Useless Water

It is monsoon season in the Philippines now, which means flood season. There is water everywhere—pouring down on our tin roof and trickling through the cracks down our walls, puffing up the paint as it worms down. Lingering in the air, making chairs mouldy and bags smell damp. Gushing under our feet into tricycles, wetting bums. Overflowing from creeks and tickling toes at 2 am, flushing animal pee and trash out of gutters into homes, destroying karaoke sets and sofas. Water everywhere.

And yet we have water shortage. Nothing coming out of our taps. Laundry left unwashed, greasy dishes piling up, neighbours waiting idly by the gate for water to come. When it does come in trucks, it may be yellow water, good for nothing but for washing the floor and clothes, but we bathe in it still.

So much water, and not enough at all.

Hugot time. 

Like how the world is saturated with information, yet starved for truth. We are constantly rained down on by useless water, rain that is smelly and undrinkable, not even good for washing with. We know this, and we are parched for usable water. We’re sometimes so eager to get it that we run out to the first water truck that comes by, and fill our water drums before we realise it’s all yellow water, false truth. It then takes time to clear our storage, to try to use it up, to dump it out along with all the anger; yellow water makes us angry. If we choose to use it anyway for bathing and washing our dishes, it could make us sick. 

The trick is to make the water truck boys fill up a small white pail first. When tested and found to be clean, we then let them fill up all our water drums. We are told to test every spirit to see if it is from God, for not all water suppliers carry pure water. Not all philosophers tell the truth. 

Pregnancy Update: 5 months

Five months in.

Most frequently-heard comment: "Can't tell that you're pregnant."
Secondly most frequently-heard comment: "Oh you're really showing!"

Workout routine: BodyFit by Amy's Prenatal Bodyweight workout. 25 minutes of enough movement to challenge my muscles without making me feel like giving up. An 8-month-pregnant fitness guru is more motivating than anybody else.

Prenatal checkup: It's a girl! She likes to raise her hands up in the air, and is growing well.

Extra pregnancy calories: Marks & Spencer's smoothies from downstairs. The big bottle is much more worth it than the small one.

Perks of pregnancy: Feeling her kick. Seeing the belly move and ripple as if something were about to spawn from the surface.

Lows of pregnancy: Not much right now. Not as fatigued as in the first trimester, and less peeing in the middle of the night. Isn't that odd?

Names we're considering: Theo and Avery (Avery is purely me, as k says it sounds like "ovary". What?)

Baby equipment: Now proud owners of three pairs of baby socks and one hand-me-down car seat.

Little worries: That our cats will be jealous. Loki has been awfully needy lately because Thor doesn't cuddle with him all the time anymore.

Coupledom bucket list: Went to Manila for our last time as a duo, and had our last Valentine's day as a carefree couple. As I was telling a friend on Sunday, it's the same feeling as when I was about to get married. I couldn't wait to be married and move into our new home, but I was sad to leave my jurong home, my room, and my little routine with my parents. I'm excited about the baby coming, about holding her and placing her in a co-sleeper cot, and pushing her around to have lunches with me at city square mall, and about us moving into a whole new phase with someone we'll love more than we can imagine. At the same time, though, I'm all too conscious of these last days of being just kj, netflixing and making life work together in bits and scraps, minding monthsaries and steak dinners. Someday when I have my hands full with this baby girl, I will look back at all these little things, and maybe I will miss them. Or maybe I will laugh at how silly I was. God's plan is infinitely better.

A present at 30

Around June this year, I started thinking about turning 30 in a positive way. The twenties no longer felt like a golden era I had to cling on to. I started telling people I was 30 when they asked. Tomorrow, that is what I will be.

I did think, though, that I should do something momentous and cliched to mark the turn of the decade. Perhaps get that tattoo. I thought about trees and roots and words, and then I forgot about tattoos.

But God thought it was time for a body modification too.

I started feeling it in my chest, pms symptoms dragging on a week too long.

On 9th November, I groggily took a pregnancy test first thing in the morning. No spectacles on, teeth unbrushed. Two lines appeared. I took the box out to k, who was already up and trying to submit a paper online. I showed him the box and the test stick.

"What does this mean? So what does it mean? You're pregnant? Don't worry, it may not be accurate."

I would have clobbered him, except I was also unsure that something so cheap could be relied on to tell me the biggest news of our lives. So we shrugged it off and went about our day. In the afternoon I took another test. It was positive too.

