Functus Nusquam Impedro Cunctus

Friday, December 30, 2005

2005- i bid thee adieu

as the year draws to a close, and also becuz i have neglected my blog for 1 week w/o just cause, i have decided to list down a list of memorable ( mostly pleasurable) events that have occured in my life this year

1) Ops Flying Eagle: the tsunami rescue op...i was in the thick of it frm end dec'04 to feb '05...still vividly remember how pathetically drained and tired i was as i went for the new years eve watchnite service at brmc, having ended my work at 9pm, rushing for service which lasted till 2am, then rushing home to catch a few hrs of sleep before reporting for another shift at 7am....our unit was on 24 hr full ops manning.....damn that was a memorable experience

2) Ex High Noon : my 1st and last overseas exercise with the saf as an nsf haha! lasted frm 15th to 27th april.....taiwan....full of bittersweet memories...frm the ninja van, to f***ed up collegues and bosses, to a surprisingly good r&r, and rather interesting nites out....heh...truly the culminating experience of my nsf daes.

3) my 21st bdae party...to signify the true transition from a boy to a man.....it was extremely hectic, as i had returned from taiwan only 2 daes before..... as a side note...this was the year that saw the most invitations to b-dae parties in my life haha...everyone wants to celebrate this significant milestone in our lives....we're old now pple....old!! crap.

4) 17th june 2005. ORD LOH. enuf said....2 yrs 4 mths of highs and lows...and many many memories. thank God for keeping me safe and relatively sound throughout....and teaching me many life lessons, showing me the different kinds of people that exist in this world...and learning more about how i should handle such people

5) my short relief teaching stint at barker....abt 2 wks....for which i received abt $500 all told....not much, but an interesting experience to teach, rather than be taught....it was fun! and i'll probably do it again hehe

6) helping out the logistics team for a church camp in june....i shall never ever again underestimate or underappreciate logistics pple...they are really the ones behind the scene making sure that events happen the way they are planned to. the camp gave me a much needed boost to my faith in general, and helped me bond alot better with my cell members

7) matriculation: my orientation and initiation into the new world that is the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. getting to know new pple, new faces, realizing that truly i am a civilian and a student instead of a miserable underling blindly following orders... the feeling of actually using my brain and my abilities to help myself, not some career minded superior advance his pay scale...heralded indeed a new and welcome change to my life.

8) trip to KL.....my 1st time mountain climbing...and i must admit...i suck at it....fitness lvls totally gone...leg ached like nobody's business (but at least i can now tell exactly what muscles are aching hahahaha) and rather good shopping in KL.


well tts abt it...a summary of the high and not so high points in my life....a year of changes definitely. school starts in a weeks time, and i foresee my future blog entries getting more and more work related. no new years resolutions for me, 'cos i never keep them anyway.

stay safe, stay happy and happy new year to all

joshua

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

pigtures

alvin the keng and his servants
newman horsing around
me at teh summit. note the totally not shacked out cannot think face
a candid shot of us at the mid-pt camp.

josh-in-jungle
4 mad medmen!
the 2 joshuas outside a shop tt spelt our name wrong haha

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

lets go shopping girls!

*ok to continue where i left off*

day 3

we were woken up rather early by the guides....they wanted us to go swim in the river or something. CRAZY!! 0740am swim in the river? goodness knows whats inside! and how cold! and how my body ached! cannot move at all. they shud all go fly kite instead.

oh we also took river water cos we were all out of water...luckily we brought water purification tablets so that we wouldnt get cholera or some other vile waterborne disease...so for the 1st time i drank chemically treated river water heh...tasted rather good too.

anyway we finally woke up at almost 10 (haha so indulgent). packed up, had breakfast, broke tents and prepared to move out. tts when we discovered a dead rat in the water. shite. tts the same water we bathed and drank from. abit traumatizing, but we figured the water was rather fast moving...so its contents would not be contaminated.

the trip down to the carpark was pretty uneventful, as the gradient wasnt very steep, and we were eager to go back to KL. however, it was rather painful for me...as i had a blister, and a searing pain in my left leg that came whenever i lifted my foot. sigh. the climb down took abt 90 mins, following which our guides brought us to this nearby hot springs to "cool off" so they said. so ironic. hot springs? cool off? i just wanted to sleep. and shop.. by the time we reached back to KL it was abt 1600H. naturally the 1st thing we did was to bathe (properly), then crash out for awhile. nightime was spent doing a spot of shopping, then someone decided that we shud play DOTA haha. so we went and played for abt 2 hrs....i cannot play for nuts. cos i'm not familiar with the items to buy and the myraid powers of myraid heroes. at least it was rather cheap i guess.

