This new year isn't festive, but familial.
Handshakes and hugs were longer and there were more laughs.
I managed to sit down with my cousins at every stop on the first day for meals and it was sweet.

The day before, my uncle had a little Hennessy which made him extremely talkative over steamboat. Red face and loose lips are excellent tell-tale signs of inebriation.
He gave me some sips which I suspect spread the headache over.

I now decidedly like steamboats, because they bring people together. I've had a few since last week and oh, they fill me up. The small space and the hot boiling pot with goodies in it, and humour flying across the table. The jokes strike you and make you purge rice out your mouth.

Meals are really powerful in bringing people together, especially if the meal is excessive and we are compelled to dine. Such pressure evokes humour which make stuffing yourself more pleasant. This classifies as the best part of all Lunar New Year.

Of the three cars setting off from my grandmother's place when we went to Hougang and the car I was in, with my witty uncle was first even though the odds were stacked against us. I like to thing that the vehicle I was on is blessed.

It was startling to run into Jamie from the back of my father's lorry on Lunar New Year Day One on Upper Changi Rd East while she was in her family's vehicle. Shouting across to her on the road was strange but pretty cool too. Meeting a friend from school on New Year is a rare first for me.

This reminds me that I met a lot of people on Sunday in Tampines after my workout. I was pretty outraged that every food place was closed and I couldn't have my salmon or beef post-workout meal. The good Lord has made me see people whom I haven't seen for a long time for reasons that I humanly cannot fathom, but am grateful for.

White wine helps me sleep I think. My grand-uncle was very generous while emptying the wine bottle. I'm resolving to get some into a private store which I will toast to the health of my big heart. I think beer is coarse and unbecoming of my refined character.
And it makes me nauseous.

I've been stuffed so much, I think I've probably taken in 3 times the amount of carbohydrates recommended by the RDA of Singapore for 20 year-old males. Steamboat and/or rice at every stop. Right now, I feel that my midsection has been compressed top and bottom and thus it has no other option but to balloon outwards.
This is a purely horrid sensation.

I'm wary of the effects of downing a last dose of milk tonight for fear it will upset everything within.

Realisations Recently :
We must magnify the child in us, but have an adult nearby.
I'm pretty sure I like muffins more and more.
I've bulked up, but I've added fat to my frame. Which is dismal.
You never recover from the death of a close one. It's a gap that doesn't get filled in.

With God who is all powerful, nothing is impossible. Also for us humans as limited beings, our definition of impossible is far off from his. Is anything too difficult for God?

I must love because I am a reflection of my God, who is Love.

1st Corinthians 1:27-31
27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

E.Coli Is To Blame

Recently, writing for me is like starting a car with no gas.
I will avail to reproduce some of the intellectual things that go on in my head.

I call it structural irony on Saturday when I was watching the eighth season of Scrubs and then got admitted into hospital some hours later. The diagnosis was pyelonephritis.
E. Coli again was the source of my agony.
The three-day hospital stay was unasked for but was absolutely necessary I realised, because God was at work.

INSERT-
[The way God works, He does one thing which has multiple and diverse effects that all work for His divine purpose and this is so complex that we haven't even been able to preceive all the things that He's been doing.]

This is what I realised: an antibiotic treatment can be a useful metaphor. If you don't finish the course, the bacteria doesn't die out and you still get sick.
What I really mean: God, unlike an antibiotic, never stops treating you. We need to go back to God, who is the physician and healer for follow-ups all the time. If not, sin cannot be excised from us. We need treatment constantly.

Faith expresses itself through love.
Galatians 5:6
"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

All relationships need maintenance, whether if it's with another person, and especially if it's with God. If we leave it by itself, it'll degrade and start to stink.

We buy into lies when we think that we have enough of God sometimes after a heavy 'dose' of Bible Study or Christian literature. Only God fills us up. There is an infinite gap in all of us and only the Being who created us knows how to fix us up and we run away from His fix.

Humans have shallow perceptions. We make judgements based on what we see, and most times, we're not very far-sighted. This is why it is wiser to refer to God all the time.
In Isaiah 8:19, Isaiah asks "Should not a people inquire of their God?"
To Isaiah, it seems ludicrous that the Israelites turned to alternatives other than the Almighty God who had all the answers to every question.

But I guess we turn away from God because already know that God cannot concur with us and that we of course, are in the wrong.

The people we meet and come into contact with in whatever small way is definitely within God's plan. And for good reason. I think Romans 8:19 is especially concise in summing up what is taking place in the world.

"The creations waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. for creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

The human definition of freedom disparages with God's. Our definition of freedom is:
Autonomy from external sovereignty, even from and especially from God.

The freedom God actually gives is freedom from the bondage of sin.
Which as humans we actually love and uphold to be as 'nothing wrong'.
However, sin corrupts and is an object of God's righteous anger.
Dismal.

I enjoyed my hospital stay strangely, and it was not because of the food. I enjoyed the attention and maybe because I was grown up and the needles did not bother me that much. Maybe it's because being told I need to have some blood taken out of me immediately gives me little time to react when the needle is already in my arm.

Or was it because Vivien had her appendix taken out and was downstairs in the hospital. So though alone, I was also technically not alone.

