I stood, my heart and mind subtly lifting their curtains. I looked around. I did miss something. 

Beauty. Captured my heart so close, I didn’t dare to breath, afraid. Will it steal another moment away. 

Looked within. There laid a buckled passion, waiting for its pair of wings to fly. 

And when it comes, everything within and everything around, 

will make sense. 

Took off my coat, closed my eyes, a breath from the deepest of my soul came through my nostrils, into the beauty around,

and I know,

my heart is free.

The reality is people make a conclusion of you based on what you do, what you’ve done, and perhaps when they find out about your wrongdoings in the past, they conclude you to be a loser. Basic fact : People judge based on what they see and what they think they know.

Sometimes, I find that in a religious assembly, there’s always a clique, that if you don’t make past the group’s cut of point, you’re not in. And you become an outcast. People give a connotation that you don’t belong here, cause “you ain’t like us.” But, is this what we call a family?

We love our siblings because they were biologically made by our parents, and simply because, they’re family.

Shouldn’t we love every other person out there because they’re made by our Dad?

Take a drug addict, or a pimp who sits in the church pews in a service. Will other members talk among themselves about “how sinful they are”, “what on earth are they doing here in church?” and avoid them because they’re not dressed properly, or don’t behave in the same manner as church members. And then they leave… unnoticed.

I believe we’re not any bit more perfect than any other soul in this world. Who ever said that God loves a pastor MORE than He loves a drug addict? God’s love is the same for all, and who are we to judge and segregate one another?

Who ever said that He loves a man who saved a four-digit number of souls, MORE than an adulterer?

He loves us all the same.

I’m not saying that it’s okay to go around committing sin, since you’re equal to a man of God, but what I’m trying to say is that, we are not in position to treat the lower class worse than we treat those who are well, because what matters is truly WITHIN the person, in which we do not know completely.

Instead, it’s all about loving every person the same. Sincerely, whole-heartedly.

We definitely should take certain people in our lives as role models for us to follow. It’s a great guide for us to live better.

But, just remember at the back of your head that, above all circumstances,

people can still fail you.

Although this message may be a cliche, but if you just stop, and look through the life around you, this is everywhere.

And as we always follow after the footsteps of others, we too, gotta think and create better footprints, for those younger than us, to follow.

I myself have followed blindly, but God sends people to make you realize, and change for the better.

Perhaps we can reach times when we are so painfully ashamed of our weaknesses, we pull out of society, and just be the wind. Perhaps we are ashamed of our past. We are afraid to get ourselves into people, because we are afraid that our flaws would show, and people would discriminate us.

But, we gotta accept who we are – the good, the bad, the ugly, and learn to live a life driven by our passions, geared by our strengths, and in the mean time, sharpening our weaknesses to become strengths. Nobody is perfect.

What about love?

Human love, loves those who love them.

Human love, loves those who are like them.

Human love, loves those who help them.

Human love, loves those who are amazing.

God’s love, loves the murderers, adulterers, the nerds, all colours, all pasts, all sinners.

God’s love, is for all.

Loving every person for who they are, and treating a beggar like treating a king.

Unconditional love.

This, I make my resolution this year.

It’s beautiful up there

Sunset above the clouds

Chinatown

Waiting for countdown

Khao San Road – our best place in Bangkok :)

I had to pay RM1 for this shot. LOL. Scorpions, maggots, cockroaches, crickets, worms that look very tasty.

Site of James Bond movie

Our faithful friend

Just a couple of shots out of the 1000 plus shots and videos we took.

Great time spent with loves. And moving from places to places.

Travelling makes me gay.

As we go on living this life, we sometimes become so buried into the works and actions and things this life demands of us, we forget why are we doing it.

We have friends who have better lives than us. Or who we know WILL have better lives than us. Perhaps their career promises them a life of early graduation, a promising job that is more than sufficient to help them make a great living, to build a family, etc etc etc..

