city that is to come.

note to self:

(isn't it beautiful? there are gems in the word,

waiting quietly to be found,

to shine into eyes that see

the unseen.)

'For here we have no lasting city,

but we seek the city

that is to come.'

Hebrews 13:12

'..as we look not to the things that are seen but

to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient,

but the things that are unseen are

eternal.'

2 Corinthians 4:18

'As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty,

nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches,

but on God,

who richly provides us everything

to enjoy.

They are to do good, to be rich

in good works, to be generous and ready to share,

thus storing up treasure for themselves

as a good foundation for the future,

so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.'

1 Tim 6:17-19

do good, my friend,

see the unseen,

love not the present world,

but

the city that is to come.

*

happy birthday luke and amanda. :)

here in prague

i search the archives on the left, and find that i used to have much more to say. or much more time to say what i had to say. ive been in prague for 4 months now. kehni n i reached here end of august or so, and we're here til the end of december.

*

my favourite definition of a tourist comes from Edmund Chan.
"the tourist busies himself in the conquering of space but not in his understanding of it".
in that definition, i would like to think i am not a tourist.
i would like to think i see with new eyes.

*

prague has been a space. a bubble from the rest of the world. it buffers me from the familiar, and distance leads to a questioning of the things that used to run clockwork in my routine. the shuttle bus back into my condo. the thought that tampines and clementi are so far apart. the smelly coffeeshops which are so insanely cheap and desirable now. free toilets. the huge and affordable shopping malls conveniently littered all around. hordes of people compared to the quieter prague streets. multi-racial society, versus homogeneity (from which i stick out from a sea of sameness). traditional chinese reservedness. attitude towards people who club and party. (they used to be classifiable under a group with specific, normally undesirable, traits. now i understand at least part of their motivations to party, because i finally have some faces to pin to this group. faces of persons i know and care for.) the idea of fun. being open in public. being friends with your mother. earning your own keep soon as you graduate, even if you may be 19. the privilege of knowing and understanding English. the safety of singapore.

*

i could go on, but i believe getting to know Ondrej's family is one of the things that i appreciate most here. it has certainly challenged the way i see things most drastically. the idea that his father's mother could be friends with his mother, even though his parents are divorced, is shocking. im too used, perhaps, to the korean-drama-cliche of evil mother in laws, and too accustomed to seeing mother-daughter in law conflicts in real life to question otherwise. the idea that his mother is so strong and brave and optimistic, after her second husband passed away from a heart attack last year. the fact that she's so open and puts on no airs. her striking honesty, when she told me in the forest that she bought her current house in Louny with her deceased husband three years ago; they had so many dreams about the home, and now she is alone and has to form new plans due to the new financial situation; above and beyond that- the new emotional situation. the landscape of obliteration, when one is forced to start anew. start from scratch. three small but very fragile and frightening words when you're alone on a large, blank canvas. i wish i could help her in some way.

*

many reflections bubbling to the surface, but not enough time. submission looms large this Thursday, Czech quiz/presentation on Wednesday, where i will need to babble about myself in Czech in front of the class. Building Construction exam on Friday. Lord, show me how its done. Each time, you pull me through.

do it again. i want to love you again.

ten things

if i had the time,

and the discipline,

i would seriously love to blog about

1. the lovelies my eyes have been feasting on at blackeiffel and simplesong blogs

2. my desire to stop working and start creative production-- how i've bought the cloth and printed the pattern, so that next week i can start sewing my own skirt!! make earrings and necklaces, paint my corkboard frame and create handmade cards

3. the delicious french onion soup joel n i cooked that had everyone asking for the recipe!

4. the 3rd time successful carbonara (first two times were failures: too eggy + oily). But i called greg, my chef-to-be cousin and he gave me the perfect recipe.

5. borrow joel's lomo and start being trigger happy

6. start packing for my trip to Prague

7. doing a thorough martha-stewartesque clean-OUT of my room. dispel the clutter! i love throwing stuff away. it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

8. share about quiet time tidbits so that i can be more accountable and disciplined in my faith

9. sleep in on weekday mornings :)

10. having a new, more inspired blog. with lots of white, and lots of pictures. inspired by simplesong! i love her stuff.

f.

signals

max lucado's devotional for the day.
Spiritual Water
“The water I give will become a spring of water gushing inside…giving eternal life.”
John 4:13
Deprive your body of necessary fluid, and your body will tell you.
Deprive your soul of spiritual water, and you soul will tell you. Dehydrated hearts send desperate messages. Snarling tempers. Waves of worry. Growling mastodons of guilt and fear. You think God wants you to live with these? Hopelessness. Sleeplessness. Loneliness. Resentment. Irritability. Insecurity. These are warnings. Symptoms of dryness deep within.
Treat your soul as you treat your thirst. Take a gulp. Imbibe moisture. Flood your heart with a good swallow of water. Where do you find water for the soul? “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”

anti-coke

look at the lovely i found on englishrussia. an anti-coke calendar in russian style, not sure why they started it though.

the degeneration one is my favourite! haha.

illusion of work.

