my lungs are full of phlegm.
my nose is blocked.
i'm in a haze.
and having diarrhoea.
and cramps.
my bones feel twinges now and then.

and i'm craving for tea and mooncakes. hahaa.

lol. I find that I've been more motivated to work in these few weeks, as compared to the previous months. Am not sure if that's because there's been more projects these days for me to do, or because I now have a group of peers in the school whom I can have fun with, not that I couldn't have fun with the teams I was in, but there's always a certain kind of age barrier, or some things which I can't identify with.
my other ftsc has been on a constant campaign to persuade me to stay though. lol. i'm starting to prepare for leaving by informing the people around me (e.g. my cluster supervisor, and cluster people). i guess i need to do this properly since the new person is not here for me to handover too. am suddenly not sure how to tell my students. or what will happen if i tell my students. rather worried at this moment, especially the ones whom i die die cannot put my heart down （死死放不下心). i hope they can finish their 4 years in school well.
T_T

Kim So Eun & Lee Hyun Woo Clinique CF

eye smiles! haha

"Their energy levels increase the more functions they have to attend, the more people they have to meet and the more activities they have to organise."
--> haha. true to a certain extent.
i saw this and laughed while i was searching online for enfjs and the people they appreciate.
recently i've learned to appreciate some people more, specifically the ones who are investing/have invested in my lives.
i think the thing about usually being the one to give is that people just assume that you don't need to receive, that's it's okay to take from you, to assume thar you will listen, that you will give the time, and so on, and so forth. and then they might become angry when you don't give what they expect of you to them. unappreciative people.
so i'm particularly appreciate of people who give to me. not in terms of items, or gifts, but the thought, the support given, the care that's provided. The people who have won my hearts and will continue to stay in my memory for a long time yet. The ones I want to just keep by my side, and continue to keep in touch with through the ages (though some may not be possible). the ones whom i've learned from.

was feeling blessed last week cos had a good time with two of my counsellor friends after training on wed (and got scolded by p and vp for not going back to school after my training -_- they expected me to go back at 3pm and leave at 5pm. wow.)
also had a good time with some of the teachers after staff dinner :) first time going out with them. haha. it was good to just hang out with people around my age :) haha. around my generation, when i can be identified with.

sleeping for 4 hrs for 2 nights in a row is no joke when you're past 25. hahaa.
my brain is neither alert, nor fuzzy, it's just there. like, there.

heh. i may end up in Fei Yue afterall.

hahaa i quite enjoyed the extended time with Lynn and Samuel today =) had training at HPB in the morning, and saw them (and jiadai), then went off with them and had lunch, after which Samuel suggested that we go to Lynn's new home (in Punggol! unrenovated! hahaha) and after that to his new home, and ta-da, off we go for our own self-declared learning journey.
so it was a whole afternoon talking about interior design (possible design of Lynn's new house), and the very clever design of Samuel's house. haha. really very nice!
had the chance to just discuss about future counselling options with them as well, and told them about my decision to leave. discussed about ADD as well. hahaha. pretty refreshing i guess, since i'm talking to people who understand the situation, and know about how the counselling sector is, and know the difference between the 'standard' of school counselling and the external social service sector. school counselling is really very narrowed. and there're a lot of chapalangs. haha.
talked about backpacking too. haha. samuel and his wife previously spent 6 months just backpacking around Australia. hahaa. i guess backpacking for an extended period of time is something which I'd like to try as well. hahaa.

Sunny & Luna - It's Me 是我啊 [致美麗的妳/ To The Beautiful You OST] (中文字幕) .mp3

Sunny's voice sounds sweet in here =)

hahaa at L'etoile and I've only spent 1/5 of the time here trying to do up the script in advance. realized that I need to get into the mode of script writing after such a long time, and it's rather hard to start one when you know that it's a collaboration. i think it's easier to write a script myself D:
they're filming something on my left at this moment (has been for the past 3 hours. haha). and there was this guy who's been playing war of warcraft for the whole time that he was here. I think I should write out my own summary of the play, as well as brief lines to each part, so that I'd be able to have a clearer picture of how to write. I guess I'm also not used to having so many parts to the play ba D:

I think it's interesting to note a person's personality type. recently just realized that we have an ESFP in the lg. haha

