100th post: I'm almost done with finals!

Yeah! It's been an amazing finals week. Since last Thursday, I've had one thing due/happening every day (excluding the weekend) so I'm really glad that my finals are only ending tomorrow. Most people usually complain that their finals don't end earlier, but if mine ended any earlier I would've been much more pressed for time. So it's really a blessing that everything's so evenly spread out.

Finally got done with my Music 220A project today. Finished it in a total of 6.5 hours. Ideally I was supposed to have started it a while ago, and I guess technically I did but I did the bulk of the work today. Basically what I did was to write and record a musical piece using recordings of water - water droplets, the shower, a fountain, water cooler etc. Some of the sounds are raw, most of the sounds are processed at least a little using a computer program called ChucK, and a few of the sounds are synthesized like crazy. If you're interested to hear it, you can take a listen here , or right-click on the link and select "save source as" to download it.

And yup, even those broad chords in the second half are from a water source. Specifically, a fountain (the same sound that you hear in the background a couple of times that sounds kinda like rain). I think the theory of how that happened was the script I wrote constructed a delay every 500 or so samples, and at the high sample rate of 48kHz, that ended up producing a tone in and of itself rather than merely altering the original sound. By changing the frequency of the delay (i.e. 400 samples, 300 samples etc.) I could change the pitch. So it actually took a while to come up with those chords.

I like them though. I like the whole piece in general, even though some things didn't quite work out perfectly - like some of the stuff sound out of time even though they were supposed to all line up. But it doesn't matter too much. I like the piece - it's sort of calming. I don't know if I'm reading too much into it (I don't think I am), but I feel like it's a prayer for rain (hence the title Raindance). Not physical rain, but the kind of rain that softens dry ground and parched hearts; the kind of rain that is refreshing and nourishing, that softens soil for roots to go deeper and mends the cracks in hardened hearts. God's already begun to water the dry ground(s) a little here and a little there, but it's not enough and more rain is coming.

One more final tomorrow! I'm not worried about it. It's challenging, but somehow I feel really at peace with the fact that even in the midst of studying I need to, and should, take care of myself. Like it's actually more worth it to take some time to do nothing, or to write a blog entry, and of course to sleep, than it is to study more or cram more practice problems.

In other news... I'm officially an Econ Major!! Yeah!!! I'm so glad I finally declared. And it was such a blessing too. By right I can't declare this week - I can submit the online system request and submit the forms but the department says they won't approve it until next quarter. But I went to see my advisor two days ago, submitted my forms and requested to declare last night at around 2am. And it got approved this morning in just a matter of 8 hours! Yay. =)

God's just been really good to me this week. Not that there haven't been downsides or challenges. But it's like He suddenly awakened me to a new realization of His goodness during what's supposed to be the most pressurizing or intense week of the quarter. Funny. He would choose this week to do that.

Music Stuff

Here's a link to a .wav file that I made for my computer-generated sound class. The task was to record everyday sounds and turn it into music - I decided that limiting myself to a theme was a good way to help me keep my focus and so I ended up recording sound clips of various parts of my car. Everything you hear here is either a pure sound clip, or a sound clip that has been processed through a filter or two using code.

If playing the sound doesn't work in your browser (it's not working in mine), try downloading it and playing it off your computer. It's kinda big though, 40mb. Sorry about that. :P

And since I'm on the topic of music that I've worked on, the concept album that I've been directing and working on with The Mendicants is finally out!! It's called Roses In My Hand. I made a preview: Click here for the full version, or if that doesn't work ('cuz so far one friend's told me that the video didn't play properly) here's a smaller version that requires more squinting:



I directed the a cappella group last year and we spent the entire academic year working on it. I'm pretty pleased with the final product! 12 songs, all covers of a wide range of artists - there's Simon & Garfunkel, Huey Lewis & The News, Jason Mraz, Frankie Valli, Barenaked Ladies, Sublime, John Legend and even Coldplay. All a cappella, no instruments (with the exception of a cowbell in one song). Most of those drums are me. :D

CDs are US$15 a piece. Let me know if you'd like a copy!

Thanksgiving break next week. I'm actually tired from Fall Quarter already. The break should be good for me.

Photos of home

National Day always passes by with songs and messages of nationalism, national pride, family values and all that. Want to sing about the greatness of a nation? Try this.

