Christmas last year , i was in agra, india.this year, we are celebrating it in bali, indonesia. steve from michigan is coming to town and we will visit the country this coming thursday for the first time. i heard from most that it is a beautiful place.
i hope you guys have fun at whichever part of the world during this season and getting ready for the year 2008 filled with new beginnings !
i just finished my german certificate exam for B 1 level last saturday. right after, a good friend ken gave me a nice german bible as a christmas gift with some german words on a card. after 2 years of learning, i am glad i am able to understand some of it!

here goes,

Dass deine zwei Welten sich endlich zu einer einzigen vereinen und dass diese Welt so wunderschön ist, dass alle- Du, ich , deine Freunde und alle anderen um dich herum-nicht anders können, als ein Teil davon sein zu wollen. Wenn Menschen dich betrüben, vergesse nie wessen Kind du bist. Jesus ist in dir, die Hoffnung seines Ruhms.

then, it was translated into English within the same card,

I wish for you is this: May your two worlds finally become one, and this one will be so beautiful that everyone - you, me, your friends and society at large can't help but want part of. When people get you down, don't ever forget whose child you are. Jesus in you, the hope of glory.

a quick question

We arrive with this game,
where the squares on the chess board
become circles and
the pieces fade into nothingess
and all that is left is
the unseen.
That is when we decide
whether the game
continues,
or ends.

why not

today we had to draw some boxes, mixing colors with dark blue and brown, and then i thought how wonderful it would be
if what we paint from our minds
becomes real in life, and then happiness comes from there, like a river.
what about the postman that comes to our place delivering us these letters, and the doves who come to us with love notes, telling us
that the trees are smiling and the kids with the balloons are dreaming of a future, filled with honey and wafers? that is when we go back to a fairy tale, where we fall in love with some eyes and the obsession with the color blue begins.
when the obsession ends, you have to let me know.
there was a fish in the water telling me that he found a secret but he needed to get out of water in order to show me. i wouldn't let him leave his comfort zone. maybe one day, i told him, i will find it myself , back in the ocean again, where it actually belongs.

the beat

I have always admired dancers, maybe because they are able to communicate feelings just through the body and the touch. The 2 recent parties that I went to were at Double O and Cubra Libra.
At Double O a guy taught me how to dance with him. At first, he was not satisfied because when i moved my body, my heart and feelings were not in it. He could sense it immediately. He asked me to loosen up the self. And I did.
I allowed my feelings to move along with his hands and body, including the music. In less than no time, our communication took off.
At Cuba Libra, where everyone was dancing to Latin American music, i had a conversation with a girl who told me that she used to have a dance teacher who did not express much verbally, but spoke volumes every moment she demonstrated with her body gestures . Instead of listening to her , students could feel her dance, her soul.
Then I thought about my own imaginary dance with Jesus. That is what I romanticize occasionally. In order for me to improve my dance with Him, i need to feel what i believe, in spite of circumstances. Yes, i believe, but i need to feel it with my heart, then i can tango with HIm, enjoy our secret language, and get closer to His rhythm and style.

then i feel two verses floating in the afternoon air ,
,
"it is for freedom that Christ as set us free" Galatians 5: 1

"if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free." john 8: 36

yea free to dance too !

hey i just saw an alleyway. i am think of going further. Before that however , i would like to share with you glimpses of it.

so this is me dreaming by the sea , spending the last day of my travel, in halong bay, vietnam. In that dream, i would like to bring u to some other moments spent before that, in bangkok, cambodia and parts of vietnam.


street market in bangkok

yoshi, an aspiring chef

ankor wat, cambodia

ankor wat

ankor wat

hoi an , vietnam

a friendly girl in hoi an

man in hanoi

hanoi

water puppets, hanoi

last but not least, yoshi and paola , my two lovely friends i was travelling with

the truth is that once i start travelling, i can't stop. the craving never ends; the craving for new stories and sights, encounters with a variety of backpackers and having great conversations.
Vietnam was my favorite among the three countries. the people are beautiful. the language is soothing to the ears as well. french influence in architecture and environment definitely played a big part in contributing to the sense of beauty. i also cannot forget a 20 hour train ride i had when i was bunking in with a vietnamese family who made me felt at home with them.

in saigon

just a tiny update. had already spent one week in bangkok and toured the ankor wat in cambodia ( which was absolutely amazing) and it's my third day in saigon now. i celebrated my birthday here two days ago with yoshi and paola with some great italian dessert and then went to a club called Apocalypse Now and partied the night away.saigon is my favorite so far compared to the last two places, but i wonder what i will think of hanoi where we will head to later this week. at any rate, thai and vietnamese food is just great.street food, though not the cleanest, is definitely a must try.
visited the war remnants musuem in saigon today and i was certainly taken aback by how little i know of the mad brutality that happened during the vietnam war. i am glad i gained some awareness today.

talk to you later.

which story?

