Blogging from office

Wow... i got a new com today. large 19 inch flat screen... i want it for my home. haha new everything la... faster much faster. :) scroll mouse and all. okok, it's actually a super avg pc.. but compared to the one i've been working on the past month, this is the greatest achievement of technological advancements. haha

yeh, keeping this short coz i'm in the office mah, jus blogging for fun so i can say that i blogged from the office. :)

internet isn't free here. i'm using it secretly coz it's not supposed to be given to us... only my supervisor has internet.. but he log on for me. yay. haha. he's real nice to me. :)

today quite a lot of complain for kenneth, the other temp staff. seems like he's causing them problems and stuff. i used to be quite happy that he would get asked to do work coz he's never doing work. always sit there, sleep, play handphone game,listen to music... so now the rest of us are quite... displeased with his performance and attitude.

but now, the compassionate part of me comes up and i told jalil, my supervisor, not to complain or grumble bout him la. jus tahan till he leaves in sept... and jalil was complaining to me jus now then stopped himself and said, aiyah, cannot add sin. [he's a muslim mah]...:)

yeh, so work is getting better but still boring. :)

i wanna play my guitar and i wanna play it now.

Mormonism and Musician

Today has been eventful. Meant to blog lots.. but someone got my mood down and dirty and thus, have not much motivation to blog a wonderfully bright and brilliant post. so do excuse and pardon me. :)

first, i'll talk bout my day. today started out quite bad... was late for church coz i msn-ed with debz and blogged after that. so went late... but as always, no problems.. jus guilt. :)

Reached office and spent the day in mindless dealings with flights from this country to tat country... and filled my head, thoughts and motivations on Ravi. His messages are power packed with truths and wonderous lessons to be learnt. today we covered Jonah, Nehemiah, The dying Thief... yeh.. jus selective memory on those he talked bout today...
so i indulged in the sermons and feasted upon the truths in God's word... come lunch time, i watched the next half and almost finished "underworld evolution"... and continued to listen to sermons after lunch break. knowing full well my battery was being drained... i had planned to charge it at 4pm [as always]. so the battery dwindled down to red bar at 4.30 and i decided to charge my zen. to my horror, when i looked into my bag, the jack for the charger was missing!!! that means i can't charge it! so i had a dying zen and an hour's trip to city hall. oh goodness.

cut a long story short, i stopped my sermons there and then and had to take a train instead of a bus due to the lack of entertainment. yeh so that wraps up the work side of my day.

Found Angel dozin off at city hall steps and promptly got the sleeping beauty to excelsior hotel. k, this is where i bore you with the background of the following topic. *flash back*

told lydia i was lookin for a guitar some time back and she gave me the 101 on buyin an acoustic. her info and knowledge was ... immensely useful and beneficial to me. Tian en heard i was lookin for a guit and got in touch with his fren, Kelvin, who works at a music shop. on another note, lydia recommended going Excelsior Hotel coz they had lots of guitar shops there and lo and behold, Kelvin worked there.
so last nite, i called him and we discussed bout what product i can look for there and worked with my budget and all. he gave me some specific ones to look at and i promised to pop by today to look see but he wasn't in.

so yeh, today i went to excelsior and checked out the guits. there were 3 that i was considering... $250 CORT - 2nd hand, plug in, rounder brighter sound
$249 BLAST - 1st hand, no plug in, nicer colour and look
$299 BLAST - 1st hand, no plug in, brilliant sound

so after talkin with the guy there for a while and weighing the pros and cons, i decided to buy tomolo after askin dinesh if church can handle my guit plugged in. but when i walked out, i called my mum and asked permission and dinesh to settle the PA issue. and it was all green lights so i walked back in and purchased it. it came with a free bag and so i walked out $250 poorer but tenfold-ly happy. :) so surreal. the exact amount i budgetted for, God provided a wonderfully "got standard leh" guitar... according to Lydia. haha

On the way to Subway for dinner, i approached a Mormon and spent an hour and 15 minutes speaking with him. My experiences with that is here [click to go to link] in my other blog. go read it. it was an interesting experience.

so we had wonderful subway, which i miss so much, and it wrapped [no pun intended] up a cool entertaining, informative and thought provoking day.

i are happy. i is going to learn how to play my acoustic guit well. :) and i promise to put pics when i have them.

Debz touched down in DC

Thank God, just got news from Debbie online that she's all safe and sound in DC. :) Uneventful flight and good weather. She's currently staying with Keewen's sister and looking forward to the week. here's her blog for updates.

