should old acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne?
some of you might disagree, but i think some of them, at least, should be. and sometimes it's not so much of a question of should and be forgot as it is a question of is and forgotten. is old acquaintance forgotten, and days of auld lang syne? now the answer to that, i think, is yes. some things are better left forgotten and unsaid, or, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie, we say. perhaps those are really excuses for the fact that we do forget. how do we not? as time goes by, as brain cells die. or we find Life and Love like no other we've ever experienced.

yet there are times when the past creates fear in the present. and that's the only time, i think, we don't forget - simply because we don't allow ourselves to. but here's a thought for 2008: God's intervention in your life was (or will be) as real as all the times you've sinned, or done something that made you feel horrible. more real, perhaps, than all those times. i know i need to remember that.

it's about half-an-hour to the sun setting as i'm sitting at my desk typing this, and i'm sure people all over the world are doing the same; trying to preserve the last measure of 2007 daylight in words that ultimately mean so little in the grander scheme of things. what's another new year, anyway? as the world parties on, bluffing itself that the mire we wade deeper into everyday doesn't exist there will be people who will die in the first minute, within the first hour of 2008 not knowing that Jesus died for them. what will anybody's words, what will their hopes and plans for 2008 matter then?

i spent the last day of 2007 buying new running shoes and watching across the universe with sean. do watch it if you're a beatles fan, it's got some truly lovely dream sequences (unfortunately signifying drug abuse) and extremely thoughtful covers of some of their best songs.

i wrote before, and i quote, (there are) days you feel the exact feeling i believe you get right after you know you've lost perhaps the only person you'll ever really love with that love which comes only once. it's the loss of that mad kind of love . . . the kind which some people are lucky enough to experience but once in a lifetime, and which i will believe forever i had the fortune to have had, as i write this with a sort of wistful longing as one of those who have joined those ranks. i wrote that in 2004, and to me, that's pretty much what the movie was about. that mad kind of love - they loved without fear said the trailer. when you were young, fearless, felt invincible, felt you could do anything just because you were together in the world, and when it ended you felt it would never be that way ever again ---

so now, forgive me if i sound old, cynical, jaded and disillusioned (i don't think i am in the least, really, and you should read on so you can conclude as to whether i am or not) but: BULLSHIT.

hur, hur, hur. this is NOT going to be an emo post about 2007 and the past. i mean, i'm like so totally over that kind of post, hello (now hold on while i check if there are any past posts to incriminate me)?!

well, okay. i'm not so totally over that kind of thing - but i believe i can say BULLSHIT! now because i got baptised and i believe i've found true freedom loving Jesus. which sounds so totally cliche but it's true! and can you like, so totally count the number of "so totally" 's i've used in the space of two paragraphs?

i will always enjoy, and be able to identify with movies like across the universe - think eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and love me if you dare - but in the movie the hero and heroine hook up right after the heroine's first boyfriend gets killed in the vietnam war. and even though i know sean and i both felt a sweet sort of wistfulness when she broke into if i fell in love with you i couldn't agree more when sean turned to me after they woke up in the morning in the hero's bed and said "that's like just major rebound lah!"

IT'S TRUE AND YOU KNOW IT.

call me preachy, but it's so much more comfortable and restful to be practical, to be older in Christ and wiser in His ways. because that's what the Bible says we were created for - "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them," Ephesians 2:10 - and it follows that we will never find true contentment and joy in life unless we've surrendered our lives to Him to take care of. and i've found that no amount of telling yourself you have to get over something is as effective as telling yourself to believe that all your sins are forgiven, making you a child of God and best of all, a new creature in Him. no matter what's happened before.

