Last Few Weeks Of Being 23

My birthday is coming up next week and I can't help but feel a little sad. As the years roll by and I leave my teenage years behind, I find myself wishing that time could stand still. I know youth is a gift and it doesn't last for long. Like a whisper, it comes and goes. 

I also know that someday in the future, I am going to wake up and realise that I needed to sleep at 9pm not 3am. My bones are going to feel more brittle and my muscles- less responsive. 

Almost all my hobbies involve raising my heart rate to a racing bpm, which is why I dread the day my body fails on me. 

I look at all these young kids around me doing things I wish my fifteen year old body were still around to do. 

So it is with such a mindset that I have been living life. 

Fast-paced. 

No space to breathe. 

Few weeks ago Shirley, two other friends and I went skating/cycling at East Coast Park.

We made it to Bedok Jetty.

And stayed out there moon-gazing for some time.

It was so beautiful, big and bright that night.

On a different day, MingXian drove us both into Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We had lunch at a wanton mee place.

Spent almost two hours grocery shopping in KSL City Mall.

Had dinner at the Bamboo restaurant.

Hung out at Danga Bay after dinner.

Poor MingXian had no choice but to be dragged onto this ride. Even though it was small, it was really fun!

Then we just took a million photos for the rest of the night.

Had a Friday night urban skate as usual to the recently-finished Marina Bay Sands hawker centre.

Met up with the Davidians for our monthly get-togethers.

Went ice-skating with the usual Friday urban crew on a separate Friday.

 

Fell while telling people to "watch out for the curve in front". 

LOL 

Attended Shan Shan's graduation ceremony.

I love graduation ceremonies. I love them even more when they're held in a church with a service and worship before and everything. 

Well, I guess this was my first graduation ceremony that was held in a church with a service and worship before and everything. 

I cried during worship. The songs we sang somehow made me think about how lucky we were with Eric's situation and how God's grace just saves us... weak sinners... I thought about our mission in life and whether I am living out that mission to bring people to Christ. 

Hmm. 

(Note to self: don't wear mascara to church services, graduation or not)

Skated around MBS (yet again) with the three amigos. 

Snacked on the night view.

Finished off with a heavy supper at 126 in Geylang.

This is only one-thirds of the food that we ordered and tried desperately to finish.

On Friday, I went prawning at Farmart with Alu.

And Annie!

Annie had quite a few firsts that morning. 

First time eating MacDonald's breakfast, first time catching a prawn and first time being at Farmart!

Nothing beats eating the prawns you caught. 

Swimming one moment, dead and cooked the next. YUMZ.

So, horrors of horrors. 

I just got back from Skateline's monthly Saturday Night Skate and it was on this fateful night that I dropped my iPhone twice and cracked its screen.

My phone looks like a rat just chewed on it now. 

T^T

The first of the birthday gifts have arrived.

A special chinese recorder-like instrument from Chuan gu & Aunty Pei Leng! 

It's too late to try it now since everybody is sleeping, but I'll probably start chirping away later this morning when I wake up for church.

Gonna be playing the piano at Sunday School later...

I don't know how to explain the rush and mix of emotions that I have right now. But one thing I know: no matter what the situation, no matter how old I am getting or how young I am feeling, my purpose in life is simply to praise God, and I have very good reasons to do so.

All my life Lord, I give it to you! I give all my energy, youth, money and time to the furthering of your kingdom. In every walk of life, I ask that you use me like a vessel to pour forth your Spirit. In every action, word or thought of mine, I pray that you reach out to those who need you most. 

How I Spent Valentine's Day

Wow, Valentine's Day was such a huge success!

I woke up this morning feeling as if today was going to be a failure. Instead, everything went by smoothly and surpassed my expectations by far. 

I was supposed to take an exam at 2:30pm, so I resolved to wake up at 10am to study, despite going to bed at 6:30am. However, I did not hear my alarm and woke up closer to 11am instead. And guess what? Instead of studying, I just ended up procrastinating for the next two hours or so. It was simply an impossible task for me to focus on studying. 

With an hour left before the exam and my textbook still untouched, I decided to prepare myself mentally for the possibility of having to retake this exam. Still, I went online and memorised as many mock exam questions as I could before running off to the exam venue. 

I was late for 12 minutes and there was a crazy man sitting next to me in the exam room. He kept throwing a fit whenever he got frustrated with the exam and even banged the table so his computer mouse fell off the side. What a psycho! Totally distracted me during the whole exam.

When time came for me to press the SUBMIT button, I cringed inside, expecting to see four big red letters F A I L. Instead, I saw four big black letters saying P A S S !!!!!!!!

OAO

I was so shocked, I wanted to bang the table and throw my computer mouse off the side too!

Needless to say, I left the exam venue in extremely high spirits.

Ran off to Jaben at The Adelphi to get new earphones after that. 

The ones on the right are new, while the Hippo VB earphones are what I used to wear instead. 

After I paid for my purchase at Jaben, I got a very lovely surprise. They gave me two pineapple tarts, an angpow with real money inside, as well as two cuddly teddy bears! 

