HOW TO OATMEAL

I ate oatmeal for EVERY SINGLE BREAKFAST last week and

it

was

fantastic

So here are my oatmeal instructions:

1. Buy lots and lots of rolled oats (Not quick cook, not instant, rolled. Don't be lazy.). Find a 2 x 800g bags for $7 something discount at shengsiong - buy them. Go to fair price finest two days later and see a 2 x 1kg bags for $6 something discount - buy them.

2. Curse Shengsiong under your breath but feel completely happy that you now have 4 bags of oatmeal on your shelf.

3. Wake up early and decide that those rolled oats look really sexy today.

4. Measure out half a cup of rolled oats plus some more because half a cup doesn't look like enough.

5. Dice up an apple and wonder why your mother threw away the nicer dicer.

6. Put apples in with oats in a sauce pan, plus half a cup of water and half a cup of non-dairy milk. (I use soy because that's cheapest in Singapore)

7. Turn on the heat and stir the oats a little to dissipate some of your excitement at OATS.

8. Get rather lazy and leave the oats to sort themselves out.

9. Return to lots of milk bubbles and stir feverishly until they have settled a little, and then fuss over the porridge and keep stirring until it becomes creamy.

10. Pour oats into a bowl and put in a spoon of honey or maple syrup, cut up a banana and try to artistically arrange it over the top, sprinkle some blueberries on as well and then cover any attempy=t at an artistic arrangement with cinnamon.

If you're lazy you can always do overnight oatmeal which is

oats + soymilk + apples + cinnamon + honey/maple syrup

in whatever amount you like in a jar over night, with blueberries and bananas added in the next morning.

(This was so good I had it for lunch as well one day.)

Go out and conquer the world.

This happy post is because I FINALLY FINISHED EVERY SINGLE SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION!!!!!!

MFASPH

A very strange parallel occurrence happened to me this year.

An occurrence that was very similar to one last year.

Both involved scholarships and implicit rejection.

Last year, on the very last day of my A levels, after I had gone bowling with my class and returned home happy and exhausted (and also very wet because there had been a thunder storm and as usual I had forgotten my umbrella.) I was lying on my parents' bed watching ANTM when my dad returned home, holding a letter. The letter was from MFA, the ministry I had applied to for a scholarship, and it was a rejection letter.

I don't think I did much after reading it. I was pretty stunned and obviously disappointed. But more than that, I was angry. I was RAGING inside. I was asking (mostly rhetorically, I didn't really want to listen to anyone but myself at that point) why on earth God had raised my hopes by giving me a place in Durham and then dash my hopes by stealing away my means to get there. (this was before Cambridge, although Durham is completely still a dream school - it is beautiful)

I acted like I deserved the scholarship, than something had been taken away from me rather than not given. 

I think I threw the paper across the room at some point.

I know I cried, and curled up in the bath tub, stuck that rejection letter in my diary and wrote 'What's the use of having places when I DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO GO THERE?'

It took a few days, good friends, and the movie interstellar to bring me to my senses and show me that God is in control but he isn't out to ruin my life, quite the opposite, he has a plan that is greater than myself. Maybe I'll be a waitress for the rest of my life, maybe I'll die tomorrow. But whatever happens, it is ultimately supposed to glorify HIM and not me.

Anyway, last week on Monday a similar thing happened.

After completing a very long application form and writing out an essay about how much I wanted to delve into people's lives and capture the essence of humanity in writing, I went onto the SPH website to submit my application - to discover that it was closed. After calling them, they told me it had been closed on the 9th of March and not the 19th of March as I believed. (I even thought I was submitting my application early!) I panicked a little, and tried emailing them anyway, with my application attached and an apology. However, they reiterated that the application was closed and that I could apply again for a mid term scholarship.

I was so disappointed - the SPH scholarship was my favourite of the lot - but there was no raging this time. 

I went swimming, swam 30 laps and cried some in the pool (although I never know if I'm actually crying in the water or just thinking that I am because of the sadness inside and the water all around me) and then got out and dried off and felt much better.

And by that evening, when Tim asked me what happened with the SPH scholarship and if I minded awfully about it, I really could confidently say, Yes I am pretty sad and I feel rather stupid for that 1 mistake, but I think that this is God sort of putting me in a funnel, and as he closes doors, he's guiding me closer to where I really need to be to truly live for Him.

I'm actually so glad about losing the scholarship because it has shown me that God truly is working in my life - that anger and confusion and hopelessness I felt after the MFA rejection is in such juxtaposition to the peace I felt after the SPH rejection. It's a weird kind of appreciation for this 'tragedy' (sort of like how I am happy to have gotten food poisoning in Burma because now I finally know what it's like!) but it has reassured me of how God is really directing and guiding every little step I take which is a huge relief honestly.

