Lost

No, not the show Lost!

ME. I'm lost. I've never felt so lost in my life. And that would be appropriate, because I am at the stage of my life where I'm standing at the crossroads.

The dilemma is, should I leave the comfort of familiarity and convenience, for the unknown? I have everything I essentially need here. My family and friends are here. I have a shelter, sufficient food and money (my parent's, actually) here. I don't need a reason to leave. Except, that never-ending, nagging want in the back of my head to be independent, go for the adventure and leave my comfort zone. To go for the easy route, or to for the hard one...

I'm at the point of feeling so lost and indecisive, that I (want to) cry almost everyday. I'm so sick of having to choose what to do with my life. I have that overwhelming feeling that every choice I make, will affect either my happiness, or my parents' happiness. I don't know whose happiness to sacrifice for a better future. If I do something I might not like, I'll feel uncomfortable and shitty for the rest of my life, but save a lot of money for my parents and save time for myself. If I do something that I'll potentially like, but it's going to be very very difficult, I'm wasting time and my parents will have to spend all their savings on me, so I know I'll feel horrible for the rest of my life. So, they both end in me feeling shitty. Except if I do well in what I want to do, or if I actually learn to like what I might not like. But it's all so uncertain. YOU SEE MY PROBLEM!?

The freedom of choice can sometimes be a burden more than it is a right. I am those kind of people who when it comes to making a choice, we overthink. Our mind jumps to all sorts of conclusions, all the different ways it could go wrong if I chose one and not the other. Why can't we just pick one and go with the flow? I guess we just don't want to make the wrong decisions and have to face the consequences of it.

I am so afraid of my future. I am so afraid of failure and disappointment. I am so afraid 5 years from now, I'll regret what I'm doing. I know that, mistakes are how we learn. But I can't afford to make a mistake. I don't have a second chance, really. The deadline is near. I literally feel like pulling my hair out.

Sigh.

The Chemistry family

I have the weirdest Sim household names don't I. I pick them because there's a large variety of subsets to that category. My previous ones were Mamak and Pasta. I named my Sims Linguini, Angel Hair, Maggi, Bom... pretty unfortunate family name, but cool first names you gotta admit.

Recently, I made a new family, in honour of the new neigbourhood, Islo Paradiso from The Sims 3's latest expansion pack, Island Paradise.

The Island Paradise expansion pack had many new hobbies and skills to offer. From scuba diving (HEHEHEH I JUST CAME BACK FROM A DIVING TRIP SO I WAS PRETTY CHUFFED TO SEE THIS ONE) to creating a resort... it was definitely fun to explore the possibilities.

My Chemistry family initially consisted of 3 people: Lithium, Helium and Potassium.

Potassium was a heartbreaker, with a life aspiration to have 10 boyfriends. Potassium was HOT and immediately reactive with guys (which is why I named her Potassium, because it's reactive [in water]). In the end, she got called a manipulator and only ended up with 2 boyfriends and 2 love interests. But in the end, she gave birth to Boron Chemistry. At that point, she stopped to think about her life, and decided to end her cycle of tumultuous relationships and focus on her baby daughter.

Lithium was a chick magnet. He was a lifeguard, saving drowning people one CPR at a time. He saved so many people, the mayor named him Chief Lifeguard of Islo Paradiso. 

Aside from his heroic job, he is also making strides in handling the ladies. His job as a lifeguard does come with a lot of perks. He can 'demonstrate' mouth to mouth resuscitation on people. And the first person he tried that with, fell in love with him, and vice versa of course. Not long after their on and off relationship bloomed, he popped the question, and she said yes. (I'm sorry I don't even remember the lady's name, let's call her Camilla, because she looks like one)

Not much on Helium because she's pretty unreactive (Helium is in group 18, which means it's unreactive). But she learnt every single recipe, and is pretty much the maid. She cooks and cleans for them lol.

(The small boathouse seemed a little too crowded, so I had to 'trigger age transition' for some of the elderlies so they had to go :( )

Boron Chemistry grew up knowing one single purpose in life, which was to create a 5 star resort. She graduated from university with a degree in business. Immediately after graduation, she sets out to discover unchartered islands. Little did she know, Camilla was a level 10 scuba diver, which means she can scuba dive anywhere. To discover some of these unchartered islands, Camilla needed to dive to find a treasure chest with treasure maps (this is legit in the game, I swear). In the process, she found many gems and gold coins.

