Give them something to live for....

I don't know what made me suddenly remember the incident months ago when one of those psycho radical Islamic groups kidnapped the American journalist Paul Johnson and beheaded him because the American government refused to release some of their leaders. I don't know too, why I wanted to search out the video showing that beheading, because I'd never seen it and I was curious all of a sudden to just watch it. And so I searched it out on the net, and found it in 5 minutes, thanks to the wonderful power of Google...
It was gruesome, disturbing, shocking and everything I expected it to be. And I thought watching it would just make me furious at the pure sickness of those people, and I expected myself to be sitting here verbally walloping the radical Muslims for doing such disgusting things in the name of their god.... but I actually don't feel furious...coz' I'm just too stunned to feel furious. Firstly, I'm not so much disgusted at those people as I am sorry for the friends and family of Paul Johnson who, for the rest of their lives, will be haunted with the memory that someone they loved and cared about had his head so brutally sliced off. I just try to imagine how it would be if the person in that video I saw was someone I knew and cared about....and it already makes me want to cry.
Secondly, even though what that radical group did was completely sick and disgusting, when I think about it, these people deserve our sympathies more than our anger. Which is not to say that I don't completely condone what they did...it's just that it's so obvious that anyone who would do such things has had their brains completely messed up. I think every human being is born with an innate appreciation of the value of human life, which is why people will go out to oppose the killing of unborn foetuses or even fertilized embryos used to make stem cells. But this group of people has completely forgotten the value of human life...and it's not just one or two sickos but a whole society! And one has to wonder how or why they allowed their minds to become twisted as such? Of course, most people will take one look at the situation and blame on the teachings of the fundamentalist Muslims, which teach things like they are promised a great reward in heaven if they die as 'martyrs' or slaughter non-Muslim 'infidels'. Now while that is one of the major factors that result in twisted terrorists, I don't think it is the biggest factor. The biggest factor is that these people have been living under oppression, poverty and suffering all their lives. I think it is because they have nothing to forward to in life, that makes them so easily susceptible to such ridiculous teachings. If they have nothing in this life and they are promised something better in heaven in exchange for killing non-Muslims, why wouldn't they want to believe it? I don't think these people are born not knowing the value of human life. But because they are so desperate for something better that they ignore their own conscience in their effort to attain it. I can bet 100% that if these people were living in a more developed, rich country and everyone had everything they needed to survive, these radical Muslim groups and terrorists would disappear. I've never heard of a single Malaysian Muslim blowing himself up in public or killing people in some jaded hope that it will get them into heaven. Why? Because most people in Malaysia are not dying from hunger or being oppressed or suffering in a terribly big way. In fact, the Muslims are given quite a few handouts by the government just for being Muslim. They have no reason to risk throwing that all away for some ridiculous radical teachings.
My next question is then, is it in the interest of the rest of the world to keep such communities under poverty and oppression for fear that if they become even more rich and prosperous, more powerful terrorist groups will arise to wreck havoc on the world? Or would it be a better idea to help rebuild these countries by providing the people with infrastructure and helping their economies to grow, so they can finally have something to live for? Should the rest of the world continue to allow such societies to suffer because of all the suffering the radical Muslims have caused through events like 9/11 and suicide bombers and kidnappings and decapitations? Or should the rest of the world do the unthinkable and actually help these societies grow and proper? Give the adults job opportunities and build schools for the children so they won't have so much free time to practice how to use machine guns and bombs?
It's an interesting question. Maybe I should write a letter to Mr. Bush. :P

