A Warrior's Journey

I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through now. I can only say my thoughts and my prayers are with you. Helpless. That's how I feel. But I guess this is also a form of chastisement. I so want to walk through it with you. I so want to be there when you cry, to offer my presence, to offer my shoulder for you to cry on. But I know I can't. And thus I feel so helpless.

I do agree with you. Christian fellowship isn't suppose to be this way. We can and must do better to support each other in our spiritual journeys. But somehow I can't help but feel this is a phase we all have to go through. Its a valley we all must walk through. When we will finally realise that there is no one we can depend upon except God. There is no one who is 'perfect.' That we have no 'rights.'

In a way, I too have been going through this phase. It started way back when I was in the army and lo, I'm still going through it.

2 essays done, video and sound left... halfway there~ *pant pant*

Ok I'm done with the screen culture paper. I don't want to work on it anymore. Let me end off with a quote I put in there,

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind; You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions; We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity; We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before." - John Barlow.

如果记忆也是一个罐头的话，我希望这个罐头不会过期。如果一定要放一个日子的话，我希望它是一万年。

I've 2 essays which are due next week. One is a essay for the Screen Culture module in which I attempt to address this topic, "To what extent is computer culture (the net, computer art, email as communication, interactive media) a new kind of cultural form and to what extent is it remediation of other media?" This is a topic of which I've academic interest on, as a media communication specialist and as a future CreaComm staff. However I am facing writer's block. The other topic I have to write about is more or less along the same lines. At a crucial time like this, in the midst of looming project datelines (they are due next week), I have to get a writer's block.

I have a sneaking suspicion its due to emotional burdens that I'm carrying. So in an attempt to exorcise my 'demons,' I should blog them and hopefully provide sufficient release to myself. As many of you all know, those who have been reading my blog at least <yes, all 5 of you>, would know that I'm not exactly on rosy terms with my housemates. A few days ago, my roommate finally pressed enough for my buttons for me to lose it. And I proceeded to blog an entry of which I am not particularly proud of. I'm not one to show my anger easily. Note I did not say I don't anger easily. That was a lie I chose to believe for a good many years. I'm one who doesn't show my anger easily. If you offend/piss me off, you would more often than not, find me distancing myself from you until I had dealt with my anger by confessing my rage to God and getting comfort from Him. If you are deliberately looking to provoke a reaction from me because you're just a *beep*, then let me tell you that I rarely give people like this what they want. As such, it takes really a lot for me to really manifest my anger outwardly. Even in cases of righteous anger, when I'm angry at a grave injustice or angry at something that is very justifiable, I do not show it on the outside.

I remember the last time I had been so angry (it happens so rarely that I even remember the times I do lose it) had been during my tenure in the School of Armour, Specialist Training Wing as a Mortar Instructor. We were having a 3D2N exercise, one of the ones nearing the end of their course when the trainees were expected to more or less competent. Still, trainees being trainees. I had a particularly strained relationship with this particular batch. I was the designated (whether I want to or not) 'pai kia' sergeant or to put it simply, 'the bad guy.' I was a no-nonsense kind of sergeant. I did my job, teaching them what I knew and then some. But when they were out of line, I whipped them back in. So it was a strained relationship if you will. Anyway, the day I blew it was quite memorable because it was also my 23rd birthday. One of them had to lose his rifle while outfield on an exercise. Shit hit the fan and everyone's morale was down, including the instructors. They made so many unforced errors and stupid mistakes that I blew it and for the first time since I entered the army 1.5 years earlier, I actually used cursed and swear at them. Now the army is famous for its usage of profanities and vulgarities and ever since a faithful object lesson back when I was 10 years old with my old sunday school teacher, who till today remains a close family friend and the man who introduced me and my brother to computers, I've stopped using profanities and vulgarities. Perhaps only Xuan can attest to what I was before and who I am today as she was the one who knew me the longest. (14 years, dear sister)

So those who read my 'record' post of last week would know the extend to which I was provoked. I've since moderated my post so you can still see it, but I've self-censored some bits. Anyway, E happened to read the post and felt affected by it to a certain degree. This, after all, was a side of me she never saw because she is not familiar with the pre-Christian Andrew Yu. So while I was still emotionally unwell, I was also affected by her being affected by it, if this statement makes any sense at all. I know the Christian life is a constant struggle with the 'forces of the world' and the sinful desires of the flesh. 'What I want to do, I do not do and what I do not want to do, I do,' to paraphrase the apostle Paul. The one who made the post that day, in the heat of his rage, was my sinful flesh.

