Confused, but going to stick it out with You

Then He said, "Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

1 Kings 19:11-12

Tick tock tick tock

Ring ring?

Part 1 of His answer to my prayer

All I can say is, "Thank you Lord that you are in control of my future - and that all your plans for me are for me to prosper, not to come to harm, and to have hope and a future."

The waiting game

Josh has been very sweet and expressing his concern that I don't get out very much and how I should find something to do outside the house so I don't A) get depressed and/or B) go bonkers (I'm wondering if he envisions me greeting him at the door with a knife and a deranged look...).

I'm not really sure if it is inertia, fear/nervousness or the weather (or maybe all) that's really stopping me from going out and doing stuff. Part of me is constantly thinking I shouldn't be spending money when I am not earning anything and going out always has the temptation of BUYING something. Even if it is just coffee. Coffee plus bus fare equals at least GBP5.50. Back when I was working I could justify these little extravagances because I'd tell myself I was working hard and/or I had saved money the day before by having a cheap lunch. It's not like we're short of money but I feel I should be more prudent, don't you agree?

And finding outside activities (he's been suggesting dance classes) - whenever I think about it, the question 'what if I find a job and the classes don't fit with my schedule?' always pops up. I guess in my mind I'm always thinking that job should come first and if I do anything other than focus all my energy on getting a job (housekeeping doesn't count as it's a given in this equation) then I'm not helping my situation. And that there isn't a reason for me to be blamed that things are not moving as fast as I hoped it would.

I just need my big break and everything will (should) fall in place. But then sometimes, God doesn't work the way we humans think He should.

Maybe I should consider those dance lessons...

Faith the size of a mustard seed

Sometimes life feels like an endless cycle of waiting.

At last

T'is the night before the wedding

I'm feeling jittery, nervous, anxious but mostly excited.

It feels strange knowing that tomorrow is finally THE DAY.

But strange in a good way.

An Eulogy

To Long-Distance Relationship


Goodbye and good riddance!

Oops! Are we guilty? I hope not...

I Hate Your Wedding Web Site
What should be purely functional turns into a showcase for narcissism

By Noreen Malone
Posted Friday, March 12, 2010, at 7:17 AM ET

My roommate and I spent a solid hour on the couch one evening discussing a wedding Web site we'd been sent. The people getting married were strangers, but that didn't stop me from forwarding it to a friend or two I thought might get a kick out of it. Pretty soon everyone had seen "Jane" and "Tim's" site, on which they treated their impending nuptials with all the pomp that preceded Princess Diana's wedding. Except Jane and Tim's wedding won't just be broadcast live on their special day, like Diana's paltry event was. In the months preceding their marriage you can watch the Flash slide show that explains how the pair met-cute while rooting for opposing teams during a Yankees-Red Sox game as many times as you want. But that's only if you tire of the video showing Jane and Tim lovingly washing their dog, Mr. Snuffles.

Sadly, Jane and Tim are not alone. Nearly every pair of happy, ordinary American betrotheds creates a personalized wedding Web site. NBC's tapped into this with wry realism recently, ginning up the slightly painful www.halpertbeesly.com for the wedding of characters Jim and Pam. In theory, the practice is as harmless as Jim's clean-cut demeanor. The sites make life easier for guests who can't remember where the couple is registered or lost their save-the-date cards. But instead of being tasteful, utilitarian affairs, these sites inevitably turn into showcases for unbridled narcissism—and open the couple up to a great deal of mockery from friends and strangers alike. Brides have been told that their special day is the most important thing in the universe, thanks to the wedding industrial complex (which has been amply documented), and Generation Y has taken this wedding mania digital. If you're used to extensively celebrating your daily existence on Facebook, Twitter, and perhaps a Tumblr or two, how better to signal that this night is different from all other nights than by giving it its own bespoke URL?

