Directly related to my earlier post:

How many times
Can I push it aside
Is it time I befriended all the ghosts of all the things that haunt me most
So they leave me alone
Move on with my life
Be certain the steps of left and right don't fight the direction of upright

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands of it

It's time to decide
Which is out of my mind
Cause it'll be me unless I put some thoughts to rest and leave some faults behind
I'll watch the glint in my eye
Shine off the spring in my step
And could be blinding depending on the amount of You that I reflect

Cause I could spend my life just trying to sift through
What I could've done better but what good do "what if's" do
Oh oh
Oh oh

There's something I should tell you now

Devastation and Reform

Isaiah 43:18-19

A verse given to me more than a month ago.

I had been searching all this while,

of all the things in my past.

It had to be this.

And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started

A cup or two?

I can never get my estimation of food portions right. I either cook too much or too little. especially rice. I can never remember exactly how much rice i can eat at once. And two cups of rice is really a lot of rice. Nevertheless I had delicious lamb stew to eat it with. especially with all that delightful gravy. No pictures this time I'm afraid. But you can go have a look at my earlier post.

Did anyone else notice the heavy advertising by Microsoft in HIMYM S6E04? I mean, whoever have seen a lappie with a Microsoft logo? And bing maps suck. Stick to Google maps. It can save your life.

Anyways, tomorrow it's do or die. My semester-long battle with MMM132 (Management) will soon be over. Wish me luck. Or blessings if you don't do luck.

Pedal Board Frenzy

After using my friend's pedal board last Friday at OCF, I realized what an awesome experience it was to use one (not to mention how cool it looked, heh). Not satisfied with my Line6 Pod:






Or my Zoom G7.1ut:






I have made 'building my own awesome guitar pedal board' one of my life goals. It may be like this:







Or this:









Or even THIS:







Heh, the first one's more realistic, not too mention I already have that exact same wah pedal. Since I already have a Boss distortion pedal my next target is a delay pedal. And after that, a compressor, chorus, flanger, reverb, heavier distortion....... ...

"faith"

Having had no other inspiration to write about, I decided to write about something we discussed in Bible study last night at OCF: faith. We have been going through the book of Hebrews for the last couple of months and last night we reached chapter 11, which, arguably I think is one of the most famous chapters of Hebrews. So here goes a brief summary on what chapter 11 is and, in general, what faith is all about:


One of the questions we had to tackle was: "What is faith and how different is it from hope?"


v1: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (KJV)


Verse 1 can be separated into two parts: substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. From the first part of verse 1, what we get is that faith is the substance of things hoped for. The word "substance" comes from the Greek word hupostasis (hoop-os'-tas-is), which means, in terms of abstract: assurance. Another meaning is confidence. So from these we can garner that faith is the assurance/confidence of things hoped for.

(On a side note, that is exactly how the ESV Bible puts it, but I'm just going through all that again to explain where'd they get it from)

The second part of verse 1 talks about faith being the evidence of things not seen. Again we look back at what the Greek dictionary says about "evidence". The original Greek word is elegchos (el'-eng-khos), meaning "proof" or "conviction". To have faith is to have real conviction of things yet to happen.


So back to the question of what is the difference between faith and hope: in my opinion, hope is the basis for faith. We can only hope so much for something, but with real conviction and assurance, that hope becomes faith. In Romans 8:24-25 the apostle Paul also talks about hope: v24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? v25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Hope comes from the Greek word elpis (el-pece'). It means to have expectation or confidence. So for the conclusion for this question is that hope is something abstract, it is just an expecting thought. From that thought we get faith. This may be backed up by James 2:17: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.


Now then you may ask me, "So does that mean we have to work for faith and our salvation?" Well, to get the answer to that we need to turn to Romans again. In chapter 3 v20 it says "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified..." and in v28: "therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law." And in chapter 4 Paul goes on to talk about how Abraham was justified by faith, not by works. The apostles James and Paul may be contradicting each other in their respective epistles. What James is really trying to get at is that if your faith is genuine, then it is going to manifest itself in your life. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. That word "become" is the key word here. It tells us that there will be a manifestation of our faith when we believe in Christ. It can be an action as well: look back at the "hall of faith" in Hebrews 11, all the great people of the Bible did something to show their faith. Eg By faith Abel offered.. By faith Enoch was translated.. By faith Abraham obeyed..


