10Q!!!

Ten small things that made my day............


1) Smelling fresh lemons & fresh laundry





2) Seeing purple trees everywhere





3) Spotting parakeets flying around





4) Watching a small child "attack" his dad with a balloon sword in Rundle Mall - the dad plays along, amidst gales of laughter : )





5) Spotting an elderly couple sharing cotton candy (partly bcos it's so rare to see older folks eat sweet stuff; but mostly just "awwww....")





6) Finding a 2 dollar coin under my bed





7) A gorgeous sunset





8) The free bus arriving right on time (which it rarely does)





9) A cold cup of Kahlua coffee!!





10) Wonderful people who encourage me heaps, even through the smallest of actions!










............and one big, loving God who made it all happen! : )

Gen 1:31 - "God saw all that He had made, and it was very good."

Le Sable Du Horrifique

Had the worst baking experience thus far last Friday. Tried to make Sablés (French butter cookies). Followed the recipe. 200g sugar. 280g of wonderfully dainty premium Danish butter. Whisk 3 min.

Add 2 eggs.

Cracked first egg in. No worries. Cracked second egg in -

"Euaaaaggghhhh!!"





















It really hurt, having to chuck everything into the bin. Up to that fateful moment, everything had smelt so good that I was foolishly considering salvaging the batter by rinsing off the rotten egg (thank God I didn't hehe).

Everything went downhill from there. Ran outta ingredients. Ran outta time. Dropped the tray and smashed a lot of the biscuits. The frustration was immense, like being strapped to a torturing rack and forced to watch a C-grade movie in slow motion. In a sealed room. With a bunch of folks who just had beans for dinner. And with every last ounce of strength, as life excruciatingly ebbs away in a malevolent waft of toxic fumes, silently scream - "Somebody get me outta here!"


I know, horrible analogy :p

And as I went through the rest of the day, my thoughts kept coming back to the egg. I guess I could really identify that situation with Paul's words in 1 Cor 5:6-8 (just substitute 'yeast' in the passage for 'rotten egg' haha). There is such a sense of exasperation and anger in seeing the rotten egg of sin perfusing its way into the good batter of the children of God. Knowing such abundant grace, where Christ absolutely hammered evil Humpty Dumpty onto the cross once and for all, one should not take it cheaply.... "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast - as you really are!" For if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! So even as the Day draws closer, let's discard any stink that we stubbornly cling on to, and live as the salt (or nice batter) and light wherever we are!






Rotten egg - Bad!









Nice batter - Good!!!

YES!!!!

I'm back!!!! I survived 9 weeks without the internet!!! Yaba-daba-doo!!! :)

Anyway as promised in my last post, I'll put up some pics from time to time for fun, they really do speak a thousand words, maybe even more... and here are a few select ones from an era when Erwin was less than 4ft tall and had flat hair :)

Getting stoned on durian...patriotiknya....

My fav birthday cake!! Ever!! Back in kindy, TMNT were kinda like the equivalent of ipods I guess... if you didn't like 'em, you were uncool! And boy oh boy did the cake taste good, especially the green and red goo on top... go Leonardo!!!

My first ever Christmas play, I'm the shepherd in blue on the right, and the dude wearing the headgear thingamabob is my best friend, Jermain. Note the object in my right hand, it's not a chocolate bar, it's a piece of parquet... I think you can probably see where this is going....

ERWIN YOU RETARD!!!

Glad I got over my wood fetish :p

Connection Blues :(

At this point, I have slugged it out for roughly 7 weeks without an internet connection at home :( So, I'm typing this at 1 a.m. in a cybercafe... honestly speaking, I'm almost in **aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh-must-punch-someone-and-skin-their-pet-dog ** mode right now, this being the longest period I've ever been without the internet since my computer-free days of long looooong ago....

All of which means I'm hopelessly out of touch with the outside world. Who knows what's going on out there? Maybe they just discovered that bird flu is good for health! Or armpit hair trousers could have just become the latest fashion craze! Perhaps all this while it's been the water in Adelaide that's making most of us so lame! Heck, Thambi Mat bin Ah Beng might have suddenly been elected as the new Malaysian PM and I wouldn't have the slightest clue....

Not only that, it's crap to have 30+ new messages in my uni email account when I finally manage to check it, and it's crap having to delete most of them one by one because they are mostly about crappy stuff like advanced works notices, and it's crap having to do my banking in uni and risk having my account siphoned off by some loser looking over my shoulder, and it's crap not being able to go on msn at night, and it's crap not being able to upload new nonsensical pictures that I have been planning to post on this blog for ages, and it's crap having to use the word 'crap' so many times in one paragraph!!! **Deep breath** :p

I feel guilty la, getting all riled up over something that trivial. Why am I not as distressed whenever I fail to set aside time for Him, or whenever I try to hide my face from Him? Surely our connection is a gadzillion fillion dillion quatrillion times more important than a mere internet connection! And if He has promised to be there for me no matter what, and I act in this manner, how heartbroken He must be....

Sigh I feel like a total gundu... someone knock me hard on the head please....

Random Quotes

"Wah, who on Earth wears something that heavy?"
- Wei Jin, upon spotting a flyer titled 'Lost: Two TONE gold earring'



"Aiya.... It's part of a pig!!!"
- Adrian Bock, describing the word 'pigment' in a game of Taboo




"Hey Adeline, would you like to chip in for the surprise birthday par... (pauses for 3 seconds)... oh... oops"
- Kian Choy, totally forgetting who the birthday girl was




"Huh? It's not from the Kiwi Bird meh?"
- Shirley Ng, trying to understand where Kiwifruits come from




"Huh? It's not from the backside meh?"
- Ian Hong, trying to understand where babies come from




"Nipplely man I met, he ate my motorboat!!"
- Some random Indian actor dude (get over it Erwin!!)