Coming to Australia has been an 'eye-opening' experience in that, not so much that I saw things with my physical eyes that I've never seen before, but that I really saw the 'world' as it is as well. I've always thought I came from a pretty much sheltered life. The first few instances of 'seeing the world' as it is began in Poly education and continues on to the army and even now, in Oz, I'm seeing a side of the 'world' I never knew. I know Christians can be ugly. I just never seen it and experienced it myself till now. It is a good lesson for me to learn in lieu of the fact that I will plunging into full-time ministry upon my return to Singapore. I will be going into a company which is suppose to be filled with 'mature christians' to a certain degree. I'm glad that at least now, I would not join staff with a naive myopic view of Christian behavior. That said, my convictions about how Christians behavior should be remains the same. My disappointment with how Christians react hypocritically remains the same. My prayer to Him now is for Him to show me what I can do. May He deal with my heart. A heart wounded from the inside by people who are suppose to be on your side, on this side of eternity.

You know what's the worst bit? Thinking that my COFA friends will see me in this state and go, 'Wow, this is how Christians are? This is how Christians treat each other?' Jesus said, 'By this will all man know you are my disciples, if you love one another.' No, this is not how Christians treat each other. Love isn't meant to be like this. But Christians are human too. And humans are foolish creatures.

O Lord, if I have ever stumbled them, forgive me. Help me reflect you and reflect the way things are suppose to be.

Ok, time to move out of this melancholic state and move on to finish my papers!!!

Am I so deaf that I hear not the words you say, seemingly out of earshot? Are the walls (or doors) so thick that there is true privacy within our walls? Is your motive anyway at all honourable?

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
Please, enough about trying to 'help' me with your 'advice.' I see your actions and hear not your words.

From Christiancops.org,

"Ultimately whether we consider the possibilities of an untimely death or not, we must consider the current statistics on death. Every 1 out of 1 person born today will at sometime during their life, die.

Several years ago the popular saying "he who dies with the most toys wins" was everywhere. I ask you, wins what?"

Ok, I've enough of this. I'm gearing up. I'm stepping up. I'm pressing on, full steam ahead, no turning back till all of my projects are done and all my papers are written and handed in. This is the last lap and I'm gonna step up and take my best shot. The past few weeks, even months, have been quite terrible for me and I want to put everything behind me. I don't want to fill my mind with the 'could haves' or the 'what ifs' or the 'what not.' I'm not going to be bothered by anything or anyone. Everything else can wait till after November 12th.

And after all the work is finished, I'm going to travel to Melbourne for a family holiday, with my parents and my brother. I can't even remember when was the last time we did something like this. I think the last time I had a family vacation was in primary school.

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Oh and I found an efficient way to finally get some work done on the two papers I have to write. It starts with me unplugging my laptop from whatever cables it might have. This removes the all important cable which grants me internet access, and then I plonk down on the sofa with the laptop in front of me and then proceed to draft out my papers. With only a few programs running such as Word and iTunes, battery life should last for 3.5 hours, thus ensuring I spend at least said amount of time on work. Hehe.

...died while this was happening to me last year. I'm the one who's suppose to squat next to it, perched on top of the M113, while the weapon was firing. And believe me, there were some near misses...

There must be a reason why I'm still here(alive).

Is it very easy to do the things I do? Video. Producing. Directing. Very easy.

Or is it?

Sigh, its been very hard to improve my craft over here. So dry... so very dry.

Loneliness is a gift.