day 4

decreed a day for shopping....morning was spent at times square....where we also managed to watch a movie..chronicles of narnia heh..RM10 only! good show. afternoon was spent at sungei wang, another shopping mall kinda like queensway..where theres lots of stuff to see, and buy. night was spent at chinatown again, before we adjourned back to the hotel room to play cards till like 2am. i also found out i cant play bluff for nuts...

day 5

woke up, had hotel buffet breakfast, then boarded the bus back to s'pore with fond memories of a nice trip

thanks to newman phua chu cheng, joshua lam peng kuan and alvin keng kah heng for making it all possible

quote of the day : "*tugs sleeve* sex! sex!" heh private joke

joshua

Guru-on-Mountains-wise-not-to-descend. Too slippery.

dear all

im back! 5 daes 4 nites malaysian delight...with a bit of nice primary rainforest scenery (day and night) thrown in! fraternize with the local wildlife! touch the thorns and jump! feed the leeches....so much to see and do...

ok seriously i have 3 pointers to add

1) anyone who calls gunung nuang at 1497m a Hill and not a Mountain should be SHOT. by ME.
2) anyone who calls Bukit Timah Hill a Tough Climb....will face the same abovementioned fate as well.
3) battle scars: 3 blisters on left foot. left 4th toenail and right 5th toenail blackened (with dried blood). leech bite on right hand (dorsum). suspected strained muscle/ligament on left thigh (with associated pain). nearly fractured right patella in bad fall.



day 1

spent the night at newman's house so that we could move out bright and early.. took a bus to golden mile complex to catch the direct shuttle bus to KL. the trip was uneventful, and took abt 8 hrs. arrived KL approx 1700H. checked into hotel room to find chinatown literally at our doorstep. very pleasantly surprised by this. nighttime was spent shopping at some shopping centre, as well as chinatown.

day 2

woke up bright and early. today is the day! all prepped and ready to go...we stepped out of our hotel...into the rain..ARGH so demoralising! exactly what we feared had come to pass. we were wet even before we left KL! thought of "bad omen" crossed my mind. met up with newman's 2 malaysian frends and the 2 guides who would bring us to the top and back. 8 people. 2 cars. 2 hour drive to base of Gunung Nuang. not enjoyable.

reached carpark. felt very garang esp after applying mosquito patch, mosquito repellant and half gloves. light drizzle but raring to gogogo. started to hike....ground was undulating dirt track...incline abt 40 degrees max...so quite ok still. 2 hrs later, we reached base camp (altitude abt 300m) pitched tents.then suddenly the rain got rather heavy. we made the decision to leave packs at the base camp, bringing only food and water. i donned on my yellow plastic temporary raincoat. felt abit demoralised. started the trek to summit approx 1130H.

at this point id like to point out that at 1497m, Gunung Nuang is approx 4-5 times highter than the swisshotel next to cityhall station. thats 1497m of tropical rainforest gentlemen. the track after the base camp doesnt even merit being called a track...it was just a path hewn out of the jungle and periodically cleared. width approx 1.5m. the going started to get tough (what an understatement) ground is mushy soil, and rocks. at one point i distinctly remember sinking my foot ankle deep in mud. ugh ugh! rain was heavy. i was cold, tired and hungry. reached the mid point camp (abt 900m) at 1430H. had a light meal of uncle tobys there. uncle toby never tasted so good and sweet b4. water situation getting precarious cos i drank too much and didnt bring enuf. set off for final leg aprox 1450H.

abt 300m short of the summit the ground suddenly changed. it was mostly rocks, and it was STEEEEP. approx 70-75 degree incline. had to use hands to grab tree roots, and pull myself onto the next rock. dreaded the prospect of climbing down. started to get cramps in my quadriceps femoris, as well as triceps surae haha. the most demoralising part is actually seeing the summit for the 1st time, but having to DESCEND another like 70m and then ascend..so tiring...

reached the summit at abt 1600H. too tired to care! view obscured by clouds and rain. really disappointing!! ate another uncle toby bar to comfort myself. oh i somehow got bitten by a leech as well. so my hand was bleedin and bleedin'.... set off for the base camp ard 1620H

i shud mention that this last part was by far the most morale destroying part...the combination of rain, tired nonresponsive muscles, the dirt and mud, the steep decline, and impending darkness combined to make me feel abit miserable..thoughts of why i ever subjected myself to such paain ran throught my head. seriously the only thing more shiong that ive ever done is ex nutcracker( trench ex) and that was 2 1/2 years ago!!! why oh why oh why....orded personnel shud make slacking their main priority in life..

anyway....the descent was just. shack. words cannot describe my fatigue...i was on the verge of exhaustion. so shack that at times i just sat on the ground and pushed myself downwards. perversely, i rather enjoyed that actually...felt like i was on a slide since the ground was soo slippery hahaha. i didnt even feel very happy when i reached base camp abt 1930H cos i had past the point of emotions and caring long ago. washed up in the river (coolllddddd), ate dinner then crashed out.