And perhaps, we imagine our lives to be more of a sacrifice, a lifetime commitment. Perhaps we have strings attached from our past, or strings that tie us to certain commitments, that we can’t let go, simply because, we’re tied.

But, what’s the point of having a life, full of comfort, but there are millions of others out there in hurt, desperation, pain, sorrow, hopeless? What meaning does it bring for us to be at the peak of fame and wealth? After all, are you living for yourself?

As I watched Grey’s, I was immersed in my myriad of depth, of giving myself to this life. To serve others. Instead of myself.
Human nature teaches us to put ourselves above others. Many don’t wanna be a doctor because of the years of studies, the exhaustion and commitments.

But, as we live, do we live and do things because we want others to see our good deeds and praise us?
Do we live because we want something in return? A big paycheck, our names in the papers, a public acknowledgement of our so called noble acts?

Or do we do it, simply because… we want to?

In school, we used to receive certificates and acknowledgements for our achievements.

But in the real world, sometimes, we get trashed and spitted on, although we did something we thought was good, but misconceptions turn the way around and make us the black sheep. Life isn’t what we want it is. Life is life.

It all points to why are we doing it.

Why do we love?
Because we want to.

Why do we share?
Because we love you.

Why do we give in our scarcity?
Because you don’t have enough.

Why do we empathize?
Because we feel you.

Why do we strive?
Because we want to give more.

Being in a position that gives you power to heal people physically, does not limit you to just there. It gives you opportunities to heal others emotionally, mentally. To bury yourself in their shoes, and cry with them, laugh with them, smile with them, celebrate joy with them.

People are hurting. Inside. It’s all beyond the physical eye.

We can heal one another by touching each other’s hearts.

Does it take someone to do you a heroic magnificent life-saving deed, for you to love them?
Does it take for others to love us first, before we love them?

God loved me before I was even formed in my mother’s womb.

Shall we pass on this love?

This love that expects nothing in return.
This love that goes the extra miles, no matter how much it costs.
This love that is not confined to those who loves you, but those who despises you.
This love that knows no hate.
This love that comes from a whole heart.
This love that heals you.
This love that completes.
This love came from One, who gave His all.

Shall we pass this on?

Let’s love with a sacrifice.
Let’s love with sincerity.
Let’s love even when it hurts.
Let’s love because we want to.

Christmas isn’t Christmas til it happens in your heart

Somewhere deep inside you is where Christmas really starts

So give your heart to Jesus, you’ll discover when you do

That is Christmas, really Christmas for you

Jesus brings warmth like a winter fire

A light like a candle’s glow

He’s waiting here to come inside

As He did so long ago

Jesus brings gifts of truth and life

And makes them bloom and glow

So when you’re here, bring a song of joy

And when He comes, you’ll know

My all time favourite Christmas carol – speaks about the heart of the season.

Birthdays are made for us to appreciate the birthday person, AT LEAST once a year, and to make sure they know we love them, and that they’re special.

Well, I think God has been treating us everyday like our birthdays. He makes sure we’re protected,

He directs our paths,

He holds our lives,

He knows us better than we know ourselves,

He’s our first love,

He remains faithful.

And today, it’s HIS birthday.

What better gift can we return Him, than ourselves? In fact, even our whole life is not even worth a tiny bit of who He is to us.

And I know I’ve taken Him for granted. A million gazillion times. I didn’t give Him thanks when it’s due. I didn’t apologize when it’s due.

As I recall the skit of “Everything” by Lifehouse, it moves me all over again, about how many times I’ve broken His heart, by putting others before Him, or by disobeying, or doubting, and yet.. and yet.. He still loves.

A broken, wretched, failing, vulnerable, insecure child like me. Yet He still loves.

Know why?

Cause He believes in you.

That’s all it takes to inspire you to be an overcomer.

I believe that’s how it works with people too. We believe in ourselves when people believe in us.

When people tell us that we can’t do it, we lose all hope, throw in the towel, and live like a loser.

But even when all else fails, He is faithful.

