One unknown lighthouse along the Great Ocean Road, Melbourne

Glory YF Camp '08

Anitpas

Camp 08

As much as it was another exhausting, energy sapping, sleep depraved time of the year, the camp has proven itself to be an enriching and wonderful experience. Well before I begin with the “cam-whore” pics, I shall now dispense some of what was my “last three points” of the penultimate group share with Antipas.

My expectations of what this camp was? Well, what I expected was a really shag time. Like the endless prep that had to be carried out. The rushing to get things together, the needing to get the script of the prayer and praise skit done, the need to figure out what lines to say for the JOKER role for the night game, would the clue to the urban crisis be too difficult... It was RELENTLESS. All the preparation…. I was using the time I had after night shift at work to churn out the clues, the power-point to Wu Ling Da Hui (the pugilist game) and write the poem that wasn’t eventually used. I didn’t like that I had to do a lot of the dirty work (if you’re interested we can discuss about this). I was frustrated by the situation altogether.

But as soon as the camp kicked in I was promptly reminded of the joys of serving in the youth ministry. Seeing God touch the lives of youth through this camp was really refreshing. Here are some of the highlights of the camp. (Still awaiting Alicia’s camp pics)

Wu Ling Da Hui

I arrived from work thinking about how I could be a better more psychotic character. My mind was still on the “why am I doing all the stuff? Why can’t I get some others to take on the minute responsibilities?”

I saw my sister in the log room at Pei-Hwa and thought to myself it must have been at least 11 years since Mich and I were in the same room working on a camp. Scary….
They threw on some make-up and wah-laah, the half measure and not so psychotic but still-quite-scary JOKER.

I had oodles of fun. My rendition of “why so serious” was a five upon ten at best, but it was such great fun seeing people cringe. I didn’t want to make it so easy to find me and as such I hid in a corner. I had as my “test” riddles from mindtrap (I should really be called Riddler instead). Not ONE could get why Mr and Mrs Clatter had boys for half their children. *chuckles*

Waving across the corridor and spooking them youths was super fun.
To me, this will always eb one of those games that will work. I was glad we decided not to infuse any lesson of sorts into this game. Sometimes, I feel, its ok to have a game game. Let the sermon, speaker and prayer room be what it is for (a good solid spiritual message) and let the game be the game that it is.




Its My Life

Nono, this wasn’t inspired by the Bon Jovi hitsong. This is instead one of the most mind blowing games I’ve ever come across. The jist of the game was that we were supposed to live out 30 years of our lives in 3 hours. There were elements in the game that mirrored what goes on in real life. There were wealth, health, social, and moral tokens. Our goal was to accumulate as much of these tokens and try to attain different levels. There was the professor, the celebrity, the superman, the billionaire. It was akin to some huge scale monopoly. This was an individual game and everyone were no longer tied to their groups. There wasn’t a specific goal to reach and there were no intended winners, but nonetheless, the game served its purpose of making the youths, albeit momentarily, lost in the world.

Before this game, Jonathan was asking me for the most brainless, repetitive, menial tasks possible. These were to be used as work stations. I was responsible with conjuring up “Threading the eye of the needle”, “finding the number of words in the first 5 chapters of Genesis”, “having the stop watch stop at the zero hundredth of a second”. (Gotta love this one). I was just laughing at Amanda and Michelle trying their utmost to get the stop watch to yield. The stop watch won, they could never get to the zero hundredth. It was hilarious.

Youth sunday: HUMANOIDS!

Daniel "himbo-Spice" Chen as Mr Know-it-all

Silence is golden....get it?

The humanoids were well received. As members stream out of the sanctuary they stopped to find out what these gold-skinned-figurines were all about. If you didnt read the boards hastily put together, here's what they're all about...

The Emo-kid
Devoid of any confidence, the emo-kid is self-absorbed and is just happy feeling sorry for himself. No positivity could get to him and cynicism is slowly creeping in.