Loving myself

A few days ago, I was looking back at some of the things I had written when I first started this blog. One of the things I wrote was this 'I recently looked in the mirror and tried to find any resemblance between myself and twiggy. Because i thought if there was, i would have at least a reassurance that my face was pretty' (That was during my twiggy phase)

If I could travel back in time and meet fifteen year old me, I would give her a hug and tell her she was (and is) beautiful. But I would also know she'd have heard that before, and it would take a while before she actually would believe it.

My younger self was a microcosm of what is a common occurrence- 96% of women worldwide do not consider themselves beautiful. My own perception of inadequacy probably began when I was still a child; people used to tell me I looked like Fann Wong ( "No, Fann Wong looks like her." My dad 

would always quip back at them), and strange as it might seem, I began to view beauty as a necessary standard to be met. I had to look as good as Fann Wong. Fail to do so and I would not even be me. 

Social standards are definitely an important determinant of our self-perception. We expect to conform to a certain standard of beauty, one that is reinforced by social media, beautiful filters and cosmetics. All these have the potential to enhance (and make us 'more than' what we normally are) and can even become an art form for expression, but often they are used to make us feel just adequate. That means we perceive our normal selves as 'less than'. Everything we are is no longer sufficient - something in our very identity, the core of our selves has been diminished by our inability for us to accept our appearance. When we reject part of ourselves-we lose it completely, and that doesn't make us happier, it reinforces negativity.

Notice that a lot of the time, it is our own selves that plants this negative self perception. Although we rely on the comments and compliments of others to build up our own mental mirror reflection, it is our own self that accepts or rejects or basically ascribes weight to these comments and compliments. One example is how studies have shown that women tend to believe the compliments given them by men but they disregard compliments given them by women. We have our own choice in who we listen to or do not listen to. As Chantelle Brown Young, a woman with the skin condition vitiligo, says 'The only person that can make you feel that you aren’t beautiful is you. You can’t let someone else lower your self-esteem because that’s what it is — self-esteem, you need to first love yourself before you have anybody else love you.'

People who deliberately or unknowingly pull you down with their words also contribute to negative self perception. My father has a habit of calling larger people we see as we drive around in the car 'ah fat!'. Somehow, this always gave me the lingering impression that being fat is undesirable and repulsive, and also that my size had something to do with how much my father loved me. I never attributed my strange fear of being fat to the possibility of a perception cultivated by the disparagement of size I have been exposed to, until I realised I was unconsciously perpetrating it. When I first started using Instagram, I used to caption pictures of food with half-joking quips like 'My friends are going to make me fat' or  'the fat life chose me', until one day a friend who was herself struggling with body image texted me. She said that my captions were incredibly discouraging; my self deprecating captions had the potential to act as a negative comparison for other people who did not feel secure and send them deeper into negative self-perception.

Another contribution to negative self-perception can be building an identity that is overtly fixated on a facade of healthy and happy living. Orthorexia, a new eating disorder, is increasingly a buzzword as people realise how our culture of health may be making us even more unhealthy, if not physically then at least mentally. I remember in the beginning of J2, I decided to take a healthy turn in my diet and immediately cut carbohydrates from my meals as much as possible. I was convinced that carbohydrates gave you sugar spikes that would ruin your liver, and were calorie dense in a bad way, and low in nutrients compared to things like meat (I wasn't yet vegetarian) and vegetables. I still recall waking up early in the morning to pack salads in my bag - some days I would be too tired to think of creative salads and they would be a pathetic collection of limp lettuce, tomato and cucumber. People would ask me if I even enjoyed it, and although I could think of plenty other things that would taste way better, I would force a smile and say, "It's really good! I love salad!", trying to maintain my image and also my self-belief/identity as a 'healthy, happy' individual. However, I was far from healthy (carbs are actually very healthy for you!) and far far far from happy. I don't think I ever got as bad as orthorexia because of my ongoing love affair with chocolate and also I found out that carbohydrates are essential for brain function including MEMORY (one of my worst fears is dementia), however, what I do know is that my pursuit of wellness had made me live a restricted, miserable life. As Hannah Darvas puts it, "Eating well is amazing, and can really alter your life in so many ways, but when it manifests itself into an addiction or means of control, it no longer can be deemed healthy. Running a mile from your truly favourite foods out of fear because of their 'fat content'...'unhealthy ingredients list'...'what they'll do to your waistline' is nothing but wasted time, wasted worry, and most importantly a huge drain on your happiness and mental sanity; even if you don't see it. Too often we can become sealed within our healthy bubble that we become proud of the willpower that we have. But have you ever questioned that? Will you look back at yourself in 15 years and say, 'wow, I'm really proud for missing out on all of the time spent with friends eating my favourite treats and having fun so that I could eat clean'...will you? I certainly won't be one of those people. You're not 'cheating' anything when you're tucking into what you love. But you are cheating yourself out of life and enjoyment when you shield yourself away from the real world and what amazing things life has to offer you." The growing culture of health foods and wholeness can go too far, leading to an insidious negative self-perception that hangs in the impossible and tenuous balance of remaining strictly and perfectly healthy.

