i’ve just finished reading dear john, and it was a really good read. (:
the kinokuniya membership privileges are so awesome, i’m so tempted to sign up. 20% off storewide! i’ll go crazy buying up half the store (which might be a bad idea).
sometimes, the smallest things can warm a heart.
and other times, the smallest things can hover like an ominous raincloud that threatens to never leave.
i screwed up in the audition room today, but left with something far more precious. i know i have this gift; i don’t need others to validate it for me. but i’m gonna use it to make others happy (so please tell me if my singing irritates you), and i’m not going to sing to win.
the process of letting go is proving to be extremely difficult so far. i think i need divine intervention in this area.
i need a hug. a big one.
and i need my faith to carry me through everything that’s gonna happen in the next 1.5 months, and more.
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as a chorister, i compartmentalise my concert experiences into a few parts. the mundane practices, the focused practices, the lineup to the big day – which includes the purchasing of flowers at wholesale prices, the writing of cards and packing a numerous amount of things – and finally, concert day.
at syc and friends last night, i could almost hear the notes of enjoyment and passion from each and every chorister as they presented various lithuanian pieces. the second half of the concert was light mass, and the syc ensemble singers were joined by more singers. i absolutely loved light mass – nevermind the latin language, which i can never get my head around. the addition of the drum, two accomplished concert pianists and the double bass made the 6-movement piece magical.
it’s no secret that i love choral music. i really do. granted, i’m not especially gifted in pitching, nor am i able to transpose scores in an instant. but hearing the blend of four sections and seeing people’s passion translated into music transports me to another realm.
and post-concert syndrome entails the longing to be part of a choir again.
but, i’m not so sure. having been out of the choral scene for three years now, i don’t find myself yearning to immerse myself in weekly rehearsals and picking up scores just for the fun of it.
maybe, just maybe. one day. after lots of prayer and consideration. (:
–
singapore’s been good, so far. and God has definitely been good to me, for that i am eternally grateful.
and, marmalade pantry’s nutella cupcakes are to. die. for.
and, christmas is coming!
and, i love you guys.
xo,
d
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a little dark & twisty inside
yes, it’s been awhile since i updated. so please forgive me if i start rambling, because i don’t quite know what to say.
you know how there are moments which you think define your entire life forever? you stand on the escalator and suddenly a thought pops into your head and you find yourself thinking, “okay, this is it. life is never gonna be the same.” and yet life as you know it falls back into place as if it never left.
and there are moments which change your life when you don’t expect it to.
but, we don’t live our lives by moments. we remember snippets of life by moments, that’s for sure – but we never live them by moments, we live them in a way we are comfortable with – even if we don’t know that we’re uncomfortable with the comfortable.
i told you i was gonna ramble. haha.
it’s been an emotional upheaval since that day before my final paper. from finding strength for my first solo performance on stage (planetshakers school of creative arts showcase) to actually completing my final paper in 1 hour 10 mins (even shiyou was appalled), it all came from Him.
but it helped that i had something to look forward to, and it was andrew and yvette’s wedding (: suffice it to say that it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. from the church wedding to the dinner reception. food was awesome, the speeches made me cry, and having the extended family around was wonderful.
i haven’t been my usual self lately. perhaps it has got something to do with watching heaps of episodes of grey’s anatomy (i think i’m addicted to that show) and some life-altering situations which force me into changing perspectives.
it’s funny; i once wrote on my livejournal that every single one of us thinks we’ve made the biggest sacrifice, when the truth is that the biggest sacrifice ever made was the one where Jesus died on the cross. yet when faced with adverse circumstances, we never seem to summon that very fact to our minds.
so yes, i might not laugh as much and i may make stupid comments these few days. weeks. i don’t know. but i hope and pray that you guys don’t take offence, but don’t hesitate to hold back if you think i need a wakeup call.
and know that through everything, i love Him more than before. i’m gonna trust Him with everything i have, because sometimes it feels like He’s the only thing i’ve got.
and i love you guys too. because you are my family, in more ways than one.
as i begin this process of letting go, i am a little dark and twisty inside. yet i know He is shining the light, guiding me out of it, in His way, His time, and His wonderful grace.
xo,
d
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music makes you feel a feeling
this post is a tribute to the awesomeness of acapella music.
enjoy! (:
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tonight, is going to be a night of discipline.
thank you for the rain, and for the cool and pensive night.