Singapore, Singapore,
Don't you know your own beauty?
Singapore, Lion's Roar,
You were made in His glory
So open your hearts
And open your eyes
'Cos the Father loves you so
Lion arise,
Arise and find your song

I wrote that over the summer in response to hearing Dan McCollam (one of the keynote speakers at the worship conference I was at) say that "Singapore's a beautiful place, but even more beautiful are the people" (or something like that). We go about everyday, busying ourselves with important stuff, serving others and loving them but never knowing how precious and valuable we are.

After I got my new camera, I started bringing it around with me and trying to capture beauty in the things I see everyday. Photography is a way to worship God just by capturing the beauty in moments around us which we don't usually see. Of course, it helps to have a good camera with a good zoom. ;D Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/sicheng.su/Home#. Here's a preview of Tang's shopping centre, taken from across Scotts Road (had to try several times to avoid getting a car in the middle of the picture blocking the sign)



You're welcome to check out the rest of the album if you have time. :)

Campout!

Went camping on Friday with Chi Alpha. It was really fun. I slept in my car! Haha. See the pictures!

And our epic campfire that got really big and pretty:

Quotable quote from Christina...

"Little kids don't get Holy Spirit Jr. They get the full blessing of real thing!"

The Holy Spirit isn't something you grow into or only receive when you become mature. He's freely given to everyone who will receive Him! :)

Bites of manna, cont'd

Love isn't the excuse for what we do. Love is what we do. Many of us think that receiving God's love and loving Him back is the starting point of our Christian walk. But it's not the starting point; it's the journey itself.

This isn't a principle, or a nice saying (although if it is a nice saying I'd be happy since I came up with it). Love is the deepest truth anyone of us can ever understand, and that understanding doesn't come without experiencing it.

Only God can show me how important I am to Him, and I bet the same applies for you too...

Revelations

Got two nuggets of understanding that I wrote down during service today. The best part (as I've mentioned to several people several times, including mike) is that the speaker (Rev. Casey Treat) probably barely touched on these at all. In fact maybe he didn't even talk about them. But I guess God did, to me at least. Haha.

The first one has to do with our authority on earth vs. Satan's reign on earth. I'm still a little iffy on this one and it may not all be right, so please don't be leaving comments criticizing every corner of it. Here's what I wrote:

1. Adam opened the door to Satan. Satan had rightful access to the earth because the one(s) placed in charge of it (God's children, whom He told to reign and have dominion) gave it to him.

2. So Satan reigned on the earth.

3. Jesus came and defeated Satan. The result - the earthly realm is no longer rightfully the devil's.

4. Yet Satan and his demons still continue to reign today, because the ones to whom this world was made for (i.e. humans) are still agreeing with him and letting him in.

5. BUT Satan's dominion on the earth is illegal, and still exists because the authority that God has given His children over the earth has not been fully enforced.


The second one's to do with the issue of our identity, our sense of "who am I?", which is at the core of everyone's hearts (Christians and non-Christians alike) but seems to be almost never explicitly talked about.

1. Abraham called himself what God called him - a father of many nations - even when he had no children. He stood in his identity according to what God had called him, not according to what his physical world showed.

2. God stands outside time.

3. Abraham's identity, and my identity, rightfully comes from God - God, being my creator, is the one who intentionally made me who I am. Therefore, He is the only one who has the right to tell me who I am. Since God stands outside of time, my identity is created and defined outside of time.

4. It is illegal for me to define my identity according to a lesser environment that what it is actually born out of. In other words, who I am now, or what I look like or seem like now, is not the same as who I am in God.

5. So at the end of the day, the question is: Who does God say I am? What does He say about me?

What a week...

Last week (Mon to Fri) was spent at a supernatural worship conference called Transformation, held at Church Of Our Saviour. The speakers were all from the USA and were either part of or affiliated with the ministry of Bethel Church, a church in Redding, California that I've been to quite a few times and whose ministry I've been so blessed by. It's been an amazing week, and God just met me and filled me in so many ways. I can honestly say that I want more, more not of His manifestations but of Him.

I just tried to upload a video of a song that one of the speakers sang at my Worship Leading elective, but blogger.com keeps giving me error messages so I'll try another time. :/ But here are some pictures from the conference, taken with my new camera! *grin*

Emily, and in front of her, Ralph Nader, worshipping God with flags:


Dorea, also flagging:


Emily and Ralph Nader again:


De Wen, looking at someone's prophetic art piece (I forget if it's his own):


The drama elective at rehearsal:


My prophetic self-portrait (asked God for a picture that represented me in some way and drew it out myself):

I later got the word "sound of gold" with this picture, and Cynthia, Ai Lin and David helped me interpret it during dinner.