Corny Christian music :P

Stuart once referred to the lyrics in Christian songs as corny. And though I knew he mainly said that out of disdain for anything related to Christianity, for a long time, I've actually been feeling the same way for quite a while. Actually, long before I even met Stuart... standing up in church on Sunday mornings singing along to the praise and worship with everyone else.... I find that I cannot sing some of the songs or lyrics without feeling like a hypocrite because I know it's just not true for me. When it comes to songs talking about how wonderful and majestic and powerful God is, and how He deserves to be praised and all that stuff (which is actually quite corny too, but not in the sense that makes me uncomfortable), I have no problem singing that coz' it's true after all. But then take songs with lyrics like "Lord, I offer my life to you,", or "I love You more than life," or "Every step I take, I take in You. You are are my way, Jesus". They're all nice sounding, feel-good, nice worshipy kinda songs...but geez how many Christians actually mean what they sing in such songs? Do we actually offer our whole lives to God, instead of keeping some parts to ourselves? Do we actually love Him more than life, or do we love our life and our possessions and our human friends more? Do we really take every step in Him and follow His plan, or do we usually come up with our own ideas of what to do and not bother to ask Him if it's what He wants for us? I don't know about the other one third of the world that proclaims to be Christians, but to tell the truth, it's usually been the latter scenario for me. And anyone else who claims that they do or even thinks they do all that, even people like pastors, has got to be kidding themselves. Which is not to say that I have not sincerely tried to live that life, and I'm sure any real Christian would've tried to do so as well. But still, I cannot say that I completely offered my life to God, or that I completely love Him more than anything else, or that I completely walk with Him in all I do, coz' well, I don't. And because of that, I can't sing these songs with all honesty coz' I know I'm not living the lyrics. And it amazes me how the people who wrote these songs could've written such...um...exaggerated (if that's the right word) lyrics, probably just to make the songs sound a little nicer. I wish those Christian music writers would've been more politically correct and written something like "I'm inately selfish, Lord, but I'll try my best to offer everything to you," or "I kinda push you aside in my daily life all the time, but I'll trying to learn to walk with you"... or something along those lines, although maybe not as blunt. Hehe. Which is why I really admire contemporary Christian bands that really sing the Christian walk it like it is and don't make their lyrics unrealistically corny for the sake of making a nice-sounding Christian song. Bands like DC Talk, which sang these lyrics, "What if I stumble? What if I fall? What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?". Bands like Jars of Clay, which sing "The lonely tears I cry, I wish they'd release me. It's in despair that I find faith". And even my newest favourite band, Evanescence, which by the way does not want to be labelled a Christian band, but anyone who actually listens to their lyrics will know they have strong Christian influences. Take for example, ze song 'My Tourniquet', which has ze following lyrics, "Am I too lost to be saved?....My God, my tourniquet, return to me salvation." Of course, all sort-of depressing sounding lyrics, and certainly not suitable for a praise and worship session on Sunday service... but these are lyrics that tell of the spiritual struggles of any Christian. They are real and raw, and show the true picture of what a honest Christian goes through, not all that feel-good crap we sing on Sundays. And of course, when bands like the three mentioned above actually do sing praise songs, the lyrics are just a bit more realistic to the average Christian.
Anyhow, I can't change the corniness of the lyrics that we sing every week. But at least it's something to think about...when we're singing those lyrics in church, do we just sing it blindly, lifting our hands in the air thinking that the louder we sing, the more pleasing it is to our God? Or do we actually stop singing our throats dry for a second so we can think about the words we're singing, and acknowledge to God that we're not living some of those words, but we want Him to change us so that one day we can actually mean those words? If the whole church was like me, I think the congregation would be silent when it's time to sing such songs that say "I love you more than life" or "I give my all to You", coz' if I know I can't do it, I don't wanna be singing it. Coz' I'm not singing any old nice song for fun. I'm singing to a God who is listening.

Website work in progress...