Again, we pretended it was false. But we brought home a digital ClearBlue pregnancy test kit, because the more expensive, the more accurate?

It blinked and calculated for a minute, way longer than my cheap tests took.
Finally it decided. "Pregnant."

Humans are strange beings. A printed word is like the News, it just Is. With that word, we finally allowed ourselves to believe and rejoice.

I called my parents. My mum picked up, and I told her to go wake Daddy up. "Why, you're pregnant ah?"She just didn't let me have my moment. Lots of fumbling and phone clicking later, they were both on speakerphone, and I said this big sentence for the first time. "Yes, I'm pregnant."

"Congratulations,"my father said very properly. I wouldn't expect anything less from him.
"Aiya, I knew it,"said my mother.

The next few days were happy ones, telling k's family and my friends, absorbing all the joy that was exploding around us. We went to Choon Kit and we got a gynae appointment at Mt E. I was seven weeks in.

At the gynae's clinic, I was still worried that my test result was a false positive. I did a urine test for the nurse to check, and I was waiting for her response to tell me if I was really pregnant or not. But she glanced at it and tossed it into the dustbin. "First pregnancy?"she asked. That was a relief.

Then finally, we saw it for ourselves on tv. A mass of black, my uterus, which I'd always thought was faulty, and at the top, a blueberry-sized cluster and a tiny blinking dot. Our baby's beating heart. Dr Kek turned the sound on. I felt k melt into my side and lean his cheek on my head. All my worries about him not being in the moment had been unfounded.

I carried that beating heart with us to Tokyo, and I fed that beating heart lots of food. I took rest stops in the middle of our long walks, and went to bed thinking about the beating heart.

Today, our little blueberry is the size of a lemon. The last time we saw it on tv, it was waving its hands about and bouncing. I realized that even while I couldn't see it or take care of it, God was making it grow, and it was busy doing its own thing inside there.

Tomorrow I turn 30, and already I care less about my own birthday than the impending birth of this little one.

Thank You God, for your gift in Your good time. We don't know where we're headed or what You want us to do. But for now at least we know we are to take care of this gift You've given us, and that's more than enough.

"I Wish" is a graphic novel I read recently about a magician who grants people wishes. In return, they must give him their most precious possession. They often do not know what that most precious thing is; the moment the wish is granted, it will be taken from them.

Sometimes the price they paid was more important than the thing they wished for. A daughter wished for her father to become more loving, only to have him die as the price.

But more often, their most precious thing is something completely useless.

A studious boy wished for his friend to be healed, and in return he failed his entrance exams. It was stunning for him to realise that the thing he had treasured most had been something so trivial.

A mafia chief wished for his friend to not lose his eyesight after a wounding battle, and lost his long-cherished thirst for revenge upon his enemy.

A mother wished for her daughter to marry a rich man, and lost the greed that had made her dissatisfied everyday.

We all think we prioritize the big values: family, love, honour. But the choices we make day to day reveal what our true priorities are.


As for me, I'm afraid that my most precious thing might be revealed to be something utterly stupid--my appearance. If I should lie in hospital, my biggest inconvenience would not be my weak health, but that my friends would see me sallow and in ill-fitting hospital clothes. When I go to meetings, the first thing I think about is not what I can do for others, but what I should wear, and how I want them to see me. I get up, cultivate the outer me, and forget that the inner me needs gardening too.

It makes me shudder to think that in that secret treasure box of my heart, I might be keeping something of zero value. It might even be good if I lost it through a granted wish.

Relax, I'm not going to become all minimal and militant. There is a place and time for preserving appearances. But that time should not outweigh time spent on the inner things. And certainly not replace other more urgent fears. And if I should need to abandon it in light of other greater needs, I must be able to.

Who would have thought I'd have learnt a huge life lesson from a Korean manhwa?

Mental and Spiritual Wastebasket: the discarding of old ideas. (and the new ideas that take their place.)


1. My talent defines me.
I am who I am even if someday I can't do all the things I do now.

2. I am still young enough to let others do the planning and talking.
I am old enough to do something and not care how young I look while doing it.

3. Every day must be jam-packed with super-meaningful activities.
My only meaning each day must be found in Christ.

Taking the advice of my devotional and creating a wastebasket. I've been studying white lies lately--the kind of lies that are hard to detect because they are 80% truth. Detecting the lie is the first step. We must know the truth that replaces it.