So how then do we really get faith? How do we build our faith? Faith is really essential in our daily walk with Christ because in v6 it says (paraphrase) But without faith it is impossible to please God. Our answer can be found in Romans 10:17, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing the word of God. Why the two "hearing"? Hearing in Greek is the act, the sense, or the thing heard, be it from fame, from reports, from preaching, etc etc. That first "hearing" actually means listening to testimonies of other fellow believers. Anything that we may have heard from other believers that is encouraging will build our faith. A classic example: remember how Jesus walked on water? How did Peter walk on water as well? He had the faith to do so, because he saw Jesus doing it first. So basically what we should do as Christians is to read about encouraging testimonies, be it about healing or any other signs or wonders. Read up on the heroes of faith, all the biographies. Just throwing in a couple of suggestions. So the second "hearing" is basically to continually read the word of God. I don't think I will need to elaborate further on that.


So to summarize what I've just talked about, faith is the assurance/confidence of things hoped for, and to have faith is to have real conviction of things to happen. Hope is the basis for faith. Hope is just a thought or an expectation, faith is the manifestation of that hope. We do not need to work to prove our faith, but if your faith is genuine, that manifestation, that "works" will naturally be evident in your life. And lastly, to build our faith, we need to pay attention to the testimonies of others, and the testimony of the Bible.


ps, if you have any disagreements or if you were blessed, please leave a comment =)

...

I have yet to receive any divine inspiration to blog.

Hence the silence.

Bear with me dear readers.

On a side note HIMYM Season 6 premiere was legen - wait for it - dary.

Whoever's watched it already give me a high-5! No a high-5 wouldnt cut it, give me a high-6!

Mizz Nina live in Melbourne

Merdeka! (x7)

It has been another week jam packed with all sorts of activities culminating in the Merdeka celebrations. I don't have much pictures as yet so bear with me and my gibberish sentences. First, I shall backtrack and start us off with OCF Clayton's THE Night: Life. Love.

Thursday

THE Night was created to be an evangelistic tool with which OCF could reach out to other Monashians through skits, dances, and music. This year the committee decided that there will be no preaching - just a simple dinner accompanied by performances throughout the night. Well I was on a couple of the performances and as for my first time on stage in Australia, I thought it was pretty decent. We had a good turnout, maybe about approx 150-160 students were present that night. Minor setbacks aside, I think it was a success. Well done to the organising committee! and of course we went to Rock Kung @ Glen W. for supper as usual.

Friday

There was no OCF meeting today. Instead we had cell fellowship at various houses. We had loads of fun eating steamboat and playing Taboo + Charades in my cell. The funny actions people do in Charades.... I mean, how'd you act out something like Brad Pitt?

Saturday

Played soccer in the morning with a bunch of Msians and Singas for more than 2 hours in the winter rain. Thank God I didnt fall sick after that.

In the evening we went to CityLife Church for the 4pm service. A Msian young pastor was sharing that day and he was really good. One of the things he said that stuck with me was that people can be serving Christ full-time, but can also be only part-time IN Christ at the same time.

Interesting eh?

After church, me, Viv, Eugene, Desiree, and Sam headed off to Glen to try out the Yong Tau Foo at a Msian restaurant. The funny thing was, they labeled it as 'Young Tau Foo'. But it was pretty alright I guess. But obviously nothing in comparison with the Jalan Ipoh Yong Tau Foo. Delicious sial. But the five of us had a great time fellowshipping with one another that night over Yong Tau Foo and chocolate cake desserts after that.

Sunday

Thanks to Jo Lynn we had to wake up super early on a Sunday morning. Well 9am is pretty early especially since I usually wake up at 1pm in Sundays. She convinced the both of us to accompany her and her friend Kat up Mt Dandenong along with KC. But there was no regrets la. Especially with all the Jo Lynn bimbo moments the whole day. Until even KC and I had our dumb bimbo moments.

Our first stop of the day was for breakfast at Sassafras in a quaint shop called Miss Marple's Tearoom where we had scones and tea. Oh FYI, Mt Dandy isn't really that cold at all. Managed to tahan the weather in three-quarters :D

After breakfast we spent an hour walking around the small town visiting the shops that were there. There were shops selling puppets, some coffee-related products, and one kinda freaky looking shop which sells mystical objects. And I could have sworn that the two women behind the counter looked like witches.

