Monday, November 30, 2009
Yesterday during Sunday School the passage included a part I'd never really noticed/bothered to read before. Labels: church
It comes from the time when John the Baptist sent his followers to ask Jesus if he really was the one they'd been awaiting, and Jesus told them to report to John the wonders he was doing etc. Now, I knew that part, mostly because of this song based on it, but I digress.
After that, Jesus was talking to the people/Pharisees about how John was indeed the messenger preparing the way, and that even though he was the greatest among those born of women, even the least in God's kingdom would be greater.
Luke 7:31-3531."To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? 32.They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other:
" 'We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not cry.'
33.For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' 34.The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' 35.But wisdom is proved right by all her children."
The idea of the children in the marketplace playing different tunes and being unsatisfied when the people comply one or the other is really quite true of the people being unsatisfied with a John who lived a terribly strict lifestyle nor Jesus whose lifestyle was radical.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Yup, today's my mum's birthday!
We were supposed to eat at Quality Hotel for lunch, but because Brother had practice, we went to Parkway Parade instead. And I looked around the shoe shops, but didn't see anything I liked.
Actually yesterday at Toa Payoh I went into 3 shoe shops, saw 3 pairs I liked, and didn't buy a single pair. It's not just that I don't want to spend the money, I also have no more occasion to wear such pretty shoes. I felt depressed after that, and indulged in Burger King! Mushroom Swiss FTW.
Just tried a hand at seeing available Qantas/British Airways flights to Sydney from Singapore - the tentative departure date is 14th February, 2010, i.e. Valentine's Day, i.e. Chinese New Year 初一.
Anyway, during sermon today Pastor told a funny joke, that's actually based on a game some people play, called Fortunately, Unfortunately, where people take turns in telling a story that alternates between being fortunate and unfortunate.
So Pastor's story was about a guy sitting in the cargo area of the plane, and fell out, unfortunately.
Fortunately, he had the parachute and opened it.
Unfortunately, the parachute had a large hole and he began to plummet down.
Fortunately, there was a very large haystack below.
Unfortunately, there was an upright pitchfork in the haystack.
Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately, he missed the haystack as well.
THE LAST LINE CRACKED ME UP!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I came back from the CAC Closing Ceremony (see above for full title), and I didn't expect it to end so late! Labels: church
Yeah, so at this ceremony they have the retirement of pastors, the ordination of pastors, and the posting of pastors to the various Methodist churches belonging to the CAC (Chinese Annual Conference).
Bishop Dr Solomon was the speaker (Rev Louis Chai translating to Chinese), and for a short while I was wondering why he was the CAC president when he isn't Chinese. Then I remembered he's the bishop in charge of the Methodist Church in Singapore, and Rev Chong is the president of CAC! I'm so blur!
So I didn't know Uncle Francis was retiring! He's so cute - he asked the Bishop if he could receive the graduation hat which he was unable to when he had really graduated years back! And his whole family was there, as well as my parents, and my father's sister and brother and wife!
Then Pastor Jasper got ordained as an elder, which means he can conduct Holy Communion now! He used to be our youth pastor!
Then finally it was Rev Chong's turn to speak, and he told Rev Louis Chai his work wasn't finished yet (as a translator)! So Rev Chong spoke in Chinese and Rev Chai translated it to English, then suddenly Rev Chong switched to English, and Rev Chai just kind of stood there for a few seconds, the congregation laughed, and Rev Chai promptly translated back into Chinese!! HILARIOUS!!
Thus began the long list of pastors who were called out by their District Superintendents, and because it was all in Chinese and my Chinese is worse than some Primary School kids', I couldn't understand WHICH churches the D.S's were referring to as they called the pastors up to the front, except PLCMM and Toa Payoh, lol.
Thanks to my father, whose Chinese is excellent, I have been informed that our C.S. pastor Rev Wilfred Leow will now be the Pastor in Charge(I think?) of Grace Methodist, and our L.S. Pastor Albert Ong will be preaching in Telok Ayer Methodist.
Uncle Keng Tat (i.e. Joshua's dad, whom I didn't know was a real pastor until he came to preach last month or something) will be splitting his time between Grace and our church. And we got a new pastor who I think was previously at some South Korean Conference. I'm pretty sure Korea has many churches. I think he is pastor Gideon Choi or something that sounds similar.
The districts are East, West and Central (called in that order), so all our pastors were called up first, since Paya Lebar is clearly in the east! This includes Rev Chai, Rev Ng B.K, Ps Kong, etc. I think Pastor Jasper is going to Changi Methodist? So far! I also recognised Rev Ngiam (she used to be in our church, her sons still are), and Rev Daniel Lee (used to be C.S. pastor) in the Central District row.
All this swapping around might take a while to get used to, but I'm sure it's all decided upon much prayer and of God's choosing!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
So, last Saturday was Zi Jie's and Shan Yi's wedding! A joyous occasion indeed! In the line of cousins, I think Zi Jie is about one year older than my sister.
We went for the tea ceremony in the morning at 5th (note: 4th) Uncle's house, where we got to see the tea-serving, tea-drinking, the pretty bride in her impressive gown and the groom in his shiny suit! We also ate lunch there, while the couple had to run off to her family's side for the same thing.
