Thank You Mummy and Papa!!!

What joy awaited me just minutes after i awoke from my after breakfast-nap (dont laugh. i was tired. all the eating you know.) My birthday present from the parents arrived in full FedEx pomp - big van and signature-required-please-ma'am. FedEx. We deliver.

A gigantic FedEx box containing 85% paper strips and 15% present was gleefully torn apart.

Parents, here are the pictures as requested. =)

I shall wear it to sleep.


































































Okay i give up on the arrangement of the pictures. Pictures, please run around as you please.

MORE BEHOLDING:

BEHOLD!!!

One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.

-Robert Fulghum

Bean: Veh, you are very philosophous.

High on the brown stuff.

I *pant* dont think *pantpant* i can take *gasp*... coffee anymore.

Wobbles around.

Why must Vancouver be so pretty? It's distracting me from Hybridization: sp Orbitals and the Structure of Acetylene.

It's 7pm and it's outside my window is a Perfect Picture of Prettiness. The tops of the trees are dipped in gold from the setting sun, and the mountains behind it are lavendar and lilac. The mountains cut an outline in the seashell-pink sky and a house is sitting across the street, hidden in the trees. 715pm, the mountains look like theyre leaking purple into the sky. But oh man i cant take a picture cos its too bright and the sky just looks stupidly white, and thats not what it's supposed to do!

I am now chock full of rubbish. I have consumed an estimate of 40% chemical-preservative-fat-sugar mush, 35% useful food, and 25% water. I had cookies, an apple and juice for breakfast, one GIANT bowl of mac and cheese for lunch, and a quarter-pounder burger with fries from Macdonalds for dinner. Macdonalds is absolutely nonsense. They sell lumps of burger-shaped cow backside-fat.

I need a detox. I'm oozing msg suspended in oil...

HTML i love yoooo

jessie's blog

OHO! i have done it! my first post entirely using html. All please clap and cheer accordingly.

Thankyouthankyou. And the Jessie link works too. *smug look*

Blabberbloo.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand POOF! go my hopes of going home for Christmas. Da Yee will only pay $1000 (and it's not fair to ask for more), papa refuses to pay the rest, and since the money hasnt fallen from the sky into my cup noodles, I guess i'll see all you people in the summer of 2007.

At least it's not 2 years like i ominously told everybody.

And i'll be going to San Ramon for Christmas with Bean's family i think, so it wont be a tragically cold, lonely, friendless Christmas either. I asked God last night if i could go home and he said no (i get vibes about yes and no sometimes, and theyre always right, so...), and i very dramatically wailed at my pillow as usual. Ah well all in God's big plan. I'm horribly disappointed, of course. But i expect good things will come of it, and in the end God will say, "Ah, see!? Heng you followed me." Papa says do what He says, and you will have perfect peace - *sit on lotus leaf and hum Middle C*.

Mummy wrote me a very dramatic email in response to my post on Thanksgiving, and being my mother's daughter, i leaked some salt water while reading it. I seem to be doing a lot of crying these few days, but do not on any account take it as an indication that i am unhappy. Quite, quite the opposite. Anyway, here's a part of her email:

I can only say, faithful is my God, and the faith that i know, and the God that i know is making hiimself known to my daughter. I am blessed through the generations! hahahah. Wat a joy.

I know it'd be so for you, and his answers to your prayers, "aye" and "amen". Wat a joy and priviledge to know such a God.

And i know that if you know Him, and follow Him, i need not worry, cos you're in good hands - hands better than mine, that i am sure...

I love my mummy to the ends of the earth. It's all sitrring and passionate and all that, but she means every word of it and all the emotion in those words is exactly how she feels. Papa says thats the way she is, and thats why he married her. Haiya i want to get married too. I wonder what my husband will marry me for. Not for my scrutinizing insects, i'm sure.

Anyway... Joke of the day:
Q: What bees make the most milk?
A: Boo bees!

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!

Kay sleepy time. Nightnight.

The Call for Money

Can someone loan me $895 CAD please?

I promise to pay it back when i get my next pay package (but i do have to get a job first).

Da Yi Yi says she will pay for my air ticket home for Christmas if it costs $1000. But it's peak period and everything is double that amount.

So i'm not very happy with the aeroplane people.
Moneysuckers.

I must, i must, i must

DO WORK ON WEEKENDS!!!

Oh the horror. Oh the grief. Oh all the stupid, annoying unfinished work.

Giving Thanks.

I declare this period of my life, Thanksgiving.

Now this is not where we start comsuming copious amounts of turkey.

When i went for Encounter in the summer, i was somewhat burdened by the fact that i had to go back to Canada after my four glorious months of frivolity (also called Summer in Singapore 2006). Not just back to Canada and having all that homesickness and depression and non-existant hardworkingness again, but to an entirely different place, and to entirely different people. I had to leave behind all the things i loved and i was familiar with (and i'm a big big fan of Familiar) to go to some alien land and make friends, to which my reaction is !!! *picture Ron Weasley's terrified-of-spiders face*.

Anyhow, there was a session at Encounter where Ps Kelly told us to release all the resentment and bitterness in our lives, and give it up to God. I realised at that point that i highly resented having to go back to Canada, so i asked God for healing and for courage to carry on down the path i had chosen for myself. So there i was sitting by myself and praying about the whole mess, when Ps Kelly suddenly announced on the microphone that God had given her a word, and the word was something along the lines of:

"There are people here who are going to go through a big change in their lives and you are afraid of what is going to come. Jesus hears your prayer and He wants you to know that you will not be alone, because He will be there with you and He will provide for you if only you would trust Him."