Debbie's Safe

keep praying for her if you know her...
and we're all waiting for you to come back debz, but dun rush back... this could be one of the many holidays you have the pleasure of having. :)

on other news, had CF yesterday. it was great. :) and going to look at guitars today. hehe

Friends + Santuary Joke

Hey peeps. it's been a while since i blogged. i know... so yeh here i am. :)

today was a blast... we had beach games today for YF. :) it was good coz i was afraid since i was leading the whole yf... but it was good la. :) thank God that Chelsea and Jamie came. it was really encouraging to see those 2 sisters there today... esp Chelsea coz i know how hard it is for her to come to YF and what extreme measures she had to take jus to come today. :) thanks Chels... i was real glad you came today. :)

Yeh so on the way to church, i took a cab. knew i needed to coz i was late. so when i decided to take a cab, i decided that i HAVE to keep my promise with God. told Him before that whenever i take a cab, i will or at least try my best to share the gospel with the driver. so i did today. but i have created a blog to remember my experiences with Evangelism.. 2 reasons
1. To remember next time when i look back and read
2. To pressure myself to share with people. to also keep my promise to God. :) accountability and all.

yup. the new blog is Evangelism Blog jus for your info, "Joel" means declarer of God. so that's my new blog name coz i hope to really be able to declare to people about God. :)

yeh so read about that experience there la. dun wanna re-blog here. :)

Then after yf p[which was great. youths had fun] we had service choir and after that, stayed back with august and jodi to sing songs coz i really wanted to sing songs wif them. :) tell you. it was such a funny time la. we were trying to record a song "Sanctuary" but it turned out a hilarious time of us jus laughing at everything la. super funny. August and I were doing Vampire accents and jodi was jus dying la. she was laughing so hard we could never sing again.. and we tried so many times. :) if anyone wants to hear, let me know, i got the recording of our exploits. it's super funny. :) but you gotta be there to really understand why we're laughing so hard. :) it was so fun.

then after that went for macs with Jodi and Adrian. :) really miss eating and spending time with them. we were recapping on the train. i tell you, i thank God so much for friends. they make life so much better to live in. :) i love my friends so much... they make me happy, smile and laugh. nothing on the world can replace that. really. :)

Good Friday & Easter

Hey people, just a gentle reminder as the season came and went...

How often have you reflected on what Jesus did? As we live our lives, do we live our lives as people free-ed from Sin, from Death, from an eternity without God? or do we just live our lives without a second thot of what He paid for us?

And now since we know that, how often do we tell others He died for them? that they too have been saved from eternal damnation? The message is something that people need. Funny thing i realized this week after Street E was that people do want to hear the message, it's just how we deliver it.

God died so we might live. He sent His Son so that we might BE His sons.
Before i leave, let me just end off with a thought provoking statement.

Before we bacame Christians, we ran after Sin.
After we became Christians, we run away from Sin.

Enjoy your Monday and the week. God Bless you.

New Feature!

Guess who has a cool new feature on his blog? guess guess. hahaha.. check it out! Verse of the Day! haha.. so cool la. then like this, hopefully, every day the verse will be updated AUTOMATICALLY CAN! ahha so funky. so please do go view the verse when you tag or visit. it's jus below the tagboard... a place everyone always goes to. :)

heh so happy.

Kicked out of the Office

So today marks the 3rd day of me being sick. for those who don't know, i fell gravely [ok la. not so exaggerated.. but it was quite bad] ill on sunday night. i went to bed fine but tossed and turned in bed like a fish who jumped on shore [hmm that's quite a good imagery. dunno why no one's used that before to describe tossi... nvm] so woke [well you can't wake up when you never really did sleep much] up the next morning with a ultra high fever. this, i'm not exaggerating. my sis was freakin me and my mum out sayin how i was 38.6 and if i was 40, i'd have to go hospital and get that drip stuck in my hand. so duh, called in sick. Boss was real nice. he said take mc and rest.

