You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up... To more than I can be

-----------------------------

I was sitting down in the science library, trying to focus despite the unfamiliar surroundings, and the smell of mold in the air. Before I could warm my seat, my phone rang... It was Dad, and it wasn't the usual nagging or SMSes that he always sent me daily.
"The hospital called, they told us to make our way down as fast as we can. And to bring her IC along. They couldn't get your aunt. Let's go down now".

I immediately packed my things. Raced down the stairs as silently as I could.

We all knew it was coming. But, I didn't have enough time. At the very last moment, I doubted myself... I still failed to treasure the time I had with her. As I waited anxiously, around the canteen awaiting the yellow vehicle, I met with some whom I told the news.

"Is it alright?"
"Are you okay?"

I was.
Is it wrong to be?

All there was left to do was the administrative part of things.
We were told to anticipate this, many years before. Yellow man already didn't know what to think. Not that he ever tried to think.

I was the first to arrive. What greeted me was no longer a grandmother who couldn't speak my language, on the bed struggling to take her every breath. It was a mere cadaver, life sucked out of her earthly shell and eyes wide open like it had never been for a while now.

Up till now, I purposed only to see cadavers of people I never knew. Because I dissect and play with their innards in Anatomy class.

It wasn't hard to hold back the tears.
But it was hard to keep the waves of memory from washing up the shore of eternal regret.

The last time I saw her was 2 days ago.
Why didn't I come yesterday? I could have!
But I chose to wake up early to meet a friend for breakfast instead.
Is it wrong?

As my aunt cried and shouted for her to come back.
And we monitored the 12-lead ECG that she was hooked up to.
I don't think she's alive anymore.

The nurses said she can still hear us. "There's still abit... see here..." said the nurse pointing to the miniature fluctuations in the ECG.
Well, okay... I'd take her word for it. Maybe I'm not that smart afterall....
Maybe, she'd be able to return...


We tried to relieve the agony, and come to terms with everything with a little joke by the bedside.

But in the end...
this woman whom i lived with me for a few months when i was 6 years old.
met once at a hawker centre at 9 years old.
visited at her one-room apartment when i was 19 years old.
spent time with fortnightly while i was 22 years old.

has departed.

I was the horrible grand daughter who bullied everyone.
She was the loving grandmother who did all she could to accommodate my unreasonable requests, rude, spiteful, inconsiderate...

Surprisingly I still do recall what I demanded of her while I was on my way to PAP Kindergarden. How I mocked her, and she just did it without dignity to make me smile.
I feel so terrible. What a monster I was. am.

She was alert on Sunday and Monday.
All I could do was sit by her and try to read my Drug Quiz 2.
I didn't understand what she was saying.
And she couldn't understand the MP3s on my iPod which I place in her ears.
Why didn't I visit her on Monday. Why didn't I prepare the mp3 I wanted her to hear, immediately after I reached home on Sunday?


My final regret. was that I undoubtedly grew weary of being a good grand daughter. I didn't try harder.

I have done much more. than if I didn't have God.
But my regrets are really, minimised.

We all tried to smile. and pretend we have lives that are more important.
knowing inside, she has led a lonely hard life.

I wish they knew.
and never forget her.

I wish she didn't say "My life won't stop just because of this"

I wish I didn't had to call and persuade everybody to stop being busy and come to the hospital, to the death bed.

I wish I could have insisted that the silly doctor removed the urinary catheter and made her last days more comfortable.

I wish I had learnt my dialects well.

I wish I can love the rest of them even better, before they depart from this world.

谁言寸草心 抱得三春晖

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants

Dedicated to a beloved grandmother. Mdm See B.C.
widowed at a young age.
raised her only 3 year-old son.
and took in another young girl.
a faithful follower of Christ and a remarkable woman in difficult times.

well, it was a great privilege. as it always is, to serve the people you love dearly.
it's like being recognised and loved back altogether in one action.

the person who has touched me so greatly, and been there through my nonsensical ramblings is moving on with her life. I guess I didn't feel much, through all the things I know I had to do... throughout the whole wedding, being there on time, doing up the tasks on the time line...
while she was preparing I thought I could have helped more...
while I was helping I feared I'd mess things up...
after all, it has been a great long while I did projectionist and with all the sophisticated instruments, of co-ordinating cameras, screens, views, timing, songs, videos all in synchrony.

it was her big day. and i really wanted the best for her...
I'm glad I had loads of help, and by God's grace, the rapport with people I met for the first time in my life today.... worked so well :)

it was when everybody left the church, and there was just uncle alvin eating since we were all busy hungry throughout the day... and when we gathered around them to just talk... that I understood perhaps why tears have a role on such joyous occasions.
I was a tinge of happyness, mixed with the reluctance to part.
Mummy was really pretty tonight, as she always have been. and will always be....

and even as i left the group and sat on the long journey home... i had time to even pause and think of the entire day past. i had not yet congratulated them, but i hope my actions did.

i have never followed through an entire wedding like this, the whole day before... and now that I have, i cease to think that it is really a bane of life, a relic of the past that women of this current age have to awkwardly fit into. and hearing the accolades heaped on the late Mrs LKY... it seems that there is a mystery i have yet to uncover... yet there's some tinge of sadness to see a loved one go on to this stage.

i wonder why. perhaps it is innate in human nature. that marriage is akin to leaving everything else as secondary compared to their partner now. and though it is desirable, maybe we humans cannot stomach being demoted in the hearts of the people we love.
maybe that is why. from ages past to present, marriages are splash of joy and tears. a myriad of chaos and order... because everyone battles within themselves.... in letting go and holding on.

i really question if we can love just any one person. forever.