Camera spoil liao. After 1.5 years, just outside the warranty. And I thought Canon cameras were durable.

This is the second time this week I've coughed up phlegm with traces of blood in it. Where is this blood coming from?

I had the most stuffed up experience with my room mate last night. Nothing else comes close to describe how I feel. He had a habit of always doing work late, I'm alright with that, quite freaking used to not getting much sleep there. Yesterday night, I climbed into bed at 2am. That was like the time he usually went to sleep anyway so ok lah, I thought after I climb into bed then soon he will 自动 then off the light and go to sleep then like carry on tomorrow morning. No... He carried on doing working until 5AM IN THE MORNING. Until the sun arose and it was starting to get bright, then he decided to go to sleep. For 3 hours, I laid there, nursing my cough, trying to get to sleep... He used a table lamp to work by, I asked him to shift the light away from my bed, which was next to his table, and he refused, saying he needed it to look at his equations. What the heow? You give me this stupid cough not enough, now you also don't wanna give a sick person his rest. That's not all. After 5am, as we were trying to get to sleep, he waas kept up by my coughing and he has the audacity to ask me to get up and drink water and basically whine about himself not getting any sleep cos of my coughing!!! You freaking decide to sleep so late, delay my sleep as well, after you finally decide to sleep, then you say I'm keeping you from sleeping?!?

I pretty much heck care from then on and just tried to sleep, regardless of whatever external stimuli. And still he kept complaining that I was keeping him from sleeping. Stuffed up man, you got hear me complain the last 1.5 months when you've been coughing non-stop at night that I cannot sleep or not? You think I wasn't kept awake by you ah? Got hear me complain?? I then retorted, after I really buay tahan liao, "you've been trying to sleep since 5am, I've been trying to sleep since 2am." Then he got the nerve to reply, "but you friday no lesson right?" WAH LIEW, you're the only student in this house ah? I no lessons in the morning doesn't mean I got nothing better to do right? I had originally wanted to head down to the city to take some photos for my Digital Video 2 project. Scrap that idea. I tried to get back to sleep, desperately trying to sleep and wah piang, at 7am onwards, the construction people building a fence at the apartment downstairs just kept raising those construction noise. Foiled by room mate and now, foiled by construction workers.

The last straw was when at 10am, he who had already woke up, decided to talk so loudly to his classmate when discussing his school work, knowing full well I was trying to sleep, that I really couldn't take it anymore and just woke up to go and proceed to shower to wake up.

My head tenant Edmund, once said this in a phone conversation to his friend that his house was like an office. With a network, centralized printer and people having their individual workspaces. He also always tries to have this idea that we are one big happy family in this place. So which is it? You can't have both. Let me state now that I have never, in my 7 months of being here, felt like I was in a family. I'm in an office. With the usual stupid office politics. You know, the fault-pinning, the not-so-subtle hints when they think there is work that is your responsibility and not theirs. Coming to Australia has been an eye-opener in this regards I guess. When you just came out from the army, you almost expect stuffed up attitudes from your colleagues or those hokkien peng because they are pre-believers, they are secular. (But some of my NS colleagues are actually quite nice people, those from HQ side of course, not talking about STW) Coming here has reminded me that hey, Christians can have stuffed up attitudes too.

Now I'm beginning to understand why I don't feel as close to the OCFers as I do to the Crusaders. In Crusade, amongst the students, amongst the staff, I was with family. Here, I'm with colleagues. A beacon of hope in all of this, I'm moving next semester to stay with a COFA classmate. I'm tendering my resignation!!!

Been feeling better with my cough, though it still gets me at night when I'm trying to sleep. To all who prayed for me, thanks. To those who didn't, *glare.*
Haha, kidding... Anyway I went to see the doctor and he confirmed it to be a viral infection. Said I didn't need antibiotics, which is good since I didn't want to use them anyway, and proceeded to prescribe me a cough suppressant which I had to buy from a pharmacy down the street. Like, why can't you stock medicine in your clinic and issue them there? Then I would have been able to claim the consultation AND medicine bill from Medibank~ Grrr...