The try-hard
Wants to be popular but doesnt quite cut-it. Would love to be the centre of attention and tries all ways and means to be cool. Buys whatever the most popular kids buy, dresses and talks teh same way too. The belief that his identity is in having those things, wearing those clothes and using the IN lingo.

The nerd
Belives there's nothign more important in life than to get good results. Friends, games and fun are just all getting in the way of this mega mugger who spends hours after hours burying himself in books.

The over-acheiver
Gets his A's. Gets his gold medals. Gets his piano diploma. Gets the chicks. Doesnt get the idea that these things are temporal. Doesnt see a need to know about God since he thinks he IS a god.

Know-it-all

"Don’t tell me....i know" would be his pet retort. Along with that, he knows a few arguments that would stop the well-intended evangelising christian in his tracks. He prides himself on knowing what all these things about God but sees no need to accept the gospel.

THAI MISSION TRIP 2008 JUNE 13th - 20th

I’ve thought of how I would like to give an account of my experience on the mission trip and I’ve decided to just describe the pictures in chronological order. I will add on to this thread as and when cause its just too tedious to write everything at one go.

What's the trip gonna be like?


This is me on board a song-tiao looking all pensive and full of thought. I look like I thinking sutff like, "How is everything gonna work out?" or "What kinda accomodation would we be staying in?" Truth be told I was really just stoning. I had just slept a paltry 3 hours prior to arriving at Changi and I was knackered to say the least when we finally arrived at Chiang Mai International airport. I just saw Mich for the first time in 4 months and we hugged each other albeit her saying hi to other people first (lousy sister!) ahhaha.

Grace Fellowship @ Chiang Mai University.

Grace Fellowship at a house off Chiang Mai University. Mi and his wife graciously hosted us. They also served up some really really delicious Khaw Soy. Whilst at Grace fellowship, we saw a group of university students. There were 12-14 of them. Mostly girls though. We had a great time singing songs and playing games. Dinner was a gastronic delight with Khaw soy being served up. Khaw soy consisted of this coconut based curry sauce and flat noodles topped with a crispy deep fried unknown condiment. The coconut was not too overwhelming and everyone was raving about it after eating. We proceeded to games after dinner and Good ol’ 100-seconds-no-NG (Angie) kept everyone occupied. It was interesting to note that while these people were regulars, a lot of the girls have not come to accept Christ. My sister was saying that growth is slow amongst them. I figure that’s down to the lure of the world and whilst at university, your priorities can be really skewed. I spoke with si-er (thai for tiger) and got to know about how he came to know Christ and stuff. He came to know about Christianity and the good news because he was studying in a mission school. He's the only one in his family though. I tried to encourage him by telling him that it was the same with Mich and myself, so he shouldn't be discouraged and should continue praying. It was a short 2.5 hours we spent there but nonetheless, we had a good time of fellowship and did i mention that the khaw soy was kickass? Oh...i did...

HUH?!! So much to pack?!!

Saturday came and went in a flash. We spent most of the day in a conference room packing the gifts. I felt it was great that we could pack gifts and stuff. It was a good time of fellowship and laughter. A Saturday morning when the sun was beaming into the room, the lot of us seated on the floor. The AC made the temperature really comfortable. Just horsing around and joking while getting the gifts into the wrapper was a refreshing change to the kind of stuff I might be doing on a sat morning. Lunch was a trip down to the campus canteen where the “mixed veg” rice stall was a huge fare with a range of dishes from liver dishes to plain stir-fried cabbage. It was delicious nonetheless. I was seated with Jiahui, Sam, Emily and Nancy at a stone table. It was great to see the campus buzzing while we were all gobbling down our food. Then news came through that Emily’s uncle had passed on. She was in pieces and tears were streaming down her face. It was terrible and she seemed in consolable. I just kept handing out the tissues and prayed. The mood in the camp kinda changed and this was just one of the two events that we had to deal with. We did the only thing we could do, pray. Once we got back from lunch we rallied around Emily at the stone benches in Uniserv and prayed.

