Nothingness...

I don't really know what to share. I wanna praise God for having taught me several things this school break. The experiences i had, the people whom i met. These have helped me grown. Strangely i cant seem to share anything at all. i only have this to say. I wan to be HOLY today. Holier tomorrow and EVEN HOLIER the day after. This is my moltivation for the past weeks. For i desire to enter the narrow gate where it leads to life. Seedlings pray for me....

evan almighty!

Hey Jason, I agree with you.. When you face natural disasters and everything is not within your control, you tend to take things more easily and try your best to get up and get going. In Singapore, everything is so well taken care of that Singaporeans complain and mull over the silliest things.. We are very blessed in that sense but alos undeniably spoilt. Your flood experience inspired me to name this entry as the new movie on the modern day Noah. I say we make this a community event!! What say SP?!

Anyway, sorry guys for vanishing into thin air. I just happen to travel every weekend and am very caught up with work. SORRY!! Miss all your company. Today's reading on martha and Mary reminds me to take time off to just enjoy the presence of the Lord and to receive from everyone I meet. How easy it is for me to judge people sometimes and think that I know more or I have more to offer. I regret those times where encounters with others could have been something more if I had only opened my heart.

ok, gtg do work soon.. take care all of u and Jason, hope you don't catch a cold in that dreadful weather!

Flood.

The great flood is here in the UK! Many people are stranded... and i'm one of them!! : (

I'm in Manchester now.. and I'm stuck in Manchester with no way of going home to Plymouth, cus the train line between Birmingham and Gloucester is disrupted due to severe flooding in the Midlands!!

I'm sleeping on my friend's couch.. have been for the past nights... hopefully i get to sleep on my own bed... SOME TIME SOON. The train services say that things will be disrupted for a week! Oh no! how am i going to get to work by tuesday!!??!
-----

The flood is quite an amazing one... you find it in the Bible when God told Noah to gather 2 of a kind and build a gigantic sampan.. When I saw it flood on BBC news.. I thought to myself.. oh no.. poor people.. houses destroyed.. people stranded.. all sorts of amusingly strange and sad things.

I won't say that people are suffering though.. but the effects of it is greater then what it seems on the surface.. Transportation is brought to a standstill.. i who live in the south, and am in the north can't get back to work in the south.. strawberry, blue berry and other farms in Gloucester/Worcester/Hereford-shires are destroyed..

Its a strange whole new experience.. being disrupted by natural disasters, i never thought of it before. This is as compared to Singapore.. where you can almost never have your life be disrupted by our weather (Going to sentosa to play does not count).

It puts into perspective how in life, you largely can't choose which portion of the pie you want to get. Sometimes you get the pick of the crop, and sometimes, you get the rotten parts. Regardless of the outcome.. its just about picking your ass up, and getting on with life as best as you can, and thats living your life to the full.

Though there are few casualties because of the flood (thankfully) and people are largely taking the severe flooding with a strange light heartedness.. still.. pray for the victims.. especially those who have their livelihoods destroyed by the raging waters, and also.. that London Paddington Station will not burst at its seams and have a major stampede or soemthing, when I fight my way there to go home tommorow. : S

Thankful.

Last night, I was standing on an adit, trying to get to the other side of the passage without standing on the stopes. I had to attach myself to some ropes rigged as a traverse line. As I climbed/scrambled along the walls without my feet touching the stope, I didn't feel fear...

If I put pressure on the wooden ground that has been there since 1800s, the floor would give way and I would fall and most certainly be, dead, or severely injured.

A week ago, I was dangling over a hole that dropped about 20m, trying to remove the ropes from the P-bolts. Again I didn't feel fear.

I realised that many times I have been in ridiculously dangerous situations held up by mere little metalic contraptions and ridiculously thin 10mm static ropes, and I'm still alive!

Been thinking about these things alot recently, and I can only thank God for the graces and safety and common sense that He has imbued in me. For the first time last night, i actually prayed thanksgiving after coming out safely from the gazillionth mine/cave that I stepped off. strangely, it feels very good.

wot wot?

Hello people!

Haven't seen an entry here for a long time! So i shall post some good/bad news from here in UKland.

First the Good news:

The school year's finished! Yay! I got my results yesterday and i'm proud to say i've got a 1st class for my overall GPA.. didn't get first in class as i had desired, but should be the top few. not important.

Been given an interview opportunity for a job thats pretty interesting.. travelling around UK for 5 weeks.. and they pay somewhere about 1.2k pounds for that 5 weeks, accom and travelling expenses covered, to do some charity and fundraising stuff.