Faithfulness is rare. Because we all have limits. Once it’s broken, we make sure we don’t turn back, because we don’t want to experience the hurts and pain all over again.

But, He sees your heart, and believes in turning over a new leaf.

We live by a vision. We picture of what we want to accomplish at the end of lives, and work towards it.

But how can we be so sure of what we want to achieve? And how can we be sure that all things will work our way, in accordance to our will in our lives?

That’s why there’s a Guide, a Love that never fails.

That no matter how insecurities can make you feel completely worthless and unbelonged,

if you’re lost from the inside out,

you know, you can be found in Him.

Because He made you. And He loves you.

Let’s try to treat God as if His birthday’s everyday.

All it takes is a surrendered heart. That He’s the boss.

No one can serve two masters.

It’s either He’s first, or it ain’t right..

I’ve had my own set of mistakes that I’ve stumbled upon. But, instead of crying over spilt milk, I gotta move on, and make sure I don’t repeat them. I gotta learn, and let every experience build me to be a better person.

Christmas isn’t Christmas til’ it happens in your heart..

I can never return Your faithfulness.

This movie tells of a true story of the murder of Daniel Pearl, an American Jew journalist who travelled to Pakistan with his 5 months-pregnant wife, Mariane Pearl in 2002 (a year after 9/11). He was kidnapped by a group of Pakistanis, and beheaded after 10 days. In fact, the kidnappers sent a video of the murder to the investigators and Mariane. He was killed simply because, he was an American Jew.

I have to tell you, the exchange program I went on (sponsored by the US State Department) was initiated because of the 9/11.

That’s why I relate a lot to this movie.

The reverberations of the tragedy is touch-skin vivid until today.

How will a child grow up, knowing that his dad was killed in a world tragedy, because of unsettled prejudices between nations?

Will it be legitimate for the child to be scared to live?

Imagine every person in both the American Airlines Flight 11 and the United Airlines Flight 175 (planes that crashed the World Trade Centre), who has a life, all perished innocently because of the deeds of others. How remorseful.

The mind is so incredibly powerful. It can bring the world together, but it can tear generations apart.

All it takes is just one mind.

Peace isn’t easily attained, because we human beings are by nature, selfish and prideful. We want things the way we want them to be, it’s just how far we would go to stand up for our beliefs. Some are radical, some don’t do anything about it.

But I believe, love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8). Truly. When you love, you forgive. And it all comes to peace.

                                    Mariane Pearl and Adam Pearl (wife and son of Daniel Pearl)

Salute the strength and courage of Mariane Pearl. Such a strong woman at heart.

I decided that if those who killed my husband were determined to show the gruesome side of humanity, I would display its integrity, beauty and resilience. That would be my true revenge.

Mariane Pearl

She quotes inspiration from a speech of the late Senator Robert Kennedy:

“Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation…It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

I just came back from a 3 day mission trip to Gua Musang, Kelantan.

I sound like a jakun, but it was my first ever mission trip :)

A lot of stories to tell, so much I had learnt just through 3 days, from the team, the people, Ps Kumar and family (our hosts), the entire experience was eye-opening. Our last day was my most challenging day, because we went to the Orang Asli (aborginal people) settlement, and I just can’t explain in words how the experience was, because it was simply eye-opening and amazing.

Some pictures taken by my 2 mega pixel camera.

Among their residences

Kids outside the church

Skit

Them

It’s amazing to see that there is a church, in the utmost interiors of Ulu Kelantan, where people come to worship the same God you and I do.

It’s thought-provoking how things, events and people can add so much values into you. I believe we live as a community, and build one another’s lives through relationships by – adding values. As we grow, we gotta learn to plug ourselves into the right community, right friends, right activities, things that add values. Maturity is not defined by age, but by how we take our experiences as stepping stones to build ourselves to be better people.

