Reality: Snapshot #2 - True Friends, and Satisfaction

Photo Credit: *vlad*

What is real happiness?

Notice (26.8): I'm going to be moving this blog to a new address soon. If you have been following me for some time, the nature of my blog posts has taken a more personal, reflective turn (being true to personality FTW) and as I have rather detailed form 6 notes lying around this blog, I'll leave this blog for reference and the occasional article on learning/studies but open another address for future updates. Just felt the need for separating the personal from the studies stuff.

A(nother) five minute post-Camp Cam and holiday-end snapshot of life so far.
PS: Pics at end of post ;)

Photo Credit: Brandon Christopher Warren 

Snapshots of life come in different colours.

It's been a little more than a month since Camp Cameron ended, and pretty soon life's gonna start getting busy again. With Band Camp, classes starting (it has been said that the transition from freshman to sophomore year is a pretty big leap, and a hectic one at that), convocation - where many senior friends are going to graduate and move to the next stage in life, and juniors coming in (OMG I'm a senior already! Old already...haha!), life goes on. Everyday can't be a mountaintop experience.

When I came back from camp last month, everything seemed less than perfect. Family, church, life, friends - everything needed to be fixed because it wasn't ideal. Somewhat I had this superwoman mentality that everything must be changed (which is normally what happens when I get a 'high' from camps and stuff) and some people said that I became more judgmental, actually. But instead of everything changing for the better, it either remained the same, or I became lazy. I stopped reading my Bible daily like the first few days after camp. Worship stopped feeling personal and intimate - it felt routine again. Some bad habits and closet sins became worse than ever before. How quick it can be to forget the experiences that I had with God and with my camp family, if one never takes the trouble to remember! And once again, doubts about identity and self worth creep in in those dry, dreary days where the computer became my only companion or connection with the outside world.

There were events such as reunions with my camp family and also church camp (If you stumbled here by accident you'd probably wonder, wow, this girl goes for a lot of camps does she? Yeah, this holiday season, pretty much.) Those undeniably were good times with good fellowship, but most of the time when left alone with a computer, I start to doubt. There seemed to be pictures of almost everyone having a good time (i.e when you feel lonely, everyone seems to be having more fun). And then I start counting - the number of Whatsapp messages I received, the number of notifications on my Facebook feed, the number of friends in pictures I posted, the amount of time I hanged out with people. When others seemed to have more of those, I envied them. Surely their lives must be more fun and fulfilling than mine, I thought to myself. So at one particularly down day, I posted this:

The responses that I received were overwhelming. No, not in terms of quantity, but those that responded to me both publicly and privately chastised me for looking at the surface quantifiers of popularity as to determine whether one is truly happy or not, as well as for the envy that I had towards others. People who were genuinely well liked are so because they bless others, and I am guilty of seeing what they have and coveting it instead of blessing them/getting to know them as people.

Insecurity is a pretty lethal road block if you want to bless others and feel really happy, because you are never perfect enough, never happy enough, never satisfied, always lacking, always wanting. Discontentment...breeds contempt.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney

Alone doesn't have to mean lonely.

So it's alright to be eating alone in the cafeteria (trips me up everytime someone asks about that), it doesn't mean that I'm a loser.
It's okay if I log in to Facebook, Whatsapp or whatever and see nothing new, it doesn't mean that I have no social life.
It's okay if people who are around me are ''less fun''. They are not less fun . They are fun, and fun doesn't have to be only certain type of activities that aren't preferable for people with different personalities. And even with people of different personalities, they are not shallow or surface. They are people. Everyone is a unique creation of God. I am, too. And for that I am grateful.

More stuff I am grateful for:

Yoon Yi @ Georgetown! Pic is hers.
She's one of those few friends that I grew up with :)

The Asherite reunion @ Melaka, and the family there,
happy after their crepe cakes:)
this one was taken by Fongwan, btw.

More Asherite madness!
The pics above and below was taken at one of our outings by grandpa Jeremy :)

The last three are spoilers, bahaha! Had a small gathering at home yesterday. I am blessed to share a historical day with these folks. I admit I did envision a big fancy party and crowd but...again, quality over quantity. Besides, now I kinda have friends all over Malaysia (or getting there) :)

The family...

The childhood friends...