Mambo Queens

A quick trip down to Hang Dong church to carry out the Sunday school program was the order of the day. There were just a little over 12 kids at the Sunday school. My sis had already pre-empted us as to the amount of people who could be there at any one time. On good days, there were thirty. On a bad day, there could be a meager five. On rainy days, there could be none. Nancy kicked us off by teaching I’ve got Joy in my heart. Mich was doing the translation. It was to be the first of the many times we would be singing that song. We went on to do crafts and I was helping this kid named Johnny. He spoke perfect English and his pronunciation was better than the average Singaporean. He was a missionry’s son from LA. He was pretty straightforward in telling me that he preferred America to Thailand and would rather be back there. Tough huh? When you decide to go into the mission fields, Your kid might still wanna be back home. Just tough….

Johnny and me

Anyway, Jimmy (Pastor Tharawat’s wife) ended the session by teaching two songs. One was Yu Kit Sa Nit and the other was … Well I don’t know the title. The actions to the songs were so cool! There was cave-exploration (Adele’s description), shimmies, hand movements, twirls, leg movements, launching of space crafts, bobbing of heads, and shaking from side to side. Then it dawned on me, it was all Mambo-qse moves. The kids loved the songs and actions. The adults did too. So i thus conclude.... Deep down in our hearts, we all just love Mambo. HAHHAHA!

Kids playing games at the Shun Village

The craft maestros and their proteges

After a quick lunch at Hang Dong church, we made our way to the Shun Village. It was kinda amazing when I recalled that my sis said this wasn’t in the schedule till two members of the church alerted Pastor Tharawat of these Shun villagers. We were told that these Shun villagers were rather impoverish. We were told to do a children’s program at a school canteen near the village. Dark clouds were looming large but we prayed and prayed for the weather to hold up. Some of the kids were trickling shortly after we arrived. Pastor Tharawat went round the village on his pick-up to ferry the kids over. Along with that, the others were walking in on foot. We were highly aware that, the numbers would drop really drastically if the rain came down. Just as the last bunch of children came in, the rain came pouring down. Mich talked about having to exercise our “prayer muscles” and this was it. We prayed for the weather to hold up and graciously He withheld the rain till the last of the children came in. The kids warmed up really quickly and were really happy to see us. As we gave them balloons to participate in a game with, they were really elated to have these given to them. I can’t recall ever having seen a child thrilled at receiving a balloon. They were playing this game where they had to get their balloons from one end ot the other. They were required to blow the balloon and then let it loose to “gain ground”. Doing this would mean the balloon having to land on the concrete floor but they were totally oblivious to it and it wasn’t an issue to them at all. We were again remarking Singaporean kids would pick it up and wipe the balloon or refuse to participate altogether.

The Squatter like residence of the Shun kids

The craft bit of the program was really refreshing. Most of the kids really enjoyed themselves and took ownership of what was made albeit most of the handiwork was being done by us. They were really grateful for the craft session and the mood around the whole canteen was that every single one of these kids was happy that they made their “My Family” gloved puppet.
When time was up, Sam followed the pick-up when Tharawat was sending the kids back Sam came back and reported that they were living in rather run-down conditions. Michelle said the Shun villagers were mostly odd job labourers who would commute in and out of Chiangmai to do odd jobs. Sam then quipped that it would be a viscous cycle, about how the rich will get richer and poor will get poorer. This is a classic example of that. It won’t be too much to say that most of these kids will follow in their parents’ footsteps. I really hope and pray that God has a plan for them. Upon checking into our designated Bangkok hotel (this was post mission trip), I had all these DVD peddlers and pimps (how else could I describe them) wither shoving these porn DVDs in my face or asking if I wanted some “paid love”. I can’t help but think that some of ‘em will end up doing those things. We really need to pray for them.