I've come to see that I will never understand what it means to love a sibling. I look at k and his, and am amazed that there are still whole worlds I will never get to explore. I often imagined that I would have a brother like a Protector, or a little brother like a mini-son. But that's the best my imagination can do.

Am I an introvert--or am I just an only child? I find my way in more easily with animals than with people, barging into their territories with hugs. Sometimes I think that if I had siblings, I would be a better leader, a more effervescent marketing representative, a more successful designer. I would be friends with all the sales people and never get conned. But maybe not.

I certainly wouldn't have so much space to be reflective, if I had siblings. Or I might find my inherent need for space squandered by my siblings, and be a recluse out of the house. I will never know. And those with siblings wouldn't be able to tell me, because they've never spent a life as an only child. So it remains a mystery for us all.

Without a team behind me, I've learnt to operate independently. I wonder if the brother I imagine having would tolerate my long baths, celebrate my graduation, or approve of the company I keep. Maybe brothers don't need to do all those things.

New Mission:  Becoming a Woman, Eventually

These days my obsession has been nothing else. Ever since my mother and I had a landmark conversation about who in my social circle was a woman and who wasn't yet (me), I have thought about nothing else when dressing up. Just a year ago I was lamenting that the low-20s were passing me by, and I still wanted to be a lithe young girl. How quickly the rules of attraction change.

I asked k, "Am I a woman?"

K: "I think you are still too thin to be a woman."

(Meaning, I suppose, that I have no curves.)

K: "You could take a risk and put on weight everywhere."

Unfortunately I put on weight on my face first, so I will not be taking his advice anytime soon.

Although I do see his point. I'm 1.53m with tiny bones: tiny ribs, tiny hipbones, tiny hands and feet. Being thin on top of being short makes me look like I'm 14 when I wear t-shirts and sneakers (reason that I don't wear either). Even when I dress up, people think I'm 20 at most. Good when I eventually age, bad for when I'm in a leading/teaching role. So I turn to makeup, but it seems that makeup is not enough to make me a woman.

But I don't think it's entirely curves or makeup. It's confidence, it's a quiet being. Finally, it has a lot to do with clothes and hair, and accessories.

Francoise Hardy: a woman because of confidence

A woman because of that watch, and the lack of any other silly accessory

When I was still working daily at seen, I dressed up to meet magazine editors and suppliers. But these days as a freelance artist, I have regressed into hippie skirts, flats and headbands. Maybe what it'd take to slowly become a woman is give up the excessive accessory, exchange the slouchy cloth totebag for a substantial arm-bag, and wear a serious watch.

So yesterday I consciously searched for a substantial bag to carry over my arm. Then I was complaining about how heavy it was.

K: "Real women don't complain."

Maybe someday I will give up this silly exercise of Becoming a Woman. But I do think it is about time to look for a new refinement.



 Nothing much goes on in the privileged world. We fret over what to wear and which new places to eat at. We complain when our stomachs are too full. In all honesty I despise my life now. I despise my hobbies and need for beauty products. I despise my interest in good restaurant set lunches.

My boss cut short her stay in Japan after the tsunami and radiation traumas. But she said she lived well there. Always sure that death might be in the next tremor, she forgave everyone and repented of all her sins. And what was truly important was all that was important.

But here in our very-safe country, without tornados or military coups or tsunamis or earthquakes, we are still dying. Death is still near. Except that we live oblivious to the proximity of death, oblivious that we are already dying slowly and making no preparations to die well.

The Full Lifestyle Detox.

1. Beauty Products.

I kept my vow and was new-product free for 3 months! Without this self-ban, I wouldn't have realised how much waiting time I have killed by chalking up points at Watsons and testing products on my hand. My legs have eyes of their own and they gravitate towards shiny pots of nail polish growing out of their display trays like flowers. But for three months, I did U-turns whenever I reached a beauty counter. I also used up all my products to the bottom of the tin, and found that I can last a month on what I thought was an empty powder pact. I did, however, buy Topshop makeup as a birthday present and that's not counted.

2. Red Meat.

There was a golden age of self-indulgence when k and I would order escargots followed by steaks, dinner after dinner, week after week. If there was a meat to be chosen on the menu, it would be beef. If not beef, then squid or prawns.