"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; so far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12-13.

oh sure, i think i churned out writing that was a lot more poetic and thoughtful when i was younger and in the throes of youthful desperation and indulging in the belief that things would never be the same, in an i-am-only-eighteen-but-i've seen-so-much-of-love-and-life-already kind of way. and i'd probably have cried buckets if i'd watched across the universe when i was 17 or 18. but i don't think i'd want to be that way now. how unnecessarily complicated it makes things.

we don't ever think much of how the present will affect the future when we're living it, do we? especially when we're young - we were young, and foolish after all. i know i didn't. and i didn't know that i'd be haunted by whatever happened before when it happened in the before, and i'll bet anything jon didn't know i'd be haunted by whatever happened in his before. i don't think i'm avoiding the truth when i say that for us - for me really - it's a matter of trusting that God makes all things new if only we have faith in Jesus, and having faith that He did create us for each other. some things you just know, and don't question.

it is wearying, to have the world create doubts about true love, when you're struggling to cling on to everything He's promised, and you can't even see the "so much more" beyond that. and it is wearying, because you know you're rejecting God's blessings with each moment you allow the past to wear you down - what's more His blessings are right there waving pom-poms in front of you, bright red shiny ones catching the sunlight, and glow-in-the-dark ones for the torturous nights.

still, we are human after all; He never said there'd only be sunshine, and the Bible says that there is a time for everything. we hurt, but we also forgive, forget, realise that we're living in the Real World and there are people facing a lot more pain than we ever did and ever will. then He has also said that there is love, and there is prayer. what more can we do but enjoy Him once we've found Him?

i still believe people should be allowed to crash and burn though, because we're not alone, and it is necessary, to an extent. but please, try and live like there is a Tomorrow. because there will be, and one Tomorrow, Christ will come again. even if that doesn't happen soon, there'll be plenty of other Tomorrows for you to regret Yesterday.

***
i'll believe in you, if you believe in me; i'll believe in you, it's plain enough to see; i don't know when i don't know how, we'll make it through this world somehow - i'll believe in you and me.

the sun has set now, and that's what i'm going to do in 2008. i'm going to believe. i am going to believe that what i have now, and not what i had then, is true love. there's God's love, of course, the only true love there can be. but for what there is on earth, there is what i have with jon: bills to pay, slaving away for long hours to help rich people get richer so we can pay those bills. the possibility that one day we will be bored of each other, that we will quarrel, will say things we don't mean, which will hurt. and hurt like crazy.

wah lau, like that who wants to get married already right?

however, people do. and i believe (there i go already, and it's not even 2008!) that contrary to what i'd believed, i didn't have to "settle" for someone. i fell in love and this time i'm saying it i'm not going to add on an "again." because there is never an "again." write all the songs you want about love, and i will sing them and work out your fantastic chord progressions and recognise them anywhere. but i fell in love because God is a gracious and loving God, and that's all there is to it. and it's a love for Everyday, for better for worse. just like God's love for all of us.

chicken rice balls in malacca, and my favourite picture from our family holiday.

lukas is entering acjc next year. make me feel old only.

there's a place for us
my grandmother is getting older and it's making her forgetful, and uncertain of herself. sometimes i think she's becoming child-like - inquisitive, unaware of what's going on around her. and when she realises that the world is passing on by, faster and faster, she gets frightened, just like a child lost in vivo city on a crowded saturday afternoon. that's when she searches, reaches for my hand - and as much as it is trying for me to always take it, whether to lead her carefully up and down stairs, to cross the road, i accept it, tightening my grip around her smooth, small, fleshy palm. almost like a child's palm, only when you look down you see how wrinkled it is, that and the wedding band tightening the flesh on her fourth left finger betraying the fact that the prime of her life is over, not just beginning, never mind the slew of aphorisms about "life beginning at 60" and such like.

