First off, a HUGE

HUGE SHOUT OUT

to TAB

Haha… Took this off facebook…

BleSSed Birthday dear…

Keep up the good work…

You’ve been doing GREAT…

and keep playing the keyboard eh??

Next is

Sarah

BleSSed 20th Birthday!!

Have an AWESOME one yea..

It’s been AWESOME getting to know you more this year..

Take care you..

Wanting to have a look at what you are gonna receive… be my guest…

I know that as of right now, i haven’t said a thing nor posted up anything about today… But here you go, at the very last minute of today… This is for you….

BleSSed Birthday, Em *smiles*

*hugs*

So MANY many things happened in the span this one year… for you.. hehe… but i think You are thankful for the things that have happened… and will continue to look forward to the coming year…

I pray that You’ll continue to be that BUBBLY, JOYFUL person…

despite being,

so near yet, so far

hopefully we’ll have the overdue catch up before this year comes to an end…. haha….

Take care dear friend…

Miss hanging out with you…

Love,

Belle

Today was an AWESOME day.. I thought of bringing the baby (DSLR) out for Carnival but then i thought the better of it since i was on duty 9-11am and then at 3pm till 5… wouldn’t want to leave it near water retention area (dunking machine) and carry it around as i clean bowls of half eaten curry noodle as well as assam laksa..

Means i have no pictures even though i actually brought my old compact digital camera.. it was left in the bag as i did what i needed to do.. BUT i do have pictures of what happened before and after carnival… LOL…

Let’s back track to last wednesday, some of the youths went back to church to put on a fresh coat of paint on the dunking machine.. Some drew and coloured coconut trees as well as a boulder…

A month ago, i realised that Alithea was David(Ji Chen)’s friend the moment i saw her… LOL.. but i think it’s cuz i saw her picture before that la.. haha..

Then on friday, some of us headed headed to the club to set up our stall, Liz voluntarily scrubbed the tank clean with the help of LUX soap.. hehe.. When i got back from getting materials, the tank SERIOUSLY smelt of LUX soap.. LOL…

I think she might come after me for putting this up… haha.. she was reluctant to look at the camera too cuz DarrenH and Tab took a photo and video respectively… HAHA..

Well, set up and all ended about 1 something.. and then 9am came…

My morning duty was really a humbling experience because i was one of those who cleaned the table at the makan hall.. So far, i haven’t done it for events before and well, i think i collected 15 small black pastic bags of rubbish and more than 20 bowls of curry noodle/assam laksa… It was tiring and at times not very nice cuz i had to keep going to the big huge rubbish bin to dispose the soup.. and i think Sarah Liew’s ‘job’ wasn’t that nice either cuz have to wipe all the oily stuff of the tables.. but we were willing… This experience has taught me not to dirty my table so much.. LOL.. and clean it myself if i have to… haha… but yea… it was a long 2 hours but i think the smiles and ‘thank yous’ we received was what helped us on.. the little kids from the shelter homes gave us huge smiles and thanked us for helping them throw their food packages…

It’s not the nicest of responsibilities but one that has taught me… it’s not a job that will bring a smile out of you as you are doing it… most of the time you can see cleaners having this black and rushing kinda manner… but i found myself smiling at the people at the table as i cleaned their food plates… though it’s sometimes not returned with a smile.. but oh well, be a BLESSING right?

Next was the dunking machine… Nothing much to elaborate.. oh yes, TAB got dunk-ed for 1 booklet(RM20)..haha.. by the end of the day, she got dunked 3 times, the 2nd time being accidental.. both dunks were by her friend… hehe.. good one TAB…

By 4pm, the dunking machine FINALLY broke down.. it was beyond repair then so we decided to close shop… Earned close to 2k or actually more than 2k… This self produced dunking machine has reached its limit.. hehe.. it’s up to the team to come up with a newer Dunking Machine 2.0 in the future.. lol…

With aching legs from standing the whole day, sis and i went to spend our remaining coupons buying books from Book Xcess

 Following the footsteps of Aimee, we got these for RM38.. haha…

While on Monday, we spent RM77 on these…

See the difference.. LOL..

Well, i headed home after getting all my stuff together at about 5.45pm… was really tired out.. couldn’t stand for long… legs hurt like crazy… am singing in Cheras some more tmr for YE…

The next few pics are just random ones which i took just now, during and after dinner.. haha.. just wanted to do it… So those three photos will end this post…

Nice dinner..

 see if you get the joke.. haha..

I need You to break through..