Me and Dan McCollam, one of the keynote speakers and the teacher of my Worship Leading elective. He has such a light and joyful spirit...


Some of the ladies, hanging out at the hawker center before the last night session:


Worship during the last night session:

I really like this picture. It looks so glorious like we're dancing with angels, and so much glory is being released as we worship.

And finally, praying for the entire team from the USA. They were all such a blessing to us:


So that was my week last week. Surely, surely my days with God can only get better. =)

Meet my latest gadget/toy

*shiny!*


It was a birthday present, from a bunch of friends who've come to form an unexpected second Singaporean spiritual family to me (after my cell group in City Harvest), and from myself - they gave me a really generous voucher to an Electronics store and I decided to pay a bit more myself to get something a little better than the average compact-sized ridiculously-megapixeled digicam. Have yet to download any photos into my computer but I'm expecting the pictures to look pretty good. :)

Stewardship

I like this article from the Bethel Church (Redding, California) website:

http://www.ibethel.org/features/journal/index.php?f=journal.php&id=40

"...at its core, stewardship is not really about money. The foundation of true biblical stewardship is renewing our hearts and minds. If we guard our hearts and minds, the other stuff will take care of itself."

In particular, I like how it ends.
"A great steward, however, would know his master so intimately that everything the steward did would reflect the will of the master."
I've always heard of stewardship in terms of what I should do. But being a steward is different from 'doing' the stewarding. It's not about how well you handle your finances or how wisely you make your choices. It's about knowing God. It's always been about knowing God, and Him knowing us. Somehow I've always thought of the term 'steward' as a sterile concept, a servant who's emotionally detached and doesn't think for himself but only thinks 'what would my master want'. It's never occurred to me that a steward by definition must know the master well. Take Batman, for example. Alfred wasn't just his servant. Alfred was the steward of the entire personal Wayne fortune, AND Alfred was Bruce Wayne's closest and most intimate friend, and even his advisor.

Despite all that, the parable of the servants and the talents still puzzles me. I mean, I can explain it 'theologically' but it still doesn't make sense to me. Compare that parable to the parable of the prodigal son. Placed side by side, the two parables just don't make sense. One seems to suggest that God rewards productivity and expects nothing less, and the other says His heart is that of a father whose love and acceptance is never limited by anything we do (or don't do), no matter how wasteful or rebellious. And no matter how hard I try to look at the parable of the talents to find a deeper meaning of relationship or anything of the sort, I just don't see it. It remains just as plain and simple as ever - God not only rewards but expects productivity. More important (and confusing) in that parable is the implication that the stewards there represent us, but it paints the stewards in such a practical, un-relational manner even though Jesus came not to reconcile our actions to God but our hearts.

Oh well. It would be good to have the answers but I don't need to understand to be able to move on.

Bites of manna

A revelation about 1 Cor 13:

In God's world, love isn't the excuse. It's the reason, the main point. Love isn't the precondition to everything; it is everything.

Quotables

I just watched Get Smart yesterday. Love that movie. It's funny, witty and the humour isn't just slapstick. There's actually some substance to the plot and the characterization.

A really good line from the movie prompted me to make a post on a few quotes that stuck in my mind lately:

"That's what they do, not who they are."
- when Maxwell Smart is talking about the bad guys being, well, bad guys

Couple more...
"If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."
- Irv Blitzer, the Bobsled coach in Cool Runnings, on why he cheated to get a third Olympic gold medal and risked losing the two he already had.

And last of all, to end on a completely different note, a quote from Patrick, one of my fellow counselors at the EPGY camp held at NTU in Singapore over the last 3 weeks, whose first response upon hearing the live firing from the army camp nearby was, in a calm and collected manner as he stared as his Uno cards:

"Is China attacking??"

Weird psychology

For some reason or other, whenever I'm awake when others are awake, I have this subconscious urge to do stuff, to be productive, or at the very least active, even when I want to take time to myself, so that even if I decide to sit back and watch some TV or something like that, I still feel crappy for not doing much. But once everyone else is asleep, I finally feel like it's my own time. For some reason the night's more peaceful - when others are up, alone time is dreary, but when no one else is up, alone time is solitude. The fewer people there are awake, the less bustling the environment is. It seems completely understandable and normal to me, and at the same time it seems so fundamentally flawed. It doesn't make any sense that the night time should be the only time when I feel like I can be still. God made the entire day for me, why should only the night be mine?

