Favour and Grace, You walk with me…

as i look back at the days of my life, i have witnessed the portion of favour and grace of Jesus growing in my life, day after day. He has indeed added unto me the good things that i don’t deserve and taken away the bad things that i do deserve.

God is so good to me. thank You for Your old rugged cross.

U of T, i’m coming!

right after i blogged about my last post, i received news about my exchange posting the very next day. i got into University of Toronto for my next semester and i just can’t wait to soak myself in an entirely different culture in a completely different country, away from singapore. i don’t know why, but the moment i came back from perth, i just wanted to get out of singapore all over again. and this time, i chose a uni that was a lot further away from here. lol.

this will be the first time Ju and i will be apart for so long. the last time we were in 2 separate continents 4 years ago because he flew back to singapore from perth earlier than i did after graduation, he could not stand to be away for more than a week and he flew back to accompany me for the rest of my remaining stay in perth. i still remember our phone bills for that month itself came up to around AUD$300 per person, thanks to the 2 weeks separation (another 1 week because i took a holiday in the gold coast with Jane). i wonder if 4 years later, we have matured as a couple to learn to be independent away from each other and how to cope for this long.

have started making plans with Ning on where we should travel after my semester there ends since she may come and pay me a visit. dad suggested NY which is just a few hours’ drive away from toronto. Ju will also be coming over just before i fly home to singapore to do a bit of travelling and we may be stopping over at vancouver to visit his cousins.

plans, plans, and more plans…gotta’ contain my excitement cos’ my current semester’s still ongoing, aye!

“don’t worry, it will all work out”

started my morning off with high spirits, bobbing my head to the song “i’m walking on sunshine” while I drove leisurely to school…but it soon caved in to an all-time low with the toil of school work mounting and other personal matters which really bothered me and totally weighed my spirit down…

I shared with Ju my problems and posed many questions that I had no answers to…and as expected, I knew he hadn’t any real answers for me either. then he reminded me of what pastor had shared with us a few weeks back and I gradually felt encouraged about my circumstances…

apparently, in okinawa, there are more than 600 healthy centenarians (people > 100 years old). the scientist who stayed with them for a period of time to observe their living habits noted that these centenarians have a tagline-cum-life-motto that they use to verbally reassure themselves and other fellow centenarians regularly: “don’t worry, it will all work out”…

the older i grow, i find myself trading my childlike optimism for adult cynicism, skepticism and practicalism. that’s why I find it amazing at how these okinawans in the ogimi village have such a consistently positive attitude which they profess and how it has contributed to the prolonging their life span. sometimes we may not believe what we are uttering as the days ahead seem so dark and bleak; but funnily, once we voice it out often enough, somehow and somewhat we will eventually and unconsciously start to believe the things that we speak aloud.

we as christians ought to learn to adopt such an expressive sort of positivity; but more importantly, to let go of our worries and fear so as to let God work in our dire circumstances. after all, if God wants all the glory, He needs to do all the ‘work’ and He hasn’t stopped working our lives out yet.

thank you dear for your timely god-sent reminder. after repeating it to others for the past few weeks, i finally needed to hear it for myself.

生、老、(病)、死

had an interesting albeit packed sunday going for back-to-back events marking 3 out of the 4 stages of life which is best put in Chinese: 生、老、病、死.

the day started off with the 1 month old celebration of my new baby niece (生), where my cuzzie Jialin and myself were marveling over her tiny hands and feet and erm, her lack of eyebrows. i took the chance to indulge in the pink-stained eggs, a chinese tradition that is seldom practiced these days, but so cherished by me.

then we headed off after church service to Ju’s mum’s birthday celebration at Peach Garden for dinner (very inaptly termed as ‘老’ – i hope my future mother-in-law never reads this!), where the bill totaled at a whopping $480 to feed the hearty appetites of 5 people. my heart went to Ju’s sister, who was made a-Gucci-wallet-poorer, but nonetheless, slurps to everything my stomach could and did contain! thank you God especially for the peking duck, fried white bait, sharks’ fin and codfish (whichever species you happen to be).

and then we rushed to Jack’s granny’s wake (死), where I watched for a good 2 hours of how the surviving descendants of a deceased at a Taoist ritual had to cross over some bridge and go in dizzying circles (clockwise and anti-clockwise) to the deafening chants of the Taoist priests. crunching on black melon seeds and peanut seeds to pass the time, it eventually proved too exacerbating to watch. when the procession finally ended for the night and Jack was ‘released’ to accompany Jo, Jane, Ju and I left with a mixture of sadness and simultaneously a sigh of relief.

not much meaning to this post – just wanted to document how the 3 important stages of life so happen to fall on a same day. after all, such coincidences are few and far between?

screwed up body clock

school reopening was like a nasty reality check, akin to a hard slap on my face. am up in the wee hours of the morning these days to cramp my books into my head and to get all my homework done before class.

after 2 semesters of school, i still haven’t gotten used to the idea of sleeping less than 5 hours a day. my optimum rest period is a good 7 hours and minimum 5. but i have been hard on my eyes over the last few days and i can feel fatigue is slowly creeping in…*giant YAWN*

will have to rely on my usual companion – a cuppa’ teh-O – to keep me awake for as long as i can…