A FATHER'S LOVE

My father peeked into my room, "I'm going to buy dinner. What do you want? Hokkien mee?"

I looked up from my laptop and considered for a while. Then I shook my head, "I want roasted meat rice with char siew. The one from the famous stall."

Off he went. He came back 30 min later. We started to eat our dinner together.

"The famous stall closed down already. I bought roasted meat from another place."

"Harrrrrr..." I made a face and took my first bite. I could already tell the difference. I looked over to my father's dinner. Suddenly his Hokkien mee looked so much more delectable. My chopsticks went over to his plate.

"I went rock climbing today," I told him. The noodles tasted sour. He hadn't properly mixed the lime.

"Mmm," he replied gruffly. He started mixing the noodles.

"I got baluku," I raised my knees to show him the glory of my battle wounds. "But it was very fun!"

"Hmph."

In between mouthfuls of my dinner, I continued to take his noodles.

"Have you rock climbed before?" I tried again.

No, he answered. And then silence once more.

I had finished most of my dinner by then. Only some rice was left. Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere and I had finished the nice portions of my dinner, I decided to take my leave.

"You don't want the rice?" My father asked.

"Don't want. Cause not nice."

Wordlessly, he took my packet over and pushed his noodles toward me.

"But papa, no more meat. I finished them all."

He shooed me with his free hand and scooped the rice into his mouth with his spoon using the other. I picked up my chopsticks and began to dig into the fried noodles once more.

My dad may be a man of few words but his love for me roars through his actions and is deafeningly loud. Thank you daddy, for always pulling my heartstrings in your own special way :')

MARCHING ON

A playlist of my current favourite K songs to accompany this post. Click play! :)

March has been a month where i invested in people's lives. Not that i don't do so in the past but the kind of investment i am making this time round is different. My investment for this month is not in a traditional sense whereby you expect some returns from the investment but simply giving my time to do things that are more worthwhile. God purposely ushered people into my life and i deliberately reached my hand out. I got to spend time with so many friends and know them in a deeper level. I got to understand them, i got to take a step into their lives. It is only now that i recognise what privilege it is to be able to do so. Previously, i had just see it as a chore haha.

Celebrated Jolene's birthday with a huge feast.

Jess and I celebrated Jolene's 22nd birthday. We have now know each other for close to 3 years but it is only this month that i had deeper conversations with Jolene. God gave me opportunities to spend alone time with her and i told her honestly how i felt about our friendship and my desire for us to delve pass the superficial topics like school and dramas. And as we talked and shared about our lives, our views, our experiences, i felt that we opened up to each other and it was great :) I felt our friendship transited from being instrumental to intrinsic haha. Hopefully in the near future, i will have opportunities to do so with Jess as well. But! I think we did bond over doing manicure hahaha.

Getting pretty skilled at painting people's nails.

I caught up with old friendships this month as well. HY initiated a meet up and at first i was rather lazy to go (HAHAHAHA) but i got reminded how precious our friendship is through the meet up. Most times i take him for granted and forget that he really is a precious person God has placed in my life to be able to share ministry sorrows and exhilarations, for us to encourage and sharpen one another. I think our friendship has really come a long way. When i think back to the time when i was a fresh believer and he was my leader, to the times he shared vulnerably, to the times i cried, to the times when we laugh and make fun of each others' stupiak moments, to the times he invested in my life, to the times we invested in others' lives to now being able to support one another, i am very grateful to have such a friend who saw my spiritual journey from the very beginning :)

Rebecca

I recently got to know a lot of Koreans! Rebecca is someone i met thanks to Val and MX. They were approached by Korean missionaries in Singapore who held a small evangelistic event in NTU and i thought no harm going for the event. Got to know Rebecca from there who turned out that she will be doing exchange in NTU for the semester. She's such a cute dongseng hehehe.

