12:50.

This time last year, I was in the old news building at Genting Lane, sent there with a small passel of colleagues in some Sars contingency plan. Rotating or fluctuating between a-change-of-environment-is-good and argh-i-have-been-banished-and-will-never-get-confirmed-this-way.

Then, in between then and now, I've lived my journalist childhood ambition, dealt with politics, spent the year as an economically independent adult, enjoyed a truly good year actually, and then followed as God opened the way to come here. To leave behind the material world I have embraced and come here. To be a student again and to rest. And live in a different manner, to find and see and learn new things.

What a difference every year brings. And have I not yearned for this difference? Seeked for changes? Thirst for more?

Then this is what I want. This scared-to-death-but-I-will-step-out-of-the-boat feeling, this start-breathing-my-heart-is-beating-too-fast-while-my-hands-are-cold nerves. If people can jump out of an airplane for thrill, if people can do every thing they do for self-gratification, then I can do this for God.

Come on girl, get your act together. God is made stronger in your weakness, nothing can get you down if the ALMIGHTY is with you. As I've desired, so You have provided. As You have promised, I will deliver.

I love you, Lord.

More than life.

I really do.

20:47.

I will lay bare my heart.

Or at least I want to, or think I want to, I'm not too sure where I am and what I really feel, what of what I feel belong to me and what don't. I like to share my struggles, that the last two weeks have been trying, trying as I fight spirits of discouragement, fear, worry, anxiety. I want to tell you how God sent two people to tell me I can do it, and that He has confidence in me. I will also admit how I slid down the porcelain pipe and all I wanted was to pull the covers over my head and not face the world. And that even now, I have to fight to stay up. I like to share with you how I hit a low last night, and felt like I have no one to call because it seems like I have or am or am expected to be the strong one in my friendships. How I started tearing once I heard my Mom's voice over the line. How I sobbed silently when she prayed for me and sporadically teared throughout the conversation, so reassuring and wonderful her voice and herself is, how I could hear home in that voice and in the background. How God used Msn Msger to bring me comfort as I chatted with faithful friends. How I was truly desperate, truly weak, and how it required all of me to struggle against the enemy.

Over a drumming session. A service unto God. An act of worship I wanted to commit myself to. And yes, do still want despite my faltering feet and trembling legs. Over this one-hour praise and worship to be held tomorrow at 7pm, Aust time, I stand - or really kneel or lay - in the center of a struggle, a going-on in the heavenlies of such flurry I can't really comprehend the reason for.

I'm weak beyond words can describe just like my Jesus Christ's strength, love and faithfulness are more certain and real than my feeble lips can utter.

I will be transparent.

Who is Skye t? But a jar of clay.

Use me, Lord, fill me, heal me, work through me, use me.

And you, whoever you are, pray for me. Whether you think me dramatic, think me disturbed or think me weak, just pray for me. You can think whatever you want of me. Just pray for me. To my Lord Jesus Christ.

Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. Greater. My God is greater than all these, than all of me, and any thing that could possibly be or is. My God is big.

fading flames.
copyright.skye.t's

... in flaky shots of reamless colours.
copyright.skye.t's

watercolour skies from my bedroom picture window.
copyright.skye.t's

as the world ends, the fading sun reaches out one last time. for the day anyway.
copyright.skye.t's

shadows of a pink sunset. it peeks through blinds.
copyright.skye.t's

20:37.

Now and then, I wonder how it is like at home. I still call my, our HDB flat in Woodlands home even though I refer to 5*/2*2 Victoria Street as home too in conversation and in my daily life here.

When I pick up the phone to call across the seven-hour plane journey between my family and me, I see them - in my mind's eye - at their various places in the living room, kitchen and rooms. I see the phone ring, I see Dad, sitting at his comfy chair next to the phone reading his newspapers for the day, picking up the ringing apparatus or Mom, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel and rushing out of the kitchen to get the phone. I can hear the radio playing 95.8FM, Dad's favourite channel, or sometimes, it's the television that's on, on Channel U, 8 or Cable Channel 49, 55 or 56. Or Discovery Channel, which Dad loves. I can see them all in some distant mirage-like real manner in my head. Playing like a mind reel of the home I lived in for five years. With the family I've had for 22 years, 10 months and some.