I haven't been updating my blog lately coz' I've been spending most of my time working on my latest pet project (which hopefully I will finish, unlike most of my earlier pet projects which I had said I was going to do but never did, or never bothered to finish. *Sigh*), my poetry website. After eons of building up my collection of artistic meshes of words known as poems and songs, I've finally decided to it's large and worthy enough to take up a bit of web space. But to make a website, I either had to know html, or find a webhost that allowed me to build a website without requiring html. Plus I wanted a host from a poetry website so that I could get more people's critiques on my work. Considering I knew next to nothing about html except that it mainly involves a bunch of words stuck in between these two symbols, <>, I went for the latter option.
One of the first poetry webhosts I found did not require html, but had few customizable templates, and I'd have to put up with a million and one ads popping up around my poetry. In other words, it was crap.
After a bit more searching, I came across another poetry webhost that allowed website building with or without html. So I tried making some pages without html, using their templates. The amount of work I had to put into changing and editing each template to suit the style I wanted was just WAY TOO MUCH! Gave up on that after a couple of pages, since I knew I would have over 80 more pages of that crap to go through, since I have just about that many poems, plus I'd have to make all the navigational pages as well. So I was left with the one and only option to make a good looking website quickly and easily....learn html. Arrrrrrgghhh!!! Me? Learn html? It's like learning a whole new mumbo jumbo-ish computer geek language! I SO suck at languages! I can't even speak Chinese without sounding like an alien, and I AM a Chinese....:P
Luckily, there are a few good sites to learn html on the net...the one I chose to refer to was W3Schools.com. It was actually not as hard as I thought, coz' I knew basicly how html worked, just that I didn't know most of exactly what I could do with it. I learned most of the html tutorial in just a couple of days. Then I decided to learn the css stuff as well, coz' I learned from my bro that css is useful for changing the whole look of a website by just editing one page, known as a stylesheet. Lotta work saved from having to edit every single page if you wanna give your webpage a different appearance. I knew less of css then I knew of html, but again it wasn't all that difficult. Learned it in a few days as well. How much I remember of both, of course, it a completely different story, and I've had to refer back to that website most of the time when I'm working on my webpage. But as it is, after working at it for more than a week and fine-tuning the final design of my page, I'm all set to start typing all that poetry of mine in. In between, I've had to figure out how to make my text appear the way I want to, in the font I want to, at the position I want to... and same goes for my images and whatever else on the page. And also had to figure out the meaning of some of the javascripts I ripped off from other sites offering them, used to make my webpage look cooler. :) The most recent one I ripped from javascripts.com, which is for an expandable/collapsible menu has been the most annoying because I had to figure out how to make it match the look of the rest of my webpage. And yes, I managed to figure it out, with much celebration (just ask Leon! ^_^) and without too much head banging against the wall...although it seems to only work on the later versions of IE and Netscape, but not for Mozilla Firefox or other less used browsers. Oh well, you Mozzie users can just navigate my page the normal way and miss out on the cool expandable menu thing.
Anyway, I still got a lot of work to go, but by the time I'm finished, even though it won't be the most professional or coolest looking website on the net, I'm still gonna be super proud of it coz' it was made through all my own hard work and perseverance! Bwahahahahaha!!!!

Of fried modems and ball-less people

It's been a while since I last posted coz' for some reason my computer decided to act up and refused to connect to the net. And as is the usual case whenever something is wrong with the computer, the first thing my dad asked me was "What did you do the computer?" As if I actually did something on purpose to make the computer turn against me. Yeah. Right. Anyway, after that intelligent course of action on my dad's part, he continued to try fixing the problem for a few days, calling up every computer geek in town to fix it. Initially, we could connect to the net, but only after many eons of redials and patience, and having to type in a password every time to log in. Finally a telekom guy came over, fiddled around with my computer for two minutes, and then declared that the modem was not working and needed to be replaced. Another computer geek who came over yesterday told us that the modem as well as the router were both fried during a lightning storm. So now we are advised to disconnect the model and router to prevent similar inconveniences from occuring. A bit of advise for everyone else with external modems and routers living in a lightning prone country!
Anyway, in other not-so-good news, my big brother Bernard just came back home from the USA two days ago. Well, that's not the bad news, of course. The bad news was that as soon as we got back from the airport, he realised that he was missing his most important bag, and even though we went back to KLIA two times, lodged a police report, looked at the airport surveillance cameras and talked to anybody with possible information, we couldn't find it. And I figure it's as good as gone, coz' the bag contained some pretty valuable stuff, especially my bro' s company laptop containing all his hard work over many months and some secret company info. He was completely devastated, which made me and my parents devastated. We're still not sure how it got lost, but we figure it's likely that someone either picked up the bag from the trolley while we were all distracted with each other, or that we had unloaded the luggage and didn't notice the one bag still left on the trolley before driving off...free for the picking. Whatever happened, if an honest person had picked it up, they would've sent it to the lost and found or to the police...but it hasn't been there, so it's quite definite some bad hat got his grubby little paws on it. Of course, my family was really stupid for being negligent over the luggage in KLIA, which is notorious for missing laptops and such valuables.....but it really gets my goat how people can be so dishonest. If we lost it and someone picked it up and decided to keep it instead of trying to return it to us, that's already disgusting enough. But for anyone who actually set up to take my bro's bag when we weren't noticing....that jerkoff isn't just disgusting. He's a heartless monster with no balls. No, I shouldn't call him a monster...that's an insult to the monsters. I mean, sure, stealing stuff isn't half as bad as murdering someone. Murderers are in a whole different class, known as sickos. But thieves aren't maniacs that can't think straight...these people actually plan out how to steal stuff and have plans and stragedies to remain inconspicuous. They're smart...but they use their God-given intelligence to make other people miserable so they can get rich quick. They abuse their intelligence to make off with honest people's hard-earned money or valuables, which they spend so long working to get, and these jerks take away in just such a short time. They're willing to take the easy way out for their own luxury by taking advantage of the people who actually work honestly for what they get. These guys are not manly men, and that's why they have no balls. If they knew how distressed my bro was that day, if they know how upset they make all their victims, how can these jerkoffs live with themselves? Have they no conscience? Then well, their not human beings, which means they're even more ball-less. I'm so pissed at what they did to my bro, if I ever found out who did it and I caught the guy, I hope for the guy's sake, and for his face, that my Christian principles don't fly out the window. Ugh

