BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Monday, January 31, 2005
ANTIBIOTIC PRAYER

When you take antibiotics, you've gotta finish a whole course. i've known this all my life, but still, my terrible habit with them medicines persist. the last two times i've fallen sick, i've been prescribed antibiotics. and on both occassions, i quit the course before it really ran through five days. why would i do something like that? lazy, i guess. the first sign of improvement, the moment i feel well enough to miss a dose or two, i forget that i ever got on them, and i tell you, i've no clue how bad that must be for me. i'd hate to wake up one day and find out that none of the antibiotics work on me anymore.

but really, what's more troubling is the inability to hang in there and finish my medicines. what's troubling is that at the first flush of healing, i forget that this one needs upkeep.

yesterday, ps lee choo was talking about people who pray for healing for stuff like cancer. and when they pray, they really, really pray. but for lots of these people, the moment they get healed, they stop praying. some of people seek God so desperately when they want something, and the moment they get it, they stop seeking God.

now, i don't have to be God to feel offended and cheapened by this kind of attitude. it usurps God and His willingness to love, His unconditional condition. it exploits his affection for us for what? some dumb earthly thing or a deliverance from what is inevitable - one's body failing unto death! am i saying that praying for things and healing is wrong? no. but if we only approach God to take and run, we treat Him like a 7 Eleven.

oh but wait... i treat antibiotics in the same way. who am i to be all preachy about this? no one, i guess. because i too am found in this category of usurpers - and i admit that i don't respect my antibiotics enough to see them through the requisite five days.

when i pray, i can end up asking for a lot. and while that is already mildly scary in itself (depending on what i'm asking for), what's more worrying is that last week, i considered the whole idea of "backsliding" and i was thinking about the whole mechanics of it. i thought about people who had backslidden, why they must have done so and how it applied to my life. and for a brief moment, backsliding seemed ok to me. of course, i snapped out of it and i can say that it is never something i wanna go near. but...

.... if i entertain such thoughts any longer than "brief moment", you never know with these things. so, all in all, i don't want to take our Father forgranted anymore. it is cruel and unkind, and it must hurt Him so much. but not even because of that. if i really love Him the way i say i do, then i just will not usurp Him. i will see out my life with Him even after the good life kicks in. and as for antibiotics, next time i'm gonna take them to the end.

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Genusfrog [ 3:47 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, January 27, 2005
PURPOSEFUL GROWTH TIMETABLE

I learnt a thing from championship manager, paired it with something i learnt from church, and the result is my Purposeful Growth Timetable.

i sat down the other night, remembering two things - pastor talking about growth and mel asking me what i do after work each day. and i decided that i had to purposefully (not incidentally) decide what i do each day after work to achieve the kind of growth i gallantly talk about each january.

when it came down to putting a timetable together, i realised that it had to be a different format from everything i'd previously done. it had to allow for flexibility, and be real and reasonable. it could not, must not be set in stone. yet, it needed a structure, a distinctive framework with set activities due at set places. now, i'm glad that so many long nights and early mornings playing championship manager have not gone to waste. cos i'm deriving my format from the training module they've got on there in cm4: drag n drop from a pool of available activities.

i've come up with this wonderful timetable with colour coded activities. purple is exclusively for quiet time, blue is for personal growth, yellow is for church involvement, pink is for social needs, orange is for entertainment and green is for work. all of the activity pieces can be pulled off and replaced (blu tack). activities that are not on this week are either off the board or on the "next week" column.

still, some activites will look forced being timetabled (not least of all "blogging"), but like i said, it's mainly a guide to remind me of purposeful activity and growth (btw, the scheduled blogging time is actually for the one carefully thought-out christian post i plan to put up here every week in a bid to make this place more deliberately christocentric).

i don't know about you, but i'm really excited about this coming year. it's still january and i sat down that night, thinking about all these things, and i wrote down all the areas i wanna grow this year. having written them down, i thought of the activities that i needed to fill my time with in order to produce such growth. so, all this led to the timetable you see here. i'm only starting to use it, so i can't say it really works. but i'm definitely encouraging purposeful, deliberate actions and life planning in order to achieve the results you want for this year.

amen!

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Genusfrog [ 7:16 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, January 25, 2005
SCHOOLTIME NAUGHTIISM

We were talking about the notorious things that happened in our schools last time. for me, a few of us who didn't take chinese class booked ourselves into an empty classroom and started playing ping pong by joining tables, using pencil cases as nets and exercise books as bats. needless to say, our ruckus eventually brought the penyelia petang to our classroom, where we got quite the punishment. we had to wash the bathroom. not just any bathroom too - the one next to the science lab, the one that smelled like ammonia all the time.

we had a goreng pisang stall opposite our school, on the road. you see, my school hand three roads going through it (or rather, it was built on three blocks). so our classroom overlooked a pisang goreng stall three floors down, opposite the road. boon ping, glendon, bernard, ang, and of course, myself... used to order goreng pisang from them using hand gestures. they'd gesture back and then bring the goreng pisang over... where one of us would go downstairs and collect. this one time, she gestured that the penyelia petang was in the class next door, but of course, we didn't understand what they were saying. lucky didn't get caught. don't want to imagine what we'd be cleaning for that! haha...