*Dramatic music plays*

So there i sat again, blinking stupidly to myself in utmost amazement. There it was, the answer to my prayer almost instantly.

Now that i'm actually here, i can only watch with stupendous astonishment as God fulfills His promises. Everything that happens now is a cause for praising His name and thanking Him for His provision. And the marvellous thing is that i dont deserve the smallest bit of any of that. And when i think of how blessed i am, i feel so ashamed that i ever felt discontented.

I have:
Parents and family (cousins, aunts, uncles all inclusive) who very very veryveryveryvery obviously love me to bits. And a dog who is speechlessly cute and who i feel the need to kiss very much.
A spiritual family and spiritual parents.
Marvellous friends. The Jessie, the Bean, the Chew, the everyone else.
A very pretty campus in an incredibly pretty Vancouver.
A spanking new residence in a Christian environment, in the nicest part of campus.
A room that somewhat resembles a hotel suite. I see a pretty lane with pretty trees and a pretty house outside my window.
SIX pillows. Sing: So much i've got to give it away! Gave bean one.
Classes with splendid Profs and fun courses. Seriously, each and every one of them.
Nice people in all my labs.
Nice people in my residence.
Good food. A lot. In residence.
Shampoo that makes my hair nice. (Pantene Ice Shine)
Alot more that i cant recall or otherwise havent uncovered.

I can only say all glory to God.

Wah lao Tangky! Who says you will retain!!! Nonsense.

I know you wont.

The Thrifty Little Birds.

I've just used a squirty bottle full of bathroom cleaner-water to clean my sink and counter top. The sink is now very satisfactorily shiny and gleamy, as are the taps. See, having a room with your own bathroom has slight drawbacks. Cleaning up after your own dirt is your own responsibility. So when the dirt starts to annoy me, that's when i will decide to start cleaning. Papa and i went shopping at Superstore for the household items involved in bathroom hygiene. Due to inexperience in such matters, we lingered in front of the bathroom cleaner-water bottles for a significant amount of time, weighing their virtues. In the end we took the cheapest one that professed to be able to clean everything.

I've officially had school for one whole week now, and i havent blogged for that amount of time and more (yes, i feel adequately horrified about it). Classes are fine, no outstanding grievances of the murderous sort or anything. I'm really looking forward to my very splendid display of diligence and the very befitting reward of Very Good Marks at the end of term. I shall 1. Endeavour to keep up with the reading, 2. Try to remember to finish online quizzes, 3. Revise, 4. Shop, 5. Everything else that i cant remember, but that i should do.

I have discovered to my dismay, that the textbook of the subject i'm most interested in (Vertebrate Structure and Function, BIOL 204) is immensely difficult to read. Lengthy and rather dry discussions of the characteristics of the 42348 critters featured in the book leave me gasping for air, and slightly dizzy. People who invent words like Labyrinthodont and Lissamphibia and Osteichthyes should be invited to swallow a dictionary. The Cell Biology book is better though. It has big words and pictures that are thankfully, coloured.

Now Asian Studies is another matter altogether. It's... interesting. Dr Fran Harlow is big, round, wheezy and rather ugly. She also sounds like a man. Now why would that be? one might ask. Has nature been unkind to her? Why no, little children, this is not the case. Dr Harlow sounds like a man, because she is a man! Really. I'm not kidding. She/He's transgendered. She said so herself. My sheltered little Singaporean self was so stunned that i think my diaphram became numb for a bit. What's more, she was Bean's Asian Studies teacher last term, but at that time she was her other half, Dr Larry Preston. We had an exciting time discussing all that. What is the world coming to eh?

There's a girl on Bean's floor from Singapore who's my age. And i tell you, there are so many connections that it's got me thinking that Singapore is smaller than half a little red dot. Her name is Shu Ling (MGS/ACJC girl) and she:
1. Knows Zhuping (from her Chinese class in AC)
2. Knows Leon (who doesnt?)
3. Is the girlfriend of Jon Ong, the guitarist in some songs Daryl sent to me (his friend i think). Incidentally, the singer in those songs, Joy, is also in UBC.
4. Is Amelia Koe's childhood friend/neighbour. And her brother used to date Amelia's sister.
That's all. I think. Okay it doesnt sound very impressive when written out like that, but i tell you, the finding out of all this is eyebrow-raisingly breathtaking. haha.

Thrift shopping is one of the funnest things on earth i think. Think of it as stretching the dollar five times it's value without even trying in the least. I went with bean on sunday after church to one on Broadway and another on some other road. I would have bought a large part of the shop if not for my concience hammering very hard on the part of the brain in charge of Moral Center. I bought Levi's jeans for $14 bucks (they look brand new), a Prada jacket (becasue it's Prada right.), practically new, very comfortable shoes (that still need to be broken in *stares vehemently at blisters*) for $36, and a Japanese patterned obi-style sash thingthing. Bean and i were very pleased little birds on sunday.

Carey Hall, Vancouver.

I can only think of one reason why i got an absolutely marvellous room. Only by God's grace.

The National Geographic is for ahem... entertainment purposes. haha.

I am terribly homesick. Being homesick is worse than being carsick. I feel like i can never be happy again.

I want mother.

mehhh...