actively

Hear us, Shepherd of Israel,
you who lead Joseph like a flock.
You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth (Psalm 80:1 NIV)
Isn't it strange that singular Joseph was referred to as a flock? But Joseph's story has been key in leading me to the path I'm about to take, so was thrilled to find this verse during QT.
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Heading to New York next week! But before the excitement of going, there is the bustle of tying up loose ends, and this weekend bares the face of a restless monster.

Friday night:
One of those crazy triple booked days.
Had to turn down SIA dinner and AFF Swarovski show invite to go for cell with Nicole! Then i had to cancel on Nicole for Cherie's wedding planning. I'd totally forgot!! The bridesmaids met after work to discuss the gatecrashing, got home at midnight.

Today:
9 Woke up, did laundry.
945 Designed Cherie's guestbook.
11 Photoshopped burger cafe render.
12 Worked on burger menu
1245 Hung morbid black laundry
1 Got ready to leave the house
2-330 Lunch with erica!
4-930 Went to office for work
More burger stuff. Shower. Face mask. Episode of Lost. Worship.

Sunday
Church, Chinatown in the afternoon for wedding props shopping + wedding planning. Burger meeting? Dinner & drinks at Timbre to celebrate belle/ling's birthday. Pack for US of A!!!

Feels like minuting down this crazy schedule exhaustively is a way to get it out of my system. Gah!

the heart's cry

Ever since that Sunday, when i thought i heard Him speak in church:
"surround yourself with an atmosphere of worship"
"worship in the secret place, and I will open doors to worship Me in the public space."
and i responded by renewing a covenant to worship Him,
there's been this hunger, this added dimension to seek His presence and anointing
in all the facets of what worship is. 


ultimately, worship is our heart's response to the overwhelming love of a saviour. whether it is expressed in an awkward dance, or tuneless singing, or a painting, or tongues, or prayer, or sitting quietly at his feet, or speaking aloud the promises in his word, or crying out for him- somehow when we release ourselves to respond to him in honesty and in freedom, something powerful stirs in our hearts. it doesn't even need to make sense. this peace that i feel in the midst of all the uncertainty at work doesn't make sense. but it is exactly what i feel, what i know, that certainty lies not in the surety of circumstance but hinges solely on the character and perfect timing of God. of a God who cares, who intervenes at the right time to redeem, to heal, to bring joy. such joy. 


2012. the year of the lord's favour. (: i expect only good things from a good Father. 
as deep cries out to deep, so my soul cries out to you.!

Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

dream places

the first two .gifs are cinemagraphs by the talented Jamie Beck and the rest are not real photographs of Paris. *surprise, surprise* but miniature models that were carefully photographed then edited. hard to believe it's not really Paris, huh! but unfortunately, i cannot remember the name of the artist who created it, please tell me if you do!

yasuaki onishi's reverse of volume

an ethereal, stunning piece at rice university art gallery. a plastic sheath was propped up by a stack of boxes, which was later removed to reveal negative space. the sheath is held up apparently by adhesive that was dyed black. how onishi did it, is of course his little secret. the trickery (!) is breathtaking. every image has a quality that reminds me of a chinese landscape painting.

framing you

it dawned on me today
why loss is so difficult.

because loss is never complete
nor is it thorough
that would be so much easier.

instead, we are left with
the remnants of a person
all the associations without the presence
a web of invisible trails cut from you
all the places and signals and gestures
slowly empty themselves of kinship
but not of meaning
half of the stories replay themselves
in my mind, but are no longer mine to tell

the cut flowers
without the roots
that make it a dead thing.
although that blossom is still beautiful
left by the window, inside the box
to fade itself out

eventually what remains
is what we allow to be framed
i was never one
for throwing out the bathwater
for the sake of clean laundry
but for our sakes we'll let the water run
to dilute the frothing detergent,
that ever purges and removes.

one day i will look back and see what we framed
through the 'faulty cameras in our minds'
and smile

grace to rejoice

wow, this was a tough week. 
which ended in a good way, with cherie's hens party at amara. 


But he said to me, 
"My grace is sufficient for you, 
for my power is made perfect in weakness." 
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, 
so that Christ's power may rest on me. 
2 Corinthians 12:9


I don't always understand joy, "count it all joy, when you face trials of many kinds"
I also don't understand how weaknesses are to be boasted and celebrated, but the bible doesn't say experience the power of God when you are weak, therefore, be happy you have weaknesses, but rather the reverse:
boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 


The difference is that faith is required, that mustard seed of it. That when I feel most crushed, that is when I am to rejoice. That is when I am to count it all joy, for when I respond in faith, I open a door for Christ's power to enter and work in me. 

the day emma

I woke this morning to the straits times alert that Emma Yong passed away after a prolonged battle with stomach cancer. All that was in my head was 'no,no,no..'
...
I was in RJ year 1, and was supposed to arrange for a number of classmates who'd wanted to catch the Dim Sum Dollies. Mr Reeves very kindly booked and paid for us, and put me in charge of collecting the money for him. But I messed up and thought the show was on Friday not Wednesday, so on Thursday a very offended Mr Purvis and maligned Mr Reeves thought we stood him up and didn't show up the day before! But I passed him the money and apologized for messing up the dates. Mr Reeves felt bad and told me he'd call up Emma, who was his ex humanities student to see if she could do anything about it.

