the eternity in a minute

3 minutes before i exit cyberspace, returning to the asphyxiating cocoon of reality where 47 pages of head and neck reading awaits prior to practical tomorrow.

tomorrow. haven't spelt this word in its fully unfurled, magnificent form since... i can't remember.

what can a person do in 3 minutes?

blog in an incessant monotone about completely irrelevant, unimportant, useless things. conjugating unhappy verbs and adjectives and nouns into a marriage of convenience and wanton need.

save a life. commence life-giving CPR, apply defibrillating shocks to a V tack heart. telling someone on the verge of irrescindable despair that s/he is loved. that there is at least someone who cares enough to say that statement. that statement may prove to be the very very thin line between a moody, pensive person and a very dead person at the bottom of a block of flats.

make a lifechanging decision. go into ministry. go into prostitution. get saved by Christ. succumb to the tempations of Satan. redeem a life claimed by God. refusing the gift of life from God.

witness the birth of a new life. witness the death of innocence in a wild eyed, sweaty, frantic child-not-yet-adolescent 10 years old, scrambling with soured calves and pained knees away from the father, away into the corner of the squalid little one room flat, away from the terrible, terrible, oppressive reality that is child abuse and pedophilia. witness the birth of the same tormented soul that more than once attempted to cross to Satan's land, and witness the singing of the angels in heaven. witness the physical death of the blessed soul and know in your heart that he ascends to heaven to be with the Father, who loves him so much it pains the heart to describe, and infinitely more than what scarred and flawed humans can ever offer.

3 minutes. it's the line between life and death, condemnation and salvation, eternity and termination.

will you choose?

instead of diligently wreaking my distal phalanges by pecking spasmodically on the keyboard for the magazine article, i'm blogging.
spent this weekend completely unproductively, eyes riveted upon the TV screen which was sending out, at 45minute intervals, episodic re-runs of War and Beauty. the uber-popular (a season ago) HK period drama chock-full of indescribably beautiful women wrapped like chicken pita tortillas in a sparingly thin carpet whilst being delivered to sleep with the emperor. i admired neither plot nor acting skills of the strong cast (for this drama series, both male and female leads won the respective prizes for the annual HK film festival) - instead, i drooled shamelessly over the irrefutably breathtaking costumes. as a child, i've never failed to be enthralled to awed silence by women's clothing that is deeply, unapologetically drenched in periodic drama and opulence. victorian garb is amazingly beautiful, the lace details an intricate web of dark deceit and a malevolent facade of demure innocence. elizabethan collars and farthingales intrigued me and held me captive for hours as i imagined court ladies sweeping regally and doll-like through the gilded arched entrances into glaringly lit ballrooms where princes of noble birth waited to kiss their perfumed and gloved hands. but most of all, i was entranced, in this drama, by the purity of the untained white fur muffs the court ladies held during winter. white has always held an inexplicable spell over me ever since i discovered the magic in a simple bowl of vanilla ice cream, in the soft breezing caresses of a pure white woolen towel, in the sheer heartstopping beauty of an unadulterated snowscape. white is magic - the universal language of purity, of innocence, of virtue, of virginity, of submission. of the last, i'm certain, lies the interest of more than a few men. i've heard of an urban legend spun from myth that mothers whisper to their bridal daughters on the wedding day: to wear white lace lingerie to bed on the nuptial night. it has been wildly speculated that men desire nothing more than to receive their maiden brides in a teasingly ironic spare garment of white, that they may henceforth lay claim on their wives by marking territory over the once white but now sullied lingerie of the virgin. this legend goes on from generation to time eternal, but as society grows one cannot but notice that brides nowadays would be no more likely a virgin on the night of marriage than any other random girl u'd care to pick from the streets (about 50% chance, that is, according to a very recent street survey of 227 school-going singaporeans), and that the preferred colour of intense seduction is now red and black, in varying ratios and area distribution (on the body, that is). i don't speak from personal experience, but suffice it to say that i'm well-heard on stuff like that. once again, one need not know how i know such unspeakable things... :D yet again, i feel that since physical intimacy is a phase of human life, let's face it. for myself, being a Christian, i hold true to the biblical truth that any woman who lays with a man before marriage is an adulteress and a sinful woman, so i'd rather withhold animal pleasure momentarily till marriage than be sent to a hot fiery place after death. (and that place doesn't sell buffalo wings, alright?)