First week with my puppy, Sassy

My little puppy has grown like one third of its original size in just a week, and now it looks like a little furry piglet with a squashed in nose. Her teeth have gotten so sharp, it hurts like hell when she starts chewing at my toes now, when just one week ago, it didn't hurt at all! She's really active now too when she's awake. Likes chasing after our toes and bouncing all over the floor like a furry, fat ball. But she sleeps a lot too, like a baby. And then wakes us up in the middle of the night with a whining. But still....she's so cuuuuuute!!!!

My own cool little miracle story...yay!

Having grown up going to church and being a Christian for quite a few years, I've heard my fair share of testimonies from other fellow Christians about how God has answered their prayers. Some of the stories I've heard could easily have been brushed off as a coincidence, but I've heard many other stories that were too unbelievable to be just a mere coincidence. I'm still a bit of a skeptic at heart, but hearing so many of such amazingly uncanny stories has helped me strengthen my faith and trust in God to the point that I am pretty sure that this God of mine can do very amazing things if He wants to, and also if we really believe He can. You see, He's kind of a funny guy in that for some reason, it's not just enough for us Christians to pray for Him to do something, but He wants us to believe that He can and will answer our prayers before He does. James 1:6-7 says a little something along those lines..."But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord".
And so even though I'm completely hopeless when it comes to obeying what He says in the Bible, and also to me personally, I've learned to have faith that He can and will answer prayers if I truly believe so. In other works, what I lack in obedience, I make up for in faith! :Þ Not a very well-rounded Christian I am, but it's a journey that won't end until I finally konk out.
Anyway, after hearing so many cool stories of God doing cool things in people's lives, I've always wished something equally cool would happen to me. Not something that anybody could brush off as a mere coincidence, but something that could make even skeptics go "whoa!". Perhaps even a miracle! Not so much because I wanted 'proof' that God is there and He does answer prayers and all that blah coz' I knew all that myself already. I wanted my own cool little 'miracle story' so I could share it with other people and help Christians grow in faith, as well as let non-Christians know more about the powerful God we serve. And little uncanny things have happened to me in my life that I take as God's way of touching my life, but they've mostly been related to Him touching me emotional or something intangible that skeptics could scoff and say it's all in my head. And I've kept on asking God to show Himself to me in a bit more spectacular way. Something more tangible, and not just something I can feel in my heart. Something that could make at least a few people go "whoa!". Today, I think I got something pretty close to that.
Last year sometime in August, I got a serious knee injury during a Taekwondo training session. I was doing a spectacular Bruce Lee-like flying kick, when I landed improperly on my right leg, causing it to twist and tearing something in my knee (Ok, ok, the spectacular Bruce Lee part isn't quite true...:Þ). It was followed by a heckuva lot of pain and a week or two of walking around like a crippled person. I've had Taekwondo injuries before, so I thought this one would heal in no time, and so left it alone. After a while I could walk ok again, but my knee still wasn't quite right. I could not squat properly coz' it was too painful to bend my knee all the way. And although I continued to train Taekwondo after my accident, sometimes when I made sudden twisting motions or straightened my knee too fast, a sharp pain would hit my knee...painful enough to force me to fall to the floor and roll around in agony for a few minutes. After a while, I finally saw a few doctors in Australia and in Malaysia once I came home. They said I had either torn a ligament or a cartilage in my knee, and it would need surgery to fix. If not, I can still walk, but I'd have to take it a lot more easy on my Taekwondo.
