year of the rooster

a happy chinese new year to everyone...
especially to all my fellow '81 roosters out there :)

He gives and takes away

God gives each of us a set of gifts and talents that He expects us to use to the fullest of our abilities to bring Him glory in one way or another. in what way or to what extent we're gifted or even the number of talents we've been blessed with... all these things aren't the point. the point is that we have to make use of what we've got. i believe that throughout life, God gives us many chances to show Him how we've made use of what He gave us. i also believe that whatever we don't use (even after so many chances to do so), He will take away accordingly.

i hope with all my heart that my chances have not yet run out. but even if they have... i know He'll show me another path to take. He's gracious like that :)

Blessed Be Your Name
by Matt Redman
album: Where Angels Fear To Tread (2002)

Blessed be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

*Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

**Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

ciao

burned the roof of my mouth today. now i can't consume anything without wincing... boooo

3 hours to go and i'm still not finished packing... i suppose some habits will never change :P just wanted to make one last entry for 2004. the holidays are supposed to be relaxing but i've found the opposite to be true for me this year... which i guess isn't so bad, since the craziness has kept me on my toes. also occuring a lot... when the good keeps getting better and the bad just gets worse... but all in all, a fine balance ;)

belated merry Christmas and an early happy new year to all!

word

i went through my shelves and compiled a list of books to read in the next little while:

1. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
2. Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 - Steve Stockman [finally :P]
3. Friday - Robert A. Heinlein
4. Dune - Frank Herbert
5. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
6. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
7. The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Neuromancer - William Gibson
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
10. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

these should take care of my sleepless nights ;)

sleepless in markham

what do u do when u can't sleep?

me, i do one of several things... i think. i read. i write. i pray. i think. i study. i sketch. i compose. i think. i paint. i make lists. i eat. i close my eyes and try not to think.

basically i think a lot. perhaps i should add 'i blog' to my list...

or not. once hardly counts :P

on the side

it looks like i'll be spending new year's eve on an airplane... and with northwest's infamous delays, perhaps the countdown as well.

woohoo. can't wait.

team regina :)

good memories from summer 2003...
a lot has changed since i left in '95.
when i first arrived, i thought the city had gotten smaller.
just kidding :P
rattana [far right] and i go way back...
arguably my first friend in regina
(and a kickass soccer player on the side).
her friends are an awesome group as well.
they had a softball game on her birthday and i joined them.
we broke a bat, made some great plays, scored a lot of points...
it was their one and only victory of the season.
feel free to draw ur own conclusions ;)

analyze this

what do u see?

pardon my french

some days i'm just downright ashamed of this country. canada has no real backbone, no moral absolutes... and the world loves us for it. it's sickening.

once upon a time

AI was on tv a coupla weeks ago and i was watching it from the corner of my eye... of course i got sucked in eventually. i've seen it before but i forgot how much i actually liked the movie. i know it didn't get great reviews... but i thought it was great. my ideal bedtime story... very sad, very touching... i cried a little at the end. and i LOVE that bear! i want one for myself. and then this week, i was reading a classic heinlein novel (have space suit-will travel) that i haven't read since i was about 12... and i almost got teary-eyed. almost. not that the story was sad in any way... just that there was this one passage that got me all nostalgic... reminded me of how much passion i had for science as a kid:

It was midday when we left; it was night as we disembarked. The ship rested on a platform that stretched out of sight. Stars in front of me were in unfamiliar constellations; slaunchwise down the sky was a thin curdling which I spotted as the Milky Way. So Peewee had her wires crossed--we were far from home but still in the Galaxy--perhaps we had simply switched to the night side of Vega Five.
I heard Peewee gasp and turned around.
I didn't have strength to gasp.
Dominating that whole side of the sky was a great whirlpool of millions, maybe billions, of stars.
You've seen pictures of the Great Nebula in Andromeda?--a giant spiral of two curving arms, seen at an angle. Of all the lovely things in the sky it is the most beautiful. This was like that.
Only we weren't seeing a photograph nor even by telescope; we were so close (if "close" is the word) that it stretched across the sky twice as long as the Big Dipper as seen from home--so close that I saw the thickening at the center, two great branches coiling around and overtaking each other. We saw it from an angle so that it appeared elliptical, just as M31 in Andromeda does; you could feel its depth, you could see its shape.

*sniff* what a beautiful description... i remember, back when i could count my age on two hands, reading about and looking at pictures of nebulas, stars, planets... in grade 4 the teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, and i distinctly remember saying that i wanted to be an astronomer. originally i was fascinated by the microscope kit my dad had sent me, but my passion quickly got me looking spaceward. my uncle used to send us a lot of books... dinosaurs for my brother, space stuff for me. at the time i knew that whatever it was i did in life, it would certainly be in the field of science.

i wonder what happened along the way to make me so adamant against pursuing anything 'science' now... i loved it once. well, maybe a part of me still does... it's never failed to wow me, that's for sure... *sigh* what a shame to see a passion like that go to waste.