Outgrow… We outgrow habits.. We outgrow clothes/shoes/ fashion/whatever stuff that we can outgrow of… we can outgrow friendships as well, we outgrow relationships with different ones…

I was watching an episode of a Korean drama a few days ago and one of the character was having dementia, always forgetting stuff and people, we’ll call him as Mr Kim. When Mr.Kim is lucid, he treats a high-school girl, Hannah like his family member, like treating his grandaughter.. BUT when dementia kicks in, Mr Kim thinks that Hannah is his real grandaughter, Julie.. meaning, he totally doesn’t remember who Hannah is. This hurts Hannah because she cares so much about Mr.Kim yet he doesn’t remember a thing about her or who she REALLY is..

Don’t you think that that’s a bit sad? To have someone forget you.. Yes, tho it’s not on purpose… still…

I guess, it doesn’t really affect or hurt when both sides are no longer placing importance on what was previously shared… I think if our shirts had feelings, they would be pretty upset that they now end up at the back of the closet or are sent away… haha…

So MANY different questions are running around my mind that i’m not even sure if i should post it up… But this is my outlet.. MY PLACE to make sense of all the non sense…

When did i first come across this word, OUTGROW? It was when Crystal taught the CAs girls about relationships.

Will you outgrow friendships? Yes, over time, you will…

That’s pretty much a fact in itself…. i guess that’s probably why i’m not close to my primary/certain high-school friends anymore..

There has been quite a few conversations lately about different stuff, yet it still comes back to whether or not i’m able to MOVE on..

I want to… I VERY much want to… and i think one way is to LET GO… and in another way i can’t because part of me feels that it’s NOT the time to let go… and the other part of me saying that if i DO not let go soon, i won’t be able to move on…

I found out yesterday that things may not be what it seems and things may not be how i understand it to be…

All of a sudden today i felt very tired of being strong… i felt that there’s just SO much going on inside of me that i can’t be a good enough example… i felt betrayed..

 i felt that all ‘work’ was left behind for those who stayed back…

and THEN i thought about all the smiles i’ve seen so far even though all that has happen… all the concerns that came forth because WE want those under us to grow.. all the love and care that we shared with each other… those who have stayed strong and encouraged me on…

and i caught myself again… why am i DOING all the things that i’m doing now?

It’s basically because i find the JOY of serving Him… like what i realised on Sunday serving with choir…

So, i will persevere on.. and all I can do is COUNT on God like what we sang last week…

I want to see the younger ones continue to grow and i want to see them become ’stronger’ and not waver easily… despite whatever happens and to be able to see for themselves what is REAL… no one is a lost cause… despite all that i’m feeling, there’s just SO much to be done and yet there are not enough hands to carry and do… i need to fill that need to carry on the fire… and i KNOW that it’s not just me… there’s a group of people who are doing the same…

I know and believe we can do it… May all of us draw strength from God… because it is ONLY Him that will be able to bring us up again…

Vines that come from the main source…

Quite a few has expressed about their disatisfaction towards the size of my FONT.. lol.. so here you go.. a lil bigger than normal…  and well, i’m back from my busy busy assignments, tests and presentations… it’s been pretty hectic but there were lil signs that things are going ok and well… heehee.. gotten good comments about my marketing presentation and my whole group consist of LINGUISTS.. what are the odds of that happening.. haha… but i’ve still got to score for my final essay paper…

Now to share something that brings a smile to my face… i REALLY couldn’t stop smiling at that little girl.. haha… Not that it’s a good thing to teach her that la…

Today reminded me why i enjoyed choir so MUCH.. haha… I guess it’s the people in it that matters and MOSTLY GOD… and not to forget, the song was pretty AWESOME too.. Tab went on and on about it when she introduced choir to the youth group a few times… hehe… The song is called Counting ON God by the way… you should have a listen, it’s catchy and AWESOME…

I probably would call this a bittersweet moment because, i’m now in another ministry that involves me to put more of my singing abilities into it rather than in choir because it happens at the same time(most of the times). But i’ve still got a long way to go in this new ministry, because it requires one to be able to sing well, REALLY well.. not too confortable with the fact that there is a pressing need for time…

Anyways, last time i enjoyed being a part of choir was a really long time ago, probably when i just started… NOT that choir hasn’t been enjoyable, i guess i lost the focus of being in choir along the way.. found it again sometime back but it didn’t really stay… BUT today, made me miss choir alot… The FUNNY jokes shared and the times we just sang all out and what we received back was our OWN contentment in being of service to God. Today, i had a good time laughing at how Tab was trying to imitate Chinny on how to conduct choir since there was only me during the final special no. The rest couldn’t make it, Chinny wanted to join me for sops and Tab would conduct choir BUT ended up Tab sang and Chinny continued to conduct.. LOL… I think ALL of us had a GREAT time serving and laughing…