Yesterday morning, I went to church as usual. The service today was longer than usual, but it was worth it for me, and maybe some other people. At the end of the service, the pastor asked anybody who wanted healing for any sickness or condition to go up front so they could be prayed for healing. I'd been having my personal spiritual issues with God lately (mainly coz' I've been trying to get out of obeying Him :Þ), so I was a bit hesitant to go up. But eventually I did, and I told the pastor my problem. As he prayed for me, I could feel a tingly feeling in my body...not at my knee as I thought it would, but around my chest. And when he was done, I didn't feel any difference in my knee. It was only later when I had to squat down to do something when I realised that my right knee no longer hurt and I could bend it all the way without it hurting at all! And I've 'tested' it by bending it again since, with the same results. I wasn't too surprised though... I knew God could do it, and really thank Him for it. I don't know if it's completely ok coz' I haven't 'tested' it out in a Taekwondo training session, and I haven't seen a doctor to check it out. And anyhow, I think God told me He would heal it over time, which means I shouldn't get out there and stressing it out too much. But the fact that there's no pain anymore when I bend my knee...well, that's my cool little 'miracle story'. :)

ICQ guys

Ugh, I don't know what's the deal with guys on ICQ. As soon as I put up all my real details on my info page, including any indication that I am young adult female, all these guys I've never met before start flooding me with messages. And funnily enough, most of them are Malaysian guys who are just around my age or slightly older. Me senses a pattern.... Which is fine and all, I don't mind meeting new people...especially guys who might be potential 'extra good friends'.... :Þ. But I really would like meeting people who have something interesting to talk about. And usually these people have the most absolutely boring things to talk about.
"Hello, a/s/l pls!"
"What you doing now?"
"Working or studying?"
"Where you from?"
Yaddayaddayadda, blablabla, boriiiiiing.... Especially when I have all that useless info on my ICQ info page and they can check it out in two seconds. Why ask me all that nonsense again? It's especially annoying when I go through all the motions of explaining my life story only to have them stop replying my messages, probably because they lost interest in me. Hello, people, I don't mean to be rude but I have better things to do with my time! At least say something that'll make me a bit more interested than the gazillion other guys who ask me the same ol' stuff. Some good debate on the politics involved with sending aid to the tsunami victims. Or maybe some debate on religion. Or just some insight on what ticks in their brains. Unless of course, nothing else ticks in their brain except for the usual you-know-what, which I won't mention here just to be politically correct.
Haaaiiii..... As I'm typing this, I've had at LEAST 5 Malaysian guys I've never met, all aged between 21 and 23 introducing themselves and wanting to chat. And it's 4am. Don't these guys sleep? Haha, I could ask myself the same Q. So I shall head to bed now and send these hopefuls a packing.

Da latest member of the Ng family!

I got a puppy I got a puppy I got a puppy!!!! Hehe, obviously I am very much a doggy lover. :) My mum just got a 6 week old Shih Tzu female puppy a few days ago. We named her Sassy Ng. She's mostly brown with patches of black and white. And she's SUPER cute!!!! She looks like a little doll with big eyes on her round head. And she looks so cute when she runs around. And looks even more cute when she's asleep!
Well, I'll shut up and just show the pics.