So spent the first half of the morning jus dying. HAHA.. k k, trying to get rest and fight the ache... then went to poly clinic at bout 10... waited and finally got all the things done at 12. :) that's 2 wonderful hours. there came a point in the polyclinic i was sitting alone coz dad went to walk and the aches were so bad i was like dying in my hard chair la. twist and turn [people watching must have thot i'm on drug rehab or sumthing] but nuthing was comfortable. it's like one of those scenes where a person's trying to escape a straight jacket. wanted so much to cry out DAD!!! so i did it virtually. smsed him askin where he was and when he came back, laying on him was so much better. aiyoh. felt so uncomfortable b4 he came lor. dunno why also. evil fever. so yeh, got the mc and went home to rest. spent the whole day sleeping... managed to take winks in between smses coming in and stuff... and phone calls. -_-; but yeh. managed to rest quite a lot despite my high temp [i always told you people i'm hot] and aches...

the next day i still didn't feel well enuf... fever was lower but still not gone. aches were slowly going away but there was a weird feelin in my stomach. so woke up and decided to call in sick again. felt so bad. but necessities. this time, we didn't have the time, patience and.. ummm.. anything to sit thru 2 hours so we jus decided to pay a little extra and go to the family clinic outside. he was a real nice guy. really.. warm and frenly. :) he's a catholic. i saw the crucifix and he's closed on sunday. anyhow.. he charged $26.. which is $16 more than the poly clinic... so i pay $16 more and i got a full doze of antibiotics, one extra day mc, no wait and a warm smiling guy who makes you feel that you're actually a patient and not a tin can sitting on a conveyor belt that doesn't stop till you've cleared all the tin cans. :)

yeh. so i went back with 2 days of mc. so that's a total of 3 days... so spent yesterday resting and recovering. towards the night, the fever had disipated... but the stomach weirdness was getting worse... to cut a whole day short [coz when you're resting and sick, the day isn't interesting at all] i woke up today feeling much better so i decided to go work la.

So got changed and stuff wif the motivation to go work. parly coz i missed working, partly coz i should go since work would be piling up and partly coz home was boring. So i went, despite having an Mc that covered the day... went there and had hell at the pass office.. first time had so much trouble. made me really late for work. anyhow, once my boss saw my MC he was like. eh! today also ah? joel come here... you on mc today ah? k k, let me try to re-anact...
Roles: Christopher [boss 1, nicer and playful] Alvin [boss 2, less playful but still nice]
Chris: eh, your mc covers you today ah?
Me: umm yeh yes sir.
Chris: then go home! go go. get lost. dun want you here. later you kenna sumthing then die la.
Me: yeh sir i understand... i won't drop dead la. but i can go home if you want
Alvin: eh, dun waste his trip la. since he's here.
Chris: if doc say dun work, then he's not supposed to be here. anythin go wrong i dun want to say he was working here mah. whatever he say also no use see. it'll look like we made him work.
Alvin: i'm fine wif him stayin la
Chris: eh, dun overwork yourself la. go home la. got mc dun want to go home. why? we dun torture you enuf issit? that's why you want to get more torture ah? hmm Alvin, i know liao la. see la. this temp get sick on weekend coz he got no work to do. so from now on, we make the temp staff take home work to do on the weekend. then they won't get sick. hows bout it?
Alvin: haha yeh yeh.
Me: -_-. haha very funny ah. haha... yeh, i clear my work then i'll go la.
Chris: go home la! why you so siao onz to get tortured?!?

yeh..so i managed to bargain with him to let me work till bout lunch time or at least till i finish my work. promised him i won't drop dead.
So i got off work at bout 11.30 and came home. been relaxing the whole day. so shoik. :) life's good so far. realized i actually dun mind working. haha dunno why. weird i guess. :)

Yeh, going out now to meet matt for dinner. yay. haha haven't dined with him in a while. bedok bend summore. shoik. good food. yay yay.

Apologies to Angel. spent the day making the blog and it turned out like [insert cute emoticon of a pile of dung with a cherry on top]... so sorry bout it. dun have to put it up if you dun want to. trust me. i like the black and white. if not, the skin of the day for Apr 7th is quite nice. :) sorry so much. sorry sorry.

till i next blog people! ciaoz!

Depressing Mail

I'm depressed.

It finally came. in the mail as promised. 21st july 2006. I am so sad. really i am.

Shalom Youths! I Need You!

This troubles me. As i walked into church for YF today, i passed by riverlife and glanced inside. I just love their little, hang out space la. like a patio yet it's like... an open space where it's jus SO nice to hang around, chat, drink coffee in. sigh. for a split second again, i wished so hard Shalom had one of that. that we converted our outdoor carpark into something like that. :S but yeh, not good thots.

YF was alrite. sad attendance. wished we had more but i'm so glad for the core group that comes every week. it's refreshing to see that in the midst of such troubling times, there's still a bunch of strong willed and clear hearted people. they inspire and encourage me.