Jane and Tim, for instance, have chosen to color their special story various shades of soft green, with tan accents of faux ribbons, shadowed floral flourishes, and a highly stylized fake script font. The vibe is perhaps meant to be "classy," but it's very hard to achieve an understated aesthetic when the message you most want to telegraph is LOOK AT ME. The main page features a black-and-white shot of Tim adoring Jane while she reciprocates with the upturned chin angle that telegraphs true, moony love, taken during the couple's (extensive) engagement photo shoot. Visitors can choose one of several unrecognizable soft-rock songs while they browse (but no mute button option). There are a grand total of 651 pictures featured—from baby photos to Solo-cup-filled college dorm-room shots to shots of their four—count 'em—engagement parties. Other sites might stop at just a couple of hundred pictures or fail to limn the courtship narrative in quite the same painfully painstaking detail, but the features of Tim and Jane's site are closer to the rule than the exception.

The idea behind a formalized wedding is that the couple stands up in front of their family and friends and declares their love. Historically, this happened in a house of worship or maybe City Hall. But as so much more of life is lived online, it makes sense that people feel the need to share their wedding news with their virtual community. This doesn't excuse, say, the couple who tweeted and changed their Facebook relationship statuses from the altar, but perhaps it explains the compulsion. The instinct to spread those marriage tidings isn't new either—think of newspaper wedding announcements—but now a self-created site democratizes the process, while getting one's union written up in a newspaper often means running a gantlet of elitism.

But the democratization of the Web creates an entirely new problem: It asks the virtual community to engage meaningfully with the idea of blissful foreverness in the same inherently judgmental medium that spawned Perez Hilton. Show me your rock over coffee, and my delighted exclamations over its beauty will be genuine. Post a jpeg of it on your site, and I'll probably do a quick catalog of the many ways it is gauche, along with a back-of-the-envelope calculation on roughly how much it cost per karat. Let the best man tell the story of the proposal in his toast at the wedding, and I'll beam in the reflected glow. Spill a plodding 2,100 words of questionable grammar about how the groom managed to disguise the ring in your tiramisu, and I'll worry whether your future children will be able to develop writing skills at a state-mandated grade level. The inclination to judge is probably doubly true for people who aren't inner-circle enough to be invited to the wedding but close enough to be forwarded a link to the Web site.

Should you actually be attending, the overflow of advance information a wedding Web site provides also brings knotty practical implications. When you want to flirt with a groomsman, all obvious avenues of points of entry will be barricaded off: Try inquiring innocently about what he does for a living, and you might end up inadvertently revealing that you'd Googled him to such an embarrassing depth that you know all about his 3-point shooting percentage during his flourishing Euro-league basketball career. And when someone at your table brings up the story of how the happy couple met, you automatically snort with derision. You can't help yourself after those hilarious 11 minutes you spent with your roommate and a glass of wine doing a close reading of the official online text. You've already deduced that the "friend" who had introduced them was Samuel Adams, and that the time they'd spent "learning about themselves" before deciding to be married involved three or four acrimonious breakups and probably some cheating.

The problems of the wedding Web site are the problems of the social Internet, clad in tulle. And it's a practice that's increasingly impossible to opt out of—if couples don't create a site of their own volition, there are inevitable requests to please, please, just post the driving directions and registry, which are followed by requests from undermining maids-of-honor to pretty it up just a tad, and soon the couple is making Jane and Tim look hermitic. I can come to terms with the fact that these sites aren't going anywhere, if the perpetrators can come to terms with the fact that the more baroque they make their creations, the more they're opening what ought to be private and special to the indiscriminate mockery of the World Wide Web—and their future selves. Twenty years from now, Jane will shudder at the excess of those four engagement parties and Tim will regret those faux ribbons. They should remember that while half of marriages crumble, a Google cache is forever.

(Source)

The most beautiful verse in the Bible

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love."

John 15:9

S'Wonderful

T-t-t-ten days till Mr J T-t-ting returns!

