Monday, March 31, 2008

funorama

it is the most boring carnival i ever attended. That's probably because none of you, my dear friends turned up to hang out with me. I mean you and you and YES YOU! bloody bastards, all last minute cancel ):. Well it had its moments.

the usual funorama, equipped with 3 of the haunted houses that would make the most boring of ghosts bored. Lots of good food, and many games which i couldn't be bothered to play because....well because i didn't feel like trying to win any games. THERE WAS TANDOORI CHICKEN!!! and really nice lasagne which i couldn't afford. There was also a cow which was roasted before my very eyes. Well actually i hoisted it up onto the machine thingy. Really interesting, the guy, who did the roasting, roasts meat for a hobby for the swiss club. He also manages a restaurant called Stewhaus. Really nice food. Apparently the 150kg calf is air flown from austrailia, where it has to be marinated (spice rub) for a whole day, then roasted for 10 hours. Too bad the head was left in austrailia, it would have made for a more interested picture than just the decapitated neck.

In order for the meat to be ready at opening time, it had to be roasted the night before. If you do the math, you would realize that it would be about 1am when the roasted the thing. Which would beg the question why the fuck was I at school at 1am. Well i was doing security duty. The most boring thing ever, walk around a school so empty that mas selamat wouldn't even bother to sleep in, though he might have been from saints or disgusting green people... It was really empty, and dark, and really really a big waste of time. 3hr shifts with a 10 minute routine, but i did get to hoist a calf onto a spindle, and i got invited to hoist a 300kg cow onto a spindle at oktoberfest. Woot. Plus pancakes for breakkies. Double WOOT!

though i think the most sad part of the day was the end. I was getting bad underwear abraisions and i had to do clean up duty. I wish I'd never had agreed. I didn't know it was clearing the trash that other people cleared. That's right emptying the dumpsters into the open top containers. That seems easy you say. Every dumpster that we emptied, had brown liquid spew from it's insides down the container like a water fall. Not to mention, we had to climb inside the damn thing in order to empty the containers. This was all done while some morons came around to lob bags of trash onto our heads. They got well screamed at.

You'd be amazed at the stuff people throw away. A whole box of unused AA batteries! NICE...prized not won and food unsold. Then there was the amount of bags that burst with the contends coming right out at us. In the end a technique was experimented with successfully in disposing of rubbish. The six of us, Haiyuan, naveen, kester, tak jian, me and another guy. We used the edge of the dumpster as leverage to topple the dumpster all the way into the container, before emptying it and lobbing off the side. Great success....that is until many many more dumpsters started to show up. Needless to say, we all threw our sneakers away at the end.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

I WANT KATONG LAKSA.

yes quite badly too...
it pines for me everytime i visit Queensway to buy whatever. Today's venture was to replace my poor nalgene bottle which i left in a cab, for the second time. You know my trademark blue fishing bottle? ya that one.

Anyway, there i was walking around level one, looking for the camping shop that sells the bottles, and i past the laksa place, and the aromas just hit me, and then, the that bottled up desire started to rise. OH man! Alas and alack, i cannot eat laksa for another two months ): I think it'll be one of the first things i'll eat once season is over, which will be soon. And when we win, i'll take my medal and go and enjoy some katong laksa.

put oh, the dieting annoyances of season. blah. i wish i was like slim.. and with a monster of a metabolic system. Of course i have one.. just you know a better one.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -Marianne Williamson

I really this quote. Often we view ourselves with such a low image that we need to bend down just to see it, discrediting our talents and abilities, our God-given talents and abilities, we constantly bury them in the sand like the third worker who felt his ability was not up to standard. God isn't too happy about that though, after all, if these talents did come from him, they cannot be bad, they can only be good, since after all God is infinite goodness, and we are his children, his creations.

When we doubt our abilities, we are not just hurting the one who gave them to us, but we are also hurting ourselves because we will never actually witness the power of our potential. It will forever remain exactly as that, potential. Since when you do something with the goal of failing in mind, you will definitely reach that goal. After all, failing is a rather easy goal to achieve, it is simple and tempts with laziness. where we could have done ten questions for example, we do 5 instead, citing inability as the excuse for our failings, knowing full well that this is not true.

When we do anything in life, time only offers you one opportunity. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misinformed. For the window for that opportunity to archieve or complete or partake in it in that timeframe and period with those people, or circumstances only comes once in your life. This is simply since time while a relative concept, happens to flow only in one direction. We can never go back to it. A wise priest named Fr. Keane, once told me: Why live in the past? it is over, you do not exist there. Why live in the future? it has not began yet. But you exist in the present, here and now. So you should make the best of it and live. CS Lewis too argues this in his Screwtape Letters, citing that the past is a solid concept, it is over and cannot be changed. The future is fluid, changeable, wieldable, malleable, it is full of infinite possiblity and that is where the devil might now tempt us. After all it is full of success, scary success and that is where we fall. We fail becuase we are scared to achieve such glory, we are scared of becoming that person.

Inasmuch as we are afraid to succeed, we will surely fail. After all that is the logical goal. And this fear of success can be seen in all our lives. We are scared to know God more, because we are scared of who we will become, we are scared to achieve are dreams, because we will become someone that is beyond our current idea of ourselves. And this fear is stemmed from risk. We are putting ourselves at risk the minute we decide to achieve our goals, we are making ourselves vulnerable to forces beyond our control, we have left the coach and tv and actually gone out into the world. We have just left our comfort zone. However, we know we are not alone, for God will never give us a task so daunting and so difficult that we will not be able to achieve it, for he only gives us what we are capable of. It is because of this that we know we will have a companion always on the journey, for God is always with us and he is the almighty and all powerful, so we should trust in him. After all, Jesus said 'For humans it is impossible, but with God all things are possible' (matt. 19:26)

In the end, we have no excuse not to succeed in life and give God the glory with the talents he has bestowed upon us, save the ones that we create and give ourselves. So what have you done to best use your talents?