I was reading "Predictably Irrational" when it talked about how a person is willing to do things for others, but not when he/she is paid to do so. In the chapter, Dan Ariely talked about social economics and market economics - that a relationship when one does things for another willingly is based on social economics, but talking about money brings it into the realm of the market, thus rendering a person to adopt the mentality of calculating the worth of his/her hours.
I've also realized that I am the most motivated when I'm working in the realm of social economics - that I can give my all to you knowing that I'm not receiving any money for it, but knowing that I'm paid for my job doesn't really motivate me at all. And it irks me more when my VP brings up PB or ranking or whatsoever in the effort to push me to do more things, cos it just doesn't work.
So I've decided to adopt the mentality that I'm working at the school because I want to work to help (which is kind of true at this moment). And I realized that time passes much faster, and I am more motivated to do more cos it becomes something enjoyable once again, rather than work. I guess money doesn't really matter much to me now (other than the fact that I have to pay for fees and give my parents money, and have to have enough to eat) since I no longer feels the constant desire to want to be out of Singapore.
I do want to save up money to go for STM at New Zealand though :)
Everything seems to fall much more in place now =) I guess I was never meant to be a person who works for the sake of money. If not for the fact that I'm still having Japanese lessons and fees (school fees and insurance) to pay, and parents who're not earning much, and the social pressure to save up to prepare for the future, I think I'd be rather happy just volunteering my time away. hahaa.

Editting my CV at this moment.
As I was mentioning to some people, I realized that my intense desire to travel was reduced now that I know that I would not be staying in the job. I guess the fact that I'm involved in a few personal projects also reduced that desire. Like I have things which I want to complete and I enjoy the things that I'm going to do. I look forward to them, despite knowing that it may be tiring. I guess it's the anticipation that fires the drive to do things.
as often mentioned, an interested ADD-er is a focused/hyperfocused ADD-er. hahaa

Lots of outflow of finances. haha

ah. my lenovo lappie died after 3 years and 6 months of usage. hahaa. i guess it's not as hardy as the generation before (when it was still IBM. haha. since IBM allowed me to drop my lappie 17 times before it died). sadly, it seems like a new chapter of my life opens with the buying of a new laptop (i bought one before i went into uni, then one before i went into the post-grad diploma for school counselling, then now that i've decided to change jobs, my lappie happily dies on me too). haha.
was doing some simple market research, and the choices easily boiled down to either Apple or Asus. hahaa. sadly, Asus is out of stock EVERYWHERE. the casing was really pretty though (aluminium casing, with a beautifully designed outer, and packed with good specifications! good for playing intense games! hahaa.)
but since i need a lappie urgently, and i don't play a lot of games on the lappie anymore (more of watching anime, and dramas...) and i need my lappie to be portable and durable, i've settled on Samsung's ultrabook series 5 3.3inch lappie. it's not meant for games, but for everything else it's pretty alright. the keyboard is rather shallow, but it makes typing easy. hahaa. i still prefer the solid typing of lenovo, but well... hahaa. i guess samsung's series 9 is more power packed, but it's also $800 sing more. hahaa.
i hope the lappie lasts though! :) let's see how long this one will last. hahaa.

And so, I was evaluating what caused me to miss my Secondary school friends.. and why I feel that I'm in a state where I seem to living only 20-30% of the life that I'm intended to live. And I realized the following things about myself:

1) I miss the vibrancy and energy of my secondary school friends. My 2 best friends are both very upbeat people (probably both sanguines) and rather bubbly/emotional (as in they emote well. hahaa. and they willingly share. and share their thoughts as well).

2) I'm used to being surrounded by quirky and motivated people. hahaa. i think my entire class was rather quirky! and each one has something that one is passionate about (be it the right or wrong things). hahaa. each has a distinct and strong personality i guess. not necessarily very healthy self esteems, or whatsoever, but definitely distinctly different. like you can use one word to summarize that person. they shine in different ways. and i think i'm that kind of person as well. you can say that we're pretty shaped by the education system to want to push things forward. haha. we can be quite lawless too.

3) i miss the intellectual stimulation. I was wondering why recently I keep feeling that there's a need not met, specifically that I feel I've not been learning - and this has caused great mental boredom. hahaa. my mind doesn't feel challenged. and it has grown lazy. so I guess it's great that script writing is rousing my slumbering mind once again. but not just that. my learning comes mainly from modelling and experiencing things, so there's been a great lack in there i guess. God~!

