Sunday, August 26, 2007

Bourne Ultimatum

Well, I finally watched the movie last night and thankfully I didn't fall asleep like I did during Bourne Supremacy. The fight scenes were pretty awesome, Bourne's miraculous survivals are reminiscence of Die-Hard movies, and the plot was so bloody ridiculous and so skewed from Robert Ludlum's novels that I'm sure he'll flip in his grave if he watches the movie. Hopefully it increases the sales of his books though, then it'll at least be worth it.

Jason Bourne is supposed to be in his fifties in Bourne Ultimatum.

Readddd theeeee booooooooooooookkkkkkkksssssssssssssssssssssss

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Now playing: Aerosmith - Dream On
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KL Trip July 2007








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Now playing: The Cure - To Wish Impossible Things
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Friday, August 24, 2007

Drunk on 29th August 2006

Sheares national day dinner 2007


More photos soon, either here or on my facebook and friendster :)
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Laughs

I like to sit and watch the world pass by. I want to sit holed up in a comfortable library stocked with every book worth reading and for time to stop till I finish every single one of them.

Reality's not like that though. So here's a laugh! It's funny, at least to me.

I was sitting alone in NUS internal bus shuttle A1 when I heard a snippet of a conversation going on behind me. One guy in a i'm-trying-to-impress accent and the other in a slightly awed voice.

Mr Impressive : "Anything routine is just BLAH"
Mr Awed : (in a hesitant voice) "Would..you say your job now(sic) is routine?"
Mr Impressive : (pause) "Life is a routine."

Quite funny, no?

Anyway I know this is incredibly tactless and maybe a little mean, but I can't resist it. Apologies to Janna who obviously blogged this with great emotion:

have you ever thought how nice and sweet a relationship would be if it doesn't have problems, if it doesnt bring the pain that often comes with loving?

Isn't that like saying how the world will be "nice and sweet" without poverty, war, natural disasters? Wouldn't the world be sweet if everybody's beautiful, smart, and just? Wouldn't the world be perfect without sin? Anything would be "nice and sweet" without problems. That's why problems are called problems, right?

But then again, there's nothing wrong with clinging on to a little innocence and naivety, there's enough cynicism going around.

When people are in love they declare that their partner is the best in the world. Some shout it from the mountain tops. I know I did, at least once, when the then girlfriend took exceptional care of me when I was sick. BUT, throughout the course of the relationship she did other things that made and makes me sick just thinking of them. People are complicated.

Usually I remain good friends with girls I've dated though. Here's Jun and I =)



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Now playing: Fuel - Shimmer
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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sponge off me

There are books that merely entertain, some pull you into their fictional world, but you emerge with your views and philosophies unchanged - you're exactly the same as before you read the book. Maybe you've learned a couple of new words, maybe you've a better idea of elves, of faraway places you've never been to, or experienced vicariously a medieval past where knights are honorable and stupid. That's the beauty of reading, for your imagination paints unique pictures only you can enjoy; the same book never stimulates the imagination of another the same way it does yours.

And then there are books that are so beautifully written they wrap your mind around the author's philosophies and by their subtle teasing and leading, the reader reaches the end of the book with inclinations much like the author's.

Read Oscar Wilde, and his satirical style starts showing in your writing, his apparently debauched views of life and love become your own and becoming morally decadent seems almost fashionable.

Our minds are like sponges, absorbing everything we come across presented in a variety of medias. Magazine, movies, television programs follow a culture that's currently in vogue and that becomes pop culture when people invariably adopt the particularities of that culture, emulating its fashion, speech and style.

The more time you spend with a person, the more you adopt his or her mannerisms, or the more he becomes like you, depending on who has the dominant personality.

Is there then any room for original thought? Is there any view you hold strongly that you can safely say is truly yours? Why will reading the bible everyday help in your Christian living? Perhaps it's the for very same reason that your mind wraps around the text you read, and by reading the word of God on a daily basis, you naturally become inclined towards Him and towards his commandments.

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Now playing: Death Cab For Cutie - Champagne from a paper cup
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Friday, August 17, 2007

music in the night

It's one of those nights, when loneliness engulfs me and yet I shun company, preferring instead the relative solitude of my room where I can be me, and not the person people perceive me to be. I've lost touch with this side of myself, and I miss it.

The dull aching in my heart is a constant reminder of the hollow within, devoid of God, and of love. Of course this is all my doing, and it's nobody's fault but mine. My life's made up of a series of imperfect and sometimes outright bad decisions, and this is the price I'm paying.

Nobody's one-dimensional, but we see what we want to see.

Here's a nice picture though:

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Now playing: mp3files.org - Air_Supply_-_all_out_of_love.mp3
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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Hello Again

Hello folks, this update is at the request of Jeryd who complained early this evening that because I don't update my blog, he does not know what's going on in my life. On a side note, it's actually pretty sad that your friends have to rely on your blog entries to get updates on your life isn't it!

His reminder was a timely one though. It has been pretty long since I last blogged, and like how I lose my muscle definition after taking only a few days break from climbing, the words come to me in starts and stops, almost as if my stuttering on my keyboard.