I am sitting at work now.

There is very little going on.

But I must look like a lot is going on.

Rather like the inverse of a duck,

which paddles furiously and presents a picture of calm.

My legs barely move beneath the office table.

Above, it is strewn with papers, multiple screens

of autocad, photoshop, internet, email

(and the hidden windows messenger-which, incidentally, is a ghost town all the time for me)

Nobody speaks.

None, but the fluttering of busy fingers across the keyboard,

the furious clicks of the mouse,

the endless drinking of water

and the emptying of those glasses into

frequent trips to the toilet bowl.

Ah.

The illusion of work.

go fish.

Let me tell you the Story of Prawning.

Sometimes you wait, and nothing seems to come. 

There is nothing but silence and monotony, 

a falling flat of your expectations.

Seasons of silence, of emptiness, of dryness.

Your fingers grasp the rod, your eyes transfixed

on a single point.

The floating bob on the playful, reflective, illusive surface of water.

Trying to peer beyond, into its depths. 

Will the Other Side give me a sign? 

A little post-it, shout-out, perhaps?

Some sign of His existence?

A fresh revelation?

New manna, new direction, a quiet whisper, a gentle wind, a nudge, a burning bush?

Silence.

Your fingers ache for something more,

your heart yearns, desperately, for that One thing.

I signed up for more than this

Surely there must be more than this. 

And something curious happens to you. 

Your sensations get prickled, earnestly alert, awake.

Because you know something more is on its way.

You are sensitized to the smallest twitch of the bob.

Is that it? 

Him?

Your eyes strain for the minutest of movements. 

You wait.

And in the wait is the answer.

----*

After thirty minutes of waiting, 

I caught the largest prawn we would ever catch that day,

not in the way I expected to--

but then again, just like God,

He doesn't always show up the way we expect him to.

God is not pigeon-holed.

I caught the prawn by its leg, a hook entangled by the spikes on its pincer legs.

But God is not 'caught'.

He is found. 

He is revealed.

And he not only waits for us to wait on him,

He puts in our hearts the desire to go prawning,

He gives us the bait- of a humble and contrite heart, amazed by his sacrifice.

He gives us the rod and hook- the elements of heaven-reaching prayer, always interceeding on our behalf.

We just need to pick up the rod,

and go fish.

call

i called the moment i got home.

-

'so how was the movie?'

'it was good.'

'what was it about?'

'... about star trek lah!'

'yeah...i meant what was star trek about'

'you didnt say that. you said what was 'it' about.'

silence.

'alright..... guess i dont know what startrek is about.'

no attempts to explain.

-

then i told you about my auntie being wacky and kind of drunk, singing hokkien karaoke.

'okay.'

-

'so.. how was dinner?'

'what do you mean.'

'like.. did you enjoy yourself? what did you all talk about?'

'...'

'nothing much la. talked about electives.'

-

silence.

more silence.

tired of asking questions which garner only disinterested response.

no questions from the other side.

'you dont feel like talking now is it?'

'well, no, not now.'

'okay then, lets talk tomorrow.'

-

so why does it bother me?

how can nothingness bother me?

let it go, let it go.

pressure cookers

As of now, April 03 0400 hrs, i have.

1. 4 sectional elevation drawings

2. 1:20 detailed section drawing

3. 1 perspective + render

4. 1 sectional perspective main drawing

5. 1 final model + contoured site

6. 4 plans to edit

7. all of the above to photoshop

I like making lists!

They pressure me into being productive.

Kinda like pressure-cookers?