*ok the rest of the story will come later im gonna take a break nowz*

3SG (NS!!) Joshua

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

(or at least me)

hey there!

sorry for the no updates over teh past few daes..cos i have been rather busy..preparing for my hiking trip...catching up with overseas friends...reading a very good book...going for a party tonite....haha quite the social butterfly eh

oh well... meeting up with people u hardly see really leaves u (or at least me) feeling so nostalgic after the meeting is over. it just leaves u ( or at least me) thinking how good life seemed to be when we (or at least me) were younger. the mind just blots out all the unpleasantness of youth..leaving us to view our (or at least my) halcyon past through rose-tinted lenses haha.

it feels reeeeaally good not to have school. school is orgasmic. jam packed with hardly time to breathe. so unlike army. and i daresay worse than jc in terms of intensity. relaxing is good. i rot as i type heh.

i'l leave u with a secular piece of writing...there are some parts which i dun quite agree with (esp the healthy child part) but quite inspiring nonetheless..

" to laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people,
and affection of children, to earn the
appreciation of honest critics and endure
the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a
healthy child, a garden patch, or a
redeemed social condition, to know even
one life has breathed easier because you have lived
this is to have succeeded."

Ralph Waldo Emerson


love
joshua

Sunday, December 11, 2005

je ne sais quoi

noun: A quality or attribute that is difficult to describe or express...

eg: attending church in a converted warehouse/exhibition space has a certain je ne sais quoi that leaves my mien slightly off kilter..

haha...chemmology siah. oh well today was the first dae of church service in the new max pavillion....which is halls 8, 9 and 10 of the Singapore Expo....my new haunt every sunday from 1.30pm to 3.30pm....the youth service of FCBC.

if u would recall a few posts back i was not exactly totally thrilled by the prospect of this "big move" from such a nice, central location to such an ULU ULU one arrrgh. i mean...expo is like siberia in timbucktoo if u get my drift heh.....so it was with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation that i went for church service today.....

in my case however, anticipation and trepidation soon blended together and annihilated each other....producing apathy in the end haha....

i must say however, worshipping as a whole youthnet does confer some sort of corporate worship benefits to it....i mean...it is invigorating to see soo many many fellow christians worshipping together as a body of Christ, exalting His Name, and generally feeling that u r indeed part of a larger plan , part of a larger purpose, part of a larger future! hehe.

i'll leave u for the night with one of my more favourite verses..forgot where it was from though hehe. perhaps someone more inspired could tell me..

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty"

goodnight

joshua

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Re-search...fatty fatty pom pom

gentlemen......FRS is OVER!!!!! *dances in joy*

omg the symposium room was soo smoky today......lots of smoke ......smoke here smoke there...

"smoke grenade......smoke out!"

whew. i was actually abit stressed out as i was the group leader....and had initial apprehensions over whether we could actually pull something credible out of our collective hats.

thank God that the group i led is really cool...cos everyone was willing to take my arrows (lets not mince words) and my nonsense.....and it was a challenge to bring the discussions back to focus at times....special thanks to kumaran, who had so many great ideas, and joachim, who even though came the LATEST for ALL our meetings....thankfully had an sbo full of smoke grenades...which he liberally threw around the room. we actually took waay more than the stipulated 10 mins per presentation....but what can i say...time constraints shud never get in the way of good research hahaha. i heard horror stories of other groups who were super bo chup, and left everything to just one or two pple to pia....thank goodness this didnt happen in my group....thank you!!!

on a more serious note...our research topic was really quite interesting. did u know for example, that apart from the normal causes of obesity being lifestyle, food intake, genes etc etc....there is actually a flu like virus that inhibits degradation/usage of fat cells...leading to obesity? i didnt know tt too. adenovirus-36 people...the virus u shud look out for. fat people all over the world rejoice! its not really your fault that u r obese! rather, it could just be ad-36 acting up in you....and that is one of the major benefits of this research... to reallocate blame from the individual to the disease....to show the world that Obesity is a Clinical Problem that Can Be Solved....to give hope to millions of laterally generous people the world over! bleargh.

ok...on an unrelated note....just to show i like being artSY fartSY, ill include a short poem that is really nice....pity i didnt compose this though...

