every time i look at old photos, and i do mean every single time, i cringe when i see the person i used to be. then again, i have come to the realisation that it is wonderful to keep looking better as i grow older. i hope when i'm 30 (omg i don't ever wanna go there. i already feel sooooo old right now, i cannot imagine 30), i look back at myself right now and cringe. that means i would by then be drop-dead. woohoo!! how shameless. ;-)

too many people have asked me how was yesterday. frightful if u ask me. i am going to say this. i had a good time. i enjoyed myself. thanks! (:

i am leaving singapore in two days. as i walked into church today, it occurred to me, it would be the last time in a long time i step into the jurong west church building. who knows how much longer we'll use the place? when the new stadium comes, i doubt we'll really use jw much. i was early so i took a walk. cafe, rootftop, riveria, car park etc. am really going to miss church.

i have said it before, i will say it again. there is no church like city harvest. not saying there's no church as good or better than city harvest. but there is no church like it. it's a place i can call home. when i was in the usa, i hardly ever missed an live online service. sigh. am going to leave so much behind.

i spent my last two weeks meeting up with people. it has been good! i'm proud to say that by tuesday, i would have met everyone i set out to meet. except kenny unfortunately. even caught up with a few others not on my list. ritchie, rachel etc. life is good when u have good friends. 

charmian and michelia took up monday and tuesday lunch respectively. they are two of my favourite pple to meet! really had a good chat. they always bring wisdom and light into situations in my life and offer my a fresh perspective. charmian gave me the tightest argument against sharks fin so far. climate change. sharks eat fish that feed on plankton, which produces oxygen for us. with sharks depleted, fish population will go out of control, and plankton will be depleted and there will be less oxygen for us all. it still hasn't converted me, but it sure has made me think!!

monday night dinner with cheryl, tina, cleo, jermain, louis, seb, ben, hadi, zhanwei and javier rocked my world. thank you for all the laughter, all the fun, all the gifts, all the wonderful memories. i'm going to miss all of u terribly. i realise this is quite a moot point because only seb and zhanwei have my blog address. wahaha. fine i shall release it to more people soon.

i am really going to miss javier. javier never fails to brighten up my day. i just enjoy horsing around with him, conversing with him, playing with him. oh man. javier javier javier. anw, he has this pillow case (we all call chou chou because it smells of his saliva) that he is really attached to. he lost it in a cab. he cried and all. and i understand how he feels because i have a towel that i sleep with every night since i was a puny boy. javier and i are both big on smell! we like the smell! so i bought him a new identical light blue pillow case. when i gave it to him today, oh my goodness, the look of joy on his face! evelyn was not a happy lady though...apparently they have been trying to wean javier off chou chou for the past two weeks. oh no!! sorry eve!!

yujie came over on thurs when we watched benjamin button and hung out. yujie was so tired but he forced himself to come over. deeply appreciated. i really quite liked the show. and in the midst of good company, it was even better! we had fun. yujie was his usual cranky self and he took to drawing on me again! the last time he did that was in bible school! wahaha. i really quite like the tattoo this time though. it was my initials AC. hahaha.

have been spending a lot of time with seb (since his unfortunate accident actually). sighs. cannot imagine not seeing him for months! bleah. seb, thanks for being the best person to hang out with and share stuff with! gosh i'm gonna miss u. please take care while i'm away. no falling down and hurting yourself. no falling in love with the wrong person and hurting yourself. oops! wahahaha. :p

talking about falling in love. in line with the valentine's day tradition at city harvest, pastor kong made all the married couples renew their vows today. it was so sweet really. awwwww. i really salute the couples who have been together for like 30 over years. it's easy to fall in love, it's not easy to stay in love. it's difficult to plan your wedding, it's even more difficult to build your marriage.

looking ahead, marriage is obviously not on my horizon yet. wahahaha. before i get back to singapore, here are some goals:

• lose more weight (how much? that's a secret.)
  
• hence i need to find a good gym there
• update my column more frequently (minimum once a week)
  
• alter my clothes so they look nice on me
  
• buy lots of new clothes for the blog shop (and for myself too)
  
• launch my web site
  
• get a good internship (washington center pleaseeeeeee. otherwise a good one.)
  