PS: For those not in the know. Medibank is a healthcare insurance company that I had to sign up for as one of my student visa requirements. You basically pay them a year's premium and you can then get free or subsidized healthcare if it exceeds $20 or so I'm told. So my consultation is like $26 (its a clinic on campus) which I could claim back but the medicine which I got from the pharmacy is like $16 and unrefundable. What to do... sick wat.

I've recently started reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, all 3 books. I wonder how long I will take to finish them. A week? A month?

This is the first time something like this has happened to me. I went to sleep at around midnight, nursing a cough, thinking I will be able to wake up in time for church the next day. This was after a night of playing Literati with E and then playing Settlers of Catan with Vic, Ron and E. I went to bed and tried to sleep. However, I kept coughing and coughing and couldn't sleep at all because I was kept awake by my own coughing. This went on the whole night. I finally got up around 6am to grab a lozenge. Went back to sleep and had the same cycle of cough-sleep-cough-wake till I woke up at around 10am, which was past my church service timing. Went back to sleep and only woke up around lunch time. This is the first time a cough has been able to prevent me from sleeping and even prevent me from going to church, due to being tired from lack of sleep...


EDIT:
I managed to get to UniChurch in the evening so I still made it to church after all. They were expounding the book of Ezekiel. Interesting... more on it later.

Falling sick... kinda hard not to when your roommate has been coughing for the past month in the room. Surprised I resisted it so long. I hate dry coughs... No, not the Zoolander kind.

Since the beginning of last week, I have been on a mid session break which will last till the end of this week. The rest of UNSW have a one week break but COFA gets 2 weeks cos of a 'research week' that is honestly baffling to me because... COFA got things need to research wan meh?
Ah well, I'm not complaining. Took the opportunity to visit some places I've not had the chance to visit since arriving here 7 months ago. Carol's boyfriend came visiting from Hongkong so he had to be given the grand tour~ Hehe, I tagged along, feeling all touristy like. Visited a couple places starting with the Sydney Fish Market. The fish market is where you can get the freshest catches delivered straight from the harbour. You buy the supposedly fresh seafood and can either take em home to cook or have them prepared for you and eaten right on the spot. All manner of fish and shell fish and oysters and the like can be found there.



Here's a pic of Carol, Helen and me at the ships docked at the fish market.

We next paid a visit to Canberra. From what I've heard of Canberra. It seems a very 'dead' and 'boring' place. Like pretty much nothing there. But I figured, 'heck, I don't wanna stay in Sydney my whole 2 years in Australia, I want to be able to say I've at least been to Australia's capital.' So off we went to spend a day in Canberra. On hindsight, it seems it is possible to visit everything Canberra has to offer and be done with it in one day. However, we should have given ourselves more time I guess. By the time we reached, it was already lunch time and you know lah, when it comes to 5pm, all the Aussies automatically close shop one.



We went to Parliament House which is arguably the biggest 'attraction' there is in Canberra. Its here that all the big honchos make all the decisions, like sending young aussie blokes to war in Iraq and what not. Looking at the city, it seems as if the whole town is built around Parliament house and from what I've heard, there is a reason to it. It seemed that once a upon a time, when it came down to the pressing task for choosing a capital for Australia with which it will present to the world and from which diplomatic relations with other countries would occur in, both Melbourne and Sydney vied for the position. The 'debate' went on a great many years till at last, a resolution was reached which was to form a capital in the mean point of the two states. And thus Canberra was born.



This is where they hold parliament.



Here is the hall where they hold their social, diplomatic functions I guess. Yes, that is a humongous Australian flag behind us.

Next up is the Blue Mountains. I personally enjoyed the Blue Mountains more than Canberra. I mean, one can't help but be in awe of His creation when placed right in front of such beauty. We went to see the famous '3 Sisters' which is this bunch of rock formations, which you can see behind me.