"Dance like no one is watching,
Love like you've never been hurt,
Sing like no one is listening,
Live like its Heaven on Earth"

wunnerful innit.
joshua.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

the silent majority

the silent majority
thats us boys and girls
we hanker for favour
and want to be heard

multitudes of people
passing us by,
some vanish into obscurity
some stop to say hi

throngs of humanity
no time for each other
apathy reigns
too much trouble, dont bother

yet

we dance when we're happy
we cry when we're hurt
but in society's eyes
"thats just sissy" they blurt

this message is then
for the unseen, the unheard
stand up! be counted!
dont just follow the herd!

a haiku by joshua. dank yew.

Monday, December 05, 2005

there is no "i" in team

i think i failed to help someone in need todae...and im feeling rather bad becos of it....
in my defence, i plead time constraints, distance and pressing engagements becos 1) it was kinda last minute, 2) i had work to do that day 3) i had to meet friends from overseas. 4) NUS is reaaally far away

nuff said lah forgeddit.

a team is a group of people, often from different backgrounds, opinions, and agendas who group together for work related purposes, united only in the fact that they have a common goal to work for. ( and sometimes this isnt even true)

i never really considered myself a team player actually. scholarship boards beware! not tt i'll ever have a chance to get a scholarship any more hahaha. the whole concept of a team sounds rather alien to me, and here i will list out the reasons why...

1) there is often a hiraerchy in a team ----- i CANNOT STAND bullshit, horseshit or any kind of shit that "buttering up" your superiors necessarily entails. i learnt this in army. i suck at carrying balls, period. i just feel it takes a bit of my soul away from me to do something that repugnant just to gain favour. i tried it, cant do it, therefore i hate it hahahaha.

2) taking the hit----- this is another pet peeve. often there is a need for someone in the team to do something nobody wants....to "take one for the team brudder". in a word, self-sacrifice. its unavoidable usually....but evil.... tts why i hate "taking the hit"

3) arrowing--- if u are unfortunately the team leader, then sooner or later u will have to "delegate responsibilities" aka shooting arrows. this is very unpleasant (for me) becos left to my own devices, id rather do everything myself just so that everything happens Just The Way I Like It. im a control freak heh. with other people, u never know the standard, or the formatting of the work given, and tt gets irritating when we have to compile our combined efforts together!

there are more reasons, but im lazy to type and think.
in other more brainless news, todae my family and i had the pleasure of meeting up with some old friends from down under.
it really is very nice to see people from your childhood again, especially if u see them only like once a year, or even less. their son is 17 this year, and about to enter uni next year! sigh. what is happening to my life. i crave happiness and fufillment, and yet instead all i get is little dabs of happiness, little splotches of fufillment....and loads of waiting time.

Praise God though. mebbe he is showing me that balance in life, consists of long waiting times b/w bouts of happiness, and bouts of fufillment. not having these feelings all, or even most of the time, just makes these moments more precious to treasure and behold when they do arrive.

after all too much happiness= frivolity=useless bum hahaha

hope im making sense

joshua

Sunday, December 04, 2005

mal-aysia....truly asia!

todae marks a turning point in my life thus far. it marks the point where i voluntarily submit myself to future hardship and physical strain....all for...what? why?...

i cannot answer that now. i do not know. perhaps i will answer it when i get back.

anyway we are going to this big ass hill called gunung nuang. never heard of before right? neither have i. its in the state of selangor, just outside KL proper....along the titiwangsa mountain range. height: approx 1.5km

the plan is to chop chop climb that thing, then head to KL for some fun! yeah...
must be a male thing lah...this conquering nature's contours....Grrr...let me at 'em.