The people I love most in the world.

You can call this egoistic, I don't think it is, I just think it channelled-introspection. I do wonder how they live without me. If they stop some time and look into my room and miss me for a moment the way I miss them. If they sometimes just stop or wake up feeling like they want me home because I do feel this way regarding them.

Two or three mornings ago when I finally woke up properly - it was one of those cold mornings where it's very hard to get out of a warm duvet and futon - I turned around and hugged my pillow. And I thought, "Mom". Then "Home". For a moment, spanning the half-second I pressed my eyes shut, I found myself wishing myself home.

I guess even a 50-year-old would miss his/ her mom, dad and family. Age doesn't really matter, does it? Or maturity? *shrugs* I want to hug Mom and Dad.

23:25.

But a jar of clay
Shattered into pieces I can’t find
No man could put me back again
Except the One with the divine touch

Broken alabaster jar
Good for things earthly eyes can’t see
I’m feeling my scattered pain
Oh Lord won’t you come and work in me

Beauty for ashes
Gold for toil
Undeserved kindness
From the King who saved my soul

When all I can see is the dust I’ve fallen in
And I’m caught up, in myself and me
Break me Lord out of who I am
To be who You called me to be

When in silly sorrows I bury my name
Refuse my birthright
Bring shame to your Name
Forgive me, Abba, and clothe me again

I’m sorry.

13:32.

Today was the first day I woke up on time for my morning lessons so far. Lest you think me decadent, sleepyhead and lazy, the last two notes may be true but it's actually just two lectures I missed since I don't have classes on Mondays.

Today is also the day I got my first Credit for the semester. Sigh. I know it's okay to not get straight Distinctions and Higher Distinctions and really any how, I have never been a Straight-As student (unless you factor in sporadic moments in primary school and then selected subjects only across the ages but consistency has never been with me somehow) but it seriously doesn't feel good. Feels rather bad really and it makes me edgy now I'm facing two essays, two presentations (next Wed, both) and two journals. Just have to work harder and keep plugging away. Pray for me please. There's a lot of work to get done.

After class, I went to print out an essay, submitted it, meandered to a music instruments store to look at drum sticks, walked a long way to the post office in North Melb to retrieve a package to find out it was a unauthorised repeated internet purchase that I should not be getting, walked the 20minutes home, lift was not working, climbed five flights of stairs, discovered one of the lens on my shades was missing a screw.

Whew, eh? As I walked the stairs, I was wondering if it is going to be one of those days and dialoguing wryly with Dad.

Then, my day received a ray of sunshine.

Ahem, ahem, I cooked Char Kway Teow *beams*. Tasted quite good and authentic, if I may say so myself, though it didn't have clams (not going to go hunt for them and deshell them) and lard (never been a fan any how).

*beams more*

*grins*

*chuckles*

*rolls eyes at myself*

But back to serious matters... do pray for me.

Next Friday, I'm drumming for OCF. It would be my first time drumming and until last night, I didn't know another center will be joining us. It's also one of those nights when we have a speaker instead of spliting into bible study groups like we usually do. This I didn't know until last night too.

Regular readers of this blog will know how much I miss playing for God. How much I miss drumming, my piano and playing in the worship team. And I am immensely thankful that I was asked to play next Friday. I have to be honest though that I am also nervous. Sometimes even very nervous. And it doesn't help that the song list is entirely unfamiliar to me. No, the Mandarin congregation I was at the last seven years didn't play fast Hillsong or Planet Shakers songs which makes up next Friday's song list.

Yes, I need a lot, a lot of prayer.

Dear Lord, hold me close and hold my hands.

20:42.

Interesting....

22:57.

Just watched Troy with the housemates. A movie ticket cost about $11 here so I've been very disciplined. With Troy, this afternoon Germaine spotted some Vietnamese student association at her uni selling tickets for $6 each, sms-ed slaving-over-essay-me who decided very promptly with Hannah in the affirmative.