After YF and dinner, i was back in church waiting for a lift from Auntie Alicia and glanced over to riverlife again. Adrian, Yuan and I then broke out into a discussion as to why at 9pm, there were still youths there, hanging around, going home... basically fellowshippin. We asked ourselves what makes them come, want to come and be so bonded? why aren't our youths that fired up?

Adrian said it's about the open sharing and the sense of belonging. they feel closer and bonded. I said it's coz they have vibrant and emotional worship which leads to them also feeling closer coz they experience more extreme emotional poles together and grow thru encouragement between each other. No one's right... but the fact we all agreed on is that their hearts aren't like ours. ours seem cold, indifferent, routined... worship isn't the winning factor, neither issit the activities.

it's the hearts

what's with the hearts? what makes our youths not have the hearts for God or each other? why aren't our youths reaching out to each other, finding support within the church, finding love and belonging? Why can't i share my dreams with you and you with me?
I wanted to buy a new acoustic guitar soon. to change the idea of worship in people's minds. to bring in more lively [yet spiritually grounded] songs. to liven up the mood so worship is really sumthing of an offerin to God. and not sumthing that starts YF every week. Worship isn't songs... worship is response. and i jus dun feel it now. i look at CF and sumtimes, jus having worship can be good enuf. now why is that? why isn't that the case for church?

Shalom. in charismatic churches, they call this a revival. When they see something's wrong and want to change. i dun like the word so i'll call it an examining of the heart.

If you're a Shalom youth and you're reading this. ask yourself why you come for yf. why you don't. why aren't you feeling loved by the other youths, why aren't you loving each other. why aren't you lookin up to older ones, why aren't you helping younger ones. what is Christianity to you? what is Youth Fellowship to you. How do you want to change, what do you want to change.

This is your chair. pleading. begging you to listen. to hear and to cut your heart open. find the inner most deepest core. find it and set it right before it's too late.

Tell us, tell me. what you want us to do. we're not here to entertain you. but if you feel we're boring, mundane, routined, strict, informal, indifferent, unloving, biased, judgemental, harsh, comformists... tell us. we want to be a loving community. not a loveless community.

i ask you to heed this call. coz it's gonna be gone soon. i'm 20. most of my youth is gone. i look back and i realized how much i missed what my youth was. when i was sec1, 3... i enjoyed it so much [i still do now] but i dun feel you guys do. what made my youth so much more... [make me wanna come to yf] then it is now?

This is your chair. there's so much i can say, the rest is up to you. Please Shalom, love each other. i need you to be there for each other, to be people of God. to be ONE.

Motivation
Obedience
Victory
Intentional
Numbness
Grief

On-going
Never looking back

To move on, you gotta have all those. when you wanna forget someone or something, you gotta have those things i've listed out. the list is not exhaustive. jus the first words that pop into my head when i thot of the corresponding letter.

Life is tough. but you won't appreciate Heaven if life wasn't Hellt. You won't know wad Treasure is if you never tasted Trash. You'll never find joy in Peace if you've never gone thru Pain. And you'll never know wad Love is until you've Lost.

Right? :)

1st Day of Work

::: Edit Added Below :::

OOO.... it's 3rd April! it's 8.15am! haha.. 15 minutes till i start work proper at SIA Training Centre! hehe...

going to work now. :) Prayin that the collegues there are good, the work isn't boring and there's internet to msn and stuff. haha but it's asking alot. :P we'll see how it goes. haha

Yup, wish me all the best and i'll update soon!

::: ADDED IN :::

So i went there and had to sit thru quite a info overload kinda session. Briefing and stuff... info about the company, SIA, the job scope, the people who matter and all that. Then we [there was another temp staff] assigned to a computer and slowly were assigned work. Very very mundane work la. that was like 10.30 and thots of working in church kept filling my mind. i wanted to quit so much there and then. told myself, how can this beat working in church, crapping with august and having msn?!?!? this was like NUTHING!
But then as i complained to my mum, i guess i jus needed to complain la. then after that i was like, ok. resigned to the fact i'll be working here so better look at the silver lining. :)

The work's really quite brain dead. but today was fun. scanned flight data and stuff into the com. this whole load. :) the people working there are ok la. too old to crap with, too different to find common interests.. i mean it's one indian man and one malay lady. :) but they're nice la. :)
Dun really like the other temp though. couldn't click with him at all. He's quite "jiao Ou" in a small way la. i dun think it's his fault, i just get that vibe. He's done with ns and waiting to go London to study Uni, came from CJ. His dad works there that's why he's there and stuff. so i ate alone.
I foresee myself eating alone for the next 3 months. :) it's ok. i'm used to being alone. always am.