Sometime during our time of feasts I kept hearing about young people stricken with cancer, and thereafter the golden era crumbled. I read up on cancer-friendly foods. I bought myself a hospital insurance plan and a life insurance plan. And I installed a food ban: seafood and steak once a month.

I now can see that there are other things on the menu such as fish and chicken, or even vegetables. K and i found that we have less water retention and more energy, and I sure hope this makes us less prone to cancer. If nothing, at least I'm no longer sick of steak, the worst state to be in. And I'll be looking forward to steak tonight.

3. Snarky blogs.

With lots of lull time after a work project is done with, I've followed a number of blogs I found intelligent and funny, like Jezebel, the frenemy, and...Jezebel. The sharp feminism I didn't completely agree with, but it was more of a read than fashion blogs, and I needed to know how liberal feminists thought. Now with the kids camp making me busy all the time, I haven't found the need to click on Jezebel. And just like the steak ban, I feel a brain detox--no more self-righteous snark about media, politics or celebrities I don't know. Instead, I lull myself out on lovemeow.com for pictures of kittens. Ha!

People used to imagine life in the 21st century as a hyper-technological landscape of robots performing daily duties, and we'd all wear space suits.

Listening to the auto-tuned monotonous songs on radio these days, it sure sounds that way.

I'm quite a small person. Petite. But when I was at my tiniest, I was the most fearless child ever. I was an only child who grew up among adults. So I never had any concept of how small I was.

When I was three years old, another little girl climbed on my father's back. I stood my ground and shouted, "Get down!"

When parents' friends came to the house, I went up to them and beckoned them with my hand to follow me into my room. When I saw new people, I would ask, "Who is this man?"

I found the kids in kindergarten noisy, prattling, and okay to play with but not essential to sit with all the time. I answered all the teachers' questions and knew more than any of them did. I invited all my teachers home for lunch, to my mother's shock. At church I was repeatedly disturbed by a teenage boy, and I went up to his mother to complain that her son was bullying me. She was highly impressed.

In primary one, one of the boys liked to push us tiny ones from behind as we went down the stairs. Looking back, I think he thought it was fun for us. And maybe some tiny boys found it fun. But I wasn't one to be pushed, and I told my mother. She said, "Push him back!"  (I guess this is where I got it from.) So the next day, before he could push me, I told him, "If you push me, my mother will come and push you down the stairs!"


Sometime between then and now, I lost that.

Maybe because I was suddenly surrounded by older children, prefects, who carried me and told me I was small and cute. Maybe because teachers always commented that I was quiet. And small. I learnt these things about myself I had never considered before. I learnt that there were many other kinds of people who wanted me to do things their way. And that making friends meant having to submit to other bigger, or bossier kids. So small is what I became.

Somehow I believe that fearless child is still inside me. That tiny tot to whom no adult or peer is a threat. She's deep inside, still telling people what she knows without self consciousness. Still standing up for rights and justice. She's a dormant volcano, who has come out only when desperately needed. On other days, she hides in a small voice and petite clothes and "you look so young!"s and "are you sure you can carry that?"s, the things people have defined and handicapped her with, that she's come to believe about herself.

Let's be Quiet.

A quiet early morning start to the new year. A quiet birthday cake with my parents last night, to close three weeks(!) of birthday surprises. Very befitting to start off the year this way, and a good promise of peaceful things to come.

As always, the obligatory looking-back post, done looking-forward:

Things I did for the first time in 2009 that I want to do again in 2010:

1. Make books that mean something to me, that tell the story of the children I love

2. Have happy relationships with my colleagues, whoever the new ones may be. I felt sad packing up all my office desk stuff yesterday (plants, toys, photos, totally non-work-related), and sad to receive the beautiful birthday/farewell package that Chelsea prepared for me.

3. Have lots of picnics and adventures. With K, with family, with friends. In 2009 K and I explored the island for many picnic spots that I want to share (with a lucky few), places with great green fields, poetic trees, and views of neighboring countries.

4. Spend more time with family. Cycling with my dad, home barbecues, and mindless activities like bowling.

5. Kids Camp in Hokkaido. The strange and beautiful places I visited, the surreal settings for the same family camp; walking with kids by misty mountains to the breakfast hall is certainly a more calming experience than the Singapore camp. Or I might stay to do camp in Singapore. Whatever God wills.