They didn't quite like the movie, I think, though they giggled away at some scene of a certain Bloom shooting arrows like a certain elf (ahem, ahem)... but me, I was actually quite taken with it. Yes, at certain points I had to consciously suspend disbelief or brush away some cynical thought at "hollywoodization" in action but on the whole, Troy was decent, even good yeah despite me finding fault almost right from the beginning with something, specifically a too-clean horse carriage. But before that particular carriage (which rightfully should be dirtier since it had carried a king and his flunky across many sands), another scene had won me over.

The opening scene, when the narrator intoned some lines about how eternity haunts men and how we thus seek our immortality while we live grabbed me and pulled me into the movie screen. Figuratively, of course.

"Throughout time, men have waged war. Some for power, some for glory, some for honor - and some for love."

That tagline might do it for some, but I didn't see Troy as a love story. At least, the way this version of the story was shot, it was not about love to me.

It was about the fear of nothingness; the fear that when you live your limited years, you leave nothing here and possibly go to nothing. And thus you seek - in desperation to find meaning and in defiance - to make some meaning, to leave an indent in the pages of history for for whatever that's worth, it would give you something to hold on to and possibly... maybe comfort you before you close your eyes for the world to come. So you seek glory. And if your fear is strong enough, you would die for this glory.

Achilles served not his king or country but his desire to be remembered. He seeked glory so his name will still be on people's tongues a thousand years later.

I know where I'm going when my time here is done but I also know how it is like to be haunted by eternity.

There was a hollowness in the movie. The heroes, Achilles and Hector, doubted the gods their kings speak of and served, and indeed in the movie, the impotence of these gods juxtaposed against the heroes' sceptism birthed a painful hollowness overall. It was a lackness not due to the lack of a soul in the movie but a lackness due to an awareness of emptiness in existence. A tragic emptiness filled out the face of the Trojan king who decided on attacking the Greeks on the beach on the advice of his Apollo high priest. Tragic emptiness filled the girl who asked, "When will it all end?" and the sobbing princess who watched her husband failing and heard him die. But you see, it all makes sense because the pursuit of glory is hollow in itself. Achilles' drive and motivation was at its core empty. "Everyone dies," he said. Everyone dies, it is true.

And if someone's going to watch Troy soon, please help me note that opening line? Somehow on the way home, its entirety escaped me.

Thanks.

21:32.

History class today was about The Stolen Generation.

While watching a video with footage of interviews with Aborigines who were taken away from their families as children, tears welled up in my eyes a couple of times.

The horror they had to face, both parent and offspring, when the white man just came and take the children away. What horrors they have to face, parents lost and helpless and children just as so in missions and government institutions miles and miles away from home.

Brought up to be slaves. Brown babies to assimilate into white society. Black folks to be segregated.

Those taken lied to about their real families, given new names, brainwashed, inculcated into the homogenous lives the official agenda would have them live. Which weren't lives at all really.

What barbarous behaviour. What inhuman perpetuation. What evil was done unto the original people of this land on which I am residing on.

My racism course is not easy, not easy because every lecture and readings, you confront the evil of men, the wrongs we have done.

The church played a role in the stolen generations. It seems that so many times in history, the church, the body of Christ confused Christ with race or economics. So much wrong was done in the name of right.

Did those who perpetuate it know? The sisters and reverends, were they genuinely misguided? How could there be folks who preached justice in slavery because they believe the black race to be descendents of Ham who was cursed?

What wrongs have been done in the name of right indeed.

What number of hearts and homes broken, what number of souls turned away from the narrow path, what amount of tears have been shed.

When wrong is commit in the name of right.

My heart was heavy when I watched the video. Again, as in previous times when I was aware of the blood on the church's hands due to unjust events like the crusades, I felt shame.

Not shame at being a Christian.

Not shame at being part of the body of Christ.

But shame that we have been so wrong, and are so wrong at times.

So tell me that Christians should not exercise their intelligence. Tell me that we should be unquestioning. I can't. Won't. Refuse. Absolutely.

We can't right a wrong already committed but we can be serious and love. Serious and learn to really do God's will. Close to God so that we won't see man's propaganda as truth. Exercise discernment and God-given brains to see the influence of everything on everything else, and then with God's strength and grace, to pick through the chaff to glean the gold.