Mendicants Spring Show 2008

Check out the trailer to my a cappella group's Spring Show happening next week...

Where did all that time go?

It's finals week this week. Where did my whole quarter go? Was Pi day (March 14, a.k.a. 3.14 in American notation) really an entire year ago, when John Sillcox demonstrated his Mathematical prowess by reciting Pi to a HUNDRED decimal places unprepared in front of a captive Chi Alpha audience? Has it really been more than an entire month since my last blog post? Am I really 2/3 way through my SECOND (!!) year of college?

Geez. This is nuts. This quarter didn't feel like a quarter at all. Didn't really enjoy my classes, don't feel like the quarter peaked, don't feel like it's ending. Guess it hasn't been a great quarter. Like most things, it's had its good sides, but that doesn't mean it was good.

Took Indonesian this quarter, I can form decent sentences now and understand basic written stuff; still can't understand spoken Indonesian very well just 'cos Indonesians speak really fast and with a pretty thick accent. But I've made a good amount of progress that I'm happy with. Yesterday we had to take a 45-minute final (which wasn't really critical 'cos I'm only taking the class for pass/fail, not for a letter grade) and then give a short 10-minute presentation on anything we wanted. Took some photos with my computer's webcam. Photos are always a nice addition to the blog. Unless you're Gong Gong who prints out my blog pages without the photos to read. Sorry Gong Gong, but you can still come online to see the pictures!

Guru kami (our teacher), Anita:


Charmaine, setting up her presentation on her past and upcoming service trips to Sekayu, a village in Indonesia. Charmaine's also a Sophomore (i.e. 2nd year) from Singapore.


Anita, manning the video camera. She wanted to record all of our presentations for her own keepsake. Clearly Charmaine had just said something really bad by mistake...

I'm just kidding Charmaine saying something bad. Her presentation went great.


Charmaine presenting. "Musim panas tahun lalu" = (lit.) season hot year last = last summer:


Alejandro, presenting on his family:


Alejandro again:


Tidak ada foto lagi (that's all the photos I have).


If I've anticipated your thoughts well, here are my responses:

1. Yup, no pictures of me, 'cos I was the one taking the photos, using my own computer. Besides the fact that I can't click the camera button while doing a presentation (let alone in Indonesian!), I was also using my laptop for the presentation so obviously I couldn't use it to take pictures at the same time. In case you're curious, my presentation was entitled "Kenapa Saya Mau Belajar Bahasa Indonesia" which means "Why I want(ed) to study Indonesian".

2. Yes, that's all the students in the class (besides me). There're only 3 of us, not including the teacher. Actually there were 4, but one of them, Shannon, is a Anthropology Ph.D student who flew off midway through the quarter to Indonesia for intensive Bahasa Indonesia courses and on-site field work. Intense stuff. Wonder how she's doing there.

My last final's coming up this Thursday, and then I fly off until March 31st to tour the East Coast with the Mendicants. I wonder if I'll have the time/motivation to update the blog with photos during the trip. We'll be flying to D.C. (yay), then going to New York City, then East Hampton (I think that's on Long Island, which is also in New York state), then Boston (yay again). And apparently we're doing all of it without renting a single car. This should be interesting. :P

Patrick Kozey and the Mendicants sing for SABA!

SABA = Singaporean-American Business Association. We sang for their gala dinner about 3 months ago in San Francisco. Here's the smooth voice of Patrick Kozey of the Mendicants singing Hooked On A Feeling. The video's a bit jerky, sorry about that.

Durian!

Yes, believe it or not. They've apparently found a way to grow durian trees here in California.



I'm kidding of course. They freeze durian and import it to the Chinese supermarket here. I was at the supermarket (Ranch 99) the other day and saw durian in boxes. It was two pieces for 5 bucks which i thought was quite ex but decided to try anyway. Turns out they're seedless! Or at least someone took out the seeds. So it's a pretty decent amount of durian flesh for 5 bucks! Unfortunately I think I left the durian in my fridge for a bit too long so one of the pieces was a bit sour. Don't worry, I didn't eat it. The other piece was pretty good - nice and smooth and creamy and, of course, tasty. More on the sweet side, only slightly (but not really) bitter. Yummmmm. :)

Talking about food.... two weekends ago (the weekend before Tahoe) I went to SoCal (Southern California, i.e. the LA area and San Diego) with the Mendicants and Counterpoint, this all girls group that is pretty good friends with our group. We went to this ex-mendicant's house in Hollywood - he sound engineers for TV shows for a living and he's actually won an emmy for sound engineering on Ally McBeal and was nominated for his work on the X-Files! Pro... Anyway check out this HUGE pizza that he (his name is Kurt) ordered for us:



It was like 3 feet in diameter. Which is about... I don't know... 120cm?