6. Have birthdays with my loved ones. My first birthday back in Singapore in a while, and the celebrations have been endless. Yesterday I had lunch with my colleagues, and was preparing to be picked up by my mother at 3. But of course, my mother was lying again, and it was the Glue Girls there to whisk me off for a home-cooked picnic. They had cooked all morning and risked life and limb to come out in their post-cooking selves (ie no eyeliner) to surprise me. It's so difficult to even get them out altogether for a meal, let alone see them do this great feat on my birthday. Much, much love, wish there were photos of the PSCafe-style cuisine. And then it was a quiet dinner with noble K, who had survived 4 birthday celebrations with me and coordinated 3 of them, and is still going to birthday lunch with me today. He deserves many pats on the back, a spa back massage in fact.

7. So much blogging! If you didn't realize, I wrote posts for the national heritage board in 2009, to promote museum visits. My application letter for the job read like this: "I have FIVE BLOGS." I can't keep up with all of them now, and I can't stop making new ones either. But everything I want to write about the kids will be still be on apart, and if I do any new illustration work it will be on ennegrey, and this one here is for all of you who I wish I saw more often, so we don't grow too distant. The others shall die slow and painless deaths.

SO I hope you find many things you'd like to repeat this year, and many new things you can carry forward with you in 2011. Learn new things, love more people, do something that scares you, change your hairstyle, step on new soil and take new photographs.

Lena had her Moment, and I had something similar this weekend.

I was waiting at the traffic junction to cross over to taka and a trumpet started playing. There was no flair, no style, no accompaniment of electric drumbox or keyboard strings, just a trumpet and a straight melody blaring out note by note. A few of us at the traffic light turned and saw that it was a busker in a wheelchair. As the tune unravelled itself it was this song:

Why does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don't they know it's the end of the world
'Cause you don't love me any more

Why do the birds go on singing
Why do the stars glow above
Don't they know it's the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love

He sounded like a prophet, and we were the masses hurrying on in things we know aren't important to begin with. I couldn't look at him anymore, or walk to him like another passerby did. I stood there quite still for a while, and tried to understand my sudden sadness.

Sometimes you do something midway and give up on it, and upon returning you discover that it was actually quite fascinating.

Such as this Glasses Girl and other random doodles I scanned in for my process book. My FYP itself was changed because I revisited a random subconscious doodle. We will never know what Glasses Girl would look like complete, but she needs to be incomplete.

And other midway things: ET's tongue when she starts to clean herself but gets distracted by me and leaves it hanging out. And a storybook that I started writing in sec two that was loosely inspired by Anne of Green Gables, casting me and carissa as fairies: I wish I had written more chapters because I want to find out who Robyn-Jacque ended up with and how. And this piece of knitting that I didn't finish because I couldn't remember how to, and three pearls later I have my favourite shelf decoration:


And the half-cascading wall of clippings that I left hanging for a very long time, because while taking it down I realised it looked better half-removed:

Midway is also the camera click when nobody's ready, when things are in the process of being posed, and the only time when our true faces are seen.

And if I hadn't given up midway, there would be no 25 today either. I have an itch to do a project on perfect incompleteness.

So much for organising Lovefool; I don't know how to love or be loved.

There is a simple truth that children sing, and that I tell anyone who will hear it: God loves me. But I've only thought about it as the kind of love between a kind master and a servant. I do what I'm supposed to do, and I do my best, and I report to Him what I've done and check that it's alright. Then with my eyes still averted I retreat into my own room and wait for His promises to come true. And they do; it's been a transaction of faith.

But I've never really thought about what it means for Him to love me. To want me to stay after I've done everything He's told me to do. To care about me the same way another human being cares for me: all the silly little things like doing what makes me laugh, or just wanting to spend some time together. He's been a loving God only in my head, a foot away from my heart.

And the same goes for the people who love me the most. I can't understand it, I can't grasp it wholly. I still think that they want the most perfect girl that I can be. And so in return I don't know how to love them back any other way than in my head.

--

I know why though. Because this kind of great love, though unconditional, comes with expectations. Can unconditional love still come with expectations? But it does. And I know it because I see it in myself when I love other people (and creatures). Nothing they do can make me stop loving them, but that doesn't mean there aren't expectations.