Speaking of which, that is exactly what I've been doing the past 2 days - Intensive Speech Therapy at SGH lasting from 9am to 5pm. Tomorrow's the last day. I'm exhausted.

More updates soon.

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Now playing: Bon Jovi - (You want to) Make a Memory
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Sunday, August 12, 2007

We are the CHAMPIONS


The Chancellor's Shield is ours again! Not that I was particularly involved in the whole rag and float building experience but I did slog my guts out on flag day from morning till evening soliciting donations, carving out my niche market of secondary and jc school girls.

I am also the proud owner of a Sheares "Cinderella" Rag tee given when I volunteered for the ad-hoc "logistics" team and had the honor of pushing a side prop all the way from the waiting to performance area and back again. My gosh ... it was back breaking. I'm too old for such manual labour I tell you.

Of course my contributions are nothing compared to the Raggers who slaved the entire term break working on the float, the dancers who trained insanely to produce today's superb performance and of course the costumers who made the dancers' costumes. Awesome job, Sheares Hall, I'm proud I'm a Shearite.

Here are the only photos I have now, more to come!


My Cinderella shirt, and Christina who's in her SDE dance costume.


A glimpse of our float. And Kexi :)


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Now playing: the wallflowers - sleepwalker
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Thursday, August 09, 2007

Adventures of a Climber

SHuai, Sheares Hall's orientation camp was exhausting, so much so that when I slept one night, I locked my door from the outside in the rare chance that someone comes knocking.

After a blissful night's rest, I woke up, walked to the toilet and was having one of the longest pees in my life when I heard a door slam. That was when I remembered locking my door from the outside and that my matric card was still in my room. The pee was still happily flowing though I could only pray that by some miracle the sound of a door slamming wasn't mine but some distant neighbour's.

As luck would have it, it was my door, and the only thing I can be thankful for was that I was fully dressed and not clad in only my dryer-shrunk boxers. THAT would be a nightmare. Anyway, after briefly considering my options, I decided to do a mini Alain Robert, and climb into my room from the first floor.

This was my route:


Credit goes to Japheth who left his climbing shoes in his shoe cabinet, without which I could never have flashed the route. I'll rate it 5C for difficulty and 8A for balls-shrinkingness. Haha.
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Now playing: Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
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Saturday, August 04, 2007

Do you remember the moment you said the Sinner's Prayer? The pure, tingling joy that travels down to your fingertips as tears roll down your cheeks, mucus clogs your nose and you look like a general wreck? Ok, maybe not, but that was how I looked like when I prayed for forgiveness, repented and accepted Jesus as both Lord and Saviour.

That was 12 years ago, during a church camp when I was a skinny bespectacled kid with short, un-parted hair. I knew fully well what I was getting into. My group leader went to great lengths to explain why we needed salvation in the first place, and described the crucification process in great detail - down to the length of the nails they drove into our Lord's wrists. I was overcome with remorse and gratitude and wanted to give my life to God immediately. But no, we were told to sleep on it, and to return to the same place at 4am if we still decide we want to follow Jesus.

Every single one of us turned up, and tearfully went through the sinner's prayer. I made a promise then, that I would wake up early every morning to do my Quiet Time, and spend precious time with God.

Fast forward to present day, and where am I? I've had practically zero growth since I left Bethany at 14. In fact, I've strayed. I cling stubbornly on to the essence of our faith, and doubt everything else outside of it. I pray in tongues, but I honestly can't find any biblical support for the kind of tongues we practice nowadays. I doubt .. and doubt .. and question .. and yet I believe. I believe that we sinned, and that God sent Jesus down to die for our sins, and through him we are gifted with eternal life.

I need to remember that Jesus is both LORD and Saviour to me. LORD, but then I spend pitifully little time with him. Our lives are supposed to be living testimonies for God but people express surprise when they learn I'm Christian.

Yes, Hello, I'm Shaun, and I'm a Christian.

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Now playing: hillsongs - Reaching For You
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Thursday, August 02, 2007

Tired


I'm in hall, but the bulk of my things aren't. I am thus down to a ration of 4 pieces of underwear sans swimming trunks, one pair of paint-stained broad shorts, a pair of jeans, 2 pairs of socks, a couple of tee shirts, and several singlets that happened to be in my laundry basket when I hauled it over. Unfortunately I'm not exactly in singlet wearing condition right now so I'll save them for emergencies.

SHuai, Sheares welcome camp for freshies starts tonight, and I don't have enough clothes. I am also extremely sleep deprived. Or maybe I'm just tired in general. Tired, tired. I'm so tired I don't know which side of myself to show the world. And I don't have a waste paper basket in my room. I want to cut my nails but there's no waste paper basket. I have this awesomely huge Michael Jackson poster that Weeli very kindly brought over from aussie even when he was still mad with me, but I don't have enough blutack to keep it on the wall. I have Harry Potter with me but I haven't yet manage to read more than 10 pages at a single sitting.