we had a malaysian family holiday - i secretly think we've had too many malaysian family holidays but i cannot tell my father this - like this recent one when i was nine. i remember lying in bed next to my grandmother late one night in a hotel room in genting, looking through the open window and thinking about her dying. and i felt tears come to my eyes, because then, it was a sad thought. it meant that there would be no more grandma to buy lukas and i snacks at tea-time, no more grandma to come to in the middle of the night because the dark threatened to consume you whole. i remember i used to launch myself off my bed and hurtle towards the faint glimmer of her night-light, heart beating tremendously fast and only going back to normal when i'd managed to wake her up and convince her to sleep on the roll-out bed in my room. there would be no more grandma for da-yi-por and er-yi-por to visit from china, and thus no more treats from china when they came. and when i was 13 and unable, simply unable to tell my mum about my first boyfriend, my grandmother was the first person i thought to tell, the only one i thought who would understand.

i was flipping through the first post-secret coffee table book with josh and joe some saturdays ago, and this, i suppose, would be my great post-secret: now, when i think of my grandmother dying, i feel a peculiar sense of relief. i'll be sad, of course, and i will miss her. but i will be relieved - and happy. after all, they say, christian deaths are but the beginning of Life. and i think it's better for her to move on, because, as cruel as it sounds, it sometimes seems that there is no more room for her here with us.

in my heart of hearts i will admit that it may simply be that i'm selfish, and i'm tired of looking after her. tired of always having to be the one to watch out for her when we go out together as a family - she has a bad knee and walks very slowly, and i'm generally a fast walker - tired of having to give in to her and put her needs above my own.

like the time i was eating the dark chocolate my father brought home from berlin - 70% cocoa solids and made with only three ingredients, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and cane sugar; not available in singapore - when she asked if she could have a bit of it. i did give her some, but oh, so grudgingly. i had wanted to say no, and had felt annoyed that i had to give her some, because i felt she wouldn't be able to appreciate it and it would be wasted on her. or when she arrives in the living room after a show has started and i have to interrupt my viewing of it to tell her what's going on, even though i feel she never quite gets it anyway.

also, she takes what seems to be an eternity in the bathroom, whether she's using the toilet or showering, and it's hard to be patient when i'm in a rush to wash-up or i have a bit of a tummyache. for a while she would tell me to just come in if she was using the toilet and i needed to wash my hands, but i decided a while back that i would stop doing that, if only to preserve her dignity, no matter that it inconveniences me. and there were (and still are) times when she'll simply walk into the bathroom to retrieve her face-towel or wash her hands when i'm using the toilet. i've taken to locking the bathroom door and pretending not to hear her entreating me to open it, albeit rather guiltily. what do you want me to do?

but the thing that gets to me the most is her reaction to the world as it is today. it annoys me, i think, because it breaks my heart. like the tsktsk she made when she saw a clip of a beyonce performance on a wide-screen television on sale in giant in jb - one of her suggestive ones, with a bevy of back-up dancers as scantily clad as herself. she tsktsks at matters which we've come to accept as the de facto state of things: explicit sex scenes and violence on television; beauty pageants, reality contests and the glorification of false ideas of perfection and vanity, backstabbing and meanness respectively. i can't quite face watching such things with her around. it's not really because she exudes silent disapproval - maybe this is what cuts the most, because i don't think we should accept these things either, and they've made the world a less safe, less peaceful place, bringing humanity further and further away from God's grace. and it makes me feel guilty that i go on watching it if there's nothing better to do, and because i do think i'm mature enough not to be affected by it any longer. but what of the generation after me? and is this really the, a world for which men have fought and given up their lives for? we all want world peace, but what are we doing to preserve our own?

she has lived through a war, fallen into a well and scrambled out alive. she has brought up two sons single-handedly, and she still does volunteer work. however human she is, however frail old age has made her, has brought out her foibles, she has lived. and she has, in her own way, as part of her generation, fought for everything we enjoy - and abuse - today. she doesn't deserve to be this terribly lonely, and she deserves my utmost patience and respect. what's it to me to help her across the road, to stop myself from replying her irritably, to let her enjoy washing her hair, enjoy a bit of dark chocolate? nice, not too sweet was her reply that day.

but there you have it. that's life, and i'm getting older too.

