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Had poor sleep these 2 days due to work at odd hours (3-5am) and all that for money. With all this money I might be tempted to think that stuff I buy is really mine. Money I give is well.. above and beyond the norm which is hoarding supplies. While in earthly terms that is in fact true and we enjoy the fruits of our labour I think we sometimes just get lost in all the stuff we accumulate. For Christians, I’d like to propose that the stuff we buy is not ours.

1. Our lives are given, our eternities are bought with a price. That makes us wholly and solely owned by God.
2. We spend our life which is our time, earning money which we then spend on stuff.
3. Stuff is really bought with our life.
4. Therefore stuff is really God’s since it was bought with the life he gave to us.

It really doesn’t matter who gets what I guess.. we’ll never know what his specific will is in this life but we do know we need to  glorify him in this body since we were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). As long as that happens (which it hasn’t) you can be assured God would be pleased because his hidden will doesn’t go against his revealed will and he cannot deny himself regarding what he has said and promised.

Putting whoever is really right aside (since everyone thinks they are right, this speaks to all..), being right is no license to being barbaric with the hammer of truth. I’ve learned that time and again when dealing with people and being a sore winner doesn’t show love. I just wished everyone would act their age and stop fighting over their toys.

Off to bed I go! Hopefully get some good sleep. Bought a wireless mic today and realised how expensive they really were.. lol..

Slept at 12, got up at 4 to pic my mom and dad from airport, couldn’t go back to sleep for quite a while but managed to lie down until 8. Haha.. Suprisingly don’t feel too bad. On the mrt after visiting a client or a couple of minutes. I still thank God for work and stuff that comes along. Got 2 queries about photography that I couldn’t follow up on but I’m sure it’s okay.

Last thought is that His grace is always sufficient and I only start to flounder when I’m not plugged into it. Have a great Monday! It’s not O.S.I.M, always just TGI Mondays that enable you to enjoy TGI Fridays.

The Post actually ended with the following:

Today was good.. the 2 ah-yees and groom’s sister were pretty great! We saw lotsa action in the morning and did tea ceremony thing 3478392 times then everything else was a super big blur then we were in church then super big blur then it was dinner then super big blur I took 1000000 photos of people leaving then I went home and typed this. Haha.. no seriously, I can’t remember anything form today already because its already happened 200 times before for me already. I’m just waiting for photos to import because I stupidly decided to give a RAW workflow one more try.

Anyway I’m pretty happy for the couple.. I sometimes ask myself why people fall in love and get married.. and I never get a specified answer. It just seems like the same formula each time which is pretty nice: a partnership of two people who love their spouse more than themselves. I’d actually love to see more people do that.. and to learn and teach people how they can do that too would be so cool.. but as I always say in office “I just a technician..” haha.. maybe one day I’ll find myself doing that.. babysitting relationships instead of servers.

The Post actually started with the following:

I can’t remember how many weddings I’ve photographed. It not because it’s so many I can’t remember.. its probably because I’ve helped out in so many weddings it doesn’t even seem any different whichever role I play. Every role ends the same.. busy, tired and mostly a blur. To add to the already bizarre idea of doing it expecting nothing, I help people who will almost certainly never be free enough in future to ever help me out when I need some myself.

C’mon, these guys and girls are all gonna be so busy with their lives that they can’t really do much for you in future. I guess in the end everything is paid forward in advance by the next generation and the losers are those who help out most. That said, the losers who help out most are still the biggest winners somehow with some intangible satisfaction gained at the end of the day, knowing the time and energy spent was an act of love towards the couple on our part in a very tangible form of music, ushering, chairing, ah-yee-ing, driving, co-ordinating, catering, flower-arranging, make-up-ing, bestman&maid-of-honour-ing and solemnizing.

Haha.. I sound so cynical but I really do hope somehow people actually do step up when I need them next time. I think this stems from my you-can’t-trust-anyone-except-yourself-to-do-stuff mentality and the occasional total domination approach to getting tasks done.