She gave us five VIP seats. They were probably double the price of the crappy student tickets we had paid for! And that sickening knot in my gut that I had to compensate all my classmates for being so stupid dissolved into gratefulness. Mr Reeves then gave me emma's number and told me to give her a call to thank her. "But don't call her too early in the morning! You know these artistic types.." ;) I texted her, nervous and very starstruck. She replied and was so sweet about the whole thing. We bought her flowers and after all these years, am still eternally grateful. xx RIP Emma.

little joys

One must always count their little joys
Mine are the yummy gummy vitamins
In my secret stash cupboard of which I'm entitled two a day
And day-gazing at the horses prancing across the field
Wishing all the time I was out in the melted glaze of sunshine
And the trips to the coffee machine
Serendipity makes me smile

Playing Steffany Frizell's song "Closer" en-loop
Saturating myself in an atmosphere of worship
Until I am moved to do the same.

"You make known to me the path of life;
You will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
- Psalm 16:11"

the need to talk

"Most of all, we need to remember... to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another."

A wonderful reminder from a well-written NYtimes article: flightfromconversation
That we talk because we are human, we share because God created us to connect deeply, and no matter how clever Siri gets, artificial will never, and should never, be good enough.

Architect's Mistake

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines." - Frank Lloyd Wright.

Oh, Frank. Heh.

diaries are records not of fullness,

but of emptiness. So that might explain very well why I have been so silent on these pages only to resurface now! Five years of architecture are over. All that busyness has swept past and now its a new chapter in my life. A season of waiting (read:bumming), of figuring what to do with the rest of my life. The scary quarterlife crisis.

I'd like to write a book, design clothes, learn Japanese, master sewing, read more, open a stationery shop. A million doors before me, and no way seemingly of figuring out which one to go through until i put my hand on each handle and twist to see if they are locked.

Wisdom, please, Lord.

Time and Other-ness

A quote by C.S. Lewis that has stuck with me, and resurfaces whenever someone comments, "how time flies!":

For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!”, we exclaim “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined one day to become, one day, a land animal.

It is so true, don't you think? The strangeness of how humans seem always to be surprised by time's passing, although our existence altogether is only on a moving time train. It is the medium in which we live, move and have our beings, but somehow we have a consciousness of another dimension, a different type of dimension- something called "Eternity". Otherwise, we wouldn't have known about something we call 'time'! God must have intentionally revealed to us this knowledge. I think the idea i'm grasping at in shreds is that we are incapable of thinking up anything purely original, purely out-of-this-world unless it has first been placed in us. In our conceptions, and our capacity to conceive. For example, if i asked you, what is a colour that exists outside of the colour spectrum, I don't think anyone would be able to tell me convincingly. Even if you thought of some interesting hybrid such as muddy-golden-brickish-green, it would be an amalgamation of existing conceptions, which are within our capacities to conceive. Our brains are just not programmed to perceive anything other than the existing colour spectrum! It is all we know, and in all likelihood be all we ever know, simply because we are not given to know what is 'other' in this scenario.

And that's why I believe that 'otherness', such as conceptions of Eternity, Perfection and Ultimate Goodness are out-of-this-world, beyond humanly concepts. We are incapable of being nor possessing these things, yet they are universally ingrained and recognized in every individual; we have a capacity to imagine and conceive those things. It is divine.

Now it is bed time. My mind is swimming with lots of things and nothing in particular. I would like a good solid dslr camera to capture the world around me with wonderment. (Also because my current point shoot camera is producing faded out colours and plenty of fuzzy due to poor light reception) I would like red red lipstick. Go on a shopping spree. Go on a holiday.

Rather the opposite of ennui, existential boredom. I have existential anxiety- i want more. MORE!

the 300.

oh! the 300th post. Masters has started, my final year of education (unless i go for a phD, of course.) which means this blog has accompanied me, spasmodically and infrequently but always readily, since secondary school childishness to the present foolish adulthood. adulthood is always foolish because we mistakenly believe we are more clever than we ever used to be. who is to say the sillyness of a child's imagination (where all options are available, and all forms of thinking are potentially correct), is not true cleverness? what we all believe now, in our present adult-ness, is that which the world has offered to us on a thousand spoons and a thousand doses and a thousand certificates of what it believes to be right/wrong. Now, only one Earth exists, in this one planetary system that revolves around one Sun. everything else is hocum, don't believe it. of course there are the scientists, who believe many other things, oh, and those who believe in God too.