There are probably other reasons that contribute to negative self perception when it comes to physical appearance - things like body scrutinization (putting someone in a leotard in the middle of a class of thinny girls is enough to make any one conscious of their body - a girl in my ballet class has been getting thinner and thinner and I don't know how to tell her she is beautiful without a thigh gap), or even culture (I'm pretty sure exclaiming 'I am SO INCREDIBLY AND WONDERFULLY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!' would be considered rather arrogant in Asian societies, unless maybe if your accompanied it with psalm 139). However, I have less personal experience with those and I'm not sure exactly how the mind process behind that works itself into a person to make them doubt their own existence as a truly amazingly beautiful human .

So how did my self perception change? If you ask me now if I think I am beautiful, I'd say 'Yes, yes and YES.' 

I think certainly something that helped me see myself as beautiful was seeing myself through the eyes of someone else. Just as Dove's Real Beauty sketches showed the gulf between women's perceptions of themselves and other women's perceptions of them, I realised that if I saw myself as a stranger did, I would see a lot more of myself that I loved. And as I waved a tentative hello to the other, beautiful me in the mirror, introduced myself, talked to myself, rediscovered the secret longings and musings of my soul, and slowly fell in love with myself. I became myself, just as lovers morph into an inseparable entity that encapsulates the best of both of them, so I became that very beautiful girl I saw and believed. Things like reading old blog posts and smiling at my quaint expression or my sudden poetic bursts, and seeing old pictures of me laughing as I hugged a friend, or grinning after a wonderful choir performance made me realise just how much of myself I really appreciated when I saw myself from a distance. And even as I got closer, I remained beautiful in my own sight.

Another, thing that helped me (Don't sigh and roll your eyes) were my beliefs - in particular in Christianity (which of course should be the centre of everything, and why not my self-perception?) and vegetarianism. When you keep telling yourself that before time even began, when the universe was a seething mass of darkness, God had you in mind - it kind of floors you to realise how amazingly precious you are. The hands that carved mountains and traced rivers and ran themselves through the whispering branches of trees also carved smile lines and traced my cupid's bow and ran themselves through my life-giving arteries. The wonderful beauty of the creator and his creation makes you believe that you cannot possibly be anything less than wonderful yourself - God never makes mistakes. Also, after I began eating with compassion in mind, I realised that it was silly to care so much for animals and not care properly for myself! Compassion is something everyone and everything deserves, and I needed to extend it to myself as well so that it becomes a never-ending well within me, something that I tie so deeply to my identity that it will overflow and touch everything and everyone I meet.

Finally, something that continues to make me determined to love myself and never succumb to the twisted seduction of negativity is seeing how other people fail to love themselves. When I told my Mum last night that only 4% of women think they are beautiful, she told me she wasn't one of them. But if you knew my mother, you'd know she has the most beautiful nose on earth and also the most beautiful heart, which of course is more important. On Christmas day, when I tried to persuade a friend to come swimming with me, and lent her my swimming costume to change into, she handed it back to me and implied that she was 'too fat' to. Hannah later reprimanded me for continually asking her to just try it anyway, because in my over-eagerness to GO SWIMMING I didn't notice her discomfort, and Hannah reminded me that 'not every one is as comfortable with their body as you are'. I think an embarrassment about body image is so common, and when I see someone who isn't proud of how God has physically created him or her, and recognise my past self-consciousness, I ache for him or her, but at the same time I become more determined than ever never to go back to that negative mind frame.

Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but what is so important to realise is that you are the beholder. You have the power to see just how beautiful you are despite your imperfections. Imperfections are interesting - I would certainly rather see a movie with conflict and plot twists and characters with fundamental flaws than one that was entirely happy from start to finish. Although the world will always have some standard of commercial beauty, that is not to say we are not beautiful. We are free to enjoy life, to reach out and grab it and hold it close and inhale it's beautiful wonderful smell of possibility, and then leap the world's ties and do what we have always wanted to, in compassion and love and humility, empowered by our confidence and belief in ourselves. And that is really beautiful.

'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.' - Marianne Williamson

Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among the white clouds?