Apart from submitting ourselves to channels that adds values, I believe we should also plug ourselves to people and channels that we can add values into. That’s how we could make an impact in this place. It’s about giving what we’ve received. Then together, we can build a much stronger community, and be better people =)

My experience in youth ministry throughout college has taught me things beyond explication, and I have a million gazillion things to learn. But it’s how you take your experiences to make you a better person. How you interpret them as values to be added into you, to make you stronger, bolder, more courageous. Some experiences are very special to you – that only you among many could have experienced it. It could be a mighty victory, a mighty fall, a breakthrough, a trial. But we are all growing in our special unique ways. And we are built to be a diversed community, where we can complement one another through times and in maturing.

So, here’s a piece of mind of mine, in the pursuit of sharing something I’ve learnt.

To all girls (especially those younger than me),

Remember that nobody on earth has the right to belittle, underestimate or control you, in such a way that you feel caged up, and restricts you in your work, heart, ministry. Sometimes people can sweet talk over us, and make us feel as if our hearts are won and captured, when it wasn’t all very real and precious to them. But you gotta realize that your dignity and self-worth belongs to you, and nobody can take it away. Men should learn to respect you the way a woman respects a woman. No man can think lowly of you simply because you’re weaker or less intelligent. You are who you believe you are. Don’t let anyone take advantage over you, simply because we girls, have a common point of vulnerability. As we grow, we must strive to add values into our lives and increase our self-worth. Raise your standards. You are great and strong from within. We, women are strong =)

My quote of the year : You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think. Winnie the Pooh

When you explain yourself to people of a different culture, we usually begin with…

“Malaysia has 3 main races, and I’m a Chinese, but I don’t speak Chinese, so I’m a banana – yellow outside, white inside.”

Heh, well they do get confused, because calling yourself a Chinese, could well similarly mean you’re made in China ;)

Okay, I know I am a rather hardcore banana, but thankfully, Chinese in KL speak Cantonese, hence explains my survival rate when maneuvering around KL (including going to the wet market near my home to get breakfast). And thanks to all the TVB dramas on TV3 at 6pm, and TV2 at 7pm, they filled me with rather good basics, sufficient for me to survive in KL.

But but but… I guess being a banana is defined by how well you speak Mandarin, and my school cliques have always been just like me (birds of the same feather, flock together eh). So I’ve never put much thought into this identity of mine, until recently.

You see, in college, I’m apparently one of the very few banana’s lying around, and hence, I realized I should be speaking some Chinese. To learn, and you know, remember your roots, and keep your culture. Okay, perhaps my accent makes me sound and look awkwardly adventurously silly, but it makes me happy for some reason. It makes me feel as if I’m learning something new, though in a rather eccentric manner, I’m learning something I should be!

Plus, living with two housemates that are non-banana’s, has been an incredibly amusing experience. You know how each person has a world of their own, and each of our worlds are composed of a huge myriad of fragments, and the communication between two is to search for common grounds where they become platforms of progression for the relationship, and then intertwining two different worlds together, expanding one another’s, opening up each minds, and thereby create a mutual understanding about everything that matters to them. Everything that makes them who they are.

Well, this identity of mine has been a fairly great bridge between me and them, and we could crack up and laugh so hard because of this. The way they try to improve their English, and me, Chinese, has done all of us good for this 1.5 years of college life. Hence, though it’s perhaps a bit shameful when I meet Indians who speak great Chinese (oh my, it’s embarassing), this process of learning up mine, and picking it up bit by bit, has its wonderful sunshines as well. Oh and another one of those silly humiliations, when I speak my wonderful broken Chinese among a group of non-bananas. Hehe, but well, it amuses me to a certain level, that learning can indeed be fun =)

Leaving college soon makes me think a lot. I know I like to think. Sometimes my thoughts run so deep, I become oblivious to all around me. I just become so soaked up within (in which an intimate worship always leaves with me this stigma for some time). College life had a lot of unexpectations for me. I found myself exploring more of myself, and unfortunately rather recluse (yes, I indeed discovered the very shy part of me) as I encounter people, things, matters, and whatever life in KTT has left with me. Sometimes the smallest of things mean so big to me. Like how a conversation left a ‘thing’ with me for a week, things around you impact you. Both positively and negatively. But it’s how you take and interpret it, to use it as something useful to build yourself to be someone better.