Because if somebody loves you, they will expect only the best of you, because they want your life to go well. Parents don't expect other people's children to do well or stay away from bad habits. Is it about having control over somebody's life? Perhaps, but love without expectations isn't true love.

What I hadn't understood so well, though, was that this unconditional and expectant love also applies to me. I can't believe that I am loved. I either don't know what I could be loved for, or I just don't think about it. So now I'm listening to the word "love" more carefully in church, letting it hit me as sharply as it did only a day ago, as if hearing about love for the first time. And I'm taking a new look at practical love, wondering why I stopped hugging my parents and why I do things that don't give anything back to them.

All I know how to do is give presents to people and be there for them, in some weak-kneed attempt to voice what I feel. I keep my distance because I don't know if I'm wanted around.

I'm getting there. Just because I know this now.

Back from the silence. We stayed in a convent on a hill, each in our own rooms, with our own sink, desk, wardrobe and bed.

There was this:

Prayer of Trust and Confidence -Thomas Merton

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and
The fact that I think I am following Your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please You
Does in fact please You and
I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire
And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the
Right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for You are ever with me and
You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

And this:

Blessed are those whose strength is in You,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

Psalm 84

Why do we have to go so faraway to read this, when it's always there in our hands? Maybe because the physical act of leaving and seeking makes us more ready to find.

Even with the silence, my insides were clamoring like a busy kitchen, clashing and clanging and never settling. Still I found the moment of peace I was seeking, on the steps under a canopy of trees, in the promise of a place of springs. Springs, even though I may be just passing through.

Even with the silence and the presence of God, I still feel like an awful person. Followed by goodness and love, but still an awful person.

Hello, today is my birthday and I haven't been able to sleep for the last few hours because I can hear my father snoring. I'm doing this to wait for him to wake up so that I can go back to sleep. I don't know what I will do today, but I'm in hongkong, where I was born.

This is also the last day of the year. This year has been as long as two years. I suppose that means I've made good use of my time. I don't dread this particular birthday because I think it comes at the right time; that today should be the day I sit back a bit and let time hurry up its end.

This was the year I stopped illustrating fashion and started drawing in miniscule for people who like stories. It was also the year I stopped liking fashion, and preferred to stay home and be as boring as I really want to be. Career and self goes together, as it should be.

This was the year I crawled out of myself and went to mongolia to carry lambs and goats, and joined e com. It was the year I could talk honestly to friends and strangers about what was truly important. I don't care for rowdy parties and I don't care for fitting in this exciting world, but let's talk about you.

This was the year my growing burden for balloon children became the project of my life. My third year in rfkc and I feel the same way about them, and I hope I will never become more Experienced or Prepared for the way they make me love them.

This was a happy year because I learnt more about myself. I learnt that I'm happiest as a child, buying toys and being outdoors and making stickers and drawing. They're the same things I did when I was five, just that at 22 I finally see that these are the best things one can do in life.

I just hope that at 22 I will make wise decisions; that the first thing I do in the new year will not be my biggest regret.

Sam and Jiet have been telling me stories about losing things, and saying prayers like, "God, I want to see it come back to me. I believe it will come back!" And God surprised them with His "efficiency."
And I wanted to experience it too, having only lost my wallet about three times, and three phones in two years, two of them within the same month.

1. Rings

I have two precious rings. One with a green stone, from my uncle's collection, and one from my mother, with dangling stones. I took them both out before drawing with charcoal, and put them on the worktable. Of course i forgot to put them back on, i am that way. When i finally remembered some hours later they were gone.

I remembered God's efficiency, and prayed hard instead of giving up as i usually do. Then i saw this classmate of mine who i don't usually talk to, and asked if she had seen the rings. She suggested searching the dustbin, "because people may just clear the table" by crumpling up everything within paper.

I did that, and after removing all the rubbish, i found the two rings at the bottom of the trash bag!

2. Wallet

Yesterday aimei and i decided to explore Mustafa at around 8 pm. "Watch your bag," she warned as we squeezed in. Mustafa is madness. It is insanity. It is a jumble of uncleared stock and thousands of people squeezing in tiny alleys. I clutched the mouth of my bag, but obviously not all the time. When i tried to pay an hour later i found that my wallet was gone.