I'm sorry.

21:29.

They are together. They finally got together for good. A happy ending. Forever in the last page of immortality. Ross and Rachel. Friends finale. Aaahh, 10 years, 10 years. I was only 13, 12, something like that. Now it's over. Over. Augh. The theme song still plays in my head. It's remarkable how a sitcom feels like it was part of my life but 10 years, we walked some path together. Au revoir, Friends.

13:34.

It's official. I'm a uni student, an undergrad, a da xue sheng. And pray tell, you ask with amusement and not without some sarcasm, what brought that on after 10 weeks of school and more than three months after leaving the corporate world?

A trip to the school library on a Saturday afternoon. Specifically, this Saturday afternoon, as in like, today, like, you know a few hours ago.

Yesterday, I spent 90 minutes in the library, grabbing more books for the three essays on my plate. When I finally got to the checkout counter, I discovered I couldn't borrow any book while an overdue book I took out for a friend was outstanding. Working with what I could, I, ahem, proceeded to go to a dusty, isolated end of the library to stuff my precious books in some hidden corner so I could retrieve them collectively without repeating the gathering process.

So that was what I was doing in a library on a weekend morning. And somehow, doing it made me feel very, uni-ish (new word! copyright!).

It's strange how good service can add on to one's day. From the grouchy, unsmiling librarian yesterday, I faced a helpful, warm librarian today who went to manually find and check out the overdue book I dropped into the bin five minutes before I appeared at the check-in counter with a pile of 10 books.

It was just small talk, about the music books I was borrowing, whether I could sing, and how those who could not end up writing about songs instead, but it added a ray of sunshine to my day.

There was a solace involved, walking to RMIT on a Sat noon, seeing few students along the way or in the library, and seeing in my journey both to and fro lots of fellow walkers with trolleys and bags for and fro VicMkt. There was a freedom, a sense of liberty of having time, being able to spend my day as I wish to. Deadlines could not spoil the immense still joy inside of me as I simply walked along, hoops earrings, my trusty retro-ish Topshop bag, light blue sports jacket covering a pink (!) peasant blouse totally unlike me but which looked ahem, rather good on me, colourful toe socks and puma sneakers on.

I loved the weather, 13 degrees but pleasant without cold wind.

Somehow, I felt at peace. Peace with myself and the world.

Peace.

While crossing one of the traffic lights on my usual route to school, a thought bounced into my mind and surprised me even as I was and still am unsure of its truth - "I'm falling in love with Melbourne".

Umm....

As I walked back from school, six books in hand and four stuffed in bag, I looked into a reflective window I passed and again, with the same feeling as if the thought jumped me instead of originating from me, I thought, "I really like being a student again."

And Germaine, who also went on a minor sojourn to her school's library at the same time I did, and myself then congregated back home and went out to VicMkt. She got a very nice jacket with a hood and a scarf. Me, I got a scarf and gloves for five bucks each. Darn, I like VicMkt.

11:05.

I woke up at 7:58, glanced at my handphone, and snuggled into my warm futon while pulling my comforter closer. My body felt like it could do with more sleep but my mind was strangely awake. I had breakfast, took a bath, then spent a leisurely morning devotion at the breakfast table as the sky though the picture window changed a hundred times moving from left to right.

It has been a good start to the day. Lecture's at 11:30. I'm starting to feel sleepy again. Thank God, the fever and sore throat are almost gone but I still feel the effects of the former making me tired... very tired. And I think I might be having a chill, since I got a bit of a runny nose going and a slight bit of the sneezes. All right, got to go to class now. Have a good day, people.

13:33.

Sigh. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

14:24. The 33rd Missionary Convention at Swanston Street Church Of Christ concluded today. It was a week long event.

For me, it started on the Friday before last, when Ross Paterson, the speaker for the convention spoke to OCF at our combined meeting. It was a cold rainy night when the temperature apparently dropped to 6 degrees by the time I got home at 2am (No, the meeting didn't last that long but I won't go into a separate story now).

