the•truth•shall•set•you•free

3 more days..

as i waz saying yesterday..
today i got a

writ of seizure

under my door.

no house nvm, i still got fortress. betcha dinno.

the Lord is my fortress; my God is a mighty rock where i can hide - psa 94:22.

*sms beeping tone*
[from 36767] You are reminded to PASS your IPPT before your next birthday. You should book your IPPT now if you have not done so. For query, call 1800-3676767.

dat, coupled with the fact dat i haven been exercising regularly (which is bad, considering i did very regularly when i waz in uni and nie, and dat i have high cholesterol and shld really be watching my health) for the past 1 yr (except for the occasional biathlon, sports day, jogathon, all of which i went for w/o much prior trg - courting death, they call it), sent me into a mini frenzy, and i decided to pull up those ankle socks and start hitting the jogging track in the park downstairs in my faithful and comfy adidas.

my results, so far..

27th june - 14:44

29th june - 14:19

4th july - 13:28

6th july - 13:17

11th july - 12:59

steady improvement, the best is yet to be..

to be eligible for the minimum (= $100) monetary reward (which is prolly one of the biggest, or the biggest, incentive for any of us NSMEN to train for and take the ippt), i need to hit at least a D-grade for every station. for running, dat translates into at least 12 minutes and 40 seconds, for a cat y (read: 25 - 29 yrs old) person like me.

so i need to shave off another 19 secs.
but of coz, it wld be gd to get more than a pass, coz a silver costs 200 bucks and a gold 400. and it does wonders for the pride and ego too, to know dat i can still run*.

lets hope the steady improvement continues tml.

*haiz, these timings are a far cry from the 10-minute ones back in my heydays in the army.

ok, enuff ramblings abt the china trip already. anyway, its almost close to a mth since we left for the land of cheap gd deals, and the initial enthusiasm is starting to simmer down, memories are beginning to fade, pple (me included) are beginning to settle back into their small little lives back in s'pore..

anyhow, a couple of anecdotes on how of the Lord demonstrated He was in control thru'out [fr the proposal to the quotations to the phonecalls to china to the agent to the students to the edusave forms to the cost to the air tix to the hiccups to the briefings to the trip to the fun to the smiles to the projs to the..] the trip.. (loosely translated as things you dinno abt the trip)

testimonial (1):
one of our students cldnt make it for the trip due to some personal probs (which i do sincerely hope will be resolved very soon). prior to dat, i had already sent the finalized namelist to the tour agent. thus, i sent another email informing the agent how we had dropped a student, and dat he had to remove a name from the list. however, as it turned out, as murphy's law suggests, wateva can go wrong will go wrong - the tour agent did not check dat email, and submitted the entire list (with the name of the student who's not going). nobody wld have found dat out (which wld result in us paying the full trip fees for a phantom tripper), except for the fact dat another tripper fell out of the trip, and i juz decided to re-check the entire list once again, after deleting the 2nd name, and found, to my utter aghast and gratitude, dat the first name was not even removed at all. i dinno why i wanted to check the namelist again, considering i did not do so the first time round. and if the 2nd person did not fall out, i wldnt have checked the namelist again, and as i mentioned, dat would have been disastrous (read: waste money). so i was really thankful at dat pt in time, knowing for sure the Lord was blessing as i was praying since i started preparing for the trip.

testimonial (2):
2 or 3 or 4 days prior to the departure date, one of my family members did not feel well, and was in a rather bad state, i wld say. i was really worried. i had to keep getting the person to promise to take care of herself while i was away, if not i really wld not be able to go with a peace of mind. i rallied my bro and relatives and friends to take care of and pray for her. during the trip, i called back to ensure dat everything was fine. now dat im back for a while, things seem to be getting betta, and her condition has improved alot. i really thank God for watching over her while i was away, and dat all my worries were unfounded, for everything is in the Lord's hands, and not mine. He fights all my battles, not me.