I met Julie (& Shawn) in service. My lg had to sit on the last row as we were late and halfway through the worship, the usher plopped 2 people next to me and told me that there were visitors. I was quite surprised but decided to host them well throughout the service. Eventually, me and Julie exchange contacts and we kept in touch. I had such a great time talking about our lives/culture/faith that 2.5 hours whizzed by just like that! I felt so sad that i had to leave because i wanted to talk more hahaha. But i'll be meeting her again so that's awesooooooome!

Guess who took this photo lol.

So, XX and i did an Easter video for Campus Service. Honestly speaking, i was quite worried when we were editing the video. We were laughing like mad but i was quite sceptical if others would find it as funny as we do. I was reminded in Sec school when we would look at each other and know what we are thinking about (the situation) and laugh while our other friends would be asking "What's so funny?"

But i'm glad that NYC enjoyed the video nevertheless. And so thankful for all those who availed themselves. Really die to self leh, but i think we had a lot of fun!

Met Pong for shepherding this month as well and i just want to say that 1. So thankful for her to be so open about her life to me 2. and even more grateful at how she's been growing. I am so excited to see her grow in her spiritual journey and i know God has great, great plans for her :D

Anginn came back over Easter weekend as well. I was so happy to be able to spend time with her (albeit a short one) and simply talk. We exchanged ideas and theories of what we've learnt, roamed around Haji lane, got kidnapped by this shop owner to model for him (HAHAHA this is the most random thing everrrrr), went for Easter service and updated each other on our lives. I think i am liking one-to-one conversations a lot nowadays. It is so nice to just be able to chat and know one another on a deeper level.

Looking back, March has been a crazy month filled with meet ups with so many different people :O God really gave me a lot of opportunities to be a friend to others. What is common in all of these meet ups is that i get to share Christ to them. Not in the direct, in your face, come my church kind of talks but simply through the sharing of life. Through sharing, I got to understand them better and at the same time, they got to understand who Christ is in my life. It is not the kind of intentionality when you invite friends for service/events that we sometimes have to bolster all our courage to ask but it is the natural overflow that comes from your heart - that when you share about yourself, you can't help but to testify Jesus because he literally takes up such a big portion of you. I am beginning to understand (though i had previously known) that outreach isn't just inviting people to church but being a friend to others and showing Christ to them in our everyday lives. I think it is wonderful to be able to share Christ in a personal manner :)

Other random activities that went on this month:

NOM: Wasn't super pleased with the standard of food. I mean it is still nice and all but because i saw a lot of raves online, i was expecting more :( However, the place is super beautiful and I'm glad that the NYC leadership team got to discuss ministry stuff in a more light-hearted and informal fashion hahaha.

March had been a really fulfilling month because through one-to-one meet ups, i learnt the stories of different people. I can't emphasised how important that is. When you hear the life story of someone, he/she ceases to be an object; a shadow in the midst of a crowd. You get to know the person as he/she is and recognise their human value. You get to see them as how Jesus would. I paused myself in the month of March - You don't pause your work, you pause yourself - because I realised there's so much more to life than just for the days to fly by. I want to enjoy the things that matter. And what can matter more than humans? 

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

There are so many connections we make with people everyday. Most times, those connections simply become fleeting moments that pass us by as we scurry along life. It takes intentionality to turn them into memories instead. The moment we don't, it will just be swept by the current, gone with the wind.

WARM AND COSY

Went to Rollie Ollie to eat on Monday. Mmm, i love their sushi (SO GOOD) although i don't recommend the salad because it is not worth the price.