They're so named because of an old aboriginal legend involving 3 sisters who got turned into stone by their local witch doctor to prevent their marriage to an opposing enemy tribe or something like that. Anyway, the cool thing was that you could actually walk to the rock formations and actually touch them.



How cool is that?

Next we ventured down into the Katoomba valley and to do that, we went by railway. This railway I'm told is the steepest inclined railway in the entire world. How steep it is? Steep enough for me to want to dig my feet into the seats in front so as to prevent myself from falling out of the carriage, hehe. It was travelling at a fast speed too. To give you an idea, here's what my camera managed to take.





Ahhhhhhh.... but we made it in one piece lah. Then it was exploring the dense jungle of the valley floor, feel like a time traveller, hehe. The Aussies really take their flora and fauna and animals seriously. A lot of time, money and effort is spent in preserving them. Walking along in the cool of the jungle and in the sublime beauty of the place, I do miss E. What to do, I'm getting 'soft,' haha.

No seriously, these past few days as much as being times of enjoyment and forgetting about one's troubles. It has also been a time of great emotional and mental trials. I won't go into specifics cos I don't know the specifics myself. I just know that I was and still am in a dark valley though it feels like God is slowly leading me out of the valley. In the midst of my gloom, there was a hint of light though.

Two of my close friends in Sydney just got attached recently. I was getting suspicious of their behavior already lah so it didn't come as a complete shock to me though I cannot in all honesty, concur that it was a good decision on their parts. Partly because their maturity and heart preparation. Anyway, I sorta took it upon myself to 'talk some sense' into them. Now, the tricky bit was that they were both non-christians so I cannot admonish them as I would a brother or a sister in Christ. Those who have been 'counseled' by me in this area would know how I am like with regards to this matter, hehe. Anyway, I really thank God that I didn't 'scold' them as I would normally under the circumstances. In fact the whole session had been fairly 'civilized' and 'calm' in my books. My stand, "I've already said all that I feel needs to be said. You two now have to thread carefully and with great care. If you don't bare your heart, you won't know what 'love' is. If you bare it, you will feel vulnerability and to be hurt while one is there, is to know what 'human love' is."

One personal good came out of this episode though and I did not care to tell them. As I was preparing the words to say to them. I was recommended a good resource which I've actually read before and which I currently have in my possession. That which is Josh McDowell's 'Secret of Loving.' I wholeheartedly recommend the book to everyone I know. In it are principles which are applicable to all who want a fulfilling and satisfying love relationship, whether you are married or single, believer or not, it is a immensely beneficial read.

Anyway, I was reading it and I came to be convicted of this huge need for honesty in my relationships and I remembered that E and I made a promise to each other early this year that we would be totally honest with each other from hence forth and not second guess each other. I realised then that I had not been totally honest with her regarding how my heart condition had been so I called her up and told her all that I felt up to that point. I think she appreciated my honesty. So I'm that little bit closer to knowing her heart as she is to knowing mine.

Glory to the Most High.

Went on a roadtrip to Canberra and Blue Mountains last week. Heaps of new experiences. I will blog in detail when I have the time/feel like it, haha.

I went to the Singapore High Commission but it was already after office hours when I got there so couldn't go in.

This isn't the first time I've entitled a entry with 'hmm.' Its just that its an accurate 'description' of my thoughts now.
Anyway, I've just received some important news that would be considered marvelous news. I wouldn't call it 'answered prayer' because I didn't exactly pray for such a scenario to happen though I was hoping it would. In lieu of it being good news however, it now raises more questions and possibilities in my mind's eye. I know it isn't healthy to speculate and I pray that I won't go into any wanton fantasies of my own that would not be in line with God's will. Still, I can't help but be excited at the prospects.

As to what news it is that has got me so happy. I shall not reveal it here lest I take away her prerogative.

Went to Switchfoot's concert at the Roundhouse yesterday. First proper rock concert in Sydney, hehe. \m/ ^o^ \m/

It was jammed packed and quite stuffy. The people here were less reserved than the ones back home so it was quite wild.

Overall ok lah, great energy from the band.