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One of the most occupying things to do is an accurate personality test. And no other test has been as freakishly accurate is the one i'm about to recommend to you: the Myers-Briggs test. You can do the test here and get free answers by googling your personality type. I've always wondered why my brain jumps from spot to random spot instead of travelling along a straight line.. where I suppose things would make more sense; or one thing would make deeper sense. But I am incapable of recalling in sequence what i did every day of last week, of recalling consecutive steps in a dance choreography. I just remember snippets, which links to other snippets, and suddenly things as far apart as the universe and the mushroom become inextricably linked in some suddenly explainable fashion. Well, almost all other things i've wondered about myself and my friends was explained in the MBTI test results.

a million trains

too many people spend
too much time
desiring to be loved
and too little
actually loving.

so tired and exhausted. no, it has nothing to do with coming back at 3a.m. last night from the hockey girls reunion.. you know how french philosophers summarized existential boredom as ennui? well, its not that either.

rather, its a kind of deep-seated disappointment
at things, at people, at environments
struggling to find expression but cant
and seeps out here
in a (semi-secret) space.

been thinking about what my pet peeve is.
last night the hockers went on and on about their different irks
i share some annoyance with those, perhaps
like annoying people who stuff their faces and elbows at the MRT doors
when everyone is trying to pour out.
or really touchy people from XXXXX on the train who
have no sense of personal space.
that agitation is acute- i shrug them off and it fouls my mood.
theres a whole science around the awkwardness when personal space is infringed,
called "proxemics".

but no, not really.
that's not my pet peeve.
i asked him what my pet peeve was, and he said i don't have one.

i don't like people who are intentionally late
you can always tell.
despite the smothering layers of 'sorry',
or lack of it.


i don't like people who can't be trusted
who say they're coming
and don't last minute.

but sometimes i am those people.
maybe i don't really have a pet peeve because
peeves are externally vented
but mine are secret pets
like imaginary friends,
internally directed.

i cant stand the way i cant be angry
even if i know im right, sometimes.
i dont like many things about me
but thats alright
we're made perfect in time.

--

i think william morris said,
don't place in your room anything you don't find to be
useful or beautiful.

by that logic, many things have to be displaced.

how i organize my mind determines

how my room is organized,

which in turn influences my daily schedule,

running to the cupboard-dresser,

then out the door

to catch the shuttle bus

that always running away from me

the room is like a microcosm of my universe

which is a macrocosm of my mind

which is filled with a million trains

rushing to a million places

and never quite getting there.

oh, look at the time.

i need to rush for harp.

it annoys me that you never show up.

muses

love this shot.

anakin sky-scurrier

just love the colours.

*

met adele today at mos burger and discussed her wedding plans! i will design her SaveTheDates and Wedding invitations. seems like the season of weddings is set in motion! (i say this with trepidation.) its our first architecture studio today, after our trip to Tokyo to study the food factory processes and be archi-tourists.

*

a love of paper. its my dream to open a paper shop. who can help me with concrete business plans?? paper concrete :) and shop names? haha. the unbearable lightness of being.

*

this semester will be different. im not sure how, but im charged with an inexplicable desire for something to change. maybe its consciousness bubbling over on the inside, telling me that life is more than work. that life is meant to be so much more. that God planned an awesome life for his children, and its our choice to take the strings and fly with it.

*

"do any of you like korean shows?"

...

"i like."

-my usp teacher, in class.

(outburst of laughter.)

*

wishes and kites

are made of the same stuff;

you pull it close to your heart

with your eyes set on the horizon-

that edge where your vision ends

and dreaming begins.

on their end, they are lifted

only by invisible winds

eyes cannot perceive

but the heart feels.

let it go,

into hands not your own

it was never your burden to bear

lightly hold the string end.

city that is to come.

note to self:

(isn't it beautiful? there are gems in the word,

waiting quietly to be found,

to shine into eyes that see

the unseen.)

'For here we have no lasting city,

but we seek the city

that is to come.'

Hebrews 13:12

'..as we look not to the things that are seen but

to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient,

but the things that are unseen are

eternal.'

2 Corinthians 4:18

'As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty,

nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches,

but on God,

who richly provides us everything

to enjoy.

They are to do good, to be rich

in good works, to be generous and ready to share,

thus storing up treasure for themselves

as a good foundation for the future,

so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.'

1 Tim 6:17-19

do good, my friend,

see the unseen,

love not the present world,

but

the city that is to come.

*

happy birthday luke and amanda. :)