There was much fun playing with Gwen, though her parents weren't there - the grandparents brought her along. Yue played with her like a lot! I even took a photo with my phone :) She's fascinated by the pictures of herself on Yue's phone as well!
I had to go for tuition, then went home, and the solemnisation and wedding dinner was held at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, I think. Their wedding invitation was so cute, like a movie promotional postcard titled The Proposal!
The wedding dinner started rather late, and for once I was at a table with some people I don't know.
On Sunday we went to see Yan's performance at the Sounds of Hope charity concert held by MGS, in which the performing arts groups each did their own performance. I quite liked The Happy Prince play by the drama group, and the secondary dance troupe, and of course, the string ensemble!!
Today is 1st Uncle's birthday, and as always, we celebrated the dinner, cake and all, at this Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant at UE Square. Actually because my tuition ended at 5:30, I was prepared to take a straight bus from Toa Payoh Interchange to UE Square, but in the end I met my family at Newton and got fetched, yay!
Our table had the four of us kids, the four from 8th (note: 7th) Uncle's family, and Gabriel and Angie. Natalie was MIA for more than half the dinner - I think she was fascinated by the fish!
The babies were evenly 'distributed' at different tables: Natalie, Ke Xuan and Anthea, who are all terribly CUTE!
Zi Chong's table kept passing food over to our table, and at a certain point we had to redirect the food to Anson's table, haha!
The cake was pretty nice, with milk chocolate flakes and blueberries. Apparently there was some alcohol in it too. This might explain why Natalie spat it out after being fed by Grace. Clever girl.
Anyway, it was kind of funny seeing all our relatives again, because it felt like we only just saw them a week ago! I love how our family is so big!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Otherwise read as ni hon bu kan no yoru, or something like that!
This evening, I went to watch Clarissa at her dance performance, organised by the NUS Japanese club that she and Xiaowen are in, inclusive of dance, tea ceremony, koto, and a guest drum troupe from SP.
I just missed the 151 when I reached the bus stop, but any way the trip was only about 15 minutes (so quick!) that I reached my destination earlier than I needed to! Then Yi Hoong and Samantha met me there and led me to the LT where the performance was.
Xiaowen came in at the 3rd item, and we all took pictures during the intermission!
It was pretty interesting, and I especially liked the last dance. It was so energetic, and had lots of performers on stage, plus people off stage chanting, SORAN, SORAN!
After that XW and I went to the BK to have a sort of dinner thing, and I realise how much I miss having my friends around to just talk about everything.
Just sitting at the bus stop earlier and seeing this whole bustling activity, made the campus really seem alive. I hope my university experience will be fun as well! I'm kind of scared, because I haven't been studying for the past year, I hope I'll be able to adjust to schooling again!
Well, so far I've just been doing my data coding job, getting used to the programme.
I'm also currently waiting for the responses of the residential colleges I applied to. I'm feeling rather nervous, but perhaps they're not used to applicants so early in the year, since their Year 12s haven't finished their exams yet.
On Wednesday my sister and I followed my mum to NIE to have a nice sushi lunch and watch this Japanese acapella group called Permanent Fish perform at NTU. They have 5 members - one vocal percussion, one bass, and three others sharing the lead and chorus parts.
And they're really good! Okay, perhaps I'm not an expert on acapella, though I have been in a group before and watched other groups from choir, and I think it's cool that their total singing is pulled off by 4 people, since the 5th guy does the VP.
They really had a lot of energy! I think the VP guy really just went on and on without needing to drink water! And the bass guy went pretty low! And the 3 chorus guys all have excellent strong voices! Plus one of them can make these cool sort of electric guitar sounds with the mike!
Apparently they've also released Korean albums, including a version of the old Korean song Balloons, which DBSK sang a remake of! I bet that there were some DBSK fans in the audience, because they looked excited when the middle guy introduced Balloons as their next song!!
They had a concert on Wednesday night at the Esplanade, but anyway I couldn't go because I had tuition. I think it's cool how they just keep singing non-stop, and don't seem to need any time to get their notes for the next song immediately after finishing the previous one!
I hope they really can go 'from Kobe to the world'!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Yesterday was the last day of the interviews for the project, and I'm quite sorry to think that I won't get to do them anymore. Especially because the last school we went to was that one at stevens road, it was so interesting to hear what they had to say during the interviews, and I really enjoyed it. I also met Jodie on the way from the bus stop - she looked pretty surprised to see me! Labels: work
I feel like I've met so many people who were also administering surveys and conducting interviews for the past two months or so, and I've had the chance to go to so many different schools in this research position, it really was fun!
But anyway I was the youngest one doing the interviews - most of them were either undergraduate students or masters students already. And of course there were older adults too!
I'm just going to list some of their names down here so that I won't forget them next time - I hope it won't complicate anything: Yongqing, Xinjie, Huihui, Zoe, Joanna, Selina, Guan Leong. I didn't really talk to the masters students, I mean they were their own friends anyway.
I wish them all the best on their future endeavours!
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