In the end, they both found an unchartered island which could be converted to a 5-star resort Boron always wanted to have. (and then I got too lazy to look for the other islands so I just used a cheat to expose all the unchartered islands yay)

Before her death, Potassium Chemistry gave birth to a son, Berrylium. Berrylium had an awkward childhood and adolescence. He was also taken up by aliens when he was in university, but luckily returned unscathed without an alien pregnancy, phew. (yes, that actually happens I'm not kidding).

In university, he found the love of his life, level 10 jock Ashley DeSorrento. After graduation where Berrylium returned to Islo Paradiso, Ashley gave birth to their son, Daryl (the game chose his name :/). Ashley and Berrylium tied the knot which lead Ashley and Daryl to move in.

(2's a party, but 3's a crowd. The boathouse again seemed to crowded, so I had to kill off Helium and Camilla. Then I said goodbye to the boathouse and moved them to a larger home)

Boron also found the love of her life in university, and they immediately got married. Boron gave birth to Tom (not his real name, because I also don't remember his name :/). Tom displayed a talented skill, being able to finish eating the plate of hot dogs faster than everyone else. He may be small, but don't underestimate his capacity to eat.

And that's all I played till. Till next time!

My underwater experience

I'm a certified diver y'all! I always think that if some natural disaster were to happen on land and the only sanctuary is underwater, I'll get to live :')

Scuba diving has always been something I wanted to do at least once in my life. Now I can cross if off my bucket list!

Textbook, dive table and diver's log

I went scuba diving in Redang, with 7 other awesome people. We took the night bus there, and I suffered from motion sickness with 7-8 hours on the bus! Reached Kuala Terrenganu at 4AM+. It was definitely a whole new experience for me, I haven't been out and about at 4AM before. We were like hobos, carrying and dragging our luggage all around town. No where was opened and we had to just sit at the jetty, eat snacks and wait for dawn to come. We travelled by foot everywhere. Then we found an opened mamak and had very early breakfast there, with a few games of chor dai di and another game where we had to dare each other to do stuff. It was fun, I got a lot videos that would come in handy to bribe people with ;)

Then another 2-3 hours of the ferry ride which was SO unbelievably cold and had a little motion sickness as well.

After half a day of travelling on road, bus and sea... we finally reached Redang Island.

It was literally an island paradise. The sand was soft to touch and walk on, tall coconut trees were everywhere, the water had that emerald colour, obviously very different from the quality of the beaches like Port Dickson.

After a few hours of rest and lunch, we immediately started on our diving lessons. We were suppose to dive to a depth of 18m. We have a buddy system, where each of us would have a diving buddy and we have to look out for them. My diving buddy was Kevin. Everyone was paired up with a more experienced diver except us. Maybe it's because of my big built which gives off the false sense of security that I can dive and I'll be absolutely fine. Unfortunately after the first dive, we also realized not only were both of us newbies to diving, but we both had MOTION SICKNESS. Kevin's motion sickness was worse than me though, and he puked on the boat every time we came back from diving. Poor guy.

Diving/puking buddies

Now here's my honest opinion and advice about scuba diving:

Expectations: Scuba diving is going to be painless and easy! Sinus problems or motion sickness? Pffft small matter.

Reality: WHY AM I TORTURING MYSELF

It wasn't the most pleasant experience for me to be honest. I knew I had mild sinus problems, cold and cough but I didn't know how much it would be affected underwater. And the boat rides coming back from the dive spots were torturous because I already have a bad headache, nose bleeding, pain between my eyes and motion sickness from the way there and diving, plus the feeling that I want to puke but can't. When we surface, the pulsating waves keep beating us and that makes it worse too. All that physical pain was a manifestation of sinus squeeze, which occurs when a diver cannot equalize sinus pressure due to nasal congestion. I took medication, but maybe it was too late? I don't know. I had a headache and felt pain between my eyes after 20-ish minutes of diving. After those 20 minutes I keep thinking to myself, when can we ascend??!

There was so much to consider while diving. How our lungs may rupture if we ascend too fast, how much oxygen we have to suck in and breathe out to maintain buoyancy, how we may get decompression sickness, nitrogen narcosis or oxygen toxicity if we're not informed divers... it's a challenge.

I had trouble with the buoyancy part. Not sure if it's because I don't have enough weights on my weight belt or what. A few times, I tend to float to the top rapidly without control (which is very bad btw because your lungs might rupture) because I don't have control on buoyancy. We were suppose to release air from our buoyancy compensator suit, which I DID but yet I still float. We were suppose to exhale all the oxygen out to sink, which I ALSO DID but still float to the top. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. But in the end, I did it. I had control of my buoyancy. Still facing a little bit of difficulty, but generally improved and can sink and float on demand most of the time (that's what I think, I don't know what my instructor thinks lol).