Let me split the work into these two
Bad things: No Msn, No youths to crap with, no attractive fellow temp staff to jio. Mundane work
Good things: Cheap Food, Good pay, Easy going collegues, Near my place

yup. that wraps up day one. :) we'll see how day 2 goes.

Though the day looked bleak, i had a nice surprise. Met up with Angel for dinner at city hall area coz she went to smu to pay fees for us. We subway-ed... sumthing i haven't done in a while... The subway girl was cute la! sigh... why didn't i talk to her more? hmm maybe coz Angel was there and coz there was like quite a few of them behind the counter. lolz. but, in Angel's words, "she's cute. but quiet"... yeh... so haha... owells. :)
Yarh, then went gai gai after that to find stuff like photocopy shop, Candy empire, pan pac's lifts, handphones... the list goes on. :)

so glad i could go out today. been wanting to for a while. i blame the last week. packed full of meetings and stuff... sigh. heh this week i'm all free. thank goodness. maybe can breathe. haha...

Nights people. till the next i blog. this is Joel, the SIA employee, signing off!

FO: A Recess to Remember

Today has been an eventful day. good and bad things to blog bout. let's go thru my schedule for today first... planned and actual. :P sounds like accounts, Budget and Actual. lol

Planned:
Wake at 6am
Reach Airport at 7am to send Rachel off
Reach Bedok MRT at 9am for FO
Leave East Coast Park [ECP] at 1
Reach Church at 1.30
Follow Up with Nic till 2
Meet Yong Jie for Worship prac at 2 till 2.30
Have YF Prayer Meeting at 2.30
YF at 3
Leave church at 6

Actual:
Woke at 7. [smsed Debbie to wish rach for me] thereafter fell asleep
Woke at 9. [smsed Mark to tell him i'll go ECP straight]
Reached at 9.45 and ate breakfast while waiting for people.
Left ECP at 1.30 [smsed Nic to push follow up till after YF]
Met Angel at Pasir ris at 2
Reached church at 2.30 and had worship prac
Started Worship proper at 3 and YF
Met Nic for follow up from 6.30 till 8.30 [we talked alot]
Came home.

yup. so it's pretty tiring la i guess. :) Woke up 2wice [heh i like how that looks. 2wice] irritated with myself coz i overslept two important things. and thus i had to cab down to ECP. but it's amazing how God can flip a situation around. Here's why...
I got in the cab and the uncle was real easy going... nice chap and he was talkative in a nice way. very engaging. so he asked me going ecp for wad? so i said going to meet frens. then he said oh yeh, good good. must enjoy life. "ren shen shi yao xiang shou"... yes we conversed in chinese... or well, mine was more of this word is like, Chinglish [Chinese + English] yeh so to cut a long story short [coz i'm tired of typing].... i asked him where he thinks he'll go after dying coz he said life is short.
he told me that we'll go back to the ground coz that's where we came from. challenged him then to think of then wads the purpose... then since he didn't believe in a God that created [from listenin to him i could tell] so i told him...
if there's a painting, there must be a painter... building, builder.... creation, creator.
Then he laughed [he laughs alot. so nice and jolly] and said that that's what people always debate and argue about.. and no one really has an ans... talked to him more bout it and in the end b4 i got out of the cab, i told him "uncle, think about what i said about a building and a builder. creation and creator." :) laughed and waved him goodbye. He was so jolly and happy about it and all. so glad it wasn't offensive or what. Felt so on fire for God after that when i rushed in to tell Nicholas [cf] about it. :P

Yeh... so the FO event was real good. fun and tiring though. i had to take off my shirt for one game though. so pai seh. i shy leh. ahha... thankfully i didn't get any funny comments. :) only i understand what i mean and why. :P haha sorry bout that people. :) my little secret.

kenna tao pok-ed at the end though. haha. but anyways, it was fun. cabbed back to bedok with Sing and Dewi. :P

met Angel and brought her to YF and to cut a long story short... the YF was really really good. felt so inspired and encouraged. then at the end, intro-ed Hsiao Yun to Angel and they hit it off really well coz they both had a similar issue that they struggle with and it was really glad to see how Angel found comfort, inspiration and hope in talkin to Hsiao Yun... it was soooo touching when she told me online jus now how she was so glad she met Hsiao Yun. God is sooo good.

Tiring day. it's ending. Sabbath. so close but after today, i dun feel like i'm that dry anymore. God refreshes me so much. I love Him.