.

"Good gawd, i'm drinking too much," he thought.

The silhouette figure walked slowly into the bar. She looked like a predator sniffing for prey, eyes darting to and fro, with the focus of a lion searching for his food. A flash of headlights poured in through the window and caught on her face, and John gasped.

"She... she... she has a mole... Just... like... mine..."

The tears welled up in john's eyes, but by that time the Woman with the Mole had reached the John's stool.

John was trembling both in fear and in awe, because while he had finally found someone with a mole as big as his, this person he found was holding what looked like a club surprisingly close to his face. John wondered if she was going to murder him, or squish his mole.

Suddenly, without warning, his face was flooded with the brightest light he had ever seen. Bright sparks of torchlight pierced into his eyeballs as the woman gripped him with fingers of steel.

"You. I'm checking for moles." Her voice was unnervingly sweet.

"Wh..What?"

"You heard me. I want my summer fling to have a mole... and wait a minute..."

The Woman with the Mole pulled John closer, much closer, and suddenly peered straight into his nostrils.

"No nose hair. Good. A sign of fertility. Come. You meet the requirements. Got mole. No nose hair. Faster fling with me."

John was speechless and didn't have time to resist before the woman suddenly grabbed his hands.

"Did your mummy tell you? People with moles normally have sweaty palms. I want to make sure you have no sweaty palms. I'm scared of sweaty palms. Are you scared of sweaty palms? I'm scared of sweaty palms."

By this time John was fearing his life. This woman was obviously insane, but suddenly an idea crystallized in John's mind. In the darkness his free hand reached for the glass of vodka and tipped it over so some spilled on his hand. My move, he thought.

John leaned close to this woman, close enough that his lips nearly touched her ear.

He whispered, "You're gorgeous. I hear that people with moles make good flings. Sure, let's fling together."

His free hand was creeping up to the woman's face in a way that would make her believe that he was about to, perhaps, stroke her face, or her hair.

"Yes, my man, let's fling togeth-"

Suddenly John's free hand pressed fully onto the woman's face, smearing it completely with vodka, surprising her completely. The woman shrieked and jumped away.

"Sorry darling, I forgot to tell you that my palms are sweaty, and my sweat smells like vodka."

He offered her the glass, "want some?"

- the end -

comments over MSN:
(name removed) says:
(I WANT SHOULDER LENGTH WAVY HAIR, WITH STREAKS OF GOLD )
...
(save this convo k. upload to ur blog...i can forsee it'd make it big next time )
...
(SHINE THE TORCH UP HIS NOSE I WANT TO CHECK FOR LONG NOSE HAIR )
...
(if it's too long, CUT )
...
(CHECK PALMS CANNOT HAVE SWEATY PALMS )
...
eeeks. vodka. i hate vodka
....
sounds...suspicious
...
please have good ending k
...
HOW CAN U SIDE THE GUY


:)

ga-ga

you know how you just *know* when sparks are flying between two people?

it's not about them spending all the time together. it's the silent knowing between them, it's how when you say hi to one of them it is a muted reply because there is now someone more in the picture, and there is a hint of defiance because they expect scandals to start forming around them, and yet deep in them you see joy.

it's nice how people don't make fun of couples who are serious. so far i don't see the usual immature fools go ga-ga over the new scandal and start making fun of them 24/7...

teach me to love

memories are capricious things.

when you thought they've passed, when you thought you've moved on and forgotten them, they may unexpectedly pop up to remind you, or to make you miss, or to make life at present seem a little less bright... and yet we all know that life would be a little less than what it is now without those memories

it's taken me some time to learn that i don't let go easily at all. i remember that period when friends around me all seemed to be moving on while i was still trailing in the dust (ok i can imagine some of you cringing at the memory of the super sad blog posts lol).

but sam, what are you holding on to? the person, or the memory of the person? people change and you've found out that you do too. perhaps the next thing to learn is that embracing people means embracing not just who they are, but who they will be.

faith, hope, love. hope is an expectation of something different to come. faith is an increased strength in that expectation of something different. both faith and hope have to do with time and with change... but love does not.

love is love. love is now, love is present. love is there regardless of time, regardless of change. love never fails because it does not care if a person changes, and it is not conditional. love is simply love. it is there.

teach me to love.

predicament

ok can't decide if i should go for the very first argentine tango lesson for 2 hours tmrw, or spend the time studying for exams which start this monday.

decisions... decisions.

realised something odd.

realised that most people i know in smu want to either become an investment banker, or a desk-bound accountant in an accounting firm...

what?

1. investment banking - no, i'm not going to throw away my free time, sleep time, friends time, youth, just to make a pile of money. there are some things money can't buy, period. health is one of those things, friends are another, sanity is too. work myself crazy for a decade and retire at 30? if you think ten years of doing literally nothing but making money, is better than having time for friends and family, then go ahead into IB.

2. desk-bond jobs! - ok i know some people like jobs like this... but i can't imagine facing the 3 walls of a cubicle for the rest of my life. by the first 24 hours of the job i'll probably scream, run out of the firm, go home and give the first friend i meet a good long hug. haha... no offence to people who like being desk-bound tho. i know people who like the familiarity and constancy of such a job.

okie that's all... wow it's 2am here. can't wait till exams are finally over.

to my old friends :)

happened to be looking through my old photos...


this was our... first prayer party? second? really miss all of you. we must have our "annual gathering" this christmas again :) at least one-third of you look quite different now heh. gosh. lots of memories in photos like this...


ok mini-tribute to 2 of my closest friends. my dear adhoc! met you two in VJ choir, knew you 2 as faces in a crowd, we failed to get into exco and got 'dumped' into adhoc instead, and life has never been the same :)

just remembering all the times we helped each other when we had problems, the times we went to the beach and just sat there singing songs as i awkwardly strummed my guitar...

i think it was in VJ that we faced major changes in our lives, and it's great how we were nicely placed there to help each other through. it was amazing how God in the end got the 3 of us in the same university and the same church :) wonderful stuff.

thanks for everything. there may have been times when we seem to drift apart a bit, but for the past five years, i know that you two have been there, through the ups and downs, happys and sads, smiles and frowns, tears and joys... and that means a lot. :)

unchanging sam?

ok so the term is more-or-less over... didn't take many pictures this term but shall post a few :)

probably the best project group in the world!


a view from one of the corridors at school...


the sight in front of my eyes everytime i drive to school :)


he's cuter than me!


hmmm ok the other nice pics i've already posted...

but yeah shall miss this term. it was great, made many new friends... even though the workload was absolutely mad.

i realise i've gotten used to being around friends. it feels weird to drive home on my own nowadays... and i can't seem to study when i'm alone. well i guess it's probably a good thing :) a good change from my hermit phase... yup even the unchanging sam has changed...