testimonial (3, 4, 5, ..., n, where n tends to infinity):
[insert thanksgiving itemsss]

there were many other happening things we did in china, including racing thru' the hutongs in rickshaws, visiting the beijing central conservatory of music, leaving a trail of angry but/and happy shopkeepers at happening shopping places like hong qiao/xiu shui/wang fu jin, sneaking to macs in the middle of the night even tho there was a curfew on humans belonging to the sub-category of students, etc etc.. to find out more, pls call 1800 - ask - around or sms 'ask' to 'around'.

of coz, i muz also acknowledge my 3 happening grps dat have made the nightly de-briefing sessions fun and enjoyable.
[overheard fr a fellow tripper] it was indeed a great pleasure and honour to be (part of) this group.

(front, l-r) raziff (ever-so-late and totally hilarious at times), kelvin (our resident photog with many a funny idea for poses), nicholas (covering.. ahem.. my face, an act-tough ah-beng who's really very nice at heart), vionna (quiet but ever-present), jan rick (daredevil when it comes to stunts, on the hair, dat is)

(back, l-r) lenard (super duper funny, totally unlike in sch), lilian (she doesnt eat fruits or something.. i cant remember), daphne (she has many, and i mean many, siblings), kaiping (prudent and thrifty - shopkeepers find it real hard to earn her money), huiling (tai tai in the making - with the handbag wherever she goes and those birks), daniel (top-shopper-cum-roommate), joanne (the mei-nv whom the uncle refuses to sell things to), jen an (too skinny, too skinny)

and of coz, with such gd students comes a sweet and happy ending..

thank you, Lord.

thank you, Guyz.

ok, continuing from where we left off the previous post..

although you cant really see from this pic that we are at tiananmen square, we really were there. its a really enormous parade square that was made famous in that pic of a man blocking a squad of tanks by standing in their way during the infamous 1989 tiananmen square protests.









here, another pic of tiananmen square (can see more of it here). i juz dunno why i put on that face. guess i was trying to look tall. besides the tiananmen, we obviously went to the forbidden city as well. its a palace that occupies alot of land space - took us a whole morn juz to walk ard w/o entering the different palaces, not that we were allowed in anyway. due to the impending beijing olympics in 2008, many of the places we went were under renovation, likewise the forbidden city. when we were there, it reminded me of the previous time i went there - how my friend and i sneaked out w/o our teacher's permission and took a cab to the forbidden city to feast upon its magnificence under the stars. she waz like a stunning beauty shrouded in mystery, with thousands of unique stories behind her to tell. i was telling my students to imagine how the pple inside the palace lived during their times - having to spend a large part of their lives there, not knowing anything else beyond the palace walls, not that they would be intd anyway - the palace was so big that they could probably spend their whole lives exploring it. a must-go!


p/s: i din bring any camera, save for my hp's, and i haven received some pix from my students, so i dun have any for forbidden city. sad.
of the many things to get accustomed to in beijing, besides the dry and dusty weather and the mad traffic with traffic lights that pple dun follow, food and toilet were 2 other important elements we had to grapple with. food-wise, much of it was salty and oily and veggy. the meal on the left was by far the best meal i had in beijing, even betta than the peking duck one. (from left, clockwise) corn nibblets (like those from kenny rogers), kong ba (fatty meat), some soup (their soups* were usu the worst course), some veg, steamed egg (like those from sakae sushi), empty bao (they call them man tou), and rice (in the centre).


*: during one of the meals, we actually played 终极密码, where each of us ard the table had to guess a number that one of us had thought of. the person who guessed it had to eat something. you had to see the look of agony on nicholas' face when he was forced to drink the soup. in the end, he forced me to drink it too lor..

while i was in china in 1996, i had the honour of visting a toilet. the urinal wasnt like those you see in s'pore toilets - on its own. it was a long drain of many urinals combined together - it was like peeing into a drain. when you flush, it was a huge gush of water threatening to flood the 'urinal' and dethrone its banks. the sound of it? thunderous. anyhow, we met quite a couple of nasty toilets on our trip there this time round. sometimes it was the stench that kills, sometimes it was the (lack of) cleanliness that irks, but we did manage to find good ones, like the 4-star toilet on the left. worthy mention: the toilet at the peking duck place was modern and clean and stylo too.

