m2 is like..... *blinks*

OMG. i haven't updated in like, aeons? :P (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration there. a couple of millenia at least, then :D) haven't even popped by to see if this derelict old thing is still floating in limbo out in hyperspace (i think tt's what they called internet before it had all the cool applications and networking)... guess i just couldn't be bothered to maintain something that nobody reads! (besides my pair of eyeballs) ^_^ reminds me of that old adage on how one should do good things when no one is doing, and contemplate the folly of the bad deeds one would've done in the absence of others in the full view of others. does that make any sense? lolx gotta ask ma cherie to give me free english remedial... the standard of my english is knee-bendingly, towkowingly deplorable. haha :P i'm inspired to type a few words here thanks to my brother, who blogs ceaselessly (and totally chao-tah-ed his CPU power supply in the process) :D his english isn't perfect, but i guess he can find solace in knowing that it's better than some of his peers (in age and academic levels) whom i've met :D and if it's any consolation at all, nothing beats the english of those quirky china food manufacturers, who annotate their packaging with completely intelligible collections of english nouns, verbs and adjectives in random order.

haiyar exams coming up. cindy and regina perfected the look of DISBELIEF :D when i told them i was having exams YET AGAIN in 2 weeks. the classical "you're having exams everytime i ask you!" ejaculation is particularly endearing on these 2 :D haha. guess that's inevitably part of the package when i signed on the line for the bond haha :P so noooooooooooooooooooooooo complaints, people! (okay, me.) hard to salvage feelings of burning glowing passion when all that's left now is spitting charcoal embers :D heh. but it's pretty tragic for a year 2 to feel jaded! lolx. not that tragedies don't happen... regretable as they may be. constant VIGILANCE! lolx. gotta guard against the feelings of complacency and disgruntlement at my abundant lot in life :P

wish i could bake brownies right about now! but noooooooooooooooo.... it's char beehoon time and on to EBM mugging! muggery muggery.... depilatory misery :P haha.

sweeney todd rocks.... ^_^

just came back from bangkok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sawasdee ka!!!!!!

pretty turbulent, the days before leaving for this fanstastically familiar foreign place. a flurry of discharge SOPs, trying to locate the very elusive paeds dr, getting used to not having the sedative effects of pethidine to aid me in sleeping at night... getting queer twinges of half-itch-half-pain-half burning sensations at 4am in the morning. 4 days of unbearable insomnia! staring at the shadow marred ceiling swirl and whorl obsidiously across the dimmed nightscape, quelling my fears of the dark by getting to know sleepless nights as a friend... pretty interesting lot of hours spent during that period, learning to readjust back to life at home, life as a normal person, life with 4 holes in my tummy. my mum used to laugh at me (with a crying heart) about the smiley face on my tummy - now there's 2 more new cuts above the umbilicus (in addition to 2 more deeper holes higher and lower respectively), making it a very surprised :O face :D haha. i'm pretty amused - my parents're just disgusted :D i love the looks on their faces when they pretend to hide their faces, yet peek for curiosity's sake and then contort/grimace in horror. actually it isn't that bad - when the catheter drain was still inside things looked much worse... now only 1 bleeds. the rest've more or less cleared up :D thank God for the speedy healing despite my adamant refusal to eat only vegetables or weird funky healthfood crap. i even sneaked some squid into my greedy little tummy. haha! i LUUUURRRRRRVVVEEE grilled squid. anyone who's been to bangkok but not tried it - you're a deep fried chicken wing! :P just kidding. it's seriously good with the special chili. come to think of it, thailand has a mind boggling array of chili sauces to go with virtually any dish you'd care to mention. pad thai has one, khao has one, gai has one, squid (now, i honestly have no idea what squid is in thai) has its own, too. and if you'd care to ask me, SQUID CHILI is the best! it's got this tangy overtone that doesn't try to muscle the authority out of the spicy chili, so what you get is a smooth kick that's surprisingly refreshing and appetizing. ah man, talking of food... i gained 4kg!!!!! in 6 days!!!!!!!! how on earth is that possible!!!! (actually, the answer to that question is pretty self-evident - i'm just in denial) oh well. there's 2 more weeks to school reopening, so i shall try to go swim a bit more to kill, kiIL, KILL off those extra pounds and fit into the pretty tops and bottoms i've bought in the trip!
and serena my darling wife, thank you for that call!! i really really love how u rmb me :D and i think our love is so strong it blew out the circuits! haha :D till now we still can't figure out WHICH appliance tripped the fuse... must have been you. yOU. tsktsk ^_^

kong qi shi se? really?

is it really true that we are to live with nothing before we can be happy?

are those who give up their things, with grief and sadness and longing, trying to repress their emotions and deny themselves their feelings, truly happy in the end?