I'm deeply impressed with the nursing team at CGH, and especially with the nurses on call at night. They really have a way of making me feel reassured. I have more respect for nurses than people in any other occupation. The student nurses are really cute though. And by cute I mean their disposition and gentleness. I am abashed to admit that I am attracted to one of them who somehow did not attend to me.
I wonder why.

I like to think that it was to safeguard their professionalism and not fall in love with me that they stayed away.

But the way she attended to the old man in the bed diagonal from mine really struck me because she was so caring and endearing with him. I'm going to ask God if I will see her again.

Visiting the Accident and Emergency area is a pretty interesting experience and it invokes several emotions. There's death, and you feel compassion for the bereaved; there's pain and you sympathise with them for you cannot imagine/understand their distress.
You also become a semi-detective who tries to figure out who's in for what, which can be slightly fun.

I'm grateful to my mentors who visited me and talked with me, because they really helped me a lot in defusing boredom and growing in understanding and knowledge.

In all, I'm grateful to God for everything. My attitude must first be right.

Sweet Ballad

I have been meaning to review 2008 for a bit, but still am late.
My punctuality (lack thereof) is a growing problem, and most friends have had a taste of it.
I have concluded that my detachment from the company has culminated in an untamedness disciplinary-wise, and am pretty sure that enlistment will phase out all of my slothiness.

I look forward to shaving my head, and pairing up with a mob of pungent males.
I look forward to long marches, soggy and smelly feet, and caressing my rifle, unnecessary activities and movements, and extremely early mornings.
Yet while belonging to one of the few who can live through an intermission before enlisting, I have the added woe of determining how to spend my time.

It's pretty subjective in labelling any year, or any thing really as 'good' or 'lousy' because our persons live out the same days differently.

2008 has been pivotal for Song Leng, however.
It has been a very rich year. Not economically of course, quite the opposite in that sense.

I have had many more laughs and many more woes, bouts of distress and etcetera.
I have cemented friendships, forged new relationships and learned new things and undergone a major upheaval as to what I thought I already knew.

"The righteous live by faith"-We only are righteous by virtue of our faith and we live and are faithful only by God's mercy, permission and provision.

I've rediscovered what's important, and although my answer will make people cringe or flush, I will stand by it. Jesus is most important. 18th October was a monumental date when God began to work on me.

I understood the difference between lust and love.
Lust is physical. Love is personal. Lust desires and pines. Love accepts and encompasses. Lust destroys, Love heals. Lust weakens, Love empowers.

Love is something we claim we know and believe we live out, but we actually don't.
Whatever relationship most people have now, it hardly can be Love. God's love for us, parental love, and the bond between man and wife in a real marriage (not Hollywood pairings) are real models of Love.

The world is often driven by self-interest. To do otherwise will mean that you have to suffer. And yet this is what Christians are called to do in suffering like our Lord also did when He was here.

I can no longer say I'm growing up. Rather, I'm getting old. Some person said this, and I might have said it before. We begin dying the moment we live. Since the sand in the hour-glass is running out, are we to try and live as rampantly and uncontrolledly before time is up, or should we behave in a manner worthy of Christ.

I've moved from being aggressive to being something mild in my temperament, where Crystal pointed out that I was an angry person. Ah, Crystal is a real brick. She infuriates me, and I infuriate her in return. We incite each other to think, which is precious. I treasure her company a lot.

Derek and Hakim, who are sensitive males that I'm close with, have been with me through fun and distress and also romance, though not with each other though.
Kah Kee and Zicong are dependable exercise partners; Jeremy and Dickson promise fun most times.

I have a store of new statements that I want to meditate on and develp into .
Like: People are just hiccups in one another's lives.
I might pursue the opponent of that statement and say too: People are like gum, which sticks to u, and when you remove them, a considerable blob of the gum will still remain; when u try to remove it with a tough chemical, you burn your flesh.

I will work on it, and hopefully it will make me a Nobel laureate for my revolutionary achievement.

But one thing I am sure of, People do impact one another and induce some change. But God rules over all of it and works mostly.
Just came off chatting with Ke Yi online. At risk of sounding non-masculine, it was heart-warming. It validates the above observation I just made. I've really enjoyed her abuse and will miss her and her treatment of me now on.

It makes me pretty sad to admit that the simplicity of last time will not be lived out again. I will miss this kind of life, way of living. It's already passed.
In Mandarin-"There is no banquet that goes on forever."

I will miss/ I already miss:

• The TKD bunch who change in the toilets next to the AVA room on Mondays;
• Being sheer lazy in TKD with Zhan Yi and co;
• The abuse I get from females who I suspect actually really adore me-a long list;
• The first JC 1 Orientation, which to me was pretty perfect because of the thrill and the people;
• The class gatherings, chalets, BBQ and games at those occasions;
• Pre-U Seminar with Derek in the carpark;
• The long bus ride on 5 with Hakim;
• Walking to college with Crystal;
• Running with my sister to Changi Village;
• Chinese New Year;
• Prom and especially shopping for clothes for it;
• Being in the classroom, canteen, in the food queue, in the Lecture Theatre; and so much more.

I don't often like to reminisce, because it opens me up to a peculiar feeling which I find will hampers my rational thought process. I prefer to let it slide.

The Bible is God's word, and our directory for living.

ACCOLADE
Best movie of the year: "The Dark Knight"
People who've impressed me: Heath Ledger
Usain Bolt
Michael Phelps

New Year Resolution:
To live by the Spirit and in obedience.
To love.