I am a happy girl! (:
I have been so busy so tired but so fulfilled.
I am such a nerd but thank God for I believe He is putting the joy back in my life, after a saga of many other issues in the past few years. :p I start to feel I have a life!
even though I am in year 4 now, not doing FYP...
I have so much more electives and stuff to do this semester but I am excited about learning new things! It's this curiousity all over again. I can't believe I requested a closed stack book on Lupus just because I found it on google doing a little assignment, and was really dying to read the pages not shown on googlebooks! :P

I want to be a shinny pharmacist! yeah. shinnyy~ for God.
I hope I can still be happy in the gruelling dungeons of pre-registration training in the Singapore's closest thing to hell for fresh graduates. ok, i may be exaggerating.. but who knows. and with my pre-existing anxiety issues, I believe God will show Himself faithful through it all, despite hearing from my seniors about stress-related health issues arising from the job requirements!

anyway. It seems like I signed up for a bit too much this semester. Every week since the first week of school, I have been super busy on mondays, to the extent of sleeping at 4to6am! and then 8am to 6pm lectures on Tuesdays! thank God for the mid-week Wednesday breaks! I so need them! Assignments and projects never end! :S
but I feel that there is this light-ness. like everything is coming but I decided I still wanna have a balanced life, I still take time to relax and find myself so much happier (: I guess I am a human affter all, contrary to my past-personal belief. ha.
even teaching tuition seems easier, and my students seem to be able to understand better. I hope they improve! they are going to be my last two darlings :)

Only thing I need to work on is being more positive!
I have taken a new langauge - Bahasa Melayu. It's been such a drag I hope I can rid myself of such negativity :( I miss my Thai whenever I sit and learn all over again the basics of another language, and find the similarities of Thai and Malay, words that I can write in Thai script, now in Melayu~ O, endure! for the sake of being a good pharmacist to the Malay patients! Thank God I have a unexpected partner for Malay lectures! :) It was such a pleasant surprise seeing Joycelyn at the first lecture.. God is good all the time! heh.
last lecture I missed half of the malay lecture cos I saw aacaan weenaa outside during the break and spoke thai with her gaogao. so terrible to know i have forgotten so much of my beloved thai language! maybe one day I can have a job that involves shuttling between thailand and singapore, doing pharmacy work!

I love my life now, but I gotta sleep cos my head's splitting.
I'm going to bed in weariness and in joy... with my God watching over me and blessing me in everything!
to God be the glory (:

well, if growing up or growing old is about finding happiness in old boring things, i certainly have grown up.

yesterday was Sunday service, i hanged around and did whatever I was told to...
planned to chill out a few hours in starbucks before heading to the Tertiary ministry's annual BBQ

a little friend of mine didn't understand why i wouldn't be eating lunch with him.
so i ended up eating with him & my lunch date instead of just my lunch date & i.
and he couldn't wait till his dad bought him his lunch and feasted from my plate.

then chilling at starbucks, wasn't really as formal & structured as what i initially envisioned the conversation to be. I guess I was digressing a bit because the main topic was really rather awkward & painful to confront sometimes.
But I guess things went well enough.

then we spent more than an hour getting from Parkway Parade to Mountbatten Road. which would usually take a 10min walk. We almost reached the initial venue of the BBQ but it was changed to church back again because of the rain. So we had a little tour of east singapore within that hour, thankfully without a cost.

Tertiary ministry's dinner was pretty much an old man's game. Networking & getting to now people... being nice and relaxed. not anything exciting and not anything glamorous.


Its funny how I recount all as a uneventful, matter-of-fact, state of mind.
Indeed the day was actually much messy & disorganised...
with me being late for my duty on sunday, the little friend feasting of my plate NON-STOP. and eating my favourite peanuts, finding my way around parkway parade to find friends to head to the BBQ together.

But I went home happy.
some sort like that saturday i spent the entire day in church.

come August, with workload and tight schedules, I wonder if I'd be able to enjoy things that don't go my way on my weekends or not. and finding such simple happyness in events that don't give me any practical benefits.
hmmmm


oh. and my heater's got killed and a new heater is at his place.
ITS FREAKING SHIOK!
warm water on my back keeping me all warm and relaxing all my skeletal muscles when I got back home cured all the nausea i had from travelling excessively within a day. :) instant magic.

i started this blog because i wanted to make it a point to stop being emo.
i wanted to focuss on the happyness in life we so often lose sight of...
i thought i would be updating the happy things here, and the unhappy bouts of emo-ness in the other.
but somehow, i feel that i should post this entry here..