Oh and I mentioned the Emmy... Here's a picture of one the Mendicants, Jai, and the Emmy in the background. We'd only just gotten to Kurt's and didn't dare to go touch it yet, so the Emmy is actually on a shelf in a corner of the room, and Jai is holding up his hand to just the right height so that it looks like he's holding a tiny Emmy. He's actually quite far in front of it:



Here're a couple of pictures from San Diego, which we went to on one of the days of our tour in SoCal. More specifically, Coronado, a small, very pleasant and pretty rich island just off the coast from San Diego:


That's my shadow. hehehe. Look at how nice the sand on the beach looks.


A picturesque view of my car set against the rising moon.... *violin music in the background*


I know I've been less regular with updates this year... last year everything was new and exciting. This year I'm finding rather different things important compared to last year, not all of which I'm inclined to say to myself "I wanna blog about it!". I'll still post updates when I can though. Like this one. =)

Ski trip!

Went with the Singaporean association at Stanford to Lake Tahoe this weekend to ski. Was quite fun, Saturday had really fantastic weather, and from the mountain you can see the lake and on the other side you can see the plains of Nevada surrounded by mountains. Great stuff. :) Sunday morning we awoke to find it snowing, and it didn't stop snowing the entire day. Apparently the snow was from a storm that came from the Gulf of Alaska... I cut short my skiing time 'cos the weather made skiing kinda unpleasant. The drive back was amazingly terrible - first they had chain control through the mountains, so there was stop-and-go traffic that backed up so far that we were probably in the traffic for 3 hours, maybe even more. Then just as we were about to pass chain control into the mountains, they stopped the traffic completely - apparently some car had taken a spin on the mountain. So for at least an hour, we sat in traffic not moving at all. Meanwhile the snow was coming down really heavily outside and with really strong winds. I must say it was kind of exciting to drive through the mountain during the storm though.

So we set off from Tahoe at 2:30pm, and what should have been a 4-5 hour drive became a 10 hour journey (including a 1 hr stop for dinner). Skipped my morning classes this morning to sleep, was really tired last night when I went to bed. Didn't get a good rest both nights that we were at Tahoe either. So, skiing was fun. But I was exhausted when I got back... and I'm actually still kinda tired now. Econ 52 midterm this week. Sigh. :/

Random post

It's been stormy today. Wind and rain, fallen tree branches etc. The main storm was supposedly yesterday - apparently it came out in Singapore papers. Winds of up to 70mph on the Golden Gate Bridge, gusts of wind topping over 100mph in Los Gatos (somewhere not tooooo far from Stanford) but somehow Stanford wasn't too bad. Which is good. But also makes me feel a bit like I'm missing out on the excitement. Apparently the wind was so strong at San Rafael that it blew over two to three 18-wheelers onto their sides on the San Rafael Bridge, somewhere over in the East Bay. I guess we're blessed that Stanford was spared the power outages and dangerous winds. Would've been exciting though. :P

Check it out on the news:
"Fiercest Storm in 5 Years Hits Bay Area"

Below (rather randomly) is an excerpt from today's entry into my (spiritual) diary that I've started keeping just before I came back to Stanford in Sep last year (that's 2007, for those who haven't yet adjusted to the idea of 'this' year being 2008):

Trust God. That’s different from trusting that things will turn out well. Sometimes we think that trusting that other people will take care of things is equivalent to trusting God, but that’s trusting other people. Yes, God is bigger, but somehow the whole idea of “God = everything beyond our control” isn’t entirely accurate. ‘Cos other people are beyond our control. And God gives them free will to make the decisions they want to make regardless of whether they’re the same choices He would like them to make. And somehow, despite that, it’s also true that God is bigger than other people – sometimes it seems like I can trust Him to work through or around others, and sometimes it seems like I can’t. That bit doesn’t seem too important right now – I guess God’s main point to me is trust Him. Not a blanket trust that things will always go well, but trust Him. Specifically Him.