Another sign?

It's been one week since the big waves hit parts of South-East Asia. I've done my small little pathetic bit to help those people by getting my dad to buy some food and collecting old clothes and stuff from my friends to donate to the tsunami victims. It seems like every major organization that can afford is pitching in. The Malaysian Public Bank gave a whopping RM1 million. Some anonymous individuals donated Rm10,000 and RM1,000 to the Star newspaper. Ads on tv are emploring viewers to donate to organizations like UNICEF and Red Cross. And my good ol' church is also collecting offerings for them. It's like the whole world is uniting for one cause, which is a rare thing and a good thing. Just makes you wanna go "Awwww....". Of course there are some greedy farts like the American government, which was slow to donate anything. And when it did, it was a relatively pathetic 35 million. Compared to the 8 BILLION PER DAY the US apparently spends on the occupation of Iraq, well, that's just plain embarassing. And after much complaining, the US gov decided to raise the figure ten-fold to 350 million. Whoop de doo, go Mr. Bush. I'm so convinced that you meant to give that money from the bottom of your heart....:Þ
Anyway, one thing that no doubt this whole super tsunami business has resulted in is reinforce the belief within the bible-believing Christian community that the last days are coming pretty soon. And for any non-Christians going "Huh? What? Got last day wan ah?", I'd have to give the super quick run through of what this big book called the Bible sez before I can explain:
1) 2004 years ago, this guy called Jesus was born.
2) This guy called Jesus went around telling everyone that He's the Son of God and that anybody who truly believes that He is their Lord and Saviour will have everlasting life. Which means they go to heaven independant of whatever sh*t they did during their life.
3) This guy called Jesus convinced a lot of people He was telling the truth, so they hung around Him a lot
4) This guy called Jesus also pissed off a bunch of religious guys who refused to believe Him even though He did a lot of cool stuff like walk on water and heal sick people and bring dead guys back to life in front of many witnesses.
5) This bunch of religious guys got so pissed off, they eventually caught Jesus, beat Him up a lot and nailed Him to this huge cross thingy stuck in the ground so He could die a slow and superbly painful death.
6) A guy called Joseph stuck Jesus' battered and bloodied body in a tomb.
7) Three days later, the body disappeared, which freaked out His followers, who later got even more freaked out when they actually Jesus alive and well, looking pretty good or someone who got beaten the crap out of.
8) The Jesus told His followers to tell everyone else about what they saw, and then He went up into the sky with a whole lotta bright lights around Him
9) The followers went out and told everyone how this dead guy called Jesus become not-so-dead and so what He said about being God's son and all must be true, and tada... Christianity was born!

Now this guy called Jesus said a lot of weird things in His life, and one of those weird things was that He would come back again some day to bring all His believers back to heaven with Him and leave everyone else standing around kinda like going "Huh?". He wouldn't tell when exactly He would come back, for some annoying reason....But before that happens, a few big signs would happen to indicate that the time for His return is getting near. Some of those signs are described in Matthew 24:7 - "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places". Which I'm guess means that there will be some countries at war with each other (WWI, WWII, US and Iraq...CHECK), some countries will be suffering from food shortage (Africa...CHECK), and the earth will be shaking a bit (big waves from earthquake...CHECK).

Luke 21:25 says something a bit more interesting...."There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and preplexity at the roaring and the tossing of the sea". I think a lot of people were pretty shocked at the magnitude of the waves...I being one of them, although I guess I shouldn't have been. Even to me as a bible-believing Christian, the fact that these predictions in the Bible are actually happening now is pretty unreal. And though I am looking forward to Jesus' return, it's still a bit scary. Scary because if what the Bible says is true, and Jesus will return soon to take His believers with Him, there will be many people I care about who will be left behind. And what makes it even more annoying is that if the Bible is true, all it takes to save them from that is for them to spend a minute or two saying a heartfelt prayer, asking for forgiveness of sins and acknowledging Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Yeah yeah, I know any skeptic reading this will think it's all just one big coincidence. And sure, Christians have been going around saying the end is nigh after every major natural disaster or war in history, and no one's been taken up to the sky yet. I have plenty of my own doubts as well and could go on and on debating about the 'last days'... but I'm just telling what that big book says, and well, just something to think about, I suppose. God bless. :Þ

Dang this html....

