:D

It's holidays! :D

I'm super excited - off to Cairns tmr! :D

A Series of Unfortunate Events

It's now 2:40am. And...I'm up nice and awake! Except I'd prefer to be in bed by now, esp since I have a test tomorrow! But it's at around late lunch, so that's not toooo bad... I'm glad that it's not an 8am one.

Attempted to sleep before 12. Failed. :( Kept tossing and turning with contracts law jumping around in my head! Then, quite randomly, started to have a mild asthma attack. Pretty random, since I haven't had asthma for yearsssss now. After a coughing fit, I'm bright and awake.

This is a first...staying up @ this insane time b4 an exam. Not preferrable, but hey, can't do much.

Back to some serious nerding now. And hopefully...sleep...soon. Sleep is goooood. :)

A Speck in a Speck!

Today our speaker challenged us to see the significance of how insignificant we are. This photograph was shown to illustrate this:

Taken nearly 4 billion miles away, if you look carefully, there's a little dot. That dot is earth! If you still can't see it, it's roughly half-way down the sunbeam on the right.

In the words of Carl Sagan, "look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... [on] a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."

So, if I'm (along with several billion others) a tiny speck in that miniscule speck, my worries, anxieties, concerns, upcoming exams, are really not that significant in the grand scheme of things, is it? Like, what if I don't do as well as I'd liked to in this upcoming exam? Boo hoo. No wonder God tells us not to worry. There's nothing to worry about, if we're (a speck in that speck)created by this BIG God, who, as the Bible claims, also created that speck and everything in it...by...a few verbal commands. :O But as a speck who gets absorb in that speck, I keep forgetting this, and often think that hey, my problems are too great for this God. But how can they be too great?

Yet, this same BIG God knows me before I was born, and knows me so well to the extent that the hairs on my head are counted. According to the Bible, He loves me (and all the other tiny, tiny, tiny billions of specklings) so much that He would send His Son to come into this speck to die for me, a speckling. A BIG hunble, loving God who was willing to die for the specklings who reject Him, and actually want Him dead. Why? So that if we specklings believe in Jesus, we can spend eternity with our BIG BIG creator. To me, this is mind-blowing.

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have sent in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him? (Ps 8:3-4)

My Dodgy Canto

So often we have the privilege of laughing at chinglish. For me, I get my fair dose of beautifully expressed chinglish from the Asian adults at my church. Oh, and I might add that my parents, at times, are quite proficient at this too. :) Though all done in a friendly manner, I've never really understood how it must feel to have your chinglish get laughed at.

Today I had the rare yet unique opportunity of publicly providing some Canto-English humour. As we have an up-coming church youth group camp (for high-schooler's), some of us had the privilege of presenting a short promo for the adults - informing them of what's happening, etc. All in Canto. Wooo. :D

Ever since the last time I visited Hong Kong in 07, my Canto has declined - exponentially. I know that I can't pronounce most, and, alot of the words properly, yet I can't fix my pronounciation. Just like the proficient Chinglish speakers, but with their Chinglish. :)

So, as I was presenting, I know that I mis-pronounced heaps of words. How do I know? Just look at the reaction of the audience. Bursts of (friendly) laughter. Yes, even when we were informing them about more serious things. I had the aid of my own style of "pinyin" during the presentation. Eg., 'qing lin yun yi ga mien dui tsien bien man fa gor cong gik.' Pretty sure this is unrecognisable? I don't know, might be pleasantly surprised. :)

I smiled to myself as I was presenting, as I had a taste of what it felt like being laughed at (in a friendly way of course) for speaking dodgy Canto. Ahhh, the pleasant privilege of being on the receiving end of providing badly spoken Canto, as humour. :)

Pretty awesome experience!

Ohh, I also would like to add that I (and others) were quite nervous about this. Canto is really not my/our forte. So, we were fully relying on God and His amazing ability to provide, which He did, as we got the message across boldly. Fairly clearly as well I think/ hope (the content, not the pronounciation lol). I find it quite awesome and amazing that God will use little humans like us, and use our weaknesses (in my case, my dodgy Canto) to glorify Him.

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Ps. quite unrelated, but go Fed!

BIG Upset

French Open - Nadal lost! :D :D :D Unbelievable...thought he would stomp through the rest of the draw with straight sets wins after he squished Hewitt...

Haha, now this just leaves the door open for Roger. :D :D :D No more Murray or Djokovich either, haha!

No. 14th slam for him soon...hopefully.

Meanwhile...in the women's draw...didn't know Stosur was soo good. She's awesome, go her. Hope she wins...all the way. :D