Familiar friends

I keep thinking that our eyes are starting to look alike but nobody else sees it. Maybe i'm just too used to seeing our faces together in photos, the familiarity of us three has been mistaken in my mind as similarity in us three.

It's strange to think that come September, the three of us may be in three different countries for university - Ireland/England/Australia/Singapore.

Don't leave me. Don't leave them. I promise I'll call.

“There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations…The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance the greater the need for the string.

“The practice of attaching cups to the end of the string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unravelled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.

“When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented." - The History of Love

accent

Today a man who came to the cafe told me I have some british in my accent.

I said, "I should hope so! I'm half...half British!"

"Aren't you lucky!" He said, "Of course, better to be fully British but still."

I smiled and keyed in his order for a long black.

I like being a half and half.

But how wonderous that he could tell my heritage just from my speech!

21/03/15

'Top student you know, my teachers they were all shocked, "How can this boy score 100?" I was top student, you know!'

The MINDS security guard isn't an ordinary security guard. He told Agnes and I, as we signed into MINDSville, that he had been a sort of child intellectual prodigy, scoring full marks and even skipping secondary one because his mind was on par with those a year his senior. He had the blueprints of his future all carefully planned in his mind - after secondary school and junior college and he would go to England to study architecture.

However, his dream couldn't be realised because his father, a drunkard, spent all his money on alcohol.

I could hear the bitterness in the security guard's voice when he said "I told my father, I said to him "you are a fool" '

Because he was a fool, and now his son is watching the world go by and thinking of what he could-have-been.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After that, we went into the hall to set up and meet the children. I was paired with a lovely gentle girl called jia ying who reminded me so much of the gentle girl in Vietnam (2013). Her favourite animal is a dog and her favourite colour is purple. She goes to church 'to pray...to God' and she doesn't like snakes. Probably the best bit of our tie with her was when we read through the 'Where's Wally?' book with her.

"Lolly!!! Where are you Lolly?" She would exclaim.

"I find Lolly!" - a curious mix of tenses because she had found Wally and yet always there was another page of jumbled characters with that red and white bespectacled enigma hiding somewhere.

After she had finished the book, she proudly announced to her helper that 'I find Lolly!' this time a final, intended past tense. She also carefully instructed the next girl who was using the book to find wally by 'looking for red'.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lunch was with Agnes, Kiyoko and Jon, because I think part of the MINDSville visit, aside from serving the children, was to bond the YAs together through meaningful service. So Kiyoko, Jon, Agnes and I ruminated over why God creates people who are blind and intellectually disabled over lunch. We couldn't think of a comprehensive answer, just certain answers for certain cases, which I suppose is the only true answer since every person differs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raj, Nathan and I discussed what it meant to truly DIE to this life and if we kept sinning if it meant we weren't truly dead in our sins and therefore we weren't/aren't saved. I still maintain that Christianity is about intention and not perfection. Salvation cannot be a process wherein we are cleansed forever on earth because earth is ultimately sinful. And so we shall and will sin. Again and again. But that does not mean we are not truly saved because there is no place God's love cannot reach us, and no way we cannot attain his forgiveness and eternal life if we so seek it through Christ. Death, I suppose, is a struggle (do not go gentle into that good night) that Christ strengthens us to achieve. And through that struggle of dying to this life and it's sin we rely on God's strength and form a personal relationship with him and a deep attraction for him that means we will keep coming back when we fail, and therefore we will be saved. I think.

Also discussed vegetarianism and discovered Mustafa sells nuts cheaply (CHARGE!!!!!)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the train with Grace, she told us about a friend who was sending her texts constantly deprecating and pitying himself. Honestly I feel rather annoyed at people who constantly talk about how degraded they are and yet make no effort to improve it, or complain about what a burden they are and yet do not help others willingly, or say they are desperate and yet decline help from concerned others.

I suppose my human patience causes me to fail to truly care for these people. But God's love is higher than their sighs and deeper than their groans.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the Cafe, I had the pleasant surprise of Switt ann Shak coming to visit on top of Nathan and Grace being there! Norman said his 'gay-dar' pinged when he saw Shak although i think it may be faulty. I did front for the first time.

I met the kitchen staff - Andrew, who held open the door for me and helped me arrange the cakes, and asked me what my name was and struggled to pronounce it, and struggled to say miri too and now calls me mary, Presley - Andrew's darker doppelganger, Travis - the main pastry chef, Jason - the biggest joker in the kitchen

Jason "This (spaghetti) is for B6. It is extra spicy."

Me "Very spicy?"