That was the bad part of diving. The beauty of diving:

I saw lots of beautiful (but common) fishes like clown fishes and blue tang fishes (a.k.a Nemo and Dory).

I touched black sea cucumbers!

I saw lots of corals and anemones (might have accidentally kicked some due to buoyancy problems. Sorry corals! :( )

Diving is SO technical. It was naive of me to not expect to have to learn so much and know how to do so many things. We had to learn how to put heavy weights on the belt, carry 10kg tanks, wear the buoyancy compensator suits (a.k.a BC), walk to and fro the ocean with said 10kg tanks on our backs, board and leave the boat also with 10kg tanks on our backs. We also had to put the tanks back where they belonged and dry our heavy wet suits and BC. It was exhausting. We were so tired we didn't even want to take off our wet suits, so we just walked around wet all the time risking a cold.

Our instructor was Major Mike, he was once in the military/navy idk but yeah we do salute him sometimes. He's 70+ I think? But he looks like a 50+ year old. Really. He says diving makes him young. Which proves to be true through him. He's like a grandpa to us. He's our diving grandpa. We also had a few experienced divers helping us, some we have appointed as our diving fathers (simply because they're old enough to be our fathers). They're all awesome. They help us out underwater and out of water!

Diving (grand)fathers

Honestly, we barely had time to enjoy ourselves, chill and just soak in the sun. Our days mostly consisted of diving with 2-3 hours of rest intervals in between. So we dive 3 times a day. The last day, we didn't have to dive (thank God) but we had to study for our diving exam. We actually have a diving exam. And hell, it was difficult. I barely passed. But we weren't in the mood to study, so we semi-studied and chilled on hammocks/huts with Taylor Swift music (To clarify, XQ likes taylor swift. Pretty nice to listen to TS songs while chilling on a beach though).

'Studying'

The resort I stayed in Redang Bay Resort was not the best resort ever (it's only 2 stars btw), we had plumbing and air-conditioning problems the first day we stayed there (only our room). But the beach was infinite, and there were no barriers between resorts, so we kinda resort-hopped. We stayed at Redang Bay, but went to other resorts for their chilling places and bars. But the staff at RB were extremely friendly! It was a little surreal, there were people randomly playing guitar and you can join in with the singing, the staff played volleyball with and against us (and we lost shamelessly)... it's a nice place to stay :)

The sunrise was magnificent though. The gradient of the sky from blue to yellow was beautiful.

The company I went with are a bunch of alcoholics LOL. (I would be killed for even talking about this HAHAHAH) They bought cheap vodka and mixed it with ribena on the first night. They ordered 3 beer towers to celebrate our divers certification on the third night. I drank only one cup, because I know the ramifications and consequences of drinking, even if it's beer. And for me it's a headache, puking and immediate sleepiness. They drank beer using a snorkel, which was hilarious to watch. And then everyone was bottoms up-ing and dancing, while I snicker at and take pictures of how drunk everyone was. Another batch of pictures/videos I can bribe people with.

I drank the whole bottle of Ribena instead LOL

But overall, it was a fun trip, and the pain was worth it for getting my diver's license. I was so against going for another dive trip after that, but now that I think of it, I might give it another go if it were some place prettier! The company also made up for the trip itself. We had many laughs, many inside jokes and we've seen the worst of some of us (either drunk or motion sick lol). However I have a lot of pictures taken with a frown on my face, thanks to the pain (which I will not post here clearly)! Here have some pictures of happy (a facade probably), diving me!

Look at me holding on to the boat for dear life

Now, it's back to reality for me. Still unsure of my future and what to do. Have had so many doubts, and changed my mind a few times. That will be another post!

Pic creds to Pei Ru and Meris.

God's Big Easter Bash

The service started with the dominating roar of a trumpet, played by none other than Shon Sern. And that was kind of how the day's festivities started and ended: God was dominating every second of it. Both members and newcomers were there to celebrate the remembrance of Jesus Christ's resurrection, or more commonly known to certain people as Easter Day.