There was a call at the end of the meeting during prayer, to stand up if you are willing to give your all for Christ, even if you don't know what that "all" would require of you. Midway through the meeting, I already decided that if a response was asked for, I would respond. So I stood. I needed the re-affirmation, perhaps it was a re-dedication, but I wanted to tell God publicly again that yes, You have me.

After that, previous varied similar scenes ran through my mind. From how I accepted Christ, responding to the invitation to "give God 100 percent"; the Joshua 21 seminar when I was 17 when I kneeled on stage and gave God "a blank check", the currency being my life; when I was 18 at a bu tao hui held in Ngee Ann and I was with Anne, Simin, Joce and Gerald and I went up front to the affirmative call to "go where He wants you to".

I still want to give more. And I know this sounds utterly foolish and is utterly foolish and dangerous to utter but I do. I do because I recognise that even though I have surrendered, even though I know my life is not my own, even though I am on the altar, there are areas in my life which I have mentally given to God but emotionally have not. The stuff that makes me go, ummm.... yeah God you can have this too, I give it to you but ummm....

That same day, while Ross was speaking, a thought, a question came to me: "Can you handle it if you never return to journalism?"

I have given my writing to God, and desire to use this gift as He wills but the question jolted me.

Despite the warts during the time I had in the newsroom, both in Tribune and the daily, I still love journalism. Next to journalism, I don't see any other career. I can see stuff like working in a family run B & B, or teaching in a foreign land but these are not stuff I see myself staying in or even wanting to stay and continue in for significant periods. Maybe I will change but next to journalism, I don't see any other career. Besides missions.

I don't think I'll ever cease to be a journalist, somewhere in my heart and the way I work. Nor do I think I will ever stop loving it. But yes, I told God my umm, yeah... if that's how You would have it, Lord, I give it to you. The "umm" was in my answer and heart but gave I did. And I was aware that there would be more of such, the hidden things which I must give to God if I'm serious about giving Him all. All.

[Disclaimer: I'm not saying God is calling me not to go back to Singapore and journalism. The possibility of such is still very valid and high and real.]

God is still working in my life, even post-Easter Camp, in a very real fashion and I'm very glad for I really detest the spiritual-high syndrome of Christian events after which you lapse back into normalcy.

Normalcy scares me and during the past week, hearing about how ordinary people can make a difference, and being reminded that one has to be different to make a difference, something that begun stirring in my heart a week or so after Easter Camp was articulated.

As I start to be integrated into OCF, as I even code switch with each person to meet him/ her at a place comfortable to him/ her, I'm afraid of something. I'm afraid of normalcy, that I become the opposite of "different". I'm becoming very comfortable here. I feel incredibly blessed and I have taken ownership of my cell group, having started fasting once weekly to pray for various things and my cell group and endeavoring to continue this. I feel for my cell group and care for these people, even though we have some way to go before we truly start to know each other more. I'm not complaining, I'm utterly thankful for all these but well... in some way, I have resisted joining a youth group all these years, choosing to stay in the Mandarin congregation where the majority are 50 and above because I didn't want to be in the Christian youth subculture.

If you ask me to define what I mean, I cannot truly do so. Maybe it's that when one is integrated into a subculture, one moves with the flow, with the crowd and I can't be comfortable with that. Maybe it's when you are in a group, it's harder to walk against the current.

I'm not too coherent here but how do you be different then? What is difference? Maybe my fever is working against me here (been running a slight temperature since Sat noon).

On other notes, my cell group went up to the mountains to a place called Dandenong on saturday. Beautiful place but it was raining and at a point, hailing, and quite misty all round too. I was rather happy with it since I never seen hail.... Had lunch at a quaint English cottage looking place called Miss Marples, named after one of Agatha Christie's characters. I had soup with sourdough, fruit scone with home made jam and fresh cream and a trifle for dessert. I was full after just having soup but I recklessly wanted more (hey, the place's an hour drive away).

Would post pictures soon, and those from Easter Camp too. Would put them all on a website then let you guys know. And yes, I will try to do it soon.

It's 18 degrees outside but it feels a lot colder to me. Oh well, I did always want to live in cold Brit weather. Only this is Australia. I can imagine how miserable London can get. And it's still only Autumn.