"His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." Matthew 25:21, 23.

take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

that way to the phone hospital
so sonny's been out of it for over a week, and i'm using my grandmother's old phone now (very hard to use, it's an extremely old sony ericsson) and later on i'm going to get an easier to use phone from shannon - who apparently has four spare ones, don't ask me why.

***
me: okay i don't really need my phone but i would just like to know what's happening to it
(i mean, wouldn't you? sonny's been through so much with me! and he's survived numerous falls)
sony ericsson guy: i'll make sure someone calls you
me: yes, not you, someone with the quotation please? (see below for why i said this)
SEG: you mean i cannot call you?
me: i have a boyfriend and he will come back and beat you up if you call me

awww so sweet hor.

anyway so just now i rang sony ericsson again for the second time since yesterday, and above is part of the conversation which transpired between me and the guy on the other end. he was quite nice, and i managed to share about my name (chloe mercy) and consequently about God, with him - he told me i had a "very interesting name," and after sharing about God he laughed and told me not to preach. "we can be friends but don't be preachy please." to which i responded "no lah i'm not preaching i'm just saying that God is real you know you know..." and then i decided i was being weird so i said "nevermind! haha!" don't think he was offended though, just amused.

anyhow, when my mother was pregnant with me she had a tumour but she survived and i came out healthy so they named me chloe mercy to thank God for His mercy to me and to her.

i do like doing pretty (useless) things for christmas. will post pictures of them soon (you wish, how lazy am i).

next tuesday my father is driving us up to pangkor. he has been reminded time and again in the past few days that it's the monsoon season, but he's clinging on to the belief that the weather will be okay because pangkor on the other coast of malaysia what.

***
mother: YOU! you left your dinner plate unwashed on the counter outside!
father: aiyah, i'm going to wash it now (proceeds to pry himself off the floor in their room where he has been engrossed in one of those "teach-yourself-jazz-guitar dvds)
mother: THE LIZARDS ARE COMING!
father (looks as though he has just discovered the secret of the universe): aha! you're right! the LEE-ZARDS are coming! geddit? LEE-ZARDS!
me: not us, daddy, just you.
father: but if i'm a LEE-ZARD that makes you one too
me: no, it's just you.. you're a grown-up LEE-ZARD, i'm not a grown-up one yet, i can still avoid becoming one for all time.

i was just looking at some pictures on facebook and the comments people made about them and i have to say, quents, that you were right about yourself - you really were very skinny LAST TIME.

of course i look very unglam also la. maybe i should also post pictures of you when you were in bmt. wah so handsome can.

cake! and other things, on this rainy day

there, as promised. sand cake. doesn't it look absolutely lovely? don't you want to pay me to bake one just like it for you? my email address is on the right.

but christmas is the season for giving after all, so be nice and you might just get some, compliments of the cook.

***

i suppose it's alright to hoard things, if only because you get to chance across them whilst cleaning up many years later and they make you shout with laughter at how seriously we took ourselves before. although for me it was more like i was sneezing with laughter, what with the dust and the cold weather. which is the best kind of weather to do spring-cleaning in, anyhow.

i'm pretty sure the person who wrote the following won't be reading this, and will probably never do so, so it's safe to put it up:

(and even if he does i don't think he'll remember writing it. all spelling and punctuation is original)

dear chloe,
i feel kinda bad telling this to you but i think i must if not it won't be right. that night when u asked me if i felt sad or was crying, though i wasn't i felt something else. i didn't want to tell you then, neither do i want to tell you now but i will. i felt disappointed. not at you but at myself. because you didn't trust me (at this juncture he drew a smiley face =) which he proceeded to CANCEL OUT! but even if he'd blanco-ed it i guess i would've turned the paper over to see what he'd written) i kept on telling you but you kept on denying. just like peter who denied Jesus 3 times. now i know how it kinda felt. but it's okay, i forgive you. pls don't break down and cry over this. it aint worth it.