• get a grasp on the chinese stock market
  
• network with suppliers
• climb the great wall of china to the furthest point they will allow tourists to go (seb are we on for this??)!
• visit xiamen, inner mongolia, ha er bin, shanghai, suzhou etc
• read through the old testament (preferably in chinese but i doubt i can keep that up).

those were the days

dug this out as i apply for washington. those were the days man. my glorious army days. absolutely unfit. but power in my hands. influence in my sphere. hated the time. but enjoyed the people. :)

2ND PEOPLE’S DEFENCE FORCE COMMAND

LETTER OF COMMENDATION

awarded to

3SG CHEW SHI YAN AARON

BEST SOLDIER OF THE MONTH

3SG AARON CHEW is an Administrative Supervisor in the 2 PDF Command Human Resource Centre (CHRC). His job scope encompasses the planning of effective deployment and ensuring NSF servicemen are adequately trained in their jobs, assisting the conducting of workshops and HR Auditing. 3SG AARON has done his job effectively and efficiently.

3SG AARON’s role has been pivotal in ensuring the smooth setting up and running of his section, a new setup, in CHRC. He started a vocational nominal roll to ensure fairer and more effective distribution of manpower in the division. He also proved to be a competent and responsible worker through his involvement in the 2005 ranking exercise, which contributed significantly to its success. 3SG AARON proved his leadership and organizational abilities in singlehandedly organizing the Commander’s Dialogue Sessions this year, having liaised with the servicemen and servicewomen in the 10 sessions, and coordinating the logistics for the dialogue.

3SG AARON is a very outspoken person, always giving constructive ideas and solutions when he encountered any problems. He has a strong rapport with his superiors and peers. His exemplary character, positive working attitude, resourcefulness and ability to learn quickly made him stand out in the unit. 3SG AARON will no doubt be an asset to any organization he works for in the future.

In recognition of his achievements, 3SG AARON CHEW is awarded the Formation Best Soldier of the month of September 2006.

COLONEL NG SOON WATT
Chief of Staff
21 Sept 06

there is nothing to fear but fear itself

i don't have a lot of fears. but i have a few. i fear that hock street popular beef kway teow will close down before i die. i fear that mei yuan duck rice will close down before i die. i fear that bee bee carrot cake will close down before i die. i fear that the bak chor mee near my place will close down before i die. u kinda get the picture.

and one of my worst fears may be coming true. the curry rice at marine parade may close down at the end of the month. plans to open elsewhere are not confirmed yet. apparently the whole coffee shop they are at is undergoing renovation and when done, rent will rise inordinately. sighs. ahwells.

as the time to leave for china draws closer and closer, i am feeling less and less prepared. oh no. sighs. i really am not looking forward to going. i really hope my experience there will be a good one. boston and new york left such an imprint on me. i hope china is the same. but...sighs. my insides are churning uncomfortably at the thought of spending 6 months there. underneath the facade that has everything under control, i'm a wreck. omg. i still have a lot of stuff to settle before leaving. i don't know how to cope.

have been meeting up with pple and have arranged lots of meetings. have been good. always a pleasure to catch up with friends. had lunch with pastor chee kiang and claire today. pastor chee kiang is more than just a pastor to me. he's a great mentor and a great friend. no matter what i've gone through in the ministry, even at times that i seem to falter, pastor has always been faithful. thank you pastor. :-)

happy chinese new year

i guess it has been a while since i updated anything. so here we go! some interesting things that have been happening in my life.

death by stupidity
by far the most interesting and the most ridiculous is what happened two weeks ago on a saturday night (17jan). i went for cheryl and you feng's wedding and after that, i got a call. sebbers called to say he was injured so please pick him up from west coast park. it just went downhill from there. when i reached, he told me, "i can't walk. carry me?" i was dressed in glitz and glamour from the wedding! but well...he was bleeding from the right knee so i carried him to the car lor.

being the little boy he is, "i don't want to go to hospital. i want to go home!" he sounded like javier! i put my foot down and insisted he go to a&e to get stitched up. nuh a&e was madness. the waiting time was like 2 hours? like i said, downhill. i thought he was just gonna get stitched up, but it was too serious. he needed an x-ray! before the x-ray was injections. poor seb, so scared of needles. sigh.

kept getting worse. x-ray showed no signs of fracture, but the cut on his knee was really deep. so he had to be warded for observation by orthopedic surgeon!! i was like omg. it was like 5am already! we waited and waited and waited for a bed. finally got him one close to 7am. aiyo.

but the downhill track continued. he couldn't just be stitched up. he needed surgery to clean the wound. sighs.

i spent a good part of the next few days going to the hospital. seb was bed ridden. but i made the place really nice and comfy for him. i have a talent for making anywhere comfortable for myself and hence, i applied it for him. i got him mineral water, tissues, jacket, wet wipes, food, ipod, laptop, a mr happy pillow etc etc etc. aaron chew is capable of rocking anyone's world, eh seb?