We retraced our path through bales of cloth and fake flowers and umbrella racks, but it was hopeless. I was very tired and very calm. Aimei rushed around asking for the lost and found counter, which was a dingy table in a back alley through a door in the corner of the shampoo department. I filled in a form half-heartedly and we left. I filled in another form half-heartedly at the mrt station.

I was calm, and I was thinking, "God, you found the rings. You found sam's wallet. You are going to bring this back." But I also looked at the crowd and the madness of little india and my years of experience of losing things clicked a what-to-do-next button: cancel atm card, apply for i/c (which would be double the penalty now cos it was my second loss), apply for my other cards.

I was in such a calm daze that i took the wrong train and didn't realise it. Then my phone died. So in the quiet of the very packed train, i kept praying the Efficiency prayer. I prayed that He would work in my pickpocketer's heart to return my cards.

I remembered the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. What had struck me these few days was the crowd of 5000 who followed Jesus into the mountains because they saw how he had healed the sick and performed miraculous signs. They came all the way without bringing food. Jesus had to worry about feeding them; they obviously hadn't worried when they followed Him into the mountains. And when Jesus was about to feed them, He made them sit down. And they all sat down and waited and watched, as Jesus broke the five loaves and two fishes, and fed every single one of them until baskets overflowed with leftovers.

I felt that I had to learn to be like them: trusting in Him because of the things I have seen Him do, waiting for my turn, coming empty-handed to let Him feed me, sitting and waiting and watching.

So I told my father, "It will return."

At 4 am I got a missed call. At 7 am they called me again. "This is Mustafa, your wallet is here." I had never been more awake answering a phone in bed. The money was gone, my ez-link card was gone, but everything else was intact.

God could have brought me anywhere to teach me to have faith in Him. But he chose to bring me to the most unlikely place, a black hole for lost wallets, even worse than hk's h&m where i lost my last phone.

I prayed for opportunities to witness His miracles firsthand. And yeah i sure got that prayer answered this week, in heavy and harrowing doses.

Of course I don't think that God is a genie who grants wishes. Or that it is because of my faith that my wallet showed up. It has nothing to do with me. I could have had little faith and God would have returned my wallet to me to shame me and teach me that I must have more faith.

But as it is, I'm doubly, triply, ten times amazed.

The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the "best" people, the "right" food, the "important" books.

as spoken by a demon mentor to another demon, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

So that's why I'm so free and happy now. I have been doing things of pure pleasure, such as sitting by the lake on my way home, and scrunching up sand in my hands. Wednesday's surprise excursion took us to sentosa, and of course there was no going back to school after that. Nobody can leave a surprise beach in midweek. And there was a happy brainless movie with butterscotch popcorn. And happy hour last night!with kiyoko, megumi and daniel playing a live set as we sat around candles on the floor.

Because I've bumped off all my classes this week, except the sentosa class, I'm going for my management lecture today for the first time. I feel very rested, and plumped up, and soothed, and comforted. :)

a) My little france on a beach.

b) Ironic that when we're told to think of the happiest day of our lives, we feel sad.

c) Green happiness, to fit life into a chinese mtv. Desaturated film clips of board games and pillow fights at home, a clean and simple kind of sadness. Girls in chinese mtvs wipe their tears and move on, staring at potted plants and their white fingers. It's the best kind of sadness to have, a child's broken heart.

d) And a surreal sense of being lifted off the ground during breakfast prayer on bev's balcony. This is our home, where we must be, where our friends are, where we will grow. (patriotic sharon) I've never felt a fresher sense of home than on that balcony. Or lying facing the wall and talking through impending sleep about everything. We blurt out during sleepovers and sleep it off, and we wake up the next morning loving ourselves, God and each other a little bit more.

e) Or sitting in home club just because that was the best way to spend my saturday. Without any real purpose but to be with the glue girls and be as alive as i can be.

f) Dancing my hair off where nobody can see me, in the dark. Does your mother know?

g) Learning to live without the little ghost trailing me, wrapping its arms of smoke round my waist.

All these things occurred to me on my walk home, or more like, my antsy tiptoe over earthworms being washed over the pavement by the rainflood. Sharon said it right. I have to remember who I was and where I came from, starting from that bright japanese day when I looked up into the sky and had a clear vision of who You were and what You want for me. I have grown into someone with fightsmarts and tricks, You taught them to me. To see me crumble over something trivial must hurt You. Warriors are not trained only to be defeated by children.