Jason " Yeah, like extra extra hot, like you"

I rolled my eyes and laughed. I love work!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wise words

'Don't feel bad because where you're headed you'll have so many chances to help people. That's what you do where ever you go.' - Emily Wong Chiun Yun

Remember that post about me feeling terribly selfish? Well, the feeling intensified over the weekend especially when my Dad told me to please decline the Roslin Orphanage trip in case any scholarship interviews surface in that period. I sort of felt, in that moment, that I had just sealed the deal to become a boring, one track student fixated on just getting to university while these 8 months where I have the opportunity to explore myself and other people just drift by.

Thankfully Luk Ching and Emily reminded me that the human right of helping should not be constrained by location or comfort or finance. Two friends reminded me today that every single foot print I leave in another person's life can either help them or not. I hope I do.

(Also, this is Emily being one-with-nature just like her favourite princess Pocahontas)

23/03/2015

It was another golden morning. 

I woke up and began making pancakes until I heard of the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, which was so strange. I felt like I was living in that moment where you just know that your country is stepping from the fold of one era into the unknown of another. So the first founding father is gone, and I suppose it's time we find our way with the help of his son. I can't imagine what it would be like to be Lee hsien loong right now. A grief made necessarily public (his address was given at 8am this morning and his voice wavered and broke but he did it. He definitely did it.) but so necessarily private as well, as he continues to lead the country while dealing with this. So many people are praying for Lee Kuan Yew's soul now but I'm going to be slipping in an extra special prayer for his son.

I completed the pancakes and then got ready to leave the house.

I saw the resident rooster and hen on my run to the bus stop.

I just caught the bus on time.

I only waited about 5 minutes before Vi joined me and another 5 before Ali came and we found a lovely picnic spot in Botanic gardens, under the shade of a tree. 

This was our SPREAD

Catching up with them after such a long absence was so nice. They are the vestiges of my choir life and such wonderful people to have around. Ali is working in the night safari, Vi has become MANAGER of the steamboat restaurant she works in, and I'm still just a waitress with big dreams. But all of us are happy and that is what matters.

We talked about things like Lee Kuan Yew's passing, work, Pastors and Popes, Christianity and church going, and finished all the pancakes.

Not a crumb of doubt I love these two.

Strange questions

Talking about this with Chrispy and Prisca and here were our answers

1) What is stopping there from being a second Fall of Man in heaven?

Because Satan will be defeated finally and forever, and therefore will not lead us into temptation and sin after Jesus has cleansed us entirely from sin.

2) Why can't Satan achieve salvation through Jesus Christ and is it wrong for us to pray for Satan's salvation?

Satan, being a fallen ANGEL, is different from fallen humans and so we guess the rules applying to his salvation are different. Basically, the secret things belong to the Lord.

Prisca Moments

Prisca: 'He looks like a peanut...His head reminds me pf a pea'
Chrispy: 'That's because he's bald!'

Chrispy: 'Do you know that song...give us clean hands?'
Prisca: 'Give us green hands?'

Prisca: 'Is it pronounced fox beef or foe-x beef?'
Miriam: 'Foe.'
Prisca: 'But that sounds like vietnamese foe.'
Miriam: 'Pho.' (Pronounced fer)

(Later on in the bus) Prisca: 'Four (faux) leather.'

Prisca: 'I think I'll call my daughter Tamara.'
Miriam: 'That sounds like tamari which is like soy sauce.'
Prisca: 'Soy sauce is salty...that means she'll be an interesting person!'

Prisca: '(On babies) I can't abandon them. I can't throw them in the drain.'

Prisca: 'I'm not drunk...Why do people always say they are not drunk when they are drunk...'

Prisca: 'I wouldn't date a two year old.'

Selfish

I've been feeling pretty selfish lately. I think that so many of the things I do in my life are for myself -  the monotony of scholarship/uni applications is so self-driven and it isn't even a happy selfish pursuit like making oats for breakfast or a healthy cake. This Saturday I'm going to MINDSville with the YACG and I am thrilled because finally I'll be doing something useful for other people and not for my own gain.

That's also why I love working at on the table, because being a waitress with minimal pay gives me a satisfaction in serving that I can't get elsewhere and helps me be a little more obscure.

I really really hope to go to the Roslin Orphanage trip in April to care for the children there, but my Dad is quite reluctant to let me go, afraid that it will jeopardise my scholarship opportunities if I miss an interview. But interviews are flexible - they call you up and ask for your free days.

Praying that I'll be able to explain things and convince my Dad to let me go.

Oh also, my new human project is to talk to strangers on the train whenever I get a seat. I think I was motivated by my Yale NUS essay where I wrote that I wish Singaporeans could be more friendly and open with story sharing (like a pedestrian Humans of New York scenario) and I realised that probably the only 'stranger' I talk to is Muthu the bus driver.