Been doing alot of caving stuff, and planning to do more research into mineral veins and lodes over the summer while i'm here in Devon (they have alot of funny mines here). And my caving club, Manchester University Speleology Club, is looking at the possibility of going to Malaysia (Perlis and Perak specifically) to do a caving expedition in August 2008. We have started prelimn discussions (over gin n tonic and ale) and some plans to contact people from various instituitions here and in malaysia to further our plans. This means that I will be back! somewhere in late August 2008!! Yay!

Bad news (sort of):

I'm still Jobless. Have been for 1 week that sucks cus i'm nearly out of cash. : ( Pray that i am bestowed a job. Any job, as long as it pays.

I obviously won't be back in Sillypore till long long long way to go, i won't have any opportunities to come back intermittently or anything even if i have a truck full of cash because all my time have been pretty committed to various ridiculous activities i subject myself to and also most importantly, my fieldwork.

Raymond tan is coming in december/january. What news can be worse then that? oh please..

Pray intercessions (rather urgent).

Pray for a job. really need one cus no job = no money = starvation = uneccesary hardship = death.

Pray for clear and objective mind to make decisions and act appropriatly (as a catholic.. with regards to spiritual matters in particular).

Pray the divine mercy for me, as The Raymond Tan is unleashed unto my beautiful city in a few months time, that the Lord be merciful and minimise the mental trauma caused to the poor inhabitants of Manchester.

Lastly.

I hardly get to hear from most of u people with the exception of a few of u who write to me regularly, or are on msn at strange hours... do share frequently on the blogs since most of the time, it is measure by measure, the most efficient way of communicating to me 11,000miles away, and i really like reading ur sharings since at the moment, it is literally, the only spiritual input into my life.

G-d bless, and tu-rah!

keeping the faith

I have been wanting to share about my faith for a while, but just have not had the time to. Keeping in mind what Raymond said about how faith not shared will lead to its death, I shall try my best to share especially when I have the luxury to type away tonight.

One of the reasons why I feel distant from God is that I do not keep him in my life everyday. Daily prayer is so important but I fail to be constant in it. Going for confession on novena last saturday really made me wake up. Instead of saying what my penance was, the priest asked directly, "Do you say your prayers daily?" And all I could say was a sheepish "I try to...". :p

I liken it to a relationship. With Jacques, I have to call or sms him everyday. This communication lets us know of how we feel, how our day has been, what's been bothering us. How can I say that I have no time for God? I felt really guilty thinking about it. Turning my back on the one who cares the most and shrugging Him off by saying I'm busy. Go save the world. Leave me alone. Or let me save myself.

Maybe it's the devil as well as my busy research life. But in the end, I know I have to come back to God, to find that peace within and to come back to the place where I truly belong. I know it's much easier for us to say it's impossible, it's difficult, we can't do it. But it's not a journey for us to go through on our own. It's one where Jesus walks with us, carries us and walks ahead of us. To believe and keep the faith is really something that we cannot boast about ourselves but to give back the praise to God. How easy it is in the world, to follow the idea that God is redundant and far away. To close our doors to the church for its backward and old fashioned ways. It is a struggle for me, especially when I face issues on sexuality, other religions, evolution, use of contraceptives... I end up questioning .. Is this really the true way?

Recently I have been trying to pick up daily prayer in my life. I'm taking slow and small steps. I set aside 15 mins to pray before I left the house one day, and God spoke to me through an article found the 'The Word Amongst Us'.

Just to quote:

It is Possible! All of us who have been baptized are set free from sin and filled with divine life. But without our daily decision to seek the Lord and to take hold of what we have received in baptism, this new life will remain either as a seed or as a fragile sapling. Only by making daily decisions to turn our lives to Jesus will we experience the grace and power that Gid has so generously given us in this sacrament of baptism.


It all ties in nicely doesn't it? What is blocking us from God? Most of the time we are the ones who keep Him at bay. Why? Why oh why especially when He loves us more than our fears or sins.

There isn't a reason in the world....

(how come i'm blogging so much when I have exams!!)

There ain't no reason why we live this way, we work our whole lives trying to earn something and to be something, and wear our pay cheques like jewelry. We always carry a weapon with us, be it a bomb, a pin, or a knife. It can even be a sentence, a word, a thought. We build prisons just to fill them all, bombs to drop them all. You can spend your whole lives working for something, to have it taken it away.

I have no reason why we live this way, thats how they've always been, and thats how they will stay, but I know that His love will come set me free.