or is it rationalizing on a foolish mortal belief that self denial is a noble act that warrants happiness as an end in itself?

does it really mean that jesus had to strip himself bare and naked for all the barren and poor in the streets?

and why didn't He do that?

yao4 si3 wor1~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

translated, literally, as "wanna die wor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

exam formats:
1) COFM - 5/11/07, 4MEQs of linked subquestions (answer part a wrong and you can balik kampung alr)
2) Virology and immunology - 7/11/07, 30 true-false questions with 5 stems each, negative marking within a question but no cross-negative marks. dunno what the hell talking me but anyway the minimum marks is 0. like, duh.
3) Neuroscience - 23/11/07, 2 MEQs, everything baokaliao tested, siao liao, plus drug pharmaco. *blubblubblubblub - can u see my air supply getting exhausted from e drowning???*
4) Pathology - 26/11/07, 60 MCQs with 5 choose 1. like 4 choose 1 not hard enough, now they find a new way to make me die faster, more painfully, and with high-class squeaks.
5) Pharmaco - 26/11/07, 20 true-false questions given 40mins (i highly suspect, at each question being alloted 2mins, they're going to give us very, very, very complicated henderson-hasselbachs, log graphs and God knows what PDC shift interpretations) AND 2 MEQs

the dean's office is out to commit mass homicide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

feeling like stagnant mint

being a bit boliao as usual. just watched qian1ji1bian4 with bro, quite a good show, to my surprise. yes. astonishment, really. i'd usually grit my teeth til they emit sparks and bear through HK films cos they're totally absurd, with strange dialogue and character developments and really quirky appearances by non-essential characters at all the wrong timings. haha :D but yes, as usual i'm sweeping the entire river kwai worth of boats asunder with my statement, so allow me to apologise for stereotyping.
i need to go the the manicurist and redeem the remaining 5 treatments before they expire! why, oh why, did i succumb to the halcyon calls of vanity???
foot's looking better after a day of not moving around too much (basically mulching like compost in bed). need to start mugging and finish COFM today but somehow i just have no more energy left in me after the incredibly stufing pizza dinner (sorry deardear, more piggy princess for you to love) and the movie...
can't wait for exams to be over really soon, then i can go out and enjoy being with my prince like what princesses and princes do :D quite a few friends have congrats-stuffed me after i changed the profile on facebook WITHOUT KNOWING they actually send out notifications to the entire world just for that tiny innocuous change in status. i was really laughing out loud at jess' baffled and bug-eyed email about not being told... well now that facebook has done the dirty job for me... i guess i won't have to hide it anymore. no point... :) need to study la... also need to go and swim/jog/cycle/diet but then again... it's all a balance of priorities...
today i set up a new system of prayer requests tracking. haha the wonderful guest reverend from sabah REALLY changed me! he's given me much inspiration to face some issues in my life as well as fresh ideas to deal with the nitty gritties of my spiritual walk and growth. i truly pray that this change will persevere and will be preserved together with this newfound spirit of yearning and seeking for Jesus! i really enjoyed the QT i had today with God, just me and Him sitting together in a quiet place talking and listening and leaning on His support.
well it's 2mins to 7.30... i've got to mug til 12.30 and then chiong my pbl til 1am. haha :D of course wc'll murder me in 4 different ways with catchup and spring onions, but well. cofm is 4 meqs!!!!!!!! that probably means it's going to be killer level. (and we're NOT even going into neuroscience, ok!)
okies better run... (figuratively...) slummi get well soon! :D