Fare Thee Well

I hope you will like your new home(s). :'(

Etiquette Fail

The past few weeks have been trying. Please don't make things worse for everyone. Here are some tips -

1. When you receive a card that says 'RSVP' and states a date, there IS a reason why that specific date was put down.

2. It is rude to question why the date is earlier than, say, 1 week before the event. Remember, you are not the one throwing the party, hence you may not know that there are others aspects involved in the planning to which an early confirmation of attendance is essential.

3. When someone sends you a reminder that the date to respond by is approaching/has lapsed, please have the decency to at least acknowledge that you have received the reminder and if you are still unable to provide an answer, you should formulate a DECENT excuse, rather than completely ignore it. This will not score you any brownie points when the host FINALLY tracks you down. Especially if you, in your reply, say that you actually saw that e-mail.

4. Building on Point 3, you should not be checking your schedule ONLY when the deadline has already arrived/passed. Invitations are sent to you early for a reason, so that you can get all your affairs in order beforehand to respond in a timely fashion.


And in closing, I hope that you get your act together in time after all this babying so that you don't think it is a brilliant idea to call the bride and/or groom on the day of the event to ask for directions/instructions/details. You do know that most likely we will not be picking up the phone so, GOOD LUCK.

Über retro chic

My mom and I have been eyeing these retro tea sets in the tea cosies/wicker baskets for ages - my grandmother has one and my mom always talks about how good one of these is in keeping tea warm (doesn't help of course that it looks pretty!). We saw these in Sia Huat a while ago but have been putting off buying one for me to take to the UK 'until closer to the wedding' so that it doesn't sit around the house and collect dust.

Given how few weekends are actually left till the wedding, we trooped down to Chinatown today and decided to buy TWO sets - one for my mom and one for me. We ended up getting one hexagon basket and one oval basket (because the lock on the clasp of the last hexagon basket they had was broken).

As juvenile as it sounds, it's so fun having 'matching' tea sets! :) And I am looking forward to using this in my new home in the UK.

March madness

As of tomorrow, it will be March!

WOW!

March means... a month (and 2 days) to the wedding. It also means no more work and full-on concentration on PACKING. oh and of course wedding stuff. There seems like there are a lot of loose ends to tie up - i think we were deluded to believe that the earlier we started the less things we'd be doing now (especially when working with suppliers who are, well, not very helpful. or understanding of TIME FRAMES).

But March also means that Mr J Ting will be coming back soon. Like in 24 days (as of tomorrow). That's two dozen days. Which makes the madness seem bearable. :)

Security blanket

someone brought this up last night -

Sometimes you just wish God had a direct phone line that you could dial to check in that He's there and that He's working on your situation. But then, that's not faith and that indicates how little trust you have in His goodness and His love for you.


which led me to think - if I can trust that someone human who is far away loves me through everything, how much more God who is with me 24/7 and is perfect and more powerful?

The end of an era

It is beginning to look even more Evelyn Waugh-esque!

And then there were three

Food for thought

"It's really difficult to locate the avenue of gain when you're being chauffeured by loss. And I think every opportunity is one step closer to perpetual evolution."

- Lil' C (in So You Think You Can Dance, Season 4 Episode 17)

Baby-smooth skin

Nothing feels quite as nice as a good shaping of nails, shaving of calluses, filing of rough edges, scrub, rich moisturiser and happy-coloured nail polish* to end off a productive day!

Bring on the rest of the week! :)


*It's a Fuchsia-like, though under different light looks more red than pink (it's from the OPI Hollywood collection - don't know the name but think it might be this...)

A rollercoaster - bordering on insane

i'll admit i'm such a strange person. i love reading wedding blogs and finding out what other couples are doing for their wedding - all the little details that make that special day all the more memorable and essentially YOU. yet i'm so conscious of not saying anything wedding-related on this blog simply because i don't want to spoil any surprises. hence, you may imagine, this blog has been sitting here quietly, untouched with the exception of a few random and/or cryptic messages over the past few months which are just thoughts i have in my head, be it having just popped in or one of those that linger at the back of your mind. (if you know me, you know what i'm talking about!)