the amazing part was his recovery. initially he was told he could be discharged earliest thursday. on monday night, i told him, let's spend some time praying. so we prayed together. the doctor came on tues and he could be discharged on wednesday! wow!

by friday (less than a week since the accident), we went bowling and caught a movie. at present moment, he has even gotten rid of his crutches and is hobbling around meeting up with friends and stuff already. wow.

second is merely the best loser
i may not always emerge top. but that is my mentality. i always fight to be the best. two incidents during the ck zone chalet (20jan, nsrcc), which was two tuesdays ago highlight this interesting fact.

when i went bowling last november, my score was more horrific than horrific. i told myself (and everyone around) i would swear off bowling forever. if i cannot be good at it, forget it. but i decided to give it a shot. so i kept practicing. i bowled alone, i bowled with seb, i bowled with yujie. and come ck zone chalet, with a score of 135, i came in only behind xue'en. 135 is not really that amazing. but the progress i have made since november!

back to the bungalow, ruxin, audrey and evelyn were just commenting on how much weight i have lost. all these years, seriously, i couldn't be bothered to try to lose weight. if i am not gonna put in 100%, don't bother. but once i set my mind to it, i cannot come in second. i need to be the person who loses the most weight! i need to be the person with the WOW factor. and i am. weddings, chinese new year, friends' gatherings...everyone goes WOW.

how do i bowl so well (relative to me in the past) and how do i lose so much weight? IT'S NOT THE METHOD, IT'S THE MINDSET. it's a quintessentially singaporean mindset. if we cannot be number one, we don't do it at all. that's why we have the number one airport, number one airline, number one seaport, number one transport system (maybe not number one but respectable) etc etc etc. but we don't have the tallest building in the world (we don't even try), we don't have an automobile industry, we don't have much agriculture.

anw, i really enjoyed the chalet. so sorry leaders who got diarrhea from the food! =(

chinese movie marathon
it wasn't a continuous marathon. but it struck me that i have been watching one chinese movie after another.

red cliff ii is super! it's exciting, it's intelligent, it has good-looking people. watch it if u haven't. at the movie. at the most exciting part of the movie, the show stopped for around 1-2 minutes. the theatre went mad with screaming and shouting. as a compensation, seb and i got 4 free movie tickets each. and we did watch red cliff ii, only missing less than 2 min. so in effect, it was 10 movies for $21. wow! =)

love matters (as much as i love our church member jack neo) is disgraceful. it addresses so many issues but none were explored adequately. it was such a malaysian show. the language was poor, the scenes were in malaysia. aiyo. darian would call it very batu pahat.

and yujie's favourite part of the trailer, "when the phone ring, 'green green', i pink up the phone, 'yellow, blue is this? you don't purplely call me. you make me angry, i will not call you black!'" was not part of the movie.

alls well ends well is super funny! probably one of the best hk productions ever!

to break with the series of chinese shows, i watched and would highly recommend bride wars.

on this note, since we're on weddings and love matters and what not, i would like to apologize to daniel chia and karen yeo; and derrick and ruxin. i won't be here for your weddings. :( i know i was supposed to be the driver at the formers' and the solemnization emcee at the latters'. i would really have loved to be there to share your joy. but i will still be in china. sighs.

chinese new year reunion lunch
each year, my family has lots of reunion meals with the extended family. but we never had one with just the five of us! since there was no church service on sunday, i offered to cook lunch for the family. the response was scary! dad and mum were elated! shijun and shijie cancelled plans so we could have lunch!

i panicked. saturday night, i went to giant to pick out the stuff to cook. i spent $37 on the ingredients. sunday morning, i drove grandma to church then went and bought half a roast duck from my favourite mei yuen just in case i failed. then i went home to cook. i whipped out a pan-fried macaroni, which was inspired by cafe cartel; a bbq sauce fish, which was inspired by jason jiang; and snow jelly or hashima (xue ge) dessert.

everyone enjoyed lunch! whee! and i didn't spend that much! hehe.

china!
i am leaving on 17 feb, 930am flight, air china, t1. i really have a lot a lot of things to do. sighs. i have to meet the following people before i leave:
cousin linda
cousin yun
charmian!!!
michelia
jeremy teo and kenny lum
michael tan
pastor chee kiang and claire
evelyn and javier
cheryl, tina, cleo, jermain, louis
darice
zhanwei
shawn

if u're in the above list and are reading this, please call me to arrange something. lunch/dinner/drinks/coffee. if u're not in the above list and would like to meet up, please call as well!!

if u're immediate family or seb or yujie, i will definitely meet u before i leave. please clear up your schedules for the next two weeks. :)