been pondering how i haven't been performing for CA1. the crux of the problem lies in the fallacy of immortality - i've never thought i'd scrap passes. so now that the truth has faced me point-blank, i'm going to work hard. i'm really going to work very hard indeed. and i pray that God will just hear my prayers for Him to grant me peace of mind and discipline to do what i've set out to do. i also pray for friends, i thank God for friends He has granted me, for they have indeed shared in my woes and prayed for me even in my times of need and despair. and indeed, even as i step out and embark on volunteerism, working with patients on a firsthand basis, i pray that God will use this opportunity so powerfully as a guide for me to come back on the path that leads me to the fulfilment of my childhood dream. oh Lord to come and make me a doctor, even as i promise to work hard from now till the end of the exams. from today onwards... no more nonsense and gallivanting, no more excuses to watch tv, no more slacking. full steam ahead... no distraction shall take me from my promise, by the power of God. if i were to ask God to relinquish my enemies, as david's psalms so frequently beseech God to do, i pray that laziness and empty envy be entirely submissive to the Lord, that i will no longer fall under their evil charms to stray from my focus. Amen! :)

and also that i will have the chance to live out alvin's advice to me: to love for true love, not for a love borne of physical tension and empty reassurance, to love as though that love could tear me apart.

i believe he is the world's happiest man, and that his girlfriend the world's luckiest young lady. to live in the testimony of such unconditional love is indeed remarkable, especially in today's world of scepticism and distrust.

NANA is uploading CIP article into yahoogroups. said CIP article loading is not something the faint-hearted should attempt.

haha.

*no energy for deranged laughter* anyway. deranged nowadays conjures up mental images of fluxes from a set point norm for extracellular fluids. aaargh. cappucino lecturer's gotten into my head and resided in my frontal cortex like an insidiously chipping woodpecker. quite an apt mental image, now that i think about it - my brain is composed of matter just about as dense as cheapo wood and has about as many neurones as your average coffee table (none).

you know, it's rather disturbing that i still can't figure out how it is that when there is hyperkalemia, there's acidosis. ok so there's high potassium. say someone eats a steak, has orange juice, and eats that sicko durian-banana-split monstrosity as afters. so WHAM huge load of potty into the GIT, unregulated intake. minus minor GIT secretions, massive potty load goes to the ECF. in regular cells, insulin promotes potty intake. so that's fine. extra potty goes to the kidneys. in the renal tissues, high potty facilitates tubular lumenal movement. which is in antonym-mic movement with hpluses. so potty goes to the lumen as secretions and hpluses go to interstitium and into capillaries. so there's an acid tide? eh why does it make sense here. no no no... erpz. i need to read that again and summarize the whole glorified blood vessel thing.

sigh. complicate your life by entering the wonderful bloody (i'm not swearing) world of kidneys.

need my sleep. family's watching nacho libre outside, CIP article refuses to load, and i've run out of inane potty assertions in physiological disturbances.

oh btw. photowhoring is supposedly this trend, cos one of my friends suggested putting my photo online would suddenly propel me to stardom like xiaxue. well i have no idea how this is supposed to help me to avoid social-pariah-dom (i think it'd probably backfire and work in the exact opposite way of the desired effect) but here goes nothing, just for those kind souls who read my blog and haven't met me since like, T-Rex last asked Bronchosaurus if he wanted to try the new vagetarian food place around the corner.

well nothing appeared. sigh. sucks, too. haha. today's my whiny day.

metamorphosis

NANA declares, NANA needs a change.

change is constantly taking place in each and every one of us. Subjected to tangible and intangible forces, of nature of synthesis of pure imagination, we're being moved in many ways unseen, every moment of our lives.
some changes are good. they move us to find our inherently innocent and loving nature, seeking the beauty and purity within the myriad layers of dreary, grimy soot smeared tirelessly into a greasy, choking, endlessly noir facade onto our faces and bodies by the bad forces. the bad forces are those that find deceit, conceit, malevolence, vengeance and hatred in the deep dark corners of our very flawed human hearts. they pull out these fanged and clawed creatures of doom and put them on pedestals of our hearts and minds, clouding good judgement and blinding all faith. they sully the whiteness of innocence and demolish goodwill into crumbly debris nobody bothers to take a second glance at. they're gargoyles, but worse in countenance than the Lord of Gargoyles and all its twisted, deformed, wicked slaves. They come together in the shadow of dusk to form the mirage of the Evil One.

but they shy from light, and light is precisely what makes them draw away shrieking horrible curses and names and pledging eternal vengeance when, once in a very long and tired while, a beam of goodness shines out of the depths of our hearts, like a beacon of light from a lighthouse in search of its own salvation.