i can only do this with You. (:
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thank you,
to those who give me constant encouragement, who give me laughter, who give me love during this hard time. (: for random visits, funny jokes, and food deliveries. for taking time to ask, “are you okay?” &for helping put a smile on my face during this difficult period.
i’m going to continue believing that He is in control; that the storm surrounding others is most certainly not mine. and that everything that’s happened is to propel me into my God-given destiny.
for now, i’m going to focus on what’s important: my exams, and that God is love – in every season of my life.
again, thank you guys (: love you guys HEAPS.
xo,
d
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the sad truth about creativity
i wonder how many of us have had a much different view of our dream careers.
as a child, i grew up wanting to be many things. first, i wanted to be an air stewardess – more specifically, a singapore girl. the way they were so demure and classy, all while being given the opportunity to travel the world, intrigued me to no end. as my mother embarked on her teaching career (which, i must say, has been pretty successful thus far), i wanted to be just liker her. quoting meredith grey from grey’s anatomy, “you’re her mother. she worships the ground you walk on.” i did indeed worship my mother, and what she did. for a little while at least.
over the years, my whims and dreams never got less presposterous – at least in today’s standards. at age eight, i became very fascinated by the weeds growing at the huge grass patch in school (anyone remembers the field at nanyang primary’s then-campus two?), and set about the task of “arranging” them into mini bouquets. that was when i started becoming fascinated with flowers, and wanted to be a florist – and then announced it one night at dinner. my dad then took me aside and very sternly told me: “your mum and i didn’t pay so much for your education for you to play around with flowers.”
i remember being shell-shocked, and never brought it up again. that doesn’t mean that the idea stopped crossing my mind though. haha.
and then one rainy night, my mum brought me to the cinema to watch legally blonde. i love that movie, by the way. it inspires me to study every time i choose to slack (which is a lot of the time, haha). from there, i decided that law was a respectable profession, worthy of all the money my parents have spent on me (funny how i started becoming so practical at age 11). i loved english, loved to write, and – more importantly – i loved to argue, and absolutely loved winning the argument. being a lawyer it was! i practically mapped my entire life out there and then. from primary school, i was going to work really hard and get myself a place in singapore’s most prestigious girls’ secondary school. from there, i’d gain automatic entry into singapore’s best junior college, and then score myself a scholarship to cambridge/oxford, and go back to singapore to be a hotshot lawyer.
and we all know what happens next.
life itself decides to be creative and throws me a completely different hand which threw my entire plan out of whack.
i went to a different secondary school – not that it mattered, really. once there, teenage rebellion set in. i decided that i wanted something more than simply good academic results and a decent career. i wanted to have fun. and so i joined the choir.
for four years of my teenage life, i threw myself into music. which is ironic in itself, because i hated the piano. but in the choir room, that didn’t seem to matter. we sang, we laughed, we hungout, and then competition between us began. we were all good, and we all wanted to be favourites, because we knew what would inevitably come next. a position in the committee, which meant the world to us then.
and then it struck me that i wanted to a choir conductor. i clearly had a passion for music – the technicalities could come later. so i worked hard towards that dream.
(i did tell you that my dreams didn’t get less presposterous as the years went by. hahaha.)
to say the least, this post was inspired by dawn yang, whom i’ve found to be a much better read than xiaxue. (: she posted the video below on her blog, and then talked about the structures of today’s education system – which seems to be similar all around the world.
this video is by sir ken robinson. sir ken robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of innovation and human resources. he has worked with national governments in europe and asia, with international agencies, fortune 500 companies, national and state education systems, non-profit corporations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. do watch it, it really does hit home.
as a student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in arts, i know that i have been given a huge privilege that my parents have presented this opportunity to me. not simply the opportunity of higher education, but also the chance to do something i am actually interested in.
i believe that we have been created by a passionate, creative God. which is probably why there are passions within us, and the urge to create – even if we can’t really bring our passions and creations into fruition. yet, i reckon that because we are made in the image of God, we are like Him in so many ways, yet we choose to deny it time and again.
in sociology, politics, and international relations, i have learnt that structures are put in place to maintain the order of society. yet sometimes i’m not sure if these structures are meant to put us in our place, or to create a place for us to remain immobile.
does anyone remember the gifted education programme in singapore? i’m not sure if primary schools today continue to run it, but it was the bane of my existence from age eight onwards (the very same age that i wanted to be a florist for the rest of my life). at the age of nine, almost every primary school student is put through a rigorous testing exercise in order to determine whether or not they are “gifted”. if it turns out (from the academic testing, of course) that they are, they are then put in “gifted” classes, which run very differently from normal ones. needless to say, gifted kids are held in high esteem.