You often hear of girls imagining what their weddings will be like in gory detail. Let me tell you mine: if you secretly dug into my mind and saw my wedding fantasies you’d probably find one that my friends don’t need to do any work, my enemies don’t have to come (with friends like these who needs enemies! lol!), everyone goes mad, enjoys themselves and it costs roughly $0.

Heh, I’m really not a sour person or having regrets or what.. just.. wondering.

This has alot to do with my quest to discover my abilities and more recently why I cannot seem to become excellent at something and just remain average or just above average at everything.

So today while meeting a guy after offering to fix his camera I asked him what he thinks makes the difference or the jump from decent/above average to excellent. He’s 27, studying for a phd and wasn’t happy with his engineering job after half a year graduating from mechanical engineering so he quit and went back to school. This is kinda the gist of what he said

I think it’s diminishing returns. The professional guy spends alot more effort just to get that little edge above that average guy.

And also, he said

2 kinds of jobs, one makes you rich one makes you happy. If you can’t get rich, at least be happy loh.. haha..

So that’s what intrigued me for the evening.. that and some talking in the car with my dearest. haha.. So I concluded i have no determination to get that extra edge because it takes so much more effort to break out from “decent” to excellent.

Do I love the gift more than the giver?

Is the question posed today during Sunday school. I’m definitely not a fan of glossing over material that has been picked out whether or not I think its useful.. all of God’s word and teaching is useful and there are always ways to incorporate anything you want into a lesson. Every topic you touch crosses into every other topic with many basic Characteristics of God and doctrine being the basis for other higher level deduced truths.

Anyway it was still an interesting thought from some “supplement” material because I was wondering how I can actually make this fact useful in my own life. As far as I could think I could only come to the conclusion that if you that God for only the things you like him to give you without regard for his will, you  don’t just have a problem with misplaced or absent gratitude, you have a totally wrong view of God’s character and how he works. Reading piper’s justification of many “bad” things (eg. death) as being gifts from God really intrigued me and how diving into the little nuances of the sentences yielded these conclusions too.

Still, the question remains.. how does this affect my life? and is it another one of those “LEARN THIS! AND YOU’LL BE THE SUPER ULTIMATE CHRISTIAN YOU WERE PREDESTINED TO BE AUTO-MAGICALLY!” kind of one principle to rule them all statement/axioms/summary-of-the-christian-life things? haha.. Honestly I’m so tired of people sharing the latest thing they learn as if everyone else is completely ignorant or unresponsive to it.. God works in different ways in different times with different people and everyone is at different stages of learning.. so lets not push stuff on each other and play the holy spirit.

I honestly think I might not be fully understanding what are the implications, but I think I’ll take a couple of days to think about the practical implications of consciously loving God more than the blessings he gives and more importantly, actually do it. There are days where I wake up and my first thought is of God and how good he is. I really like that.. I just wonder why it doesn’t happen all the time but I can’t remember if I’ve ever had a terrible day and sit down thinking God is so good too. That, is probably where the rubber meets the road.

Hyphen from Sam Hassas on Vimeo.

Found this at the website of a photographer I follow regularly. I think its his brother or somebody.. so I was looking at a promo video and then i clicked his other videos and saw this. This is VERY interesting to me. Simply because I’m in the age bracket (and I don’t feel abnormal cos I’m not married at 26). I’m also very comforted and at the same time disturbed that this youth to young adult transition happens in another country in another culture. Or maybe it because we have assimilated the culture and that’s why we have the same problems. We study till our adult life and don’t work till later in our lives and that’s why we have too much time bumming around as teens to become all messed up. Hmmm.. all hypothesis though. No concrete reasons as to why it happens. It could also be that as teens they never get rooted in God but in the group they belong in and when the group dissolves and gets too busy with life they have no reason to attend church anymore since coming to church to worship wasn’t the aim in the first place. Still, I’m sure the transition affects even the most devout of young Christians and it should be addressed.