Juenie juen juen, do you know you're such a scatterbrain? I find it hilarious how you can jump from topic to topic at such a lightning speed because you really speak your mind and your mind is all over the place hahaha. Thanks for being a wonderful friend to me! Honestly, i don't really know why you'd consider me a good friend because i don't think i did anything exceptionally touching or deserving of it. I also cannot pinpoint when we became good friends. Was it when we served together for NYC camp? When we were in the same LG? Was it when we dubsmashed? When we hugged each other? My memory eludes me but thank you for always including me in your life and for being interested in in mine haha. A little sad that you took down your blog :( Need to find a new way to plug myself into your life now :'(

The LGL family went to Minds Cafe on Friday. It was raining so heavily that day yet all of us persistently made our way down to that cosy corner of Prinsep Street :') After 2 rounds of Fish Eats Fish, we decided to play something more chill. "Let's play some cooperative game" said one. "Yes, let's find something less stressful," agreed another... And they came back with Jenga Boom and Woodman. HAHAHA.

Still, i left after a great session of laughing. Seasons In The Sun was playing in the cafe as we were leaving (God, was that you?? Haha). For too long, it felt like all of us were engrossed in our own LGs and our own struggles. I've always sensed a huge discrepancy between my SP and my NYC ministry. I had a lot of fun serving during my SP ministry and it didn't feel like hard work most of the time even when there were many crisis. All of us ran together hand in hand (and i wasn't even a leader back then) and I think that was why even when we had hurdles, it didn't seem all that bad.

I was sharing my thoughts to some of the LGLs and they had the same sentiments too. So i am glad that we are now taking initiative to foster bonds between one another. Last Friday night was a good start. Let's continue to warm up to each other and put the 'family' in the NYC LGL Family.

It seems that God was using this week to bring me back to my past - before NYC; before ministry started to get the better of me; before i only related to people in working terms; before i fenced myself up. I was reminded of who i was and how ministry should look like and how warm people are. I don't know if it is possible for me to ever revert back completely but i am thankful for this week, thankful for the people who patiently waited for me and apologetic to those who got hurt in the process.

And to many others who are like me - being aloof or cynical is not natural or what you need, even if you think it is. I can understand how the drudgery of life and people takes a toll on us and how we can be tricked into thinking that we just want to distance ourselves. But God designed us for communion. We can never make it alone. Situations and circumstances may sometimes make it hard for us to open up to others but let's not forget that walking the path of solitude is the real toll.

And as with all other fears, taking the first step is the hardest but once you've crossed the line, you'll looked back and see that there was nothing much to fear in the first place.

Jiayou everyone!

GET READY WITH ME: CNY DAY 2

Welcome to my second episode of CNY 2016. Today, i feature a hand-me-down qipao from my grand aunt. She loves her qipaos and has an array of tailor-made qipaos made by some Hong Kong (or was it Shanghai?) seamstress. She passed me and my sister one each as she has grown out of it (i mean physically. She still retains her love for qipaos), and we decided to wear it for CNY.

Once again, i did a video tutorial on my make up look today. But this one is quite embarrassing and i was debating if i should post it up because the video quality is really lousy due to bad lighting :'( But i decided to post it up because i actually dubbed the tutorial in Cantonese. I do follow some Hong Kong youtubers and i thought it would be interesting to speak in my dialect but gosh, doing a dub in Cantonese is SUPER hard. I had to google and rewatch some Hong Kongnese makeup tutorials to learn how they say certain terms. I ended up having around 200 dubbing clips (because i kept deleting and re-recording)?!?! Yes, so for that i am proud of myself and my effort and therefore i am going to post it up anyway.

Haha, but honestly if you're watching it to learn/see how i put my make up this video will greatly disappoint you. But if you're looking for something to laugh over (like my half assed Cantonese), you may want to give it a try.

Also, if you're interested to learn how to speak in Cantonese, you can try this website which reads out Mandarin words in the dialect for you.

/edit/ just rewatched my video and I'm cringing HAHAHAH OMG.

W A N D E R L U S T ; Kuala Lumpur

Last week has been absolute madness. Clearing 5 (4, if you exclude weekends) consecutive papers is sheer madness. Dubsmash had been a good friend during the critical period and knowing that i'll be zooming off for a getaway immediately after exam ended helped. Without further ado, here are some snaps from the trip to KL.

Food there was no joke. Its soooooo goooood!