Sea Hum!!!

Here's a Hokkien song about sea hums (sea cockles) that is based on actual fact. I know it's the truth 'cos I heard it in a Singaporean Ah Beng movie.







"Lang Jia Hum" (Sung to the tune of the kiddie mandarin song "San Zhi Lao Hu")



Lang jia hum ah, lang jia hum ah;

Lang pang sai, lang pang sai;

Hum jia sai ah, hum jia sai ah;

Lang jia hum, lang jia hum

English translation:

Humans eat cockles, humans eat cockles;

Humans crap, humans crap;

Cockles eat crap, cockles eat crap;

Humans eat cockles, humans eat cockles

Char koay teow lovers beware bwahahaahahahaaa!!

Visual Men??!!

In the post below, Jez commented that guys communicate visually, and I thought that statement sounded a little odd. Yesterday though, I happened to see this on the third floor of the Playford building, City East campus:





















Case closed?




Note to self - Don't take pictures of toilets ever again. People stare.

Wheeeeeee!!

Spontaneity rocks!!!! Yesterday, I happened to mention to Wei Jin that I hadn't played football in a long time... and before I knew it, he'd gotten himself a football from Rebel Sport, and off we went to Wellington Square for a game!


Arthur and Justin joined us, and truthfully, I was so out of stamina (and skills) that everyone just ran rings around me.... It was all good fun and hilarious (Arthur zipping around whilst laughing like a hyena - Priceless!), but I guess age is really catching up with me :p This is what I felt like right after the game:























Hmm maybe that is a little exaggerated :)



In times like these, I do wish I had the boundless energy and enthusiasm of a small kid! It's funny that kids often get to places by running around bug-eyed like they just had a sackful of sugar, instead of plain walking.... And only God knows why they lack a volume control button! One really gets a sense of aliveness watching kids move about.



In some ways, life mimics football, I guess. There are times when tiredness just creeps in, maybe after a hard tackle or a fall. And when it does, it's so easy to lose sight of goal. Purpose. I really was so focused on my own issues in the past that I failed to see the big picture. That He knows what's best for me. That I'm not striving toward something earthly and temporary, but rather toward something of far greater worth. That He still cares for me. Yet, I chose to dwell on the negatives, and that trapped me in a web of anger and depression. I thank God that although it has taken more than half a year and many struggles, I am beginning to see the value of something really powerful: Trust. There is such a long way to go, but just knowing that God is God really is something worth rejoicing in everyday!




I may not have the energy of a small kid. But with His refreshing grace, there is still plenty of life left in this old dog yet! :)

Sugar and fat, what's better than that? : )

Pirated tiramisu, apologies to all Italians out there.... :p

Food-o-rama!!!

There's no denying it, I'm a hopeless food junkie bound for a triple heart bypass sometime within the next 20 years. So, might as well gorge myself silly while I'm still able to! :)


Here's what I had for dinner today:

An exquisitely succulent hunk of roast beef seasoned with thyme and garlic....

And here it is, in all its sliced-up glory, smothered in a pool of liquid fat a.k.a. gravy. Note that I'm a Cinapek, so good ol' taters and Yorkshire Pudding have been replaced with 'white lice' :p

The laws of gluttony dictate that dessert MUST follow to round off everything (quite literally). And by dessert, I don't mean one of those hopelessly dainty petits fours. I'm thinking more in terms of something that carries a Surgeon General's health warning. Something with mountains of sugar in it. And rivers of lard. Oh yes.

Why, look! A giant bowl of peanut butter and choc chip cookie dough just appeared on the kitchen counter! Out of thin air! What an utterly fantastic coincidence!

Needless to say, I got cracking. And here are the results:

187 cookies. All for myself! Life is good! :)

Nah, I'm just crapping here. Shiok sendiri. The cookies are actually meant for OCF. So, if any of you OCFers are reading this, please ignore my earlier comments about the 'sugar mountains' and 'lard rivers'. I personally guarantee you guys won't get fat. yes you will and soon I'll be the thinnest person in OCF bwahahaha!!!


Wow 1.30 a.m. already??!! This is Erwin then, signing out!

Ewwwwwwww

Saw this in a Chinatown grocery store a little while back... is this what happens to stillborn babies?

Crikey.

Yup, this is the beginning of my very own blog :) 21 years of peace and solitude and I decide to ruin it all with a few taps on my keyboard * slaps forehead- d'oh !!! * Mid-life crisis la.... Anyway, regarding this blogging business - what on Earth am I doing?!! I mean, I'm really jakun when it comes to this 'jotting thoughts down' sort of thing.... I can still vividly remember the one and only time I received a diary, way back in primary school. Half the pages went into paper aeroplane production. The other half - paper bullets to shoot at my friends! And up till 2005, I thought a blog was something you'd place into a sandwich (I tend to associate strange words with food mmmmmm...).

Well, glad to report that the katak has finally leaped out of the tempurung! Yahoo! And since this blog is brand new, here's a picture of me when I was brand new too!



I can shake! I am the Elvis of babyland!

Ermmm.... alrighty then everyone, welcome to my wacky world!! :)



Erwin