The eagle and the mother hen (Lao Ying Zhua Xiao Ji)

Wat Silom students eager to learn from Mich

Dong Pin

That's right, boys make nice hand puppets too

I've got a joy, joy, joy, joy.....

DANCE SUCKERS! (Maket Place Evangelism)


Pommies @a goldsmith shop in Chinatown Chiangmai

SOMEBODY GET ME OUT OF THIS HAIRYTURKS GROUP!!!!!!

What's with all these people. I mean. Enough of all these approaches already. Dammit...

Just this afternoon i met my hall mate for lunch. he happened to be auditing my company. And i don't know how but the conversation was steered towards encounters. Yes. Encounters. My friend mentioned a financial controller who made advances at his colleague. This poor lad was auditing this firm and had to have this queer encounter . They had to correspond with this dude (the FC) who was like married wife and kids. He was texting him stuff like "I love you" and all that.

He was telling me a couple of his own experiences. One of which went like this....

This Mrt dude was staring at him while he was all moshed with the morning crowd. The situation was such that he couldn't look or turn elsewhere. He started his journey at jurong east and this guy was like trying to make some serious eye contact with him all the way through. GROSS. Anyway, by the time he got off, my friend was seriously outraged (and reasonably frustrated). When the ECG (eye contact guy) got off, his gaze never left my friend's and in respond to all the staring my friend just flashed the third finger. What ensued was classic. The dude continued to stare at my friend and licked his lips in the most disgusting and suggestive manner. Nuff said.

I went on to share my "lao shu ai da mi" story of course. I shall not have it here. Don't wanna bore you guys. I'm sure I've not heard the last of this hairy turks group.....

I-talk vs I-walk

Okay, in a bid to revive this space....

Its been months and months since I've last blogged, so its time to play catch up. This December has proven to be really packed. Relentless activities, trips, camps, events and meetups has made it impossible to sit down and write (not really...but that's my excuse anyway...)

So here it is. I'll start with my trip to Chiangmai with me family. It was just such a great time to hang out with Mich again.

List of activities include
i)Playing Dutch Blitz late through the night.
ii)going into mindless factory producing sites.
iii)Buying food and gifts in China town. This topped off with an old pink dancing tranny. Eck!
(see Pic Below)
iv)buying food from roadside stalls
v)mexican food
vi)eating khaw niao ma-muang (aha! no corrections to my pronunciation now that i'm just spelling it)

Apart from stuffing my face, we were going on these mindless touristy places of little significance. But i guess its all part of the deal. It was interesting to note that Thaksin Sinowatra started out in Chiangmai.

It was just great to hang out with Mich and Jack again. And of cos the folks. The folks will always keep themselves occupied with nuts and whisky in the hotel room. Its truly amazing when you think about it. My parents still enjoy each other's company, thoroughly might i add. It has been 30 years of a unified state. *shudders* Yeap.... That's what i wanna be doing with the old woman when i'm Fit-thy (as pronounced in 50 cents), having nuts and insert type of drink in the hotel room while your kids go horse around. We were horsing around but not this time. The days of running around and being fascinated by every little touristy thing was over. It was great. But this time around, I would say its a different kind of bliss. Just sitting at the back of the bus snoozing away was enjoyable for me. And glancing left, i saw my whole family snoozing away. It was one of the moments of my trip. It made me feel like 10 or 12 again. (is this bordering on emo? writing too tessa-ish?) Maybe its cause of work......Ah well.

And to conclude I present to you my video guide. Lonely planet's Ian Wright got nuttin' on me! And neither would Samantha Brown on channel 16.

But jack would beg to differ.

Roy*brimming from finishing the clip*

Roy: Can't stand me right? *chuckles*

Jack *sian from filming my self indulgent video clip*

Jack:(in the most nonchalant tone) Well...I live with you... *cheeky smile*

granny tranny

Some random temple. Yes....tell me about it we don't look alike

That's right....cuties!!

Gorgeous family, gorgeous backdrop