A sinking feeling

Today was my business law paper, the one paper I _really_ prepared for. Remember the 12 hours I spent in the central library one day? It was spent consolidating all the information I could get on Tort of Negligence and the various types of Misrepresentations in word documents, bulleted logically and with all the supporting cases scattered in the lecture slides and textbooks.

Well. I flipped open the exam paper today, looked at the first question .. and my heart sank. Somehow, it was at the exact moment that my eyes fell on the question that I realized that I had forgotten to print the notes I had painstakingly prepared.

Brilliant, eh?

And Jun shouldn't you be asking whether I feel better instead of complaining about my blog post?!

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My Stomach's Upset

Have you ever felt like you must shit even if it's the last thing you'll ever do as living, breathing human being, rush to the toilet, plop down on the toilet bowl and realize that no, the shit's not gonna come out?

I've been feeling this way all afternoon. In fact, even as I'm typing this I'm fighting an irresistible urge to go shit, or at least, attempt to take a dump. Why don't I? Because I know it's futile. I'll just end up twiddling my thumbs on the toilet bowl, come back here after 5 mins, and realize that hey I need to shit.

I can't decide if I've diarrhea or constipation cause I've had two extremely satisfying dumps today; the feeling of needing to shit just refuses to go away.

The ketchup did taste a little funky at lunch though ... urgh. And I hope none of you guys are eating while reading this post :D

Ok off to shit. Sometimes logic takes a back seat vis-a-vis feelings, like the feeling of needing to shit.

Of these things I am troubled

It came to pass, in the time of Paul the apostle(more or less) that certain men came forth from Judea and taught the gentiles saying, "unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."

Of course this went against what Paul had been teaching; that it's only through grace and faith that one attains salvation, and nothing more. The old commandments were set aside in favor of the new when Christ came to die on the cross.

The dispute was brought up during a council in Jerusalem where the original apostles, the converted Pharisees, Paul and Barnabas were present. The Pharisees, as anal as ever over the law, insisted that the gentiles be circumcised. Simon Peter spoke up in defense of the gentiles, stating that God gives the Holy Spirit to Jews and Gentiles alike, and if God Almighty makes no distinction between them, who were they to impose the burden of the law on them?

This, Simon Peter said, "we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." He mentioned too that it was by faith that the hearts are purified; insinuating as well that it's not adherence to the commandments that brings salvation.

James spoke after that, quoting the old testament where God said something about how He would rebuild the tabernacle of David and set it up so that the rest of mankind(non-jews, ie: gentiles) "may seek the Lord, Even all Gentiles who are called by His name."

All's fine and good, till James saw it fit to add his opinion:

"Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood."

The council was apparently satisfied with that compromise, and so a letter was drafted to the gentiles saying:

"For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well."

And since those since were documented in the book of Acts which is now part of the bible, has it now become the will of God that we abstain from these things?

It troubles me. It was the view of James back in his day that these were the bare minimum of the old law that the gentiles should keep. In the letter to the gentiles, the author said that it "seemed good to the Holy Spirit" that those particular burdens were laid on believers. Acts did not state that the Holy Spirit explicitly agreed. Did they take His silence as concurrence?

The biggest question now though is .. is ... can I still have my steak medium rare?! And of course there's the issue of sexual immorality..

If certain issues such as the consumption of blood, and other exhortations that the current establishment think archaic can be set aside, would it one day be acceptable to .. fornicate as long as it is within the boundaries of a loving, committed relationship between two God-fearing Christians who would have been married had they lived in a much earlier era, and are currently prevented from doing so only by the relatively modern obligations of life like undergraduate studies, paying off student loans, getting a job and combating an almost constant inadequacy of finances?

As a disclaimer, I have to add that the bible has to be taken as a single coherent message and not out of context like what I perhaps just did. Or did I? Perhaps I have become as Peter said in his second epistle:

"For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them."

Perhaps. But what exactly, praytell, is the "holy commandment"?

once upon a time

Once upon a time, there lived a well-intentioned, mild-mannered, sarcasm-adverse young teenager. Then, he met Daryl.


And Jianming:

Michael - no, Mikaeel - Jackson

Michael Jackson has .. converted to Islam.

Sad conlcusion to Brilliance

Fancy yourself Sonic?

They say it takes two hands to clap, but nobody said anything about there having to be two hands in motion. A perfectly stationary hand and an actively swinging hand will result in a clap just as how two active hands will. Of course, the sole active hand would have to move a little faster; with a little more force.

In the same way it's perfectly possible to play tennis alone. You'll just have to run fast enough to hit the ball as it makes its way over the net. Brings to mind images of Sonic the Hedgehog, eh. A little hard on one who collapses in a heap after running the 2.4 for ippt though. Haha.

I studied 12 hours today. Peer support seems to work wonders for me.