this uncle in my church just passed away. he just. fell. dead. just like that.
so it is quite a shock to his family and everybody in church.
he's the uncle that comes every week, and waits for the church to open... thats like 7plus am.
and he sits on the staircase of the old building, sometimes filthy due to residues left behind by pub-goers the night before.
he is usually earlier than us who are scheduled to open the church...
and when we are late... he doesn't care. he is just happy we are there to open the church.

he comes every week. to just arrange chairs and do what he can.
he is only on duty once a month. he is sixty eight years old.
but he carries stacks of chairs with joy and is quick to do it before we lazy youngsters get to the job.

i even despise my duty.
lamenting the need to wake up so freaking early and being on duty almost every week of the month.
sometimes i can't wake up and say to my team leader "aiyah, uncle ZC will be there to help you"

i'm ashamed. i took him for granted.

last sunday was the last time i saw him.
i don't see/ talk to everyone on every sunday.
and rarely i have any common topics with him.

i'm thankful. that i managed to speak to him last sunday. for the last time.
i wonder if i am good enough to be able to keep the salvation God has bestowed upon me.
whether at the end of my life, i would have fulfilled the high calling in my life and see uncle ZC in heaven.

he's illiterate. and he has only came to church for two years.
i'm freaking smart compared to him. and i have been in church for five years now.

but he is far wiser. he has spent much time, asking people to read to him the Bible and has memorised more of the Bible than I have.
my friends, you know how much i can memorise....
but it is not that he can memorise so much more than i can.
but he did memorise more than i was willing to.

i thank God for his passing. for it was quick and painless..
probably a milisecond of angina... when his heart stopped.
but he is now, safely away from the troubles of this world.
he has ended his life well, with a close relationship with God.


and i seriously doubt my own perseverence in this path of faith.
for it is so contrary to the world. and my mind just evaluates many options and condemn them to be silly and impossible in this time and age. scorning in my heart the very suggestion of the paths of righteousness.
knowing not that i am blinded by my pride and formal education.

today at his cremation. i learnt that he knew he had only a little time left. and that's why he was so focussed on serving God and learning the ways of Christ.
perhaps, i think i have so much time.
that the abundance of the time i have to live has ironically steered me away from living life as it should be.
death, on the contrary, kept him on the path to everlasting life.


to us of all religions and beliefs,
keeping in view the certainty of death, probably helps us to hold on to the very essence of life.

because we won't be wasting our time facebooking and playing DOTA or watching dramas and plain achieving grades.
we would be doing that which matters most - which we have to find out ourselves

with regards to my previous post, i decided that if I were 20 years younger.
I would be playing with the coolest toys in the world.
and not playing around with fonts to squeeze a 1.5" thick legislation into an A4 sized paper for the pseudo-open book examination.

today i spent 11am to 8pm studying and covering a lot of grounds in the drug world (:
i am happy.
but the best thing is talking to dear小妹. though we all have grievances with the current system~
But increasingly, I feel like I am on a treasure hunt.
to find Truth, according to the Bible, BUT applicable & logical for my generation.

nope, not the youthy hippy "i-am-cool" generation.
i am so past that for those who still thinks they need to be cool and youth-ful to talk to me...

but i mean, for the "we-are-seeking-relevance" generation of mine.
somehow, Christians or non-Christians alike, don't you think the world is spinning in a queer way we can't understand? and working hard and obeying doesn't seem to fully work anymore?
I do. Do you??

I guess even our parents, elders, and predecessors can never give us clear instructions & formulas to success anymore. maybe you already know.
maybe only now I feel the impact of this. maybe only now I find that even my own ways can't help me through life.
I'm still on my treasure hunt. to find Truth. and practical ways to live it out.

If I were 20 years younger,
I'd marry him who said

"jiejie Grace! I eat satay!"

simple happyness is taking the hectic tests and report schedules of this pharmacy course in my stride.
well, i'm done being bound by expectations and CAP scores and test grades.
and especially the every week one freaking scary test and the stresses of a singaporean life.

I guess it's great to take everything in my stride and just do my best.
even though it means being only ready on the morning of the test.

Chromatography theory test turned out quite great.
I'm pretty confident of my answers and could recall quite a lot of things which much clarity... like I did in secondary school.
Which is rare, and happy.
because I wanna learn to take things in my stride.


An enjoying random moments that make a person alive. Instead of chasing after deadlines. or beign chased by it!
Well, I haven't finished the lab reports AND thai homework I have due tomorrow.

But I decided that hanging out at a friend's place would make me more of a human than not... and if we live by deadlines and stick to them.
We'd fare well and great on paper..
But will citydwellers feel filled spiritually? Learning new skills and picking up new things seem like a new trend and pursuit. Learning something not just to "tan jia" but something you would be interested in?
or maybe we just need to hang around people more.

happyness. probably is that simple?

oh yah i still have to pia my lab reports till late today.
but if i didn't hang out, i'd be spending approximately the same amount of time convincing myself that i shouldn't be facebooking... while doing it.
and Pharmacy Law lecture tomorrow is going to be crap. so i'd have 2h to do my thai homework.
last minute. so what? it's mangeable...
and i feel more human.

Humans were not meant to face each other via written text more than face-to-face interactions.