i couldn't stop laughing when i read that. it goes on for a bit more, and i really want to put the rest of it up but not very nice, lah. it's not from an ex-boyfriend or anything, but from a really, really good friend i had. i found a stack of letters from him in a disused drawer which i hadn't opened in the longest time. the letter was written when i was 14 and he was 15 and there were complications in the friendship i.e. you like me i like you that kind of nonsense. which ruined it, and it only got back on track when i was 15 and he was 16 (i even tried to hook him up with one of my friends!) and then it fell apart for good when i was 17.

sadly enough, the letter above ended with:

even if we don't go together (not saying i want to =p), u'll always be a special friend.
frens come, frens go, some return some don't but the memories will always be cherished...

that aside, we really were very tight before jc happened to me. and he stuck it out through some pretty awful times in my life. i will always remember the happy meal he bought me one sad, sad saturday.

we made contact briefly over facebook when i was interning (go figure) and i remember telling him he really didn't need the money he was getting from his internship - a four-figure sum per month, compared to the $100 a week i was getting at my internship.

remember when you were a kid, and you saw models in advertisments and idolised local celebrities? okay maybe i was one of the few misguided ones who did the latter. but i'm sure you remember growing up with channel eight serials at the very least - the seven o'clock and nine o'clock shows?

the point is, i think you know you're Getting Older not only when you start discussing paychecks with people you grew up with, but you can point at models in advertisements and actors on local television and say hey didn't/doesn't that person go to school with me? or hey isn't that person my senior/junior from _____?

oh and by the way, i was kidding about it being alright to hoard things. if it's not useful it won't be allowed in the house. you know who you are, and you have been warned. or else i won't iron your shirts.

my boyfriend looks like a civil servant

not that that's such a bad thing, i suppose. aren't they supposed to be very reliable, dependable, responsible and trustworthy? hurhur. someone create an acronym for their traits, please.

you have two options, according to him:
(a) professional inheriter
(b) professional beneficiary

you can see civil servanthood isn't one of them, but don't you think he looks like one? especially in the pictures above (taken after various internships)?

now i'm not very sure what i'm trying to say about civil servants, but judging by the jokes my father cracks and the conversations he carries on in the normal course of things (see archives for examples), i think jon could well be on his way to being one.

i just transferred pictures from my desktop to lenny - too lazy to transfer them all, my thumbdrive has too little memory to get them all down at one shot and the mouse on my desktop refuses to roll properly. but here is the picture i spoke of many posts ago, the cake i baked at my godmother's when i was in sydney -

okay the picture's not loading and i have to go NOW because my godbrother's over from australia and we're going shopping. so you can't see the picture now, sorry.

alright, seeing as that worked - now to get rid of the annoying advertisment, although i don't think that's possible.

following up from yesterday:

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
you know right
THE LAST PART
i was just sprinting
and i wanted to die
hahaa
i couldnt feel my legs

chaoqin. says:
hah. that's cool...
it's supposed to be this way

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
but pain yes.
i know

chaoqin. says:
will make the memories everlasting
hah
ywee ern has asked me whether i wanna do it again next yr

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
HAHAA
is the pain worth it though
i dunno man

chaoqin. says:
haha maybe i'll think abt it when im doing up next yr's resolution

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
YES! think abt it and let me know ok! hahaaa

chaoqin. says:
haha
u sound excited abt taking part again next yr

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
hahahaa
only because im sitting down now
so i cant feel the pain

bryan hurry and PROPERLY become a doctor so you can give me PROPER free medical advice? hopefully i'll never have to give you any legal advice in return, cause that'd mean you're in trouble with the law. you can play with my children in return ok?

okay i'm trying this out - blogging through email, because china doesn't allow access to blogger and although jolie's told me to RELAX and find a way when we get there you never know, and i don't want to part with this blog for five months.