NANA wants to grasp these exhausted beams of light by the hand and pull them up, uP, UP! out of the binding of the dark and into the light where they should be.

i've never doubted the inherent goodness of people. for me, it used to be "good, unless proven otherwise." *to all my law kakis: sorry for unabashedly lifting this climatic statement from the courthouse!* after quite a lot of rather unsavoury events, i'm ashamed to say that i've since taken the much more cynical view of "potentially bad, unless proven otherwise." my dearest denise has borne the brunt of my many excursions on the pleasantly beautiful but brittle facades of people, and she has come around to this idea after some experiences of her own. i'm breeding little larvae of mistrust and cynicism here in young hearts, and can I rightly blame myself for being so?

who rebukes and chides the patient who refuses to take another mouthful of medicine, if it nearly killed him/her the first time round? likewise, who can stand up and say truthfully,"No matter how evil, distasteful, worthy of hatred and disgust anyone is, i'll never despise the person!" and bring this statement to its nadir, yes nadir, by adding,"And i'll turn the other cheek too!" the truth is, we all harbour varying unpleasant emotions towards people who have done us harm, both intentionally and unwittingly, be it mild distrust or the more extreme i-won't-give-up-till-i-hunt-you-down-and-tear-you-limb-to-limb-for-what-you-did-to-me. People who sanctify themselves by saying, no, they never ever get angry at anyone - blatant liars. they probably misfile their income tax forms, too.

NANA has the same problem. being a woman, i find that this is multiplied manifold. some women - i wouldn't go out on a limb and say all, lest i get lynch mobbed tomorrow morning whilst having breakfast - truly have a hard time forgiving. we're not even venturing into the arena of forgetting. i think it could be inherited, perhaps on a heritable mutation on the gene locus on chromosome X right next to the gene locus for the anally retentive protein, or ARp1. why? because my mum has the same problem as me. i'd say hers is a little more serious than mine, cos i am able to keep my resentment and cynicism in check most of the time. which is a little stretched for her, cos she has this rather unnerving habit of being a rather nasty little angry person, unleashing her pent up anger against others by venting all of it on her family. which means us. strangely, she is perfectly capable of treating the person who crossed her with utterly impeccable manners and fawning sweetness.

sometimes i shudder in fear of myself "evolving" into a prototype resembling hers when i'm older.

enough of this mindless jabber. my vocabulary is incredibly deplorable - i had no idea that my grasp of rudimentary english could deteriorate/decompose at such an alarming rate. they ought to issue half-live warnings with english classes, so that users may be aware of the danger of waking up one fine morning and being unable to form a complete, grammatically correct sentence in english without spending more than 5 minutes drooling incontinently beforehand. gone are my halcyon days of good english command. nowadays, i'd probably fall to the ground Hallelujah-ing if anyone said i spelt diminutive correctly. how very sad~~~

well i've got some changes lined up for myself... i even took the liberty of calling myself a Project Makeover finalist. Project this and Project that are all the rage nowadays, is it not? i've categorized my judging criteria into 3 broad aspects: spiritual, academic, physical.

Spiritual: Candidate fulfils criteria if she 1) follows the walk-through-the-bible-in-1-year project faithfully, 2) attends CG in church and VCF faithfully and 3) completes 40 day fast without any further interruptions.

Academic: Candidate fulfils criteria if she 1) studies conscientiously, without unwarranted and UTTERLY UNNECESSARY chat-breaks lasting more than 5mins each, from end of school to 7pm daily, 2) achieves at least 70% for subjects A and B and at least 80% for subject P in CA2, and 3) Passes all 3 papers at pros and does not need to take any subpapers or viva exams.

Physical: Candidate fulfils criteria if she 1) jogs at least 4 times a week, regardless of the day or frequency, with 40mins or more per session, 2) attains SUSTAINED weight loss of at least 1 kg per week, 3) maintains newly dyed and fixed hair in mint condition until CNY rolls around, 4) does not fall prey to any snacks or urge to break fast, or to munch indiscriminately, during assigned hours of fasting, 5) stay away from fried foods and canned drinks of any brand and any name, and 6) maintain good health and good studying spirits.

gambatte kudasai ne~~~~~~~!!! *pats my own back with considerable effort* ^_^