A moment

From: Shaun [mailto:shaun.lim@nus.edu.sg]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 7:03 PM
To: Xu Jia
Cc: Sung Kim
Subject: Re: CS3254 Final Exam Topics

Hello Xu Jia,

Could you please release the answers to assignment 2 to aid our
preparation for the final exam?

Thanks and Regards
Shaun Lim

-

Xu Jia wrote:

Wait a moment.

-
Someone should educate him on the definition of the word "moment".

Of Trains and Reflections

I was on the way back from dinner with dad when a fat couple boarded the train I was on at outram station along the north east line. What followed next was a few minutes of me staring at the fat girl nuzzle her fat boyfriend's neck while he stared into space.

I was just wondering how a guy can be so oblivious to his girlfriend's affections and thinking about whether he craved such affections when he was courting her, or whether his girlfriend being fat had anything to do with his unresponsiveness and thinking to myself that he's fat too so what does he have to complain etc... when the train arrived at harbourfront.

Fat boy blinked a couple of times, looked around like a lost squirrel, ok, groundhog, no, boar, and went "sia lah! salah!". His loving girlfriend said "Salah?" and he responded with something like "Salah salah .. balek"

I assumed they were supposed to be on a train heading in the opposite direction but as we all know, harbourfront is at the end of the north-east line, and trains arriving at the end of the line have no where to go but back in the direction that they came from. They couldn't have thought that the train was terminating there as there were passengers merrily filing into the carriages. All they had to do was sit tight and soon they'll be happily traveling in the right direction and the girl can go back to enthusiastically rubbing her nose against her boyfriend's neck.

What they did however, was to get up, waddle as coolly as humans can possibly waddle towards the glass doors on the other platform and stand about a foot away from them, staring straight ahead. Perhaps our heroes thought the train they left was heading to Sentosa or something. I hope they like their reflections though as they were probably going to be staring at themselves for at least a good 7 minutes.


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Faith

through a glass darkly, i see
and though i
don't quite understand,
i believe

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for,
and evidence of things unseen."

Peek into the heartlands

A solitary trip to Sheng Siong generated some interesting insights.

The first was in the form of a frowning mother nagging at her son; a chubby primary school kid nonchalantly bumbling around the super market picking and dropping random items, looking everywhere but at his mother.

I walked past them several times as I was grocery shopping and I swear that not once were her brows unfurrowed. She was mumbling stuff like "I told you to at least maintain the SA2 standard, but even that you cannot do.", "It's not your fault, it's my fault, I shouldn't have let you play your playstation." I assumed the chubby kid just got his results or some shit. No idea what's SA2 either. The contrast of the worried mum and the nonchalant bumbling chubby kid was pretty hilarious though.

And then I went to the kopitiam to buy char kway teow. As I sat waiting, my gaze alternated between seeing the uncle enthusiastically cook with an utter regard for hygiene, a red-faced old man drinking singha beer in front of the stall, and another old man in a printed floral shirt and 60s gold-rimmed glasses drinking tiger in front of the drinks stall.

First, the char kway teow uncle. He was touching and handling everything in his un-gloved hands, adding a dash of garlic here, a dash of soy sauce there, grabbing the noodles, throwing most in and the rest back into the bag, raining bean sprouts down the wok, and the best bit, adding the hum in.

Apparently, hum blood adds to the taste of char kway teow as I saw him pour a generous quantity down into the wok from a container he keeps uncapped and unrefrigerated on a shelf above the stove. Midway through cooking and realising he was running low on hum , he opened the fridge, took out a sealed bag of pre-shelled hums and poured the entire contents into the container sitting on the shelf. Now, I know, I thought the same thing - when will he ever use up the hums from the bottom of the container!? Maybe he scoops from the bottom, I don't know. Anyway I'm writing this an hour after I had the char kway teow and I must say it was delicious :D

Now on to the two sad looking old men drinking beer alone. I was thinking that they should just drink together and at least have each other for company. And the tiger beer drinking uncle at least, was doing some hardcore drinking. I saw him finish a bottle and frantically wave to the drinks stall aunty, indicating when he got her attention that he wanted one more bottle. He then shifted to the seat next to the one he was sitting on, as if that somehow makes things a little better. Sad.

I've a .net project due in slightly over a week. Sadder.

A friend said this to me today: "True Love? It'll bite you in the ass in a year." What makes it funny is that he had just ended a year-long relationship.

Oh, and in other news, I got into the nus muay thai team so I'll be training hard in December and finally do some running. Or a lot of running.
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AG v AWSJ

AG asks for substantial fine against Dow Jones Publishing in contempt case

I remember reading the articles somewhere online once, maybe the SDP website. That doesn't matter though. What's interesting is that a case involving the defamation of Singapore's judiciary is being held in a Singaporean court and being presided by a Singapore judge of obviously the same judiciary.

Sounds like utter bollocks to me, but what do I know, eh?

Anyway, check out who the defense counsel is.

Food!

Del Mar and Fingers on Fire

Climb On 2008

Halloween Sneaks 2

Halloween Sneaks 1