Thursday, May 31, 2007

Covenant

I was listening to a sermon by Lou Engle (it was either him speaking or someone speaking at his meeting) a day or two ago, and the recording came to a point which caught my attention - I played it over a few times and then just stopped 'cos I couldn't go on without getting it.

He said it as something really in passing, but earth-shaking to me. It went something like: "you know what a covenant is right? What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine; I fight your battles, you fight mine."

Jesus called our new relationship with Him the new covenant... What's mine is Yours, what's Yours is mine; I fight Your battles, You fight mine.

Talk about a high calling. It's still blowing my mind...

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Things that are White

my Macbook laptop... the plastic shelves next to my desk... clouds... my car...

My car? yeah. Feels weird saying it. But yes, I bought a car today! It's a 2007 Ford Focus 4 Dr Sedan. 5-spd manual of course. ;) I've been on the lookout for good deals on cars for a week or two, but never really considered buying a new one 'cos the depreciation is crazy high. But this weekend was Memorial Day weekend (i.e. long weekend, cos today, Monday, was a public holiday) so several dealerships were having pretty good deals. I chanced upon a really fantastic deal on a 3-door Focus hatchback yesterday but didn't want to decide so quickly and today the unit had been sold. But I did find another deal on a 4 door Sedan that wasn't as good a deal as yesterday's but it was still pretty darn good. The basic premise of my decision is that the discounts offered by the dealer are good enough to offset most, if not all, of the additional depreciation incurred by buying a new car. =)

It's a long story how I got to it, but it was pretty divine. I called several other dealerships after learning that the unit I was originally considering (i.e. yesterday's one) was gone; I wanted to see if any were offering similar deals. Yesterday's deal was basically a 3-door Focus for about $8995 or so, which is ridiculously cheap considering it usually retails at about $14,000 to $15,000. Ai Lin brought me to two dealerships; the first one was at Half Moon Bay, and the salesman was really friendly and optimistic about matching the $8995 deal, but in the end they couldn't 'cos they said they would lose money. So we went to check out the second dealer in San Mateo which offered $10,988 for a 4-door Sedan, which was better than anything the Half Moon Bay guy could offer. We arrived just as they were about to close so they stayed open for us, and basically that unit was the only unit at that price, was advertised throughout the weekend and was still unsold. Usual price is about $15,000. So I might incur a slightly higher depreciation, but it'll be great to have a new car and not worry about maintenance and stuff like that.

So we spent the entire afternoon out, and Ai Lin did all the driving which is quite a feat 'cos the traffic at Half Moon Bay was terrible (today was a public holiday so I guess a ton of people were heading to the beach there). She's such a blessing...

I'll post pictures when I have them. Econ midterm tomorrow. Must sleep now. :P

Thursday, May 24, 2007

New Look!

It's been about 10 months (maybe 11?) since I started this blog (wow time flies), and I've just discovered that my dear friends Emily and Jace, who're overseas in Poland for a few months, evidently have as good taste as I do in choosing templates: Check out their blog.

So I decided I shall change my template, since I've been using it for 10-11 months anyway. :) I quite like it. Quite minimalistic and yet aesthetic. Let me know what you think!

One down, one to go...

Papers, that is. I just handed in my barely-8-pages IHUM paper today!!! YAY! It feels so good to have one of them over and done with. Now for my PWR paper. I've got materials but haven't read through much of them at all.

Haven't blogged for a long time; been pretty busy lately, especially with The Mendicants' Spring Show last Friday which, I'm glad to say, went pretty well. Quite a few Chi Alpha and Singaporean friends came; I was quite touched at the support.

I'm currently waiting for confirmation of my flight arrangements - a travel agent is helping me, Yinshan and De Wen book. De Wen and I are hanging around Stanford for a while after the quarter's over (hopefully I'll have a car then - looking out for deals from graduating students who're selling their cars), going to a Christian conference in Bethel Church up in Redding, then hanging around a bit more for July 4th (Independence Day) Fireworks. :) We're leaving on Jul 6 (tentatively) because Jul 5 is fully booked. Leaving Singapore Sep 20 (also tentatively). Hrm. Come to think of it, maybe we should've stayed another day or two for the 7/7/07 prayer event - it's in Nashville but there's also a big meeting related to that happening in Sacramento (about 2 hours drive from Stanford). Ah well. =)

Stayed up late on Monday night to finish my IHUM paper. Haven't really caught up on my sleep debt since then so I think I shall go do that now. ;)

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Mendicants Lost

The Mendicants' big Spring Concert is coming up! 18 May 2007. Check out our promo video:

Great videos!

I just watched the whole range of Apple advertisements on the Apple website. They're awesome!! Hilarious. Of course some are better than others. Check them out at http://www.apple.com/getamac/ . Gotta have Quicktime to run it I think.

Friday, May 04, 2007

TGIF!

I had a paper outline for my IHUM due this morning. I'm so glad it's over. Haha. Although the final version of the 8-10 page paper (double spaced) is due in 20 days. But I'm glad for this small hurdle to have passed.

Some good news: I got back my first Econ midterm and I got an estimated A-! It's estimated 'cos it's really the numerical score that counts towards a final score, which will then be put on a curve and given a grade. But based on the class' performance during this midterm, it's an A- range.

Which is tons better than my first B- midterm for Econ 1A last quarter!

Other good news: I got an A for my PWR Rhetorical Analysis! Praise God!! :D

I realize I'm going to have to keep myself busy if I want to do a good job with the two research papers. I'm not gonna beat myself up over it, but I gotta try to be consistent; if not it'll all pile up and it won't be any fun at all.

Gonna take a nap in a bit. Stayed up late to do the outline last night. Yay for sleep! :)

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Talk about a fast paced life

Been pretty busy lately, hence the relatively infrequent updates on this blog. But that's not what this entry's about. Check out this report:

http://www.itv.com/news/britain_d47fb099
4d1357c3ef7d13eed7a160ea.html


We Singaporeans need to relax man.