i haven been bloggin' for a long time. well, there are a couple of reasons for this. firstly, i blog only when i have the inspiration to write (i dun really like the idea of blabbering abt mundane daily stuff), and there's been a drought in my creative department recently. the reason, i suspect, is the ever-increasing workload that zaps away all my brain and creative juices. secondly, i have been rather lazy. i actually came to this page a week ago, but after typing in a few lines, i realized i dinno what i wanted to say with that entry, and that i was too lazy to complete the post. in the end, i deleted it all away. but i realized my blog does have readers - not that im writing for others though, as you shall see in later posts. (i hope)

however, this lack of entries does not mean my life has been all blank and boring since the last entry. in fact, many things have transpired in the course of the past few weeks, and perhaps, i just need more time to defragment my thoughts and churn them out into words here.

anyhow, i went to china recently - brought a group of 41 students there. it was fun overall, and i enjoyed myself playing and laughing with my students. china has always held a special place in my heart. ive been there twice, and i still have fond memories of the places i visited and i was looking forward to revisiting them again this time round. i first stepped foot on it in 1996, when i was in jc, and its kinda amazing that 10 years later, im going back again. i remembered all the fun i had when i was there, and i had a great time with my friends then. similarly, this time round, i think the memories shall stay with me for quite some time, and i sincerely hope my students enjoyed themselves as much as, if not more than, i did.

the photos are arranged not in any order of merit or chronology, coz i cant really remember when we did what - i can only remember we did certain things, as you shall see below..

at the airport - ready to go!..













up the plane!..













to eat the delicious airplane food!.. hahah.













a great start - as with all students, they are naturally careless sometimes - as with these 2 on the left. they brilliantly left their passport and wallet (respectively) on the plane the moment we got off. we haven even got past the immigration. it was only after much waiting and worrying before they BOTH got back what they had misplaced. super duper thank God lor.. i was like praying they find back their stuff.



i shant disclose who these 2 kids are.



BUT.. if you cant see clearly the person on the left up there, he happens to be my sitting partner on the coach, and he's in this pic. hahah.











we went to the great wall - of coz! - and here's a magnificent view of the valley from the wall.












many, if not all, of the students chose to commemorate their visit to the great wall by buying those certificates which says they are a 好汉 by climbing up the great wall. still others decided to engrave their names on mini plaques to show that they've been up this monument. i, on the other hand, still believe in the staying power of memories - both captured in my mind and in a photograph like this one here.







as with most big cities (bangkok, new york, etc..) jams (traffic, that is) are a common sight. no less in beijing. thankfully, we had a really skilful driver, whom we called 师傅 (seen here at the bottom left-hand corner of the pic) affectionately. he could really manoeuvre those sharp corners while turning into narrow lanes - sometimes, he was literally cms away from the vehicle parked illegally along the road. zai! most rides were smooth and safe, thank God.











dats why the students never failed to sleep ever so soundly WHENEVER they are on the bus..












especially when the tour guide starts to speak.. hahah. super diu lian lah - pple talk, we (even i slept, and was caught by the guide!) sleep, make pple think she is boring, when she is super not! it was our blessing to get such a kind-hearted, patient, cheerful, sporting, understanding guide. she's called betty. the kids absolutely adored her. they even made cards for her and the driver at the end of the tour. sweet.












we also went to the temple of heaven (天坛), where we learnt abt the emperor's no. of 9. see the circle we are standing on? the first round of tiles around it have 9 of them, the 2nd round 18, and so on.. there were also (if i remember correctly) 9 steps leading up to each level on our way up here. apparently, if you stand on where we are standing on and shout out your wish to heaven, it will hear you and answer your prayers. (coz emperor is the son of heaven - 天子) we shouted, "SYF GOLD 2007!"