Dang, I changed my blog template back to the old one and now apparently there're some errors on the page that I can't figure out. And because of those problems, my scrolling message thing at the bottom of the page doesn't work. Argh! It's so annoying...Any html buffs can help me out here? I want my scrolling message thingy! Waaah! :(

Happy belated b'day to my mummy!

Well, like that Anastacia song goes, I'm sick and tired of always being sick and tired, so I'm trying to change my tune of constant whining to one that's a bit more cheery.... for as long as I can last anyway! I know I've been doing quite a bit of crapping about my parents lately, but for the sake of being fair and also because my mum's birthday was yesterday on new year's day, I'm going to pay tribute to my dear ol' mum.
My mum, like all mums, has had her fair share of driving her kids up the wall with constant nagging and a slightly overdomineering "I'm-your-mum-so-you-do-what-I-tell-you-and-you-don't-talk-back" kinda attitude. But even so, I know that she does it all because she just wants what's best for us (even though what she considers best for me and my bros isn't what we consider to be best for us. Heh). My mum has a fierce "don't-mess-with-me" kinda attitude that keeps me and my siblings as timid as mice around her for fear of getting a shelling. But that attitude also made sure anybody else who messed around with us kids never did it again after dealing with her. My mum is so proud that she would never admit to most people that she's wrong in anything even if you tortured her. But when she knows she has hurt me, she had the heart to forget her pride, say she's sorry and say she loves me to bits. My mum didn't get everything right in trying to raise us kids, but I know she blady well tried her best. And yeah, I know I'm far from being the prefect model daughter myself and I've driven her up the wall plenty of times too. But she's still puts up with my crap. So for all reasons and so much more, I love my mum! (Yes, you can go "Awwwww...." now!)

That's my mum's birthday cake, which was given to her by my big bro Andrew and his wife Marcia. If you didn't notice the first time, something is a bit odd about the cake. :Þ

Not-so-happy New Year....:Þ

I've been sleeping like a log and sucking up honey like a bee, but still feeling a bit sick. And to add to that, all the major national new year's eve celebrations were cancelled to pay respects to the tsunami victims. Great way to start the new year....
I did go for my church's new year's eve service last night, where we did the expected stuff like praying for a bunch of stuff, and opening the floor for people to give testimonies about how God has worked in their lives during the year. I didn't go up to share anything though. Not because I haven't seen God working in my life in 2004.... I know God has definitely revealed Himself to me quite a few times during the year. But mostly He did it when I'm feeling most like I want to just run away from Him or ignore Him. He really revealed Himself to me at one particular time when I thought I was too far gone to call myself a real Christian and actually decided to stop going to church, reading my Bible, and basically just not do anything 'Christian'. So it would've been kind of embarassing to go up there and testify that God revealed Himself to me mostly when I was disobeying Him. :Þ
Not only that, but I simply have never been able to imagine myself as one of those Christians who can go on and on about all the wonderful ways that God has worked in their lives. It's always seemed too simplistic to me to say that everything good in my life is a blessing from God while everything bad is from the devil and God just allows bad stuff to happen to some funny reasons we can't understand....deep down I know it's true, but it still seems sort of ridiculous to me to impart that belief on others by testifying that every little good thing that happens to me is from God. Perhaps it's because I grew up in such a pessimistic and skeptical family, which made me that way as well. Yeah, I know it's a sorry excuse to blame my family for the way I am...I know I could change my mindset if I really wanted to, and become a more cheery and optimistic and joyful-like person. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. Besides, I like being pessimistic and skeptical. It makes me think a lot more about stuff. And helps me to write good poems :Þ So yeah, that's another reason why I'm not much into giving testimonies and all. Also a reason why I always think I'm too far gone to be a real Christian. But if God keeps dragging me back to Him every time I run away, well, there's nothing much I can do about it..... He loves me too much to let me off that easy, I suppose...
Anyway, Happy New Year, everybody! And yeah, God bless. :)