BIBLE READING: Done with Romans a few days ago. 1 down, 65 to go..Anyone care to join me in finishing the bible in 1.3 years?We can all spur each other on. Of course, you can aim to finish it faster!

Just came back from fishing with my uncle. We caught a nice promphet but that was it. Kinda pathetic la.. but it was exciting while it lasted. Sat from 10am-3pm.. chatting about work and stuff. Now I have a throbbing headache, probably because it was so sunny. I’m tanner hopefully.. ahaha.. Thankfully no cantata practise as well, I have to go to a family dinner thing.. Mr Benny Just graduated and all so we have gathering and dinner. Yao Hua’s  Leaving on the 18th so we’ll get dinner at his place on sunday.

Matthew 11:28-30

Who do you go to when you start to experience problems? While friends are God given, they are only God given and we should visit the source of comfort and solutions instead of a proxy.

Thanks to all who took the quiz. Its really quite interesting to see what you think I think sometimes.

Went with ZG today to sim lim to get some hardware for my desktop and a 320GB HDD for his ailing computer. I was lamenting the fact that my graphics card only had one output and I would have to live with one screen for good.. but thats all changed! I caught sight of a repair shop which sells tons of 2nd hand stuff and found a gem in the dungpile.. Its an asus 7600gt nvidia card i think… and it works like a charm. Its about half the cost of a new one or less even at $75.

Crap, my dog ran out.. off i go…

I’m back. Its late at night and I think I shall go sleep.  I’m feeling just slightly off today. Was telling ZG how I have the passing I-don’t-feel-like-doing-anything-in-church feeling. Its just a feeling which usually indicates problems under the hood which I still am not aware of yet. I feel like I was a tranquil pond and somthing just dropped into it. Its disturbing me but I’m not too sure what yet. Anyways, I think its because I feel abit isolated even after spending decent amounts of time with people and all.

On that topic, I’m going fishing with my uncle on saturday from morning to late afternoon. I’ve never really gotten to know him very much and I hope this can change that.Sometimes I wonder why I look outward so much when my own family needs love and attention just as much as anyone else.

I’m listening to the piano tracks for cantata. I feel like I’m working on sound waves, not music. So disturbing. The music ministers  to me though.. even if they are just sinosoids, changing and moving so quickly. I wonder if this is what Saul felt like when he listened to David play. I played through quite alot of music for the CD I’m planning. In particular, one book which merges all the songs so beautifully into a long medley. I can operate the computer to record eunice but who’s going to do it for me? haha.. sigh.. auto punch in/out doesnt sound so great. Running up and down between computer and mics also doesn’t sound great. I need a friend and partner to see this through.. it’ll be close to impossible as a one man show. I need a SUPER techno geek friend in church.. where have all of them gone?? I feel like someone I know would fit the bill but thats just not possible.

One last thing, why don’t I have a cbox/shoutbox/whatever-box? Its so all well/not-so-well wishes can be stored together in this wordpress database so when I’m old I can pull out something you said 50 years ago and quote it against you. If I just get any old box outside its terrible, can’t store msgs, can’t admin it properly. I’d be so sad to miss out anything when it suddenly dies like tag-board.com did. Of course, this is also in line with the idea of this blog being entirely for self and my legacy. I mean, so cool. when I retire I might be so free I can take myself back in time to the times when I was young, energetic and stupid. Back the topic of boards, you can always leave a comment on the super convenient comment form that slides out (I did a code mashup of two seperate plugins to do that! No where else in the wordpress blog world you’ll see it.. I spent time on it, USE IT! haha..). Oh well.. I shall go to sleep and then wake up to jaga the house when the singtel ppl come and find out why my house phone cannot recieve calls.

Prayer:

1. YX might have dengue, pray that those little red spots don’t come out and confirm that
2. On the topic of dengue, thank God uncle Sam seems fine. His all time platelet low record is 4!
3. On the topic of uncle Sam, remember ben who’s enduring an excrutiatingly long summer holiday with pretty much nobody around. Seems to bring silence and solitude to life. Drop him an email please.
4. Those who started school seem to be MIA or sucked under so quickly. Pray for closeness to God.
5. For David Ong as he pretends to be a doctor in the day and start his real job as our double full time music director in the evenings about 5 days a week.
6. For unity. That people settle things directly with others and don’t cause needless firestorms when actually everyone just wanted the same thing

Was thinking some people have made the true friend test. To date, they are…

1. San (all started here as far as BFC is concerned)
2. Char (copycat)
3. Jem (copycopycat)
4. me (copycopycopycat)
5. YX (copycopycopycopycat)

As you can see I’ve added myself to the list. Feel free to try it out. If you don’t I’ll be really sad and cry myself to sleep every night. Quick! Go!

