is what has become of this site. Been busy with new opportunities and things on going and going on in life. A pretty belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Handed in my mission trip report last week and 3 things I took back from it: all you can depend on is God, be born ready and “What can I do?”. There are times when there seems to be nobody around when you need help.

1. There are times in life when there seems to be nobody around when you need help. I’m not talking just about physical sense but just to be there. There are times when you are all alone in every sense of the word and there are decisions to be made. Sometimes that will affect not only yourself but those around you and people in general. What do you do when times like these come? I got some sense of this before and during the trip itself. And some times you are in situations you would rather not be in. You lack the abilities / preperation / experience that would be needed to get the job done well. Not everything can be done on human strength and ability alone.

2.  Being ready or in a state of readiness as I believe P. Andy shared in one of the messages. I lack experience in many aspects of my life as I chose to turn my back on God in my teens years, as I chose to stay in my comfort zone, as I chose to limit my school life to doing things that help me get the grades I wanted but not develop my skills to what I wanted. It’s never too late to start something, so here I am at the ripe old age of 24 learning new things everyday which I should have learnt during my school days.

3. What can I do. I’ve seen the youth in my church. They have so much opportunities ahead of them: they have promise.  Many of them can do things I can’t even imagine myself doing. I desire to see them grow and develop into the person God wants them to be but the biggest catch is here and lies in one word: “how”. How can I help? What can I do? Pray to God to show me what I can do while at the same time actively look out for the opportunities and avenues.

So that was mission trip learning experience. Then came Christmas with the handmime presentation: not only performing but also prep work with the UV lights required. It is no joke bringing 3 UV lights in your car when each UV fluorescent tube costs BND$35. Just yesterday had to perform again for the Malaysian Christmas Celebration.

Not to mention I’ve been busy with some part-time/freelance work that I got. Basically it is system setup and a technical support. So I’ve been driving around setting up the systems with the required software and tomorrow there will be a training conducted by my brother. Doing some other web development for another project I’m working on that will hopefully launch next week. Currently I’m procrastinating by finally updating this blog and after that I’m in for a full day of work.

Got an interview with Lucent, or should I say Alcatel-Lucent, tomorrow afternoon after the training. The job seems good and provides a good learning experience for myself so God if this job is for me, open the doors just as You have opened the doors for the work I’ve been doing.

It’s a new year and it starts off with a long post. Too long for my taste. So next time update more. Shorter posts especially for those with short attention spans like myself. =P

God bless for the coming year and many more to come

The journey starts in a few hours and will be staying Miri overnight before catching a flight on Monday morning to Kuching Sarawak. Supposed to be involved in 2 youth camps. Frankly I don’t feel ready. It has been a lot of a week to handle. More than I could handle. Yet again I am reminded of how weak I am without Jesus as my firm foundation. I’ve disappointed Him as I have done many times before. Yet another lessoned learnt, yet another step to be taken, yet another journey to travel.

Matthew 11:28-30
²⁸“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
⁹But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Lord as I cast my burdens down at the foot of the cross You died for all the people of the earth, I pray for strength and guidance for the week ahead. I thank you Lord that you grace is sufficent for me and that when I am weak you are strong.

Loneliness is what I need more of: to get away and get back in touch with God….

The story of my life today haha
Started off roughly 24 hours ago when I decided to install Debian along side my Kubuntu Linux distro (i.e. distribution). The aim was that Kubuntu provided a lot of features I want (e.g. laptop battery monitor, bluetooth manager and others) that is not available in my Debian install as I do a minimal Debian install from the netinst ISO. First thing I had to do was to resize my reiserFS partition that Kubuntu was set up on. Had to non destructively repartition it. Found Gnome Partition Editor but I wasn’t sure if it did a non destructive repartition, but I took a chance. Backed up a few configurations of my Kubuntu setup and away I went. I have an annoyance with the partition editor (both Gnome Partition Editor and the 1 that was used in the Kubuntu setup) is that it takes a super long time for it to display the partition table that you have to edit and modify. Speaking of the Kubuntu setup, I dislike the way they do it now.