F4

bought my present for the fellowship gift exchange this sunday... wow, that was an amusing buy :P kinda pleased with my idea... hope no one else thought of it.

rumour has it that F4 will be reuniting, woohoo!! maybe sometime next year to film a movie. i love seeing those four together. [i originally had a whole paragraph here about their singing abilities, particularly live... but i decided to edit it out... couldn't bare criticizing my precious F4 :P]

bread

ever since last week, i've had this immense craving for bread... plain, white bread... and i've been inhaling the stuff like there's no tomorrow. every night my grandpa comes home with a loaf of bread or a bag of buns, but it's gone by the next day so he has to buy some more. and when i say plain, i mean PLAIN... no butter, no jam, no filling... i love eating bread on its own. (it's gotta be white though.) maybe microwaved if i want it extra warm and moist. i figured i'd be over my craving by now, but no... far from it... i've eaten 5 pieces of bread and 2 buns so far today... and the night's not over! dunno what's wrong with my appetite these days. well, my sleeping pattern was 12 hours off a while back... i fixed that already, but it turns out i left my appetite behind... explains why i'm least hungry at noon and most hungry at midnight.

alrighty, i'm off to heat myself another bun.

blues

GGHG change of command parade - sept 2001
yes, that's a real bayonet attached to my C7. dull, but real.
like everything else i was issued, my blues were oversized...
i looked like i had no hands while marching :P
we stood in ranks as the governor general walked by.
she stopped to talk to me... i'll always remember that.

sNOOO!!!w

goodness... december's here alright... it's CRAZY snowing out there... so dangerous too... never knew the camry could skate like that... took so long to drop off my brother and come home... thank goodness i brought my F4 music along :P

wish i could take a picture.

reow!

the moment speaks for itself ;)

[courtesy of wei-hsin's camera... thanks to my sexy lady! *wink wink* ]

one day at a time

nothing too special on the menu tonight... at least, compared to some of the great food i had this past wknd... mmmm :)

all that talk about china and taiwan... i take it all back. not that i'm not gonna go. i still wanna learn mandarin. but it's funny how i pray for direction and then things get thrown my way and before i know it, i'm back at square one. not gonna get into it... dun wanna talk about it anymore. anyway, i talk too much (and don't do enough) as it is. no more getting ahead of myself... just gonna take things as they come and be grateful of every opportunity that comes my way.

one day at a time.

great debts

u know what this pic is a reminder of?
1. it was beeeautiful that day.
2. samwise gamgee was standing behind me.
3. my bloody OSAP is due... grrrr >.<

needles

yesterday i added a new item to my list of pet peeves. i walked into the doctor's office expecting her to fill out a very simple form (or so i thought) and then she goes and tells me, u're gonna need some bloodwork done. within seconds, i was whisked across the hall and into a chair and before i knew it, my blood was being taken.

i'm not terrified of needles, btw... which is besides the point. the ordeal is psychological for the most part, and that's where my peeve lies. i'm sure there's more pain in walking around all day in 3-inch heels than being poked with a needle (and all the ladies can attest to this one!), but there's something about self-inflicted pain that allows my mind and body to accept it and cope with it. again, not that needles are so painful, but it's someone else stabbing me with a sharp object, for goodness sake... i feel violated!! unless, of course, i'm given some time for mental preparation, in which case i'm able to give them permission in my mind to poke me. then it's like i'm letting them take my blood. there's consent being given, even if only in my mind.

when i was young, i used to try to put my hand on the doctor's so that it seemed like i was giving myself the shot, or at least allowing them to give it to me instead of having it forced upon me. i hated it when they made me look away... as though it would ease the whole process... stupid people, assuming they knew how my mind worked... u see, by looking at where they injected me, i could see exactly what they were doing, and in knowing what was going on, my consent could be fully realized. imagine not being allowed to witness what i gave them permission to do... what kind of permission is that? how true of a consent is it when i'm being prevented from seeing what it was i consented them to do? (my mind really did work this way as a child...)

proverbs

salad, pasta, pot pie.

i can't believe i only have 3 more classes to go.

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."

i heard this twice today, coincidentally enough... first on a sitcom before class, and then again during class. in fact, today's lecture was based entirely on this proverb. i'm tempted to expand, but i'll do everyone a favour and keep tonight's post short and sweet :P i'll end off with a quote i stumbled across while eating a box of baci chocolates:

"A woman is always a mystery: one must not be fooled by her face and her heart's inspiration."

- E. De Amicis

p.s. i did not eat the entire box in one sitting

fry, anyone?

multi-tasking at its cutest :) this was my hamster pinkeye (pronounced pinky) a few years back during his healthy pre-cancer days. pinkeye was the dumbest of all my hamsters, not to mention the most fragile and sickly... but if he ever owned a saying, it would be: "don't hate me because i'm beautiful." pinkeye was one of the hamsters who loved to sleep in the 'skyroom'... we usually gave him a cut-up sock or towel along with the woodchips to keep him comfy. did i mention that pinkeye was a lazyass?? he luuuved to eat and sleep at the same time. in this pic, i gave him a fry to nibble on and he didn't open his eyes once... just sniffed out the fry, reached out, bit off a piece and proceeded to nibble on it while lying on his side. if u look closely at the picture, u can see the paws of his feet plastered against the glass :)