SO MUCH LOVE FOR ONE CUSTOMER???

I couldn't believe it. It really made my day!

In the evening, I went to JCube for an ice-skating session with some friends. Those of you who saw my Facebook status earlier on will know what this is all about. 

We played some game and won some prizes.

Had such a fantastic time ice-skating and just laughing till my belly ached!

And of course, after ice-skating, I simply had to run (literally run) over to Westmall for some last minute DDR action. 

I was really happy when I saw this score: 983,640. It's the highest score I ever received on a song! My next target score for this song will be a AAA, which is 990,000+ I think? Or is it 995,000? I don't remember exactly...

Yep, and with that, I went home nicely tired, but feeling very spoiled and loved all the same. 

Thank you God, for watching out for me even though I am such a terrible failure. Thank you for all the blessings, whether big or small. I am really grateful for everything! 

Easter Weekend

Hello, it's now 09:57 and I have to type real fast before heading off to work. 

Last Friday was Good Friday and I attended a baptism in the evening.

It is always a blessing to watch a brother or sister in Christ decide that they want to give up their old life to be born again in Jesus. And how significant a day that LC chose to be baptised!

Since the whole Easter season celebrates Jesus' resurrection from the dead, it is only fitting that we also recognise a born-again Christian's death to sin and new birth into a life of freedom in Christ.

We had big BIG dinner afterwards.

And Cinderella cupcakes with sparkly sprinkles on top! I wasn't able to capture it in this photo, but the cupcakes glimmer and glitter under the light. 

Soooo pretty and sooo delicious!

On Saturday evening, I headed to the new mall JCube (built where Jurong Entertainment Centre used to be). I was really skeptical about the new Chili's restaurant there, but decided to join my friend for dinner anyway.

Overall the interior of the restaurant was quite similar to what you'd expect in an American Chili's. However since it's new, it's also really clean and nice-smelling. We'll see what happens in a few years though...

They ordered fried chicken thingys which cost a whopping $22 per plate! I imagine this should only cost about $12 in the U.S.

To the left of our table, we could see the new Olympic-sized ice skating rink aptly named "The Rink". 

Since there were three of us, there was no one sitting in front of me and I could look directly out to the escalator on the other side of the glass. It was the most awkward seating position ever! Each time people went down the escalator, they'd stare at me eating (undoubtedly with my mouth half-full, talking). And I'd stare right back at them. Where else could I look?

o__O

Awkward. Very awkward indeed.

I ordered shrimp alfredo pasta for $18. Again, another terribly expensive dish that made me feel cheated of my money. However, the one saving grace is that it's not as oily as its American counterpart. This was also way cheesier- just the way I like it.

After dinner, I met up with some of the rest of the rollerblading crew since we were going to go ice-skating. Spent some time on the DDR and JuBeat machines. 

Oh yeah! *Does happy dance ^^v*

We'd bought tickets to the 21:45 skating slot since all the previous ones were already sold out by 19:00! Just a note if you want to skate there on the weekend- BUY YOUR TICKETS EARLY! 

By the way, Saturday nights are disco nights and that's when all the really good skaters come out to play. It's fun to watch them go round and round the rink super fast (like penguins), though it's a bit scary to feel them whoosh past you.

Because we were playing an intense game of tag and throwing ice at each other in the rink, one of us was bound to get hurt. Poor Bernard fell and his head started bleeding. Well, I guess he kind of deserved it since he was the main culprit throwing ice at all of us! HAHA!

The nice thing is, we all got to see what the first aid room looked like...

Sorry Bernard, if you read this, I hope your head is fine now, but THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR THROWING ICE AT US! xD

This probably won't be our last outing here...

It took us about six jumps to finally get this shot right! Wheee!!

Alright Sunday morning after church, I went to visit Ah yee and Tori, the cute widdle schnauzer pup that they got recently.

She's at least three times her size since I last saw her now!

And besides being extremely cute, she's also picked up a few tricks such as learning how to eat on command.

*I want food nao please :(*

Went with them to have a quick lunch at Yuhua.

When all of a sudden it started pouring heavily. Thunder, lightning, etc. If you were in Singapore, you'll remember the intense rain that caused flooding in various parts of the island.

But even in the intense rain, we would have fun.

Guess what...

It's the perfect time to play with paper boats!

Fortunately I still had some scrap paper in my bag that we folded into little sampans.

At House of Bread, we dyed Easter eggs. Annie got creative and wrote "hope" and "peace" on her eggs. I want some of that!

I took to getting my eggs multi-coloured.

To whom do these eggs belong?

In case you were wondering, we used food dye with a bit of vinegar to colour the eggs. For words, we wrote with crayon on the shells first. The crayons are from crayola so they're not toxic. Thanks to Kim who provided all the eggs and dye and crayons!

I love eating the eggs afterwards. My favourite is to take the hard-boiled egg, dip it in soy sauce and eat it cold. Yummmm! There are six still in my fridge if anyone wants some.

This time last year, I celebrated Easter in another country, with different people... 

Sigh.

Where will we be next year?