You don't see what's happening in the pot, 

but you very well know that whatever is happening,

is happening FAST.

gripes

i just remarked to joel yesterday how i am aghast at the number of shows depicting men having affairs and cheating on their wives. i was honestly, seriously sick to the gut inside. the way they make it seem so prevalent, so.... inevitable. 

he then proceeded to reassure me that its just tv producers who try to juice up their stories with something interesting. then i asked, 'why do we find that interesting?' 

i'd like to think it is the stereotype of the minority that the majority has somewhat got wind of, and the tv producers and scriptwriters are making a critique on society by airing these flimsy shows. but the perennial egg-and-chicken question of this generation shall be:

"did society come first, or did TV come first?"

i do not know who's making a critique of whom, and who's influenced by whom anymore. I think TV is society, and whatever perversion or marred values we see on the screen, that is what we get in the world! Maybe this doesnt affect you, the numbed and used-to-it reader of this post, or maybe you, like me, are over-reacting. But more and more i feel the resistance.. the starkness of light against darkness to be so prominent. It's like someone took a snapshot of society, and photoshopped the image to > extreme contrast > black and white.  

Its becoming clearer and clearer now,

if the church has any redeeming to do,

the time is now.

We All Live In A Petropolis

"This is a lonely city, and dogs are a cohesive force," said Bern Marcowitz, co-owner of Dog Lovers Bookshop... "Cats and parrots don't need to be walked, but dogs do," he said, "so dogs are the nearest thing we have to a sense of community in New York City."

Glenn Collins, "Spoilt Rotten in a Sprawling Petropolis", NY Times

see you next time!

somehow i cant seem to upload this photo the right way round!! madness. but these are the bears which suyan gave to me when we were little. its June and March bears, haha, for our birthday dates. Now, they are with my super cute cousins, shown below. 

what can i say? scaling new heights.. all the time!!

(this time in fusionopolis, a building designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurakawa, interiors by WOHA)

edlyn n christabel :) adorable.

a photo of us in hongkong! they gots better air there, so we got better skin. :)

he's in india now! for 5 weeks, his posting starts tmr. i saw the news on the way to church of a hospital in india burning down. under the grave and inauspicious seeming conditions, i have verified, confirmed and ascertained that the unfortunate hospital under consideration is not the one joel is supposed to be matriculating in from tomorrow. hence, that forfeits the (faint) possibility of  his hastened return.

autocad is calling out to me. haha.

architecture: dig and peel.

The painter starts with the real world and works toward abstraction, and when he's finished with a work it is abstracted from the so-called real world. But architecture takes two lines. The architect starts with the abstract world, and due to the nature of his work, works toward the real world. The significant architect is the one who, when finished with a work, is as close to that original abstraction as he could possibly be. 

John Hejduk.

Drawing is the language of architects. It is used for analysis, experimentation, communication, and ultimately presentation. Drawing is representation. It contains an answer to a question, and it is a question demanding further answers. Drawing is a probe, harnessing the designer's creative energies in pursuit of a potential solutions. Drawing is complex, and it is simple. It abstracts, and it reduces. 

I'm reading 'Architectural Design and Composition' published by Thoth. Editors Clemens Steenbergen, Henk Mihl, Wouter Reh, Ferry Aerts. 

For the exhibition in March, im supposed to produce analytical drawings of the Singapore river- to uncover a new understanding of the river in its situation and context that we don't commonly see. That i've never seen before. Drawings are supposed to peel away and unearth deeper knowledge undergirding the Singapore River. In that sense, the river is both a skin and a volume. To 'unpeel' is to pull away a thin, fragile surface, like the hardened crust layer over thick soup, bubbling beneath. To 'unearth' is to dig through a volumetric substance, unveiling buried secrets wedged within. It is strange how english words that are so vastly different can be used so interchangeably.

I'm officially on a 'sabbatical', though i've never used that word myself. It is inscribed upon me, the official term for an officially announced break. My reason to rest? That i can't find any compelling enough reasons to be unrested. to stay, to work, to serve, to sing. I think we all see things clearer with distance. Like drawings, you must be a certain distance away in order to view buildings in perspective. Otherwise, all you see is the flatness of a single surface, the elevation. Makes me wonder about the etymology of 'perspective'. That which is gained only through distance. 

The question that has been occupying my mind stubbornly is this: How can I live for God? 

The direct question. How can I live? 

Is what i'm doing enough? Is singing songs enough? 

Is meeting up with friends I'm comfortable with, going for the occasional prayer meeting, the weekly church service, TRULY enough? 

Maybe there is a term for this too, how about 'holy dissatisfaction'? 

We tend to have very complicated terms for very simple meanings.

Is this life, enough?

How can i live for you, God? How can i abide more wholly? More fully? 

Dig and peel, dig and peel, until we all find the answer.

i love the quote on gerry's blog : 

A woman should be so lost in God that a man must seek Him to find her.

Love it.