After Sassafras we made our way to Sky High on a flying bus. (Inside joke) The view from Sky High was fantastic though, along with most of our bimbo moments of the day. One highlight was conning Jo Lynn into believing that we could actually see the Melbourne Airport as well as the Menzies Building in Clayton from there.

After the breath-taking view from Sky High, we had lunch at Olinda in a shop called Pie in the Sky.The pies were alright, even though the servings were really small. Afterwards, we stopped by at a chili shop where being the hero that I am, I HAD to take TWO helpings of a chili sauce called the Ultra Death Sauce which claimed to be 800 times hotter than Jalapeno chili. It apparently has a rating of nearly 1million on the Scoville scale. Okay, I did some research afterward and to put it in your perspective, the chili sauce I tried is approximately TEN times hotter than the chili padi. Well effectively it is the hottest chili sauce in the world because it includes the Naga Jolokia pepper which is the world's hottest chili pepper according to the Guinness' Book of Records. The effects only hit me about 5 minutes later. I think if I had anymore of that chili I could have passed out. 2 helpings was enough to make me dizzy in my head and feel the blood rushing through my veins.

The poison:

All in all we had a great time bonding with each other that day on Mt Dandy.

Monday

And we're off to the city for a night of patriotism:p I guess what they say is true, Melbourne is really quite a small place for Asians. First off I met a bunch of futsal kakis from Monash Clayton. Then I met other OCF-ers whom we didn't know were coming. And finally, I met my pastor's son. Horrors. lol, joking. Oh and I met Ong Ka Ting's daughter as well! But hey Melbourne is really pretty small and it really wasn't my first time meeting people I know on the streets. I'll just let the following pictures do the talking for me:

Whatchu, whatchu, whatchu wai-ting for?

It's 2am again and I can't sleep so I thought I'll go through some old youtube favourites and this is what I found:


Alpha-Q performing "Stars" at the 2009 MCKL Ball


Sigh, miss the good old times.

After watching this, I started watching more Switchfoot official videos. And the more I watch the more determined I get to keep my hair as long as theirs. Hah.

You know you can call any time.

One-liners

How long is a piece of string?

My boss is more than a mentor to me - he is my tormentor.

I don't like to repeat gossip, but really, what else can you do with it?

"Mr and Mrs Explorer? Social services. We're here to speak about Dora."

Listen dude, if you wanna learn how to play golf, at least hold the bat right.

If we have the right to bear arms, then don't bears have the right to human arms?

Some of the one-liners I have been reading. I'm too lazy to post pictures this time. But that first line is from a book I'm currently reading now, Who made GOD?, by Edgar Andrews. When I'm done with it I'll post a short review.

Toodles

Fine Dining

I'm still getting over the euphoria of Arsenal thrashing Blackpool by six goals to nil. And eating maggi mee while watching that match was equally satisfying. Speaking of which, I've been eating quite a fair bit recently. After church yesterday at City Life we went to Sophia's at Wheeler's Hill. "we" being the OCF-ers. And earlier this week I had Korean dinner with my cellgroup from OCF. It was pretty decent i guess.

I've been hanging out with fellow OCF-ers nearly every day this week since Sunday. Practice, practice, practice. (You'll find out what are the practices for by the end of this week). All the songs stucked in my head.

Five hundred twenTY-five thousand six hundred minutes

Oh and cousin Vivian has moved into the room next to mine. It's pretty cool, there are more variety in the food I eat. Basically we can cook more stuffs when there are more ppl eating la. Hah. And pretty fun. Not to mention she has a car. Thanks for driving me all over the place, Viv! =D

The election fever culminated with election day in Australia yesterday. And up till today at 11pm they still haven't finished counting all the votes. Talk about wols. They've only counted about 78% of the votes. Anyway at the moment we're looking at a hung parliament, with neither Labor or Liberal having enough seats to form a parliament. With the difference between the two major parties being only about 2 seats, the hot seat is up for grabs along with the independents playing a key role role now.

Coming back to the game last night at the Emirates, I thought Walcott was on fire. Diaby's half volley was precise as well and Chamakh finally showed the world what his main strength is - heading. It was a good game overall. And excellent result. More of the same please.