well today was one of those weird days i've been having every once in a while. i guess it's one of those pensive days when i experience a myriad of moods in a short span of time. to provide you some background, i should start at the beginning.

since the proposal and Josh going back to the UK, i've been full-steam-ahead planning this wedding. considering everything, i imagined planning a wedding to be fun and easy since i do corporate event management for a living and hey, wouldn't it be so much easier (in theory) with me as the client since there's no time-wasting liaison work to deal with?

hur hur.

let's just say that planning a wedding on a budget and calling in favours isn't the same as working on a corporate project where you can bark at suppliers and get things done at your speed. because people have their own lives to live and are not really going to be able to drop everything and do wedding things for you now-now. i guess it was a good lesson in patience and not letting myself snap.

yet at the same time, i've been amazed at the outpouring of love from so many people who've offered time, services for cheaper and even financial support (big shout out to my family!). Indeed God's been good.

i guess i've always had a timeline at the back of my mind. my plan which i instinctively draw up in my head. a plan that pretty much lines up what i have to get done/achieve by a certain time/date. it's my way of dealing with life/the world. box it up and stick it somewhere where i know it is and can mentally prepare self for at the appropriate time.

everything pretty much went on schedule - save for a few things that got a bit delayed but worked out in the end due to me being extra kiasu and giving myself extra buffer time. i had a wonderful, surreal time when Josh was back. it was so amazing - finally feeling like we're a couple, doing things together and ticking things off the checklist (i know that sounds sad but that to me is a wonderful expression of love). and excitement that after he left, the separation would be the shortest! only 10 1/2 weeks till he'd come back.

but there's something that's been bugging me. actually, not quite something. some thingssss. but collectively it's something. time. or lack of. it has been hitting me (at the most unexpected moments) that time is running short. and while there is a sense of euphoria about it, it's scary. like quivering scary. not in a runaway bride way. but a sense that the biggest hurdle is still ahead and there's only so little time left. and it doesn't look like it's going to go away as quickly as the others have - in fact, i think this is probably the biggest challenge we've had.

guest lists and the sending out of invitation cards and by extension, seating arrangements.

then there's the whole pack-my-life-into-boxes-and-move-to-another-continent thing. i mean, sure, i've lived in the UK before but i was a student! there was always that sense of knowing that i have a home in Singapore to go to, that there isn't the immediacy or even need for me to pack everything i own into boxes and move them to the UK/store them away. with this, there is a sense of finality. no comfort of a home to come to where you know all that rubbish you've kept for sentimental reasons is still in exactly the same place they've been for the past goodness-knows-how-long years. perhaps it is also coupled with the fact that with my brother's move (he's going to New Delhi for the next 3 years) and me getting married, my parents are going to sell the house. not a maybe-we-will but a we-are. so everything has to go into some box of some sort to either be sent to the UK or kept here in Singapore for me to reclaim at some later stage of my life.

it's been very see-saw over the last two weeks (goodness, has it only been two weeks?). on the one hand i'm excited about the life ahead (i've been looking at stuff for the house/apartment in Birmingham) but on the other, it's sad to leave this place. stupid i know but moving out of the house is Singapore is a lot more 'traumatic' than the incessent moving i did as a student at university (hello Whitefields!).

there's also me thinking about the visa stuff and getting all my paperwork in order. then worrying about cards getting sent out and attendance being collated. on top of that, the small little details i'm paranoid i've overlooked in the planning. ALL THIS TO BE DONE IN 2 1/2 MONTHS! actually, possibly even less than that.

i guess during this whole time i've been thinking, oh that can be done next year (2010) or after i've stopped working. and now, in my excitement and amidst the countdown, i realise i've only got 18 work days left. 18. :|

so the 'future' is closing in on me. maybe this is what they call pre-wedding nerves! when you panic that you are panicking.

i feel jittery - like i need to do something to calm myself down. because being idle makes me feel like time is slipping through my hands.

(oh that was such a Days Of Our Lives image!)

sigh. i think i need to go to bed.


btw, we have a wedding website! www.josh-and-ade.com