Just on Wednesday night I was pretty fed up with my christian life. After finishing Josh Harris’s book I feel like my journey is moving in reverse compared to him, from being deep in a church to shallow non-commitment. I was fed up not in the sense that I was tired of God or felt bitter, it was more like my “fellowship life” which kinda means like “Social life” in church setting. Fellowship is social, that’s the whole idea of getting together on Sunday but it has the added dimension of socialising around God. At least that’s the conclusion one can draw when defining it from observation. Something special happens when God’s people gather.

Everyone can worship in private, responding to his revelation through the bible and receiving his word can be done alone, prayer is also to be done alone “in the closet”. That said, all the above activities are also to be done in a group setting. The early church gathered and broke bread daily. They prayed together. They listened to the word spoken by appointed elders together. Man’s social need has been there even in his perfect state, that’s why Eve was made for Adam, a companion that was like and equal to him because it was not good for him to be alone. Obviously the companionship was not just sexual or for reproduction, I’m sure she was just as much an intellectual and emotional companion as well as a work partner. It is almost recorded in genesis as if Eve was an afterthought but I’m sure God had it in his plan already. A long list of whys probably exist but I guess its not that important.

Time after time the fickleness of the human emotion still catches me by suprise though and as I said earlier this week, I find myself being more and more of a social creature as I grow older. I guess the more people grow on you the more they can really upset you and vice versa.

I’m glad I’m going to be in church this week. I told someone I feel permanently damaged already and only God can fix me. Perhaps the day will come for me to raise the anchors and move on. It doesn’t feel so soon and I’m hoping that day comes quietly and gently because I can’t take very much. It won’t be an easy journey but as they say, almost nothing worth doing is ever easy.

Sorry, its going to be filled with gear and stuff talk but there are legitimate thoughts for all people here who like to look and buy stuff in the last two paragraphs I guess. hahaha..

Well I’ve been trying to sell of my stash of cameras (everything that’s mine) except for those that aren’t exactly mine and those I wanna keep. That only includes my

1. Canon 5D + 28mm f1.8
2. Voigtlander Vito B
3. Minolta SRT102 + 50mm f1.4
4. Nikon 50mm f1.2
5. Canon G9 (for now)

Surprisingly short list. The rest are worth only about 500++ in total, nowhere near my 5D even. I guess I would have gotten myself a smashing Bessa R3a + 35mm f1.4 or a leica instead of everything else I’ve come to pick up here and there. Hmmm.. which made me come to the thought that its probable better to just get very very few things that you really like instead of getting something cheaper but not exactly what you want. YX said my G9 was (at that time) all I ever wanted. Well.. I must say I felt out of place using it for a long time and never got to really loving it even though I wanted it for so long. I still like my C5050 better if only it wasn’t so painfully slow. Bottom line is you never really know what you want until you get it. The g9 is a negative example.

The positive example is my 5D. After I got it I totally just stopped being interested in any newer DSLR technology (it was already 4 years old when I got it.. old stuff!) and I really think its pointless to upgrade to anything newer even though the newer stuff spanks the pants off the 5D. It satisfies all the needs and wants I have and is more than I ever wanted from a camera. Same goes with lenses.. I thought a 50mm f1.4 was good.. but the lens that I got stuck onto is the 28mm f1.8, much maligned but works for me. Other things I’ve bought that fit into this category are my speakers (Altec Lansing for $119 back in 2005), my Nokia Music Express phone (rest in peace), Apple iPhone and I guess my running shoes.

Now the obvious fact is looking at something breeds desire which feeds on itself. If you’re just a teeny bit interested, it’ll grow into something you will die without if you keep entertaining it. That includes everything, even people whom you’re not supposed to want. Anyway, sticking to the less sensitive things like material goods, it really helps when I don’t go scouring the forums for cameras and gear I really don’t even want or know of. Replace my camera obsession with your own thing like bags, clothes, shoes, computers, phones, ipods and you’d have contextualized it for yourself.