Again, here are some pictures of the things I have been cooking/eating. Enjoy!

Beef Stew

Complete "Chinese" dinner we (me and Vivian) cooked

Tofu with scrambled eggs

Beans

Close-up of beef stew

The last time I made dark Hokkien noodles I didnt have it. But now i do:

And hence we made Hokkien noodles once again.

And for dinner today we enjoyed some homemade fine dining:

Gravy for the beef

Chicken soup

Vivian's Classic Mashed potatoes

All these to complete an excellent dinner at home.

Next we plan to open a fine dining restaurant. ;)

Feast your eyes on this!

I'm pretty lazy to blog about what I have been doing this past couple of weeks. Just got back from Clayton OCF's Leadership Training Course facilitated by Auntie Merrilyn of OCF Australia. Quite neat stuffs she taught.

Oh and what's happening later tonight at 1:00am Aussie time?

IT'S ARSENAL VS LIVERFLOPS.

Thank God for live streaming seriously. I cant imagine living without ESPN. It may not be HD like back home but at least I can still watch my favouritest sport.

And here are some pictures of what i have been eating the last few weeks:

Mince meat with pasta

My first dish with rice. With Foo Yong Tan and some chicken fillet.

And with the rice leftovers i made fried rice the day after. Good training from MCKL CF camp.

Oh and I tried making my mum's famous lamb stew. I guess I can say it was successful. Kinda.

The lamb meat

Spices and sauces
Brown the meat first

Then chuck everything into the slow cooker

many hours later..

Of course I wont tell you the exact ingredients to this delightful dish. You would have to kill me to find out. It's mum's secret recipe anyhow.

I had been eating out very often with cousin Vivian and her dad. At one of those dinners this is what we had:







That last picture was one huge dish mind you. Compare the size of it with the size of the ordinary dinner plate in the background above. It's called the BBQ platter. All sorts of meat are on it. Skewed lamb, chicken schnitzel, pork ribs, beef sausages, bbq wings, etc etc. Enough to feed about 10 or more persons. And we had it with the two seafood platters above.

Enough blogging. Time to get myself psyched up for tonight's game. And that includes watching replays of Arshavin's four-goal-blitz vs Liverfools last year.

Ta.

Hokkien Noodles

The Kitchen:

Hokkien Noodles

+

Chicken and Seasoning

=


Viola!

Meanwhile here are the appliances I was blabbering about in my last post:

$9 Water Boiler

$25 Coffee Maker

$25 Slow Cooker

Week 3

It's only the end of Week 3 and I already have an online test waiting for me to take and an assignment planner due in before midnight. Well I've done the planner at least, now I just need to log in to that online test and get it done before midnight on Tuesday. Oh and did I mention that unit happens to be one of the toughest Accounting unit at Deakin? So sayest the student advisor. Oh well.

Academics aside, the past few nights have been pretty awesome. I had a long weekend starting from Thursday night, when my cousin Vivian took me to Ikea at Victoria Gardens to check it out. Bought plenty of stuffs from Ikea and Kmart, including a 3l slow cooker for $25, a coffee maker for $15, and a water boiler for $9. I'm so proud of my purchases. Appliances I can call my own. :D

Friday happened to be a "Free Public Transportation Day" in Melbourne. So that morning at around 11am I took the 767 bus to the 75 tram, got off 2 stations later, and took the 733 bus straight to Clayton. The whole journey took about, maybe 40 minutes. Played futsal from then until 4pm. Rushed home to get a shower and cooked myself dinner (I only had an hour to do all that), and went back to Clayton again for OCF. FEEL my dedication. Ha.

But it was worth all that. The futsal was fantastic and OCF was as fun as ever. Always meeting new people and loads of fun chit-chat etc etc. Finally got home at about 1.30am after supper (Yes, there are places opened till 1am to grab a bite).

Bahh, got bored of writing.

Summary of the rest of my weekend:

• Futsal (again) at Albert Park
• Planetshakers uni event at night
• Supper (again) with OCF kaki's at Lygon St
• Attended FGA Melb on Sunday
• Ate Ikea meatballs

The meatballs weren't all that great. Tastes the same as the ones back home.

Here are some pics from the Planetshakers event:





And a little something that happened just past midnight on Saturday. ;)