4) I haven't really felt challenged these days. like there hasn't been something that requires me to really push myself, or go beyond my own abilities. I've not had to sacrifice much, nor had to be humbled much. I miss living on the edge for God, or just plain living on the edge. perhaps the best analogy would be that i've been cocooned (in that I've been growing, but it's a very safe way of growing). I'm in the cocoon waiting for the time when I can break out and break through. and woohooo! rise above the leaves and bask in the warmth of the sun.

5) God has created me such that when I have an over-arching goal, I can work towards it. I've had a lack of such a goal recently. I was trying to write out a bucket list, and I realized that actually I don't have much that I really want to do. hahahaa. I can safely say that if I die tomorrow, I won't have much regrets, other that the fact that my loved ones may not know Christ yet. I am currently in the state of dispensibility (it's a good thing! though it also reduces my motivation for being excited about being on this earth). I guess God created me to want to push through with things? I guess some things that are still in stagnancy (and has to be pushed through) are simply too repeititive for me. Perhaps my over-arching goal should be that I have a breakthrough in the mundane. haha.

anyway, my desire to travel around has been greatly decreased. And I've forgotten to have lunch yet once again D:

Salary increase for all teachers and allied educators! LOL
i find this rather amusing cos well, could it be that a lot of people are leaving the sector? o_O

The following was not written by me:

From Shane Clairborne:

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.


It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

--> serves as an apt reminder of the God whom I love and serve

facebook is great for catching up on the news of old friends. haha.
looks like my old best friend has a new girlfriend. hoho
ah. i miss my funky friends.

sometimes being in a caregiving profession means that there's a certain set of people around, whom i appreciate, but there's that wiggly feeling in me that somehow hints that i'm not being around people whom i'm totally comfortable with.

maybe that's why i enjoy drama. haha.

this is what happens when you have two conflicting sides in you. that on one hand i need lots of time to reflect, and on the other hand, i need that space to be creative and run around too. haha

Take All Of Me- Hillsong United

Got reminded of this song when i saw printed copies of this song's chords:) what happened to our spiritual habits? and have we forgotten the child-like faith and dependency on God?

ENFJ - Possible Blind Spots
ENFJs are so empathetic and caring that they can become overly involved the problems or feelings of others. Sometimes they choose causes that aren’t worthy of all the time and energy they pour into them.  When things don’t turn out well, they can become overwhelmed, disappointed, or disillusioned.

This can lead them to withdraw, feeling they weren’t appreciated. ENFJs need to learn to accept their own limitations as well as those of the people they care about. They also need to learn how to “pick their battles” and how to maintain realistic expectations --> gotta remind myself of this
Because of their strong desire for harmony, ENFJs can overlook their own needs and ignore real problems. Because they avoid conflict, they sometimes maintain relationships that are less than honest and equal.--> like we'd realize that the relationships are poisonous to us, but we just continue them. which is really not beneficial for our own health. or that we'd choose to excuse poor behaviour, and let it silently build up at times when we're not aware. thank God there're other people who're aware though ENFJs are so concerned about the feelings of others that they can be blind to important facts when the situation involves criticism or hurt feelings. It’s important that ENFJs learn how to accept and deal with conflict as a necessary part of relationships.
Because they are enthusiastic and in a hurry to get on with their next challenge, ENFJ’s sometimes make incorrect assumptions or make decisions too quickly, without gathering all the important facts. They need to slow down and pay closer attention to the details of their projects. By waiting until enough information is known, they can avoid making mistakes
ENFJs focus on emotions to the point that they can fail to see the logical consequences of their actions. Trying to focus on the facts, not just the people, involved in their decisions can be helpful.
ENFJs respond well to praise, but are easily hurt by criticism, which can make them appear touchy. They take even the most innocent or well-intentioned criticism personally, and they often respond by becoming flustered, hurt, or angry. Their responses can be illogical to the point that they appear downright irrational to others. ENFJs do well to stop, take a step back, and try to see a situation objectively before reacting. Trying to be less sensitive will enable an ENFJ to hear the important and helpful information that is contained in constructive criticism.
ENFJs are so idealistic that they tend to see things the way they wish they were. They are vulnerable to idealising relationships, and they tend to overlook facts that contradict what they believe. ENFJs who don’t learn to face facts they find disagreeable end up ignoring their problems instead of finding solutions for them. In general, ENFJs need to try to keep their eyes open as well as their hearts

--> in summary, set proper thickened boundaries, and be less ready to respond with emotions.