blowing off the dust of tomorrow

it's been a long while since i entered this little cybervirtual crypt all my own, redolent with the smells all my own, the stashes of mental tidbits and nuggets of stuff left unremembered, perhaps discoiled from memory on purpose or without true intention - nobody knows. certainly i don't. but all this is getting too zennish for me... after all, it's just a week to CAs and everyone's mugging. it really struck me (while i'm msning my brother who's sitting less than 5cm away from me using the home com) that i ought to be slowing down, slowing really down and out and prostrated-like, you know, letting all the epithelial cells of my body really smear onto the floor. cos i'm really tired of being a person, so i want to be a jellyfish for once. a nice, respectable, dignified and WHO-accredited jellyfish of the numero uno grade. i mean, if a self-respecting jellyfish can't even take time out to really have fun, just chill and let all the musculoskeletal joints loose with family, what kind of jellyfish is that? no better than a can of catfood with cucumber, i say. that was what i told muamua last night when she absurdly declared herself a piece of "scum" :D i haven't had anyone vaguely humanoid challenge my trophy for that one in a long time, and man, am i a wasabi if i'm gonna give it up to her so darn easily! so i told her i was catfood enriched with vitamin c and e if she were scum. which brings us both one step closer to the yawning crevasse called insanity, but who cares about a bit of jelly good fun with friends :D
anyway, back to that incendiary brother-sister msn. so we're both having loads of fun playing msn reversi with each other... i think it's a form of self-righteous self-reflection. u know, when a person runs right out of useful things to do, one resorts to labelling brainless games as kinship-building material :D
things have been on my mind recently, and i can't admit i'm not more than a bit bothered by them. in a sense they're things that happen exogenously, not really any of my business at all, but somehow or rather the nana antennae picks it up with jolly fervour and processes it into a bit of endoplasmic crap. which percolates around my system and gives me grief from time to time. like now... i haven't been liberated from my thoughts on myself since i escaped from the asylum called hospital (again, yes, ad nauseum and all that. now comes with a puke bag courtesy of singapore airlines, which is celebrating their acquisition of a plane with 2 storeys and can take many people. woohoo. break one out for humanity won't you) ah i disgress (again, blahblahblah) so where was i? yeah. feeling in the dumps today and making a splash literally... first cos of how i felt touched by ben's sharing and prayers in morning worship (YOLLER OUT TO BEN: THX) and then again letting myself venture (so unwisely) into a realm marked by darkness. of course, anyone could readily argue that such lines of thought are little more than sadistic, masochistic chases in a self-oriented world, where i attempt to rub salt (or hypochlorite - james) with renewed vigour each time i revisit the sore wound. it's borne of self-loathing... i guess mingled with complex and yet strangely addictive mixtures of self-flagellation and self-doubt. it's reinforced with what i do know for facts but let's face it - facts remain facts until you let them sink in, then they become tenderhooks in your flesh for many to grip you and twist you and gore you and eviscerate for joy and laughter in the middle of the night. so there it is. facts that i face day in and day out, yet don't incite me to take a knife or a flask of sulphur or something equally self-hating and drastic and unwise (note: if anyone reading this is feeling depressed or was looking for ways to harm yourself - STOP. talk to someone and get help, seriously.) to myself suddenly turn around like a nasty draught of afterthought and permeate my thoughts. just for a moment in my life, suddenly, inexplicably, the lights go out and i dull down. and i think inwards and downwards, then then things start spirally out of hand a little and i cry.
so that was what happened today. i was looking at my hands and i was crying, then i closed my eyes and cried even harder cos all i could see was my imperfection even as a flawed human and how the oppressive feeling of being surrounded by outstanding human love and concern on all 4 sides made me feel like yellling for them to go away and love someone else cos i'm not worthy of it. it was so, so painfully (sorry for the cliche, but you know, it really does cause a bit of retrosternal pain. or maybe it was the arrythmia from being overtly excited) reminiscent of my many arguments with God. how i'd kneel or sit or lie down and sulk and cry and refuse to listen even as He cajoles and commands and debates His words of encouragement and assurance and hope into my head. it's like installing a virus filter which admits all the viruses cos you set the preferences to the opposite end on twanky days. after all, i'm still a child. after all, i'm but a baby. am i going to allow myself to be one forever? of course not. i've been trying to grow, struggling and being aided on all sides by spankingly great brothers and sisters, to become a more mature Christian. but i do fail sometimes... i do want to recede into a little cocoon and be stubborn and throw tantrums and be spoilt and demand to be nursed and coaxed and pampered back out. who doesn't? in the very depths of your hearts, ask yourself if you'd really think u could survive your entire life being left high and dry in the desertplace with endless philistines coming at you and no refuge. i'm not trying to equate myself to the noble biblicans of note... but occasionally, i just allow myself the sinful indulgence of being a little girl who refuses to hear logic despite understanding it, who insists on being self-flagellatory and mouths rejections of concern but (not even deep) in her heart she craves and yearns and shouts for love and concern. she just wants a pair of huge huggy hands enveloping her and holding her and saying it's all alright.
i believed i could feel entirely satisfied with a bf... i thank God for him but now i realise it's not the case. i still need Jesus.

i know.

i know it's hard.

i know it's hard when you stand alone, sit alone, lie down on your bed all alone, waiting for the screen of your handphone to be illuminated, to illuminate your heart and your downcast eyes, but you fall asleep waiting for an sms that never comes.

i know it's hard, to stand in a crowd of people so joyous and feeling so unsupported, so unnoticed. i know it's hard when the year rolls by and the day comes around again, and it's all deja vu and downhill from there as you feel desperate, grasping at any available straws to prove to everyone, to prove to someone, to prove to YOURSELF that you're wanted, that you're needed, that you're someone's someone, that you can be important too.

i know it's hard. i know it hurts.

my dearest darlings, thank you for sharing. thank God for sharing. and thank God for healing.