Today someone was telling me about how crazy he was in high school, and two hours worth of stories reminded me of my crazy moments. Singing in the middle of the pool on a stack of 7 pool-beds, in a hotel, by a restaurant where people were having dinner, and I didn’t care a thing about how people thought about me. Okay, you definitely need people of similar energy levels to do this. But, these things are instant laugh-jerkers. It has been a while since I’ve touched the crazy side of me, but I would love to pour it out someday, sometime. When I get the moment.

But yeah, as I live everyday, experiences make you find more pieces of yourself, that you’ve never discovered. A journey with God definitely unravels things of you, as He knows us better than ourselves. He knows you. The you that no one else does. Something I read while reading ODJ the other day, it says that even if you run away from Him for 40 years, He can still find you. The true, utmost depths of your heart’s you. Reminds me of one of my favourite passages of the Bible, Psalms 139. It helps me come to my humblest, deepest, most broken and fragile self, when I come to Him, because as a matter of fact, we can hide nothing from Him. He knows our deepest thoughts, and we can never runaway. God is an amazingly patient and slow-surprising (to me, at least). He shows you things, one by one. Well, He has your whole life mapped out before Him. His time is always perfect (though we always doubt that, being as impatient as we are).

Back to my chronicles of being a banana, it’s one part of me I discovered just 2 years ago, and it has served me well, and hoping it will serve me better in the future! Gotta learn up more Mandarin, and unpeel myself, so I’ll be a somewhat better Chinese =)

                                                            Credits to Xiu Jing

I was pushed into taking this picture (the half closed eyes explains it, I believe) , as the little small yellow banana is a mascot of my identity.

If you’re a banana just like me, it’s never too late to learn.

Life is a learning process. You can learn anything, at any day, as long as you always try to be a better person,

to make a difference in this world.

I want to learn how. How to be a better person, how to change people, how to be an influence, how to make a difference.

I’m as naive and inexperienced as any average Joe could be, but indeed,

it’s never too late to learn something new.

Though our dominant personalities do fit us into a certain fragment of the society, some do prefer to take the backseat. But, I believe, nobody wants to be a nobody.

Hence, we dream. And the dreams become ambitions. We want to make something big out of our lives. We want to set the world on fire with our lives. Making a difference, as cliche as it may sound, we are all in the pursuit of it. Dreams flood in especially when you’re on a verge of transition. Perhaps you’ve just completed your high school. When I was on my exchange, I thought I had some time to do some soul-searching, and I kept asking myself, “Who are you, what are you made for, who do you wanna be, who do You want me to be?”

Well, simple questions like these could direct our thoughts out of this world. We paint ambitious visions, and picture ourselves doing something we really love, that resonates with our heartbeats.

But then again, we cannot always have things our way. There are people we have to live up to, expectations to meet, standards to achieve. And we have to chuck our desires aside.

And when our dreams begin to grow far away, we get agitated at the present. Tough times make us give up.

I’ve to admit, I had times when I complain and whine all the time, at about anything and everything, simply because they’re not my way.

But, God taught me that,

this world ain’t perfect.

There is no perfect family, no perfect friends, no perfect church, no perfect community, no perfect life, no perfect dream.

There is not a dream that fits you perfectly. Because the world doesn’t revolve around you.

We can’t make things adapt to us, but we’ve gotta learn about the world, adapt to it, and change it for the better.

When we don’t get things our way, we misuse and abuse everything. We hurt others, we blame others.

But life is not all about us.

I ask myself again,

“Who are you, what are you made for, who do you wanna be, who do You want me to be?”

What do you live for? Who do you live for?

You gotta believe in something, and hold on to it.

You gotta find that purpose, for it’ll keep you going.

Trust me, it will.