<rant>
It seems to me that you have to boot into Kubuntu (or Ubuntu) from the CD first before installing the OS. Sounds like a nice idea especially for those people who can’t handle the text based approach, especially the text graphics and need a ‘proper’ GUI. The problem is, it’s a nice idea so long as the computer you use can display the GUI. The Kubuntu version could not display on my laptop with an Ati X700 onboard. Luckily I know how to get the updated driver for the laptop in order to proceed with the proper installation, but I feel it should at least an option to install direct from the CD through a plain DOS-like console which is completely text based. Perhaps there is a way to do it but I couldn’t find it.
</rant>
Anyway back to the reason why I installed Debian along side Kubuntu was that I wanted to build the proper distrubition I want from scratch will minimal help (and automation) so as to learn something and know what I need for my laptop to give me a minimal system install without useless programs and stuff. So a mistake I did was to install the whole KDE desktop environment instead of base install. Also another reason was that in Kubuntu Opera had a weird situation with the Java plugin: it would open the applet in another separate window instead of embedding it into the page, something I’ve never experienced before. An Opera forum thread regarding this is here. Just installed the same version of Opera and Java in my Debian system and it works flawlessly: no separate window. Strange…
So anyway that leaves 3 OS’s on my laptop right now. Well more like 2 OS’s: but 1 OS has 2 different distro. Ahhh doesn’t matter anyway :P There are 6 entries in my boot menu: both Linux distros have a normal and safe mode, a memory test entry and Windows. Thinking I’m easing into the Linux world but there are a few things that are lacking. Couldn’t get NUSCAST to work in Kubuntu, but then again I didn’t try too much to get it work. So I will try to use Debian to see if the same process yeilds different results like my Opera/Java experience. No Shockwave player for Linux so had to resort to wine to emulate Windows and play Shockwave. But thing’s in general are pretty good. Think the day to convert will be soon, in the coming months I believe :D

Went to Swensen’s today at Holland Village. The only place with the $5 student promotion to eat unlimited ice cream. hehehe. Have to savour what I won’t get back home. 10 scoops: sticky chewy chocolate, mocha almond chip, frosted chocolate malt, chocolate, chocolate peanutbutter, cookies & cream, coffee, yam, bubblegum (this was bad: looks like paddlepop rainbow but doesn’t taste anything like it), sticky chewy chocolate. That was my brunch? haha Got up at 1230-ish woken up by my dear calling me :P

Gah… Opera just crashed on my by opening up a page =| Gah… Just *poof* losing a bit of what I typed… :( So I will try to recall what I typed…

Tomorrow is back to the church office to help out with camp stuff.. Ahhh the memories of church office.. good memories :) This week has been dedicated to God for me to draw closer to Him and indeed He is making a difference. Got my first ‘official’ devotional book and so far this week has indeed been an experience. Well kind of started the ‘week’ early. Saturday had a good time with God after service, Sunday was kind of rushed, my bad sorry God. Monday was worse but good. Woke up at around 0530 Monday morning to see my dear off to airport and with just about 2 hours of sleep. Then after that went out with John, Jo, Dom, Mer and Kim. Ended up looking at a guitar shop opposite Peninsular plaza as good ‘ole Dominic wanted to look at guitars. I tell you he’s a rising star in our cell group and we all can’t wait till he starts leading worship haha ;-) All the best in learning man, I’m sure God is proud of you. Then after that spent a bit of the afternoon just chatting with Dom right beside Mer and Jo who were discussing details about church varisty camp. When that was over Dom went looking for shoes/sandals or basically footwear :P He settled for a dark brown and light pink pair after much consultation from Mer and Jo hehe. When they all left I left for Orchard as I was catching ‘Cars‘ which was enjoyable. Saw a title something like ‘production babies’ in the credits followed by single word names, which makes me think that those are the names of the computers they used. So basically that whole day I was tired and sleepy but the Lord strengthened me and enabled me to still read his word while I was in Orchard. Tried to do it at the Library in Ngee Ann City but was almost falling asleep so went downstairs to get a brownie and ended up reading in the car park! hahaha But I thank God that He guided me to the car park for me to read hehe. Today was a busy day but came back and was refreshed by Him yet again. Anyway been a good day and hope to have many more.

Good night people. Good night God.


"One way, Jesus
You're the only one that I could live for"