my mother heard through the grapevine that it was possible to prepare your child for this aptitude test. and so i went through my mother’s way of grooming me to be a gifted kid. first step: mensa. (i’m not divulging my mensa score here; ask if you wanna know) second step: a multitude of american and british scholastic tests, ranging from english to critical thinking to math. third step: hiring a tutor who claimed to “specialise in training kids to enter the gifted education programme”.
from there, i started the process of memorising the english thesaurus (which has come in pretty useful so far – kudos to mum!) and solving math problems created for 10 and 11-year-olds. when i couldn’t do them, my tutor would scold me to no end and say that my future was doomed because i wasn’t a bright kid.
i will never hire such a tutor for my kids in future.
but anyway, back to the point. i started hating math, because no matter what i did – i never excelled in it. never. this led to a chain of “problems” as i grew up. chemistry was a huge problem (i can’t balance chem equations), and so was physics. secondary school was tough, and i found myself struggling time and again. it didn’t help that being in an elite school meant that stellar results were expected from each and every one of us, and i was no exception.
to cut a long story short, my mum decided that the typical singaporean primaryschool-secondaryschool-juniorcollege-university route just wouldn’t cut it for me, and (praise God) decided to send me overseas to study. and i realised that i wasn’t weird, but that God had wired me in a way to do what He wants me to do.
as a future media practitioner, i hope that my work will not be dismissed as unimportant. sure, it isn’t as important as calculating profits, or building a functional bridge, or championing an arduous research project. yet at the same time, these are all creative industries. we were not created to be boring, robotic beings, but to be alive and draw inspiration from the wonderful creations around us in whatever we do.
after 1300 words (yes, wordpress does have a wordcount feature), i guess my point is that creativity has been greatly dismissed in our world. every single time we try to break the moulds, there will be people who greatly oppose them. one of the most famous of these was Jesus. He made wine from water, He made friends with the unexpected – only to be hated and ridiculed.
creativity stems from trying to do the impossible. perhaps i’m wrong, but i know that being creative is going somewhere noone has gone before. some would deem that as impossible, i don’t know.
i’m not sure if the education system has made us to be this way either. mistakes are definitely frowned upon, but i wonder how many mistakes we need to make in life before we start living – when we come to the realisation that mistakes make up life, too.
and well, in response to dawn yang’s entry, i probably wouldn’t change anything about the education system i was brought up in. for the simple reason that from my 10 years in formal education in singapore, i have learnt that creativity is to be embraced. perhaps it’s a form of “reverse psychology”, for me.
that said though, i’m not sure how i can be creative with next week’s international relations paper. we’ll see how that goes, hey?
but more importantly right now: FOUR DAYS TO FREEDOM! and, two weeks to singapore. (:
(if you’re still reading – congratulations, and thank you for bearing with my nonsensical and sometimes banal rambling)
xo,
d
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the i-heart revolution ♥
if one were to ask me what this film is really about, it’s hard to explain.
the crux of it, is that God is love. and if the living God lives in us, we need to go out and love.
yet that conclusion is too simplistic somehow, because there is so much more to the film than love, itself. it explains the inadequacies of human nature, and how Jesus can overcome those inadequacies. and how we are not perfect, that we don’t need to be.
and so much more.
somewhere near the beginning of the film, it begins to unravel the state of ignorance in our world today. everything is about us, about getting it now, about who can get it first. and then it goes on to show how we have not learnt our lessons, despite the fact that history has taught us time and again to look back.
but the one line that struck me particularly hard is this:
once the journalists have gotten their coup of a story, the cameras die down, and the world turns to the next big thing – what happens next?
even though the locus of control for a journalist (especially one starting out) is awfully small, i hope that i never become the kind of journalist to hide behind the comfort of my laptop screen and publication. of course, things might never go according to plan – but one can hope, can’t they?
so please, look out for we’re all in this together. it’s a must-watch, and i’m not saying that as an emotional response to a touching film. (:
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life’s a climb
your words in my memory
are like music to me
i’m miles from where you are,
i lay down on the cold ground
i, i pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms
–
don’t worry, my emotions aren’t spiralling out of control at some unearthly time of the night.
it’s just – sometimes lyrics are better able to express feelings as opposed to awkward, stunted writing, no matter how heartfelt.
at the end of the day though, life’s a climb; but the view’s great. (:
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