i've been through it all myself, too. how many times has it been when i've gone all out, flinging caution to the wind, throwing all sensibility out the window, and so very nearly catching the feathers of my stumbling wings on the traps of the wiondows of life? how many times has it been when i've pawned all my dignity, all my self-esteem, all my rationality, in a wild bid for love and acceptance, only to find that the very thing or person that i've placed the entire soul and shell of my persona on is a bankruptcy cheque waiting to bounce in my face. how many times have i faced the pillow at night, saltily and vengefully asking myself why i'm so bloody worthless and useless. how many times have i banked my entire self-worth on something so fragile, so transient, so visceral, so mortal, so doomed-to-failure, so doomed-to-die?

were they worth it? no, they weren't. was i convinced that i really, really, really could get happiness by clinging on to what the world tells me is the key to happiness? deep down, no. my heart, with each disappointment, turned sour and cynical. distrustful and vengeful. spiteful. wanted to get back at my failures by commoditizing. by compartmentalizing. by returning conscience to my heartbroken Father.

i didn't know. i knew it hurt, i knew it was wrong, i knew it was wretchedly dastardly.
i didn't know that Jesus was holding out His bleeding heart to me, while i flung myself like a cabin-fevered bird against the steel bars of the cage i've built around myself. i've set a dungeon for my hopes, and cast my soul into despair. meanwhile, meanwhile, i turn a blind eye to a love that is faithful and patient, a love that is tortured and in pain, a love that loves me and is not returned, while i lament the lack of return on my own feeble attempts to show love.

how much do you love me?
i love you as much as i would take time out to be with you (but thinking of the many other things i could have done otherwise).
i love you as much as i am faithful to you (but in my heart, i see you as just another girl who can pass away neatly out of my life when another better one comes along).
i love you as much as i am willing to go out with you, even with my friends (as a prize, a trophy, to show off that i am capable of having a girlfriend).
i love you as much as it takes for you to stop asking me how much i love you (so long as you don't come intruding into the privacy of my life, my thoughts and my choices).
i love you, viscerally, physically, transiently.
i love you, with conditions, with inhibitions, with private secrets.
i love you with judgment, with reservations, with embarrassment (when you're dumb, stupid, untrendy, ugly, fat, lazy or otherwise laughable by my peers or family).
i love you til the day we break, and then i'd hate you, i'd forget you, i'd ignore you, i'd say you're emo, you're drama, you're unworthy.

Jesus.
how much does He love us?
He loved us just enough to be torn apart from His Father in heaven.
He loved us just enough to be born as man to a mortal woman.
He loved us just enough to be ridiculed, insulted, doubted.
He loved us just enough to to persecuted, to be dragged away by Judas' lies to a lonely, wretched, accursed place with two other tainted characters, without a fight, struggle or arguments.
He loved us just enough to be filled with sadness to be separated from us, even though we accused him of things He did not do, and we killed Him with our own nails, thorns and hands, for His love.
He loved us just enough to conquer death and sin for us, and to prepare an eternal seat of glory at His right hand for us.
He loved us just enough to be with us every single moment of our lives, standing beside us in every single thing we do, giving us moral support that doesn't quaver with fatigue or end when the EPL matches start, giving us strength that doesn't run away in cowardice or with mortal limitations, giving us a hope that never fades, a warmth that is as close as a heartbeat away.
He loved me enough to stand by me in my darkness, by planting souls so bright and kind and loving that they redefined the darkness into a place lit by love.

i wouldn't even consider giving up this love. nothing on earth could ever exceed it, or even approach it in a tenth of its magnitude. i'd be a fool to think that i could carve my own happiness by bending others' wills to mine.

oh God, forgive me for my transgressions against Your will. i submit with a joyful heart, a willing heart, an eager heart, to what You have in store for me. i know that in Your own timing, You will bring the right person into my life. in my own timing, in my own plans, i have tried so, so, so hard to do what You did not want me to, and felt so, so, so tired and destroyed by all of it. thank You for showing to me Your love. thank You for standing there to guide me gently onto Your path. thank You for taking away all the pain and frsutrations that i have heaped upon myself so foolishly in the past. thank You for taking my burden, my stripes, my shame upon Yourself and casting them to eternal damnation with Satan. thank You, Lord, for washing away my tears and soothing my heart with Your words, with Your tender love. i never want to leave You, and i never want to be away from being blessed with Your grace and mercies. so Lord, wouldn't You shield my dear friends, wouldn't you show them the very same love that You have shown to me so kindly. Lord i pray that even right now, You are speaking with them, and You are being heavy in their hearts. That Your presence is so strong in their lives, that they cannot but be compelled to fall to their knees to praise You, to thank You, to seek You. and Lord, You will just be so strong for them, in their weakness, and You will manifest Your will so firmly in their lives, that their eyes and hearts and minds will be astonished by how perfect Your will is for them, and they will never again seek to be anywhere but next to You. in Jesus' name, Amen.