The childhood friends + my senior pastor & wife

Goodbye Puchong, hello second year. I welcome the challenges and the new experiences for the year ahead :)

Reality: Snapshot #1

Photo Credit: Khánh Hmoong

A five-minute post Camp Cameron snapshot on life so far.

Today, I messed up. I dilly-dallied and lazed around, didn't do my Bible reading like I wanted to, fell into a bad habit that I thought I got over with, felt envious of my friends who could drive, and then argued with my mom about the very same issue after that. I still feel this intense need to prove to my parents, and to everyone else, that I can, because I feel like I cannot and need their validation to 'prove' that I can. I don't feel like a transformed, victorious person in Christ at all, at least not today! I feel like giving up. I really do. After all, it's what I always do. When friends don't respond to invitations to makan together one, two times, I stop calling them together. I'd rather shop alone then to make plans with people who might not come along anyway. I'd rather be a hermit, under a shell, whatever you'd call it. I give up.

I give up. I'd rather not try than crash and burn again, in anything. I'd rather condemn myself beforehand than to actually fail.

Yet the God that I encountered in Camp Cameron was there the whole while even before that, asking me to look at Him:

Debra, though you may give up on yourself too easily, and though you always assume that everyone else has given up, too, I have never, and will never, give up on you.

All that self-condemning is a shield from people's condemnation, which most of the time exists in the realms of imagination anyway.

Deb, it's okay to feel pain, it's okay to hurt, but don't give up so fast-lah! There's so much in life that might be missed out if everything also give up so easily.

I will hold on.

Photo Credit: Neil Krug, text mine

ps. more on Camp Cam, and other happenings in June/July, soon :)

It's Time To Face The Finals...?

Last semester, most of my exam papers fell on Tuesdays too...talk about an exam day.
Pic mine

So, the finals start next week.

There's actually one more exam to the list above on the 13th, but it's a small group exam so it's not listed here. 6 papers in total. And I am studying for them alright, just that I zone out after 1/2 hour or longest is 1 hour...in my room, I would be the most distracted. There's a bed, and there's Internet access. No excuse, though. Still need to study.

This semester, I generally slacked off more than the last one. The last semester, I bought/photo-stated almost all textbooks, went for most classes, didn't skip any, seriously studied despite the Christmas season for finals and generally didn't go out much. Even with friendship dilemmas, the Jazz Band Concert and trying-to-adjust-to-new-university-life thing going on, I was blessed (I dare not say that I deserve it, because I didn't do 100% of my best) with a CGPA enough to earn a Dean's List award.

1st year Dean Listers in Comm School.
Pic by Wen Wen, my coursemate :)

This semester, things were different. For starters. there was more coursework than exams, so there was a lot of working in groups. I usually try to have a good work attitude/ethic, but I admit that slacked off (should have learned how to simultaneously handle two or more deadlines at the same time, something I haven't learnt to do). As long as the deadline wasn't next week, I procrastinated, and many of my assignments were handed in just in time, where I slogged through the few nights before deadlines. This will definitely affect the quality of the work done - most of the coursework I received back were all average (B/B+) in contrast to last semester (A/A-) grades.

As time passed, the amount of activities that came my way increased in duration as well as responsibilities, making me make the choice to choose between them (which I don't like to do, because I don't like disappointing people - pretty much a yes girl) before I run out of breath. If not, next year I'd be gasping for air...I had fun doing said activities though, so it's not a bad thing. Just that my focus has to come back to hitting the books and studying first before everything else.

I started not going to several mass-handled classes (students in the thousands because it's a compulsory course), and also some classes that started at 8 a.m.(woke up late). It's a good thing that for my core subjects, I still managed to attended most classes and get all the notes. But, it's a deterioration of determination from last semester. Somehow, even though I still enjoy what I study, this semester I didn't feel like studying as much.

I do not blame anyone else but myself for my lower expectations, letting myself off guard, and laziness/loss of drive this semester. For the finals, I'm roughing it out and trying my best, but basically there's not too much I can do when coursework determined the bulk of my grade this semester. There are a lot of lessons that I can learn from everything that happened in the previous year, and lots of memories as well - that's material for the next post, after finals are over. Until then, see you, and all the best for the finals (for USMers and other college/uni kids having finals)