So now I'll be trying to screw my courage to the sticking place and say hello to strangers.

18/03/15

Yesterday was a really good day. I realise that I classify most days where I actually exit the house as good days probably because it doesn't happen so often and it really should

I saw the most beautiful brown headed kingfisher as I walked to the bus stop. The bus stop seems to be prime kingfisher-spotting area for some strange reason. Because (as usual) I had been in a flurry to get out of the house, sunblock was applied en route much to the amusement of a few older aunties sitting in the bus.

I met Vanessa and Becky (who I haven't seen in ages!!!) in school. We were supposed to gym but we sort of just walked to the gym and talked to jiao lian first. Jiao Lian was so happy for my A level results (gong xi gong xi) and proudly said the smartest people come from track and field.

Then she also admitted, with a sheepish grin, that the people who do really badly also come from track and field.

We played frisbee for a while in the hot hot sun after that (my catches are heaps better than my throws) And then went back to the gym to actually exercise. We did lots of ab exercises but I actually didn't feel anything in my core although my legs and back started aching after a while. Becky and I faced our ultimate enemy the arms machine one last time and managed to do 10 reps and I think that's pretty awesome.



On the way out Becky and I both said "Bye uncle" to a new security guard before Van told us that the guard was actually a WOMAN!!!

I walked to Ghim Moh after that to pick up some groceries for our under-stocked vegetable drawer. A big plastic basket rainbow-full of brinjal, red and green peppers, carrot, spinach, watercress, cauliflower and mushrooms made me REALLY happy. I picked up some bananas and broccoli as well from two other shops, and bought four pieces of chee kueh for a treat.

As I was picking out the vegetables, I saw a mother pointing out the tattoos on the arms of a friendly old uncle to her daughter, asking her if the Uncle was a huai ren (bad person) and saying that the uncle was very kind and just because he had tattoos didn't mean he was bad. The uncle also chipped in, saying he and his friends were always  friendly and they all had tattoos. The little girl didn't say a word, just stood there and stared at the blue-black ink on his arms.

I had a long way to walk back home, through ghim moh and biopolis and portsdown with my big bags of shopping. Thankfully it was a beautifully sunny day and so walking was quite enjoyable. When i reached the top of an escalator in metropolis, one of the people who usually stand there to promote the fitness first gym on the second floor asked if I needed help with the bags. I politely declined (because i was carrying them all the way home and I wouldn't want a stranger following me all the way there. Plus it would be a tiring 20 minutes walking for him and he had a job to do.) but my heart was warmed by his kind words and it was nothing to do with the sunshine.

Walking back was a picturesque journey - I saw a fallen flower that looked like a purple sea urchin, there were lots of fallen leaves everywhere to crunch through (though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie), and the golden showers tree near my house was in full bloom. The sun was so bright that every colour was even more saturated and I couldn't help but feel that this world is the most beautiful thing there is, and the only more beautiful thing could be this world before it fell, when God walked through it talking to Adam.

I made stir fry brinjal and quinoa with peanuts and cucumber for lunch (adding nuts to ANYTHING makes it super yummy) and then worked on my Yale NUS essay before going for fellowship.

Fellowship was great. We started a new series on the books of Luke and Acts, of the season of Lent. My Lenten fast was supposed to be from my handphone - turning it off once the clock hit 9pm, but I have been pretty bad at keeping it. The study we did was on Jesus' first predication of his death, and how he also commands us to lose our lives to gain true life. It was nice knowing that the One who died calls us to die so that we will never really die because He never really died either. He never calls us anywhere where he hasn't been, and doesn't go anywhere we cannot follow.

I noticed that Uncle Anthony has herbs growing all along the balcony of his house - I spotted fennel but I couldn't name the others.

I also realised that when you die to yourself you actually probably become a LOT happier. For example, losing the opportunity to apply for the SPH scholarship (more on that soon) would have probably made me really unhappy but the constant reminders that this life is not my own, it is planned and perfected by God, gave me a peace that I know isn't from myself.

busyness

I've been a busy person for a long time. In fact, In fact, my mental picture of me going from one place to another is me rushing, hair flying, to a bus stop and putting my socks/sunblock/earrings/watch/lip gloss on in the bus. So when I came across this article, I felt it had so much RESONANCE with me.

(Full article:http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/exhaustion-is-not-a-status-symbol/2012/10/02/19d27aa8-0cba-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html)

When people just don’t make themselves available, I think it’s healthy, and I think it’s smart.

You know what I would argue? Less than half the people I’ve interviewed would say they work around the clock out of fear, and more than half would say they do it out of habit. We use work to numb out. We can’t turn off our machines because we’re afraid we’re going to miss something.