Create your own Friend Test here

5 people have left shoutbox messages

Prankster P says : MUAHAHA. hahaha i was actually aiming for zero? I CANT BELIEVE I GOT QN4 CORRECT!? and you were ALL THREE IN NS!? YOU KICKED YOUR SIS DOWN THE BED!? Okay im being retarded. hhahahha yrs is the most fun so far. i shall try yx\’s.

Heh.. I really do use it as a mnemonic to help people remember my name. Other than that, i say “Hi, I’m blha blh, and your name is?”

charissa c says : stupid la. SO TERRIBLY HARD CAN. madness. hahahhahahah. some i don\’t know whether counted or not. you know they shld have open ended. i would argue my point.

You can come contest it on saturday

Sandra W says : Okay btw Prankster was ME Muahaha. i cant believe it i cant believe it.

Yes, you just have to! haha.. Opinion and final action are very much seperate

David O says : Eh this is like so stupid lor…your questions are like all only you can answer one!

I can only say… I’m terribly upset david.. and i thought I was the honey bear..

jeremy t says : argh! i made one silly mistake. the blogspot one. oh man! lols.

Haha.. It was meant to do that.. sandra got it wrong tooooooooo

cheryl c says : WHY IS IT SO HARD????????? (you should have made the test super easy so it will look like people know you very well) HAHA. (:

Yeah yeah.. you lousy then say la! haha..

I am deskbound once more… Just handed my laptop to my brother. Its like a no feeling thing already. For everyone else, it’s like seeing me with one less limb now that I won’t be carrying my laptop around everywhere. Maybe my back will get better and my results will improve. haha.. whatever.. I have to get the TV on this media center PC I just took set up but the SCV outlet is like behind this heavy cupboard that I can’t do anything about. Guess no TV for now. This desktop seems snappy though. I just don’t like the keyboard. feels weird and a little too high. Not complaining about a 19″ screen though..

Argh.. I feel like vomiting blood.. been trying to squeeze all the JS in the website into a miniscule size. Managed to shed some weight off the pageload by consolidating and gzipping the js from 470kB to 211kB. Now I’m trying to remove the default prototype libraries..

The sound guy from the FBFI conference returns! This time its his birthday so me and YX went down to find him. Got him a polo tee from tamp metro sale. Its nice red striped. Anyway, here are all the photos..

I found this bunch interesting. I am 23 but somehow still feel like I could easily break into the group of 12-18 year olds. I was wondering if groups like the many ones in church are easy to join in, break into or just observe without feeling left out. I must say it is not really so. I know things are sometimes different here and there but here are a few things I observed from playing games with this group.

• They didn’t really talk alot of insider stuff and have any inside jokes that weren’t easy to catch on. n the contrary, jokes were all kinda easy to get and understand, even when you’re new. (hey, indian jokes are pretty quick to pick up.. esp when they are about Gopal)
• They didn’t make small talk for the sake of it. Although I initiated alot of it, we didn’t dance around the usual mundane topics just to make conversation.. they were just.. them. Sincere (I think) and unadulterated friendliness. Even if that is not true, I felt that it was, and thats all that really matters. i think activities also help take the weight off comunication by engaging minds in a seperate activity which still allows everyone to know each other.
• They didn’t carry out activities that excluded us/they included us by playing games that were more retarded and simple to pick up (no bridge and no dai dee for my sake)

Before anyone thinks such interactions are shallow, I would go as far as to say that you can’t go deep without going shallow first. Also, though some people tend to click easily, some just don’t.. can’t really help that at all. Also, it is important for the stranger to do some of the work (like us trying to talk and have fun with them, awkward at first but crazy fun at the end) but still, when we are in the majority group we can strive to be inclusive when we are in larger groups around a stranger.

One thing I have also noticed is that it helps a group to bond when you have a target, the butt of all jokes. Usually this works when that person is goofy and doesn’t care. Common humor also helps alot.

One last thing. One guy mentioned he knew our church and one of his friends a guy named Jason came for 2 weeks and left because he felt he didn’t know anyone. Hmmm.. I think sometimes people just slip through the net and we miss them. I hope this small dissection of simple group dynamics can help everyone think about how their own behaviour speaks to the new people in the existing groups.

This is specially for Charissa

I got a parking ticket! wah man.. my mom sabo say opposite downtown east no needput coupon.. There goes $30…