A wacky picture of us with an AWESOME - cheer-leading – captain – conductor.. haha…

I suppose this post wasn’t planned out like this.. but to end,

I LOVE YOU, CALVARY YOUTH and everyone in CY… and i especially MISS Calvary Youth choir today…

I’ll do my best… i promise…

Love,

Belle

This is another quickie.. Until next Fri, i will not give myself the luxury to blog yet… hehe… Need to control the urge to ‘celebrate’ the freedom of finishing assignments.. Gonna leave you with a photo… this photo was taken by Ben Ong during Pesta Kuih Bulan… with a SLR camera…

I like it..

8th October 2009

I’ve been flooded with assignments, test and presentations.. i won’t be over with them until two weeks later…sigh…

Anyways, life has been hectic and the weather is not helping… assignments are half way done.. I pray and hope that i’ll be able to get through with them soon.. i hope so…

I’ve got no inspiration to write today.. i shall share pictures of a place that i found that is pretty nice and i managed to study and chill a little there yesterday…

This was what i had for dinner… This shop is found in a small secluded housing area in Bukit Damansara… Was introduced to it by my ex employer.. the danish and pastries are AWESOME… REALLY AWESOME.. ask those who’ve had a taste.. It’s definitely worth it.. But my cup of tea not really worth it.. RM5.80 for ONE cup… while in Decanter, it’s RM5 for a pot… if i remember correctly…

Well, the atmosphere there is just nice… Quiet and serene… Not like the normal coffee shops.. I even noticed that one man was even doing his devotions there and journalling his thoughts… Nope, i didn’t peek.. I just saw his open Bible..

I wouldn’t mind heading back there for a sit anytime soon.. but have to see whether my purse allows me to.. haha.. yea ;p

Up close and personal of a Danish… Banana Butter Scotch… Yum yum…

Looks tempting right?

Well, just a thought that popped in…

Why do people get defensive? I think i’m refering to myself here… I’ve had a few conversations with someone the past few weeks and everytime he second guesses me or assumes something that is pretty petty, i get defensive and just would not accept what he says…

Is it because of past experiences? Is it due to lack of trust? I dunno and i think i shud find out…

Why do people defend themselves so much so that they push people away? I would like to think that i’ve yet gone to that extend…

Would hurt be the cause of defensiveness? In order to protect themselves from future hurt, they close up and be defensive against anything that is trying to ‘break in’

“Be a defensive driver”, i get that when mom’s in the car and I’m driving… but that rarely happens because she drives herself most of the time…  I’m not the best driver on the road and with my history of driving you might say that you are a better driver than me anyway.. heh.. but i sometime DON’T get the other drivers on the road… it gets on my nerves sometimes… and i used to get stuck in a pretty congested road because the cars were going pretty slowly up the hill.. what?? that certainly wasn’t a reasonable cause of a jam…. Don’t simply cut in just because you need to get to a place faster… wait in LINE…

I should get back to my never ending assignments… then i’ll be able to blog properly again.. from the looks of this post, it’s a bit confusing…. jumping here and there like nobody’s business… heh…

Aite, Ciao…

Have an AWESOME week…

I want to improve and i think i can…

Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines, where he had Father Ferriols as professor. Father Ferriols, at that time, was the Philosophy department head. Currently he still teaches Philosophy for graduating college students in Ateneo.

Father Ferriols has been very popular for his mind opening and enriching classes but was also notorious for the grades he gives. Still people took his classes for the learning and deep insight they take home with them every day (if only they could do something about the grades…)

Anyway, come grade giving time, (Ateneo has letter grading systems, the highest being an A, lowest at D, with F for flunk), Fr Ferriols had this long discussion with the registrar people because he wanted to give Calasanz an A+. Either that or he doesn’t teach at all…Calasanz got his A+. Read the paper below to find out why.

———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— -

PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE

By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn’t want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn’t fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other’s presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other’s foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed possible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed.

It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages. Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side.

This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other’s laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can’t accept, you will eninevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny.

If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation.

Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one.

There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers.. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken is somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom…endlessly.

What do you guys think??Leave a comment or two… haha…

Such a coincidence that youth is currently talking about You & I (BGR) this month…