I don’t want to dismiss the fact that people are fearful, but, you know, one of the biggest shame triggers at work for us is relevance. Our fear is that we’ll be perceived as not relevant or not necessary. So I think sometimes that’s why we jump on the weekend emails. You have to have buy-in from a lot of people to create a culture of immediacy and 24-hour working. I think as many of us are perpetuating that as are victims of it.

‘Crazy-busy’ is a great armor, it’s a great way for numbing. What a lot of us do is that we stay so busy, and so out in front of our life, that the truth of how we’re feeling and what we really need can’t catch up with us.

I see it a lot when I interview people and talk about vacation. They talk about how they are wound up and checking emails and sitting on the beach with their laptops. And their fear is: If I really stopped and let myself relax, I would crater. Because the truth is I’m exhausted, I’m disconnected from my partner, I don’t feel super connected to my kids right now.

It’s like those moving walkways at the airport — you’ve got to really pay attention when you get off them, because it’s disorienting. And when you’re standing still, you become very acutely aware of how you feel and what’s going on in your surroundings. A lot of our lives are getting away from us while we’re on that walkway.

One of the things that I found was the importance of rest and play, and the willingness to let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth. A lot of people told me that when they put their work away and when they try to be still and be with family, sometimes they feel like they’re coming out of their skins. They’re thinking of everything they’re not doing, and they’re not used to that pace.

So when we make the transition from crazy-busy to rest, we have to find out what comforts us, what really refuels us, and do that. We deserve to not just put work away and be in service of someone else. What’s really meaningful for us? What do we want to be doing? That happens not just in work culture, I see it even with teenagers who now have four and five hours of homework and go to bed at one in the morning. We don’t know who we are without productivity as a metric of our worth. We don’t know what we enjoy, and we lose track of how tired we are.

Banana Oat Loaf

I woke up really early this morning to go for a run. I think I ran slightly faster today - I could feel myself move more, and I tired quickly but pressed on. In my head I heard the "Run Forrest Run!" Refrain from 'Forrest Gump' which helped me run faster. That and the knowledge that I haven't exercised for ages.

Back at home I submitted my NHB application - 3 down, 5 more to go. Soon I'll submit the one for the SPH which is honestly the one I am most interested in because I get to actually write. I also watched this promo interview one where a SPH journalist talked about an article he wrote about security guards, and how a security guard personally phoned him up and thanked him for covering their profession. Diving into the secret lives of people in society (diving into ANY lives actually) would be so amazing!!! And I'm pretty sure it would give me great book ideas if I ever decide to write my own stories.

Before lunch, I baked a quick Cheeky Banana Oat Loaf (vegan, oil free, minimal refined sugar, and can be gluten free but if you have gluten free oats - although I don't understand why everyone is so afraid of gluten???). This is my second loaf this week and it's 'cheeky' because I honestly don't follow the ingredients on the recipe properly - I took out oil, added in soy milk and some vinegar and some crushed walnuts, and all these mischievous additions and subtractions never hurt it.

So here's the rough rough ROUGH recipe

Cheeky Banana Bread (adapted from ambitiouskitchen)

Ingredients

INGREDIENTS

- About 3 cups oatmeal, blended into two cups plus of oat flour
-1 1/2 -2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
-1/2 - 1 teaspoon baking soda (For both BPowder and BSoda, I put in the required amount, and then shake some more in from the bottles)
- A pinch of salt
- very very scant 1/6 cup brown sugar (I usually measure out 1/6 cup, shake some of that in, and return the rest to the sugar box)
- A generous shake or five of cinnamon
- 3 -5 very ripe bananas, mashed
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- A bit less than 1/2 cup soy milk (you can probably definitely use almond milk too) with one table spoon vinegar beaten into it till there's a carpet of bubbles on its surface

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease loaf tin.

Put dry ingredients into a bowl and mix.

In a separate large bowl, beat mashed bananas and vanilla extract, and oil for 1-2 minutes until the consistency is smooth and creamy.

Slowly add in oat flour mixture and mix until just combined.

The mixture should be pretty dry (because of the excess oat flour probably) so you can add in some soy milk here and there, until you feel its right

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and decorate top.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until knife inserted into center comes out clean. Cool 10-15 minutes, then remove from pan and place on wire rack to finish cooling. Cut into thick slices.

My mum likes it plain since she doesn't like sweet things. I eat it with peanut butter and maple syrup on top and it's heaven...

Note to self: Need to buy more maple syrup.

Pressed Solitude

Today on the train I also realised that I'm really happy on my own right now.

In the romantic way.

I suppose at this stage in my life I'm beginning to fall in love with myself. Perhaps its all the time I have alone to myself now, especially when I swim and I can't even have the distraction of music in the background. I realise that just having time to think to myself is precious and amazing - I never knew my brain would slip through the strands of thought so easily and come up with such amazing concoctions.

