chronicles of young

Hey!  I was thinking about adulting (lol yes I am not quite over the fact that I am an adult, and have to say that I am in my late-20s gah) over breakfast yesterday. And since it was your birthday, my thoughts as a birthday gift of sorts haha! Was just mulling how I got a bit anxious about wasted time cos I woke up at 12pm, and then it hit me that it was stemming from the belief that I need to make things work. Like somehow, as an adult, the stakes are higher- don't waste time cos if I do, I will lose out or the world will be a lesser place etc. Perhaps adulthood got a bit burdensome because it felt like the stakes/risks are progressively higher; and it is not okay to fail. Like, don't 'waste time' with this guy if you are not gonna marry him, or I've gotta make my PhD work else I'll be wasting my time. Or I've gotta care about this social issue because its my role as an adult who has the resources to help. Haha not sure if I'm making sense but anyway ...

A bike is also youth Ke mana? Stop where? Beams of glee To be at safe distance Absorbing Vit D Albeit with some dissonance (The Shoppes is empty and Aunty is masked up) It is sad beautiful Such lovely yellow Amidst this They will come again next year, yes He went into the sea Is he bathing Or is he swimming? The best of times The worst of times

"我祈禱擁有一顆透明的心靈 和會流淚的眼睛"  <夜空中最亮的星> The rest of the lyrics are unrelated; just putting this song here also as a sound memory for the precious times on the road in KL, talking about random stuffs over Chinese songs. The beauty of carefree youth :') But just as the 14-day stay home after the KL trip reminds me that things aren't about me, I know that it's childishly unloving to remain in the rose-tinted memories of past adventures. Yet, I believe that this adventure-loving, foolhardy part of me has also been very helpful in pushing me to just try something, as long I believed in it enough at the start. But playing on a harder mode each time, God. Let my heart of worship be there when all is stripped away, and I feel like the end of myself. Almost a quarter of 2020 gone. Somehow I feel like this year is so much more trying than all the other years I can remember in my life. I felt like I had lost a bit of that excited, risk-taking self, and in its...

"Hevel, hevel, everything is utterly hevel" - book of Ecclesiastes Hevel is a Hebrew word which refers to vapor or smoke, rendering it in this context the dual meanings of ephemeral and a mystery/paradox. Questioning the meaninglessness of things, yet wanting 'real purpose' for my life, I went to the book of Ecclesiastes. The above has been in Draft mode since early December 2019, and now it is 2020. With much trepidation and an unusual amount of dread, I face the future of 2020. I guess that is made worse by the slew of Instagram posts welcoming 2020 but that is a separate issue about social comparison. Yet today's meetup with the Exco girls though filled with pregnant silences at times when we sit (I think) in our own musings about our lives, was soul-strengthening in a way, and I am reminded of the beauty of fellowship- grace that holds me fast 'amidst life's fearful path'. I am grateful for vision to be lifted, for validation in a way. Tha...

Stand with HK is something that has been stuck with me in the past few months here. Not in the same meaning that has been used by the protesters, but rather my own making sense of what is happening here to a beloved city I would even call my second home. Today as I was heading back (early before the bloody clash by yet another providence, otherwise I feel like it would be too much to bear in this time), there were armed policemen at Kowloon Tong MTR. Seeing them was enough to make me feel very tense and troubled- something was going to happen. Perhaps I am weak (that is what maybe Satan dupes me to believe), so I may try to reason within myself that it is okay, I haven't seen the most violent and inhuman of things. Going back to Stand with HK , in my stronger moments and at the end of those desperate-despairing 'Maybe I should go home' , I feel like bearing witness to this, caring about the people and the city, is what I can do. Actually I can do nothing. The comple...

Just happened to read this post 'Not Settling' when I went to self-stalk like I often do. Quite apt for today :> As I remember, I wrote this post with mixed feelings, 9 days before I said Yes to b0Bear (and that purely because it was a nice sunny day, and he wanted a day to mark). I was already decided in my heart that I was going to say Yes to him but well... still kinda reluctant to change the status quo because it meant giving up my independent "I do not need to be accountable to you, you are not my Dad" mindset. What it meant in my brain: (1) Accountable for whereabouts, time spent with people etc, and (2) Needing to be patient, spend effort to explain my inner workings/thoughts/feelings where previously in my own space I could just be content with journalling things down to process. I was also (very) afraid, of being lulled into 'settling' with someone and not living to the fullest in taking risks, both for self and God. Well, 1 month into thi...

Gamut of feelings. It is quite mysteriously interesting that almost every time I change to a new journal book, it marks another season. Or could it be my mind instinctively marking the seasons as the pages come to an end? Either way, with reflections from the weekend of GRIT camp and other stuffs, I filled up the last page of the book I bought at a hipster bookstore in Xia Men during my 'Last Summer' in 2017. This 'Last Summer' was a series of post-graduation travels before I started what I thought will be a long long season of being a ground social worker. The 2017 social worker that I was had no great dreams, just to survive in the emotionally draining work and do good to the people I served. Fear was what held back all those idealistic thoughts (wouldn't really call them dreams I guess) of social enterprise, community work, research. Shortly afterwards, it was the seemingly inane and objectively busy work that kept these safely in the realm of good thoughts. ...