i used to think that kl schools were really notorious. in fact, they are. compared to my school, the stuff kl kids got round to doing far exceeded what we ever dreamt of. the student-teacher conflicts were more heated, the boy-girl shenanigans were more scandalous, and the 100% tulen juvenile delinquency was always more 100% tulen.

in one of the schools, dunno if it was seaport or seapark, the students blew up one of their teachers' cars. waw! that's really crazy, man. jeremy said that the worst they ever got was to move the teacher's car by carrying it and putting it in the middle of the road or somthing like that. man, i hear these stories and i still think they're quite amazing. then, jeremy told us about this one time when the police came into his classroom and arrested his teacher. apparently, the teacher was carted off for some stock fraud or something like that. but here's the best part - guess what subject that teacher was teaching?

moral!

can you believe that? that is like, so cool, you know. how many times do you get police storming into a class to arrest a teacher, and not just any teacher, your moral teacher! wahoo! man, what i'd have given to see some of my moral teachers get arrested midclass!

and then i think... ok, so juvenile naughtiness is normal. it will be around everywhere. and then there are some things which are just not really funny anymore. and i guess, to put myself in the teacher's shoes, having this bunch of kids totally torment you in this way must be quite harrowing (not that some of them don't ask for it). and then, to think that this guy would get arrested in front of all his students while teaching moral is just plain embarrassing. the truth is, the police don't have to do that. they can arrest him anytime when he's at home. but i know our police like to shame people. they're really no different from those teachers who make you stand on chairs and draw question marks on your cheeks with marker pens because you forgot to write them in your questions when you were 9.

yes, that happened to me and vernon. question mark for one, dollar sign for the other.

so in this shame society, where the punishers go for gold, i guess it's only fair that the cheeky gits get their fair bit of fun. heck, if i only heard your stories, i'd be sure it wasn't the punishers who were taking home first prize.

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Genusfrog [ 3:04 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, January 24, 2005
EXCUSE ME, WHERE CAN I FIND SERVIETTES?

Now, i do not have an agenda against Giant supermarkets. but what you're about to read is gonna make you think i do.

i was at giant the other night, navigating my cart through all the narrow aisles (on which they've placed more goods, along the middle ridge of the aisle, creating two aisles). and well, as if this wasn't hard enough (and harrowing enough), i ran into a certain problem... of finding serviettes.

i couldn't find them at the tissue area, nor could i find them at the household area, or anywhere at all. so, fine. ask one of the guys - RIGHT?

wrong.

well, i did ask the guys. it turns out they are not malaysian, they don't understand malay nor english. the guy i asked called another guy just like him to deal with me. needless to say, i got nothing out of them. i circled giant for about half an hour and i got nothing. eventually, i found another guy and he also was not on my linguistic wavelength.

i did find one of those Julie's girls, plugging biscuits. but alas, trying to speak chinese was a can of worms in its own right. at one point, i seriously felt like i was shopping in a foreign country.

eventually, i paid for everything and a nice lady in parkson clued me into finding serviettes.

so, what is it with giant? i'd already posted once on the pseudo poronographic schoolbag i found earlier this month... and now this. oh, and while i'm at it, why do they make you leave your bags at the lockers? they don't do that in carrefour or jusco? how come giant is so special such that their risk of shrinkage requires me to leave my bag, take out all my valuables and chuck them in my pocket and walk around the supermarket looking ridiculous.

do i really want to steal giant goods more than carrefour goods? crikey, no! and even if i wanted to steal something... let's just say.......... a pack of serviettes, do you think it is likely that i'll find it?

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Genusfrog [ 3:55 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, January 20, 2005
FAREWELL LOCOMOTION

">I posted this three days ago, but the server went down as the post went up,...

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Genusfrog [ 2:01 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
PAPER PUSHING IN UM

My apologies for the lack of updates. you might know that i've just moved t...

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Genusfrog [ 2:00 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, January 14, 2005
JOHNNY FEDORA

">I bought a hat. a fedora kind of hat. and i intend to wear it. like, ever...

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Genusfrog [ 1:59 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, January 12, 2005
THE TRAIN BLOG

I was standing at the station waiting for my train to come. i could see the...

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Genusfrog [ 1:57 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, January 11, 2005
THE MARY BLOG

SCANDALS! ILLICIT RELATIONSHIPS! (is this shocking enough for you???) act...

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Genusfrog [ 1:56 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, January 10, 2005
THE MARTHA BLOG

After one week of 2005, i've concluded that i am still unsettled. the title...

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Genusfrog [ 1:54 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, January 07, 2005
AMCORP MALL AND PORNOGRAPHIC SCHOOLBAGS

This isn't exactly hot off the press, but i've discovered that Amcorp mall...

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Genusfrog [ 1:53 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, January 06, 2005
I'VE LOST MY "MOJO"

I've lost my appetite. i don't know why. all-in-all, my life is going fine.

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Genusfrog [ 1:52 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, January 03, 2005
FERGUS AWARDS 2004

As i always do (thoughfor the first time on this blog ), i recognise the...

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Genusfrog [ 1:48 pm ] | 0 comments