I used to always imagine being with someone, and life was sort of just a waiting-at-the-train-station for love to come along. But today as I read and saw the little child opposite me and ran my tongue over the rough edges of my new bottom teeth braces, I realised that I'm captivated by the freedom I have right now. I find joy in the mundane-est things now, taking a shower, sitting down for breakfast, frying up a big bunch of spinach for lunch, grocery shopping after dinner with dad, train rides, tying the laces of my Nikes... I have so much autonomy to pursue self-improvement, splash through life's puddles and listen to wonderful soundtracks (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) They always say God made some people for singleness, and now I see how that could actually work and be a very happy happenstance.

Milkdribble

Today as I sat on the train (I love long train rides when I have something to read) finishing up 'The garden of evening mists' I saw across from me a beautifully peaceful little, curled up on his mother's lap with his head propped against the arm of the woman beside him (a friend of his mother's I gather)

Hi hands encircled a milk bottle slackly and a little stream of milk dribble in trailed down his chin, faun-coloured against his dark brown skin.

After a while, his mother gathered him up as if he were nothing more than a bunch of cloth and held him tighter.

I went back to reading and finished the book of somewhere near Tanjong Pagar.

Love language

Apparently my love language is quality time, followed by words of affirmation and physical touch.


Our union is like this: You feel cold, so I reach for a blanket to cover our shivering feet.
A hunger comes into your body, so I run to my garden and start digging potatoes.
You asked for a few words of comfort and guidance, and I quickly kneel by your side offering you a whole book as a gift.
You ache with loneliness one night so much you weep, and I say here is a rope, tie it around me, I will be your companion for life.

malapropism

Dad one day with correct English "I'm so hungry... I have hunger pangs"

Dad one day with real English "I'm so hungry...I have hunger spanks"

02/03/15

This is late but the past few days have been such a flurry of activity that it has been hard to find time to actually write.

On Friday night I had a terrible dream where I got 3B3s, 3A2s and 3F9s for A levels (although I don't even take that many subjects) and a distinction for my history H3 and a merit for my Lit H3. And on Sunday the verse that kept popping into my head was 2 Corinthians 2:19 "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

With A level results coming out I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to rejoice if I was disappointed. I was terrified of what a moment of weakness would do to my faith. I was terrified that all the happiness I had been basking in would turn into a snowball of confusion and squash me flat.

But I was so wrong. So, so wrong. God had such a beautiful and wonderful plan for me and I worried all for nothing.

I stepped into the hall, my insides felt like they were being whirled around by a heritage blade and my heart felt like a hummingbird's wing beat. I held Claire's hand really tight and tried not to listen as people around me joked about how well I would do because the pressure was really getting to me and I couldn't allow myself to hope.

And then they announced the top student of ACJC, who was also the top Arts student,

Who was me.

I stood up, a roaring feeling in my stomach. Everything felt surreal and extremely loud but incredibly far away and I was just really full of wonderment.

'Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.' Indeed. (James 1:17)

I stepped onto stage to collect my A level certificate from Ms Chong, who told me to never stop shining for Him, and then stood on the podium. Getting there was a bit of a hassle because (from SC honours day and AC honours night experience) I do very badly on stage and so after the hug and kind words from Ms Chong I sort of took a step forward and then a step back to ask her if I was supposed to stay on stage or go off. Some things never change.

Standing on the podium, it was amazing to see my friends come up to join me and to look at the sea of people who had seen me through JC life. One of the coolest things that happened that day was that the top science student who came up and stood beside me, was a girl who once saved me with her umbrella during a thunderstorm. Two dripping girls under an umbrella became two girls standing awkwardly on a podium with the biggest academic blessing ever held in their hands. God never fails to surprise me - and he has a wicked sense of humour too!

After that came a series of things to tick off my bucket list - doing a radio interview for a Chinese radio station (I wrote a script with han yu pin yin to help), doing an interview for the Straits' Times and doing an interview for the school paper. I also tried to buy another honey waffle but the auntie had closed her shop for the day. I also told the security guard my good news after he asked how I did, and thanked him for letting me into school every day. They were so happy for me - the Indian uncle and the Chinese uncle - and I was so happy that they could share this with me. I promised to come back, but the Chinese uncle said I could only come back if I ride my bicycle like old days haha.

I can't believe what God has done - he has built me up from an Accident and Emergency Baby, to a girl so shy she wouldn't talk, to a new and excited girl in two amazing schools, to the top girl in the school's A levels. Truly from a face in the crowd to one the crowd faces.

All glory to God.