---

Real people. Real questions. Real answers. Share what you know.

never again

but of course, i might change my mind once i can walk properly again. because there's nothing like running down the CBD with the wind in your hair, watching the sun rise. next time i get to see the sunrise in the CBD it'll probably be because i was stuck in the office overnight.

and there will never be anything quite like a good run.

i had an extremely enjoyable time, and surprised myself by really enjoying my own company for 39 km or so. the first 4 i was running with chao qin and his friend bomby (he has a cool french name which i don't know how to spell, i think that's a short form, it was on the back of his shirt) and when i detoured to the first water point they left me behind.

oh well! i decided not to hero hero and chiong with them - guys leh - and do like the posters said and run my own race.

everything lasted fine from the waist up the entire distance, and i was also pretty surprised that i didn't feel breathless or anything. what's making me think never again is the fact that i am in excruciating pain, waist down. i can't walk properly, and i don't think i can walk for long distances (no shopping yet, BOO!) so please come to my house and visit me for the next few days at least, if you're dying to see me.

oh and i have abrasions too. the pain, when i take showers.

i finished in 4:56:56 although it really, really REALLY hurt to do so. that's the time on my watch anyway, and i know i definitely finished sub-5 because the official clock showed 4:59 hurhur. but i only reached the starting point after 0530, see? couldn't feel the pain in my legs (or feel my legs, for that matter) the last 200m or so - and i was sprinting like anything and wondering when the padang would appear.

well, it did, and i finished in less than five hours like i wanted to and - we'll see whether i'll go through this madness again next year.

i'm very thankful for the lovely weather, and for the sense of camaraderie - the atmosphere was a lot better than AHM. it was nice, when we passed this bunch of poor schoolkids who were there to cheer us on (at 0645), and one of them started singing if you're happy and you know it and the passing runners very obligingly clapped their hands. it was also nice, meeting old friends along the way.

i also saw a couple of philippians 4:13s and i couldn't agree more.

i can do EVERYTHING through Him who gives me strength.

the thing about having friends from all over the place is that you finish exams earlier than they do, or you're free when they aren't. last night, after coming home from a salty lunch and even saltier dinner in JB i was dying to eat cookies and cream ice cream from island creamery. but quents had cell, i have no idea what jon (wr)ong was doing but he said he was sleepy and wanted to sleep, and shannon was my only hope because he was at church which is at adam road, near serene centre.

but he finished later than he expected, so i had to eat slightly lau-honged peanut butter oreos and a bit of lindt pistachio chocolate to satisfy my cravings for something sweet after ALL THAT SALT YUCKS.

anyway that's not the point. to top it off, i seem to remember that shannon rang me at around 0117 - that's the time shown on my phone, anyway - to apologise for not being able to eat ice cream. and i seem to remember muttering sleepily "i'm sleeping huh it's okay and i wanted to eat cause im running on sunday" or something like that before hanging up with another "i'm sleepingggg."

there is perfect running weather as of now, and i can't go for a run, which is frustrating. it better be cool tomorrow morning.

vaguely emo mood
if i fell in love with you
would you promise to be true
and help me understand
'cause i've been in love before
and i found that love was more
than just holding hands

that's the best part of the song i think, because the rest of it, though lovely chord progression and tune wise, is not very lovely lyrics-wise. kinda sounds like some guy wants to get back at an ex-girlfriend, or maybe not.

okay la it's quite sweet, but WHY did john lennon have to add "i hope that she will cry when she learns that we are two?"

minus those bits it is currently my favourite song. thanks sean for remembering how the "if i fell in love with you" parts went, at the very least - because you couldn't remember the rest. surprisingly, or not surprisingly, it was my dad who remembered the rest of it. he's been on a george harrison/eric clapton roll of late, good on him.

it hasn't even been two months, and i feel like a pine tree. pine-y.