God is the Bread of my life.

At my core, I know that's all i need.

But bread is always more fulfilling with strawberry jam (or your preferred conserve of choice)





what does it mean for me to feel this way?

dear whoever it is who still reads this blog,

i know i haven't been updating in a really long time, but i can't help myself. im going to start copying and pasting irene's blog posts and use them as my own, just so you have something to read.

much love,

Thomas

i love big butts and i cannot lie

why does something still stir within me?

i think darius was right.

ok im off to europe for now. but before i go i'd like to mention a few things.

firstly it was my vocation retreat to the major seminary in punggol. while i don't feel like i'm any closer to discerning whether it is indeed a priestly life that i've been called to lead, i believe i've grown closer to God in a less structured way. in fact, when Fr William Goh told us that a good indicator as to whether or not we were cut out to be priests was whether we experienced a passionate desire for copulation! guess where i fell under. still, it was perhaps the retreat of a lifetime and i will write more about it in due course.

next, happy birthday to me! no more PITY PARTIES! thanks to everyone who made it so great. especially to all my buddies in school, wj, rapunzel, toh!! and of course to the ninja party. your plan was perfect! execution would've followed had i not been sitting and stinking/shitting and thinking in the toilet!

rhia, you rock. once again, you continue to amaze me in so many different ways. you're setting a very high standard indeed. you actually fulfilled a birthday wish of mine (and everyone knows those darned things don't ever come true)

;p

happy birthday, thomas.

No, its not just the name of the Covenant's mothership in all 3 makes of Halo.

Today, I had lunch with Val at Curry Wok, the joint my NJ friends and I used to frequent after school for a jazzed up lunch or dinner, usually just curry chicken, but if we were smooth talking enough, free tofu, omelette and extra servings of curry would come our way. Evidently, i am quite the sucker for nostalgia. The food tasted the same, just as delectable as before though the experience as a whole lacked something fundamental, and that's when my NJ juniors stepped in. They came in a pack, the chattering, laughter, giggling (i swear i heard jia yun but alas, she wasn't there!), but rowdy and smelly (and boy were they) as they were, the little shop seemed to fill with life again. Suddenly i remembered what it was like to sit there late into the night with my choir friends eating, drinking and making mary (hur hur but not really), talking about nothing and everything all at the same time. My little IP kiddies have matured into the 18 y/o bombshells they are today. yes. bombshells. And myself? I'm pushing 30 (in 10 years time!) and still i feel like a kid in a candy shop.

it was interesting what Val and I spoke about. Not your everyday conversation between 2 hunks cackle (well, one Mr Picture Perfect and another in-training - more cackling). It was about religion and the many facets it has, and i shared with him my difficulties with regard to my faith and how it related to my relationships with others.

There essentially exists 2 separate, but not mutually exclusive, components to my spiritual life - My relationship with God, and my relationship with everyone else. Much of our conversation revolved around the importance of feeling the conviction you need to feel one with your faith, and one with God, to be able to stand up for your faith in the face of imminent doom (read: those damned evangelists, and by evangelists i mean it as a verb more than a noun, bent on converting you!), and how this core relationship should be the cornerstone to all your other relationships. If its not God-sent, then it probably isn't God willing either. How often have we allowed human emotions, a multifarious, crude amalgation of hormones and electrical signals, to block off God's soft voice? Or convinced ourselves that THAT was what God wanted for us, even if it wasn't? There's no real way to tell if isn't for us except through fervent prayer, a rock-solid spiritual foundation and a good deal of self-control to match. Why have I always found it so difficult resolving my relationships with others with what i thought God wanted for me? Because I let my other head think for me (i'm obviously talking about the OTHER kind of relationship). I created the illusion that that was what God wanted for me and at the same time, i compromised my relationship with God, because had it come to fruition, I would've found God in my struggle for another human's affection, but had it fallen through, i would've cursed the day i thought it was what He was telling me to do. Mandrew once told me, and i can't help but agree, that it wasn't right that we could find Him in the dark, but lose him in the Light. Too true, Cambridge.

When i said the 2 components of spirituality aren't mutually exclusive, i said it because on the one hand, if you let your relationship with another person interfere with your relationship with God, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, but on the other hand, you can't find God alone either. Religion is as personal as it is fraternal. The core group of friends you have discovering God with you and beside you makes the whole process seem a lot less daunting. The difficulty lies in balancing the 2 such that you grow in both without compromising either, and that is where it seems i have failed. Shuttling between God and friends just isn't the way to go. Begone with the ambiguous lines that seemingly define black from white, right from wrong, too much and just enough. why put yourself in that predicament in the first place? Spare yourself the agony and deny the devil. Don't be tempted to overanalyze. I have to believe that God will provide, in every sense of the word.

Ah yes. and my retreat at the seminary. Though i don't believe priesthood really is my calling, I won't deny the possibility of it ever happening, but I'll cross that river when i get to it. I just hope for a closer relationship with God through this retreat. In the mean time, progeny's the word of the wise.


I need God, and God willing, people, and the right person, will hopefully come along with Him.

Lord, I'm doing all I can
To be a better man.


-Robbie Williams