I guess, sometimes we can buy stuff for ourselves since we are supposed to enjoy the fruit of our labor. Even the ox and donkeys were not allowed to be muzzled as they worked on the grain but the turning point I guess is when we keep wanting something so badly it gets mis-prioritized in life. Buying stuff instead of saving for your future, spending beyond your means, gambling in order to gain more (bu4 lao2 er2 huo4) and  wasting time checking out stuff you don’t need or want (that’s me!). So much  time gets wasted.. I kinda regret wasting so much time now. hahaha.. and sometimes I get carried away wanting stuff more than wanting to read and pray or go out and do some work. That’s worldliness in its true form I guess.

So, I think i’d better rest! tomorrow I’m meeting one or two buyers after climbing bukit timah, then hopefully heading to church / young adults gathering. I must say its difficult growing up into this young adults thing. I feel so isolated because of the difference in lifestyle compared to all the usual people I’m around. haha.. still, there must be some meaning in life at this stage.

After 9 long years of T9 predictive text, I relinquish it for a virtual keyboard. Terrible feel, have to keep looking at what you’re doing and well, just doesn’t function like how I’m used to for all this time. The iPhone is just not so fantastic in that department. However its pretty good at a whole lot of additional things. Not to mention having gotten it basically free on the M1 take 3 plan its quite a good deal.

I was more interested in finding myself like how I felt after I picked up my 5D. I picked up something that was old (this is the 8gb 3G) but still wayy more functional and useful than I will ever need. Why get 16 or 32gb? is the 3Gs really faster? will I need a compass? Nike+? So after answering no to all the above, I guess it doesn’t bother me and thats why I think I’m getting older.. or maybe that’s the feeling you get when you buy something that you really just wanna use and don’t care about.

I think, however, I would feel different if i suddenly got myself an iPad or a 1D mk4. I think I might actually feel abit more happiness for a while. I wonder why that is so? And if both of the above cost $2 each, I wonder if i would still be happy or happier or would I not be interested? Is something unattainable or out of reach more desirable and satisfying? haha.. that’s a stupid worldly notion! But yet it has some kind of truth in real life. Perhaps this is why coveting and desiring something is super dangerous be it material, relational or something else.

Well, firstly I think my life has been too overwhelmed by digital media. Facebook, flickr, and google reader being chief culprits. While they all strive to make our social lives efficient, its strange how they actually suck up even more time because now you do useless things more efficiently. Although you do spend less time achieving a greater amount of useless stuff, the amount of information entering the brain is increased substantially in a shorter period of time. That crowds out alot of useful thought time. I think I’d like to change that abit and dumb down my life for abit. No facebook, no flickr, no google reader, no email even, progressively over the next few days. haha.. Impossible for a web monkey like me? watch me. If at the end of it I still end up the same, well.. it means that it just didn’t enrich my life in any way, a possibility that is very remote. I do suppose I will be able to get alot of reading, photography and job hunting done. Not to mention carry out some ideas that have just remained ideas for too long.

Anyway in other news, I just completed my final FINAL exam just yesterday. 25th November 2009. The exam was quick and unspectacular, I wrote till my hands cried out for mercy.. especially that final 5 minutes where I discovered I had missed out a question that I skipped. Also, I am pretty sure I’ve nailed everything down, just have to upload my thesis and I’m really done for good.

Its been a fantastic 4.5 year journey. From first year sticking around with friends in common engin and breezing through the modules, my second year of disaster results and pretty dull hall life with ZG, my third year first sem of quiet lonely lecture attendance which really got a little better once I had a lecture buddy in the second sem. My fourth year which was uneventful and went by like nothing and finally this extra sem I’m doing which has had its gan cheong times and slack times. All in all its been a wonderful self-discovering journey sometimes walking with God and sometimes walking my own way, still arriving at the destination safe and sound but not as well off if  I hadn’t strayed.

This marks end of academia and start of working life. Something I look forward to because of all the possibilities it opens up. A new journey which I will probably have to take all the way to the end of my life. Haha..  pretty happy.