*note to friends. please dont laugh*

Saturday, December 03, 2005

the big move

ok this post is probably gonna be a bit long so bear with me..


my church is finally moving out of the marine parade venue we've been worshipping for the past 12 years or so. we're moving to the EXPO!....Max pavillion or something.

tonight was the last service held, and i had bittersweet feelings throughout..kinda like the kind u have when a phase in your life has ended and a new one is beginning...except im not really looking forward to this "new phase" all that much...

well u might wonder why...i mean..ive been coming to FCBC ever since i was a little boy....going to sundae school since like pri 3 ...and now im in uni man...its been a long time. when i first came, the current building wasnt even bought yet, and we were worshipping at temporary premises in the SLF building. i guess those were the halcyon days of youth, where everyone was a friend to everyone else, and i really looked forward to sunday school every week.

how has things changed since then? i guess ive become more....jaded? morose? disillusioned?

just about everyone i know since my childhood church daes has left the church, due to various reasons. migrating, changing church, etc have all taken a toll on my circle of church friends, to the extent that i pretty much dont know anyone now in my church, even though ive been going there for more than a decade and counting.

i used to hate the youth service, and avoided it religiously hahaha...why? cos i felt the jumping around and shouting and fainting and crying and speaking of tongues was too much for me to handle....not that any of that is wrong mind you...its just that i was more used to the adult service. also, i look at all those kids jumping around, looking like they are really really on fire for christ, and i think to myself.....are they there for a fun experience, or a life changing spiritual one...i am not qualified to answer that, and i hope fervently for their sake that its the latter, not the former, that keeps them coming back to church week after week. what i can say though, is this.....where is my generation??!!! where are all the pple i knew when i was a kid coming to church??!! where have they all disappeared to.....

they have gone.

i guess we are at the time of our lives now with so many distractions, and so many past hurts, that it just becomes so easy to give up the faith, to quit the race.....to abandon your heritage and leave the prophisies (sic?) of our lives unfufilled. i know many who have gone through the caudron of the army, and left it with their faith in tatters. i know pple of my age, christians, who are already married with kids...all because of a lapse of judgement and self control. so many pple, those who were so enthusiastic about the faith when they were young...have turned out to be the ones that have backslided in one way or another. thats where my generation has gone, and tts why i hardly know this whole new batch of kids in the youth service.

it is my fervent prayer then, that i will never walk down this road...that even though i am by no means a model christian, or even a good one at that...i need that childlike faith to keep trusting God in everything i do....and lean not on my own understanding.

because the way i see it....if i lose God, im gonna lose myself as well...and i dont think i have what it takes to survive that.

sorry for the rather depressing post, but i had to get it off my chest. haiz.

oh well, i do believe the big move is all for the best, for the Church and for the furtherance of His Kingdom. may FCBC and her members continue to shine on for Jesus, in all circumstances.

Joshua

Thursday, December 01, 2005

medcap madness aka PDP

ok the belowmentioned event happened abt a week ago.

the star of the show was yours truly...

for the uninitiated, PDP stands for Physician Development Programme, whereby clueless students get all preened up (shirt tie WHITE lab coat) and interact with real life patients (some not so much life left....)

sounds like a recipe for disaster? u bet. tts why we call it the Pretend Doctor Programme....so witty huh.

scene: hospital ward XX

patient : some old woman with arthiritis in her right leg, a suspected skin infection on the foot, general malaise, and the usual high BP secondary to hypertension

transcipt: we were supposed to learn "patient bedside manners", ie. dumbed down talk to find out as much as we can abt the patients history, various aches and pains, and lifestyle characteristics that would enable us to make a preliminary diagnosis of their condition.

sounds easy rite? just tok cok rite? rite?
WRONG.
but i didnt know tt see....so i kinda volunteered to clerk (thats the word we use to speak to patients) this old woman

ok heres what happened. i asked her how she was (in english)--- no response...some mumbling only

i asked her how she was ( in chinese)--- same as above...no observable rxn

i asked her how she was (in hokkien)---- hallelujah! she responded! in cantonese. which i dunt know..

thats how we tokked.. my pidgin hokkien, her pidgin cantonese (and hokkien, which she knew abit) and the doctor in charge, together with my pdp mate, as ad hoc interpreters... i found out she has difficulty standing up and walking (right leg pain) mild oedema(swelling) observed together with some paresthesia(numbness)...weakness in abduction of left arm with reduced grasping action.

wow. i felt so pro.

then i asked her ( in hokkien) : aunty, how did u come to be admitted?
auntie (in hokkien) : oh, i fainted
me: how did u faint?
auntie: uh...i dont really know...all i remember is that i felt sleepy so i slept...then when i woke up i found myself in hospital already
me: (tries to stop giggling) ah....ok...
me: (aside to fellow pdp mates) hey i think she just overslept lor...

truly....real life lost in translation....
but she was such a nice patient....de best! she practically cajoled me to feel her aches and bumps, and arthritic joints, and inflammed foot. i felt abit disgusted, but at the same time, kinda honoured to be fondling the feet of some old woman...

ok sounds sick.
um....yeah....so tts pdp in a nut shell.

later!