 

 

But before that, rewinding back to 9am in the morning, children (and the adults present with the spirit of a child) were seen scurrying around, searching for hidden eggs as the first task of our Sunday School Easter activity this year, "The Traditions of Easter". I then told them about what other people around the world did with Easter eggs and where the idea of it originated from. Easter eggs brought the meaning of new life, just as how Jesus experienced new life as he was risen from the dead. Did you know, that there is a tree in Saalfeld, Germany (which would look very much like a tree with lights) where hollow Easter eggs decorated with bright colours, were hung high up on the tree? But the Americans (egg)roll a different way. They chase after eggs rolled down (a hill) with wooden spoons as a form of entertainment during Easter.

After that the children proceeded to the next station where they learned what Lent was all about. Then, they went for a 'tour' around the church holding cardboard crosses, as a mild representation of how some Christians re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus at Jerusalem, by walking on the road of 'Via Dolorosa' . This led them back into the church for a brief explanation of how WE celebrate Easter in Cheras Baptist Church, with things like baptism and the Lord's supper.

 

Back to the service, Pastor Daryl kicked off the service with 'Crown Him With Many Crowns' and 'I Serve A Risen Saviour', perfect and befitting for the theme of the event; followed by an adorable (but meaningful, of course) performance by the Eaglets, who never fails to make us go "awwwww" (personally, the boy who yelled HALLELUJAH made me awww the most). The Chinese Choir sung their serenade to the Lord, where the song was about how His grace touched our hearts and lives deeply and He truly has. The English Choir comprising of members with varying ages and races, boasts of the diversity of cultures and talents in our church. They presented a song which mentions both eagles (Eaglets) and it's wings (WinGS) 'I Will Rise', and with Pastor Daryl and Aunty Judith's constant guidance and leadership, they gave a really great and solid performance.

Then came the youth's Easter skit. I'll talk a bit more about this because I was involved in it. We've had only one practice with our complete cast. But yet they have managed to pull off a pretty stunning performance in spite of limited practice time (in my opinion). Although the skit did not have any verbal aspect to it, the skit itself spoke volumes of how vast our God's love is for us, how salvation comes from Him and only Him. We can only hope that this skit touched hearts (and maybe some repentant tears where shed :)). Watch it below!

Also, not forgetting a certain newborn who is gorgeous like her parents Christoper and Stephanie Lee... Anna Lee! She was dedicated to the Lord on that joyous day, and everyone in the congregation shared her parents' joy of seeing a beautiful baby girl who will one day glorify and love the Lord with her own set of talents. And of course, Pastor Kenneth Lee's message about miracles left me (and hopefully everyone) reflecting on my life, at how God has been so good to me, and sometimes I don't thank and credit God enough for His miracles. But I am willing to change!

The fact that God has blessed us tremendously whether in the form of miracles or divine intervention, is further made concrete by Uncle Teh, Uncle Phillip Phuah and Nicole Lee's recounts and testimonials of God's abounding grace and forgiveness. They have each gone through their respective medical issues, being struck by cancer, dengue and spinal problems, but have come out of it unscathed with the mercy of God. Now that is truly a miracle. Aunty Ai Kuen, Uncle Chee Wey's and their children joining our big church family was also a big highlight!

One of the biggest highlights though, is the baptism. 4 of them: Jun Kit, Gareth, Tommy and Kelvin (if I may call him that) have finally taken a step forward in their faith by proclaiming to the world of their love for God. And for that, we are genuinely very happy for them! It is indeed a joy to see how the four of them have stepped up and decided to take a stand for their faith in front of their family and friends.

Photo credits to Lydia Lee

Last but not least, a big pot-bless feast was held at the courtyard! This was my favourite part and I could recall this part very vividly *wink*. The food brought and cooked with love by kind members, were absolutely scrumptious. There was a variety of food, from pasta to pastries, and even pancakes! I was also amazed by how beautifully decorated Aunty Stephanie Sim's cake was with mini bunnies and jelly beans, and I'm sure everyone thought the same. Not only was the cake so pretty, it tasted heavenly too. A layer of green tea cake smothered with mint icing (MINT! How genius is that?), mushed together with chocolate cake at the top and bottom, topped off with another smothering of mint icing. Best. cake. ever!

As a firm participant of our big Easter bash for God (I was in charge of the easter eggs station for 'Traditions of Easter' and the pianist for the service), I can say that I am grateful to be involved in the church's Easter celebration. And I'm even more grateful to be involved in the greater scheme of things, as a child of God and to be able to celebrate how powerful, and how amazing our God is as He sent His only son Jesus Christ to bear the suffering on our behalf, die on the cross for our sins, and rose from the grave. That is the biggest miracle.

Can't wait for next year's! ;)

Photos from here