i suppose there are times when we all scramble in the dark for hope, freedom and even power. in the process of doing so, every one of us writes a different story to achieve that end. the korean guy in virginia tech writes a story of violence, death and blood,
and other people had to suffer along with that story, including a holocaust surivivor who died trying to save other kids from the killer's outbursts of wrath. life is open ended, with many possibilities, and sometimes, making one absolute choice takes away the other choices. for example, the choice to kill, or that to to commit suicide.

and the story has to end, just like that.

i assume there are also many loners like him in society, unloved, ignored and feeling like grand losers. all we can ask for is that these people will somehow find, in their own unique way, the choice to write a story of hope, rather than that of despair, darkness, and death. the story of hope can then become a reality, whether it be through faith in God, therapy, music, films, miracles and awesome friendships. the journey could be a labyrinth and a process, but hope is attainable, i believe. then the story can move on, and we can then read it together, and pass it along to other people, other children, while sufferering and pain slowly fade away.

and i thought it was quite an interesting occurence that when a guitarist friend of mine first switched on the TV after he got out of North korea after performing for a music festival, the news of the virgia tech killings by the south korean guy was one of the the first things he saw.
for more details about his journey to north korea please visit his website at http://www.jasoncarter.net/nkoreablog.html
based on my conversations with him last week, he seemed to have a rather blissful tour , as he also said in his blog
" I felt that I had tasted a piece of ‘Heaven’ in North Korea, a sense of peace and place that was becoming increasingly rare in an ever-changing and crazy world."
of course, that is an outsider's experience of north korea, and there are many things happening beneath the appearance of an orderly and "blissful" society that has no access to outside news and information. however, i thought how interesting , surreal and pleasant my friend's visit as a musician had been. he also talked with nostagia about the simplicity of life over there.
yea i thought the simplicty part could be brought to our modern day's way of life. simplicity could be elusive , but i thought it is worth experiencing again, like the dreams, melodies and sleigh bells of childhood.

and maybe as i go on my travels in cambodia , vietnam or even laos, with yoshi and paula (a new travelling companion i encountered recently ) we will experience and re-discover such simplicity ?

i am taking off with a friend from israel, yoshi, to go travelling this coming May, for just a few weeks. we plan to head over to parts of southeast asia, maybe cambodia, vietnam and thailand. i wonder what kind of strange tales and hippies we will encounter.
before that , i hope to complete some projects in the imaginary garden i am tending. in one project, it is about a person who meets with some problems in his adulthood. the reason is because he is still a boy trapped in a man's body because he can't get rid of the dogmatic teaching that 1+ 1 = 2.
whether or not he can be free from such crippling logic is not certain. the ending will be decided by the spontaneous process of working on the project. we all wish this "boy -man " well.

now, there are quite a number of seeds. i just hope that the weather and the conditions will be good for the garden to grow heathily. i might just need to paint some strong sunlight too. thank u for tending the garden with me.

chinese new year 2007

so the chinese new year break had been a very relaxing and fun one with reunion dinners, me receiving red packets and catching up with the extended family. after that i wandered off to join my dear friend, Kai, and we partied and danced the night away in Taboo, a club in Singapore. actually, you have to come and experience it in order to know why it is named Taboo. on my way back home at about 4 am i remembered having a very dreamy conversation with a young, energetic cab driver about life, soccer, and his niece who was living in Las Vegas. when i woke up the next day i was ready to join Iva ( a French girl who was here on a short visit in Singapore) to trek along the forest trails of macRitchie reservoir, as we scared the monkeys away and braved the rain and muddy areas. in the evening my friend vivianne and i brought her to the top of swissotel, said to be the tallest hotel in southeast asia and we enjoyed the bird's eye view of the city for a couple of hours.

today i am back to reality, after the hours in the surreal dance club, wandering in the wilderness and looking at urbanity from the top of the building like a detached observer. it's nice to be back, but it was nice to be away as well. if anyone hasn't experienced chinese new year as an unmarried chinese, you should. it's when you can get quite bit of money without really working for it. at least, it is what it's like in Singapore.

life could be simple, yet rather sweet at times.

the unseen

the trip to india has inspired me to exist a little more spontaneously. life has been rather spontaneous, but i thought maybe i could have more of it. Psalm 119:105 says," Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path."

i am not much of a planner. heavens know that. Yet God still rains manna from the sky every single day. the india trip was not a planned one. we found last minute accommodation and transport along the way apart from one day of stay with a family. Even though it was filled with uncertainty, Christ was the sure provider. the life of
nomads like Abraham also never fails to encourage me. by faith, he went to another land and lived like a foreigner in a tent, always trusting in heavenly blessings. i enjoy the surprises that come with not knowing all the time.

therefore, the metaphor of travel continues into this year of new beginnings.
the fragrance of freedom lingers in the air. the realm of the unseen is filled with magic and miracles.

since the word is lamp unto my feet, i shall allow intuition to tell me where the illuminated path is. i am sometimes confused by decisions here and there, but there is only one way that is clearer. my hope is that i will develop a sharper vision this year, so that i could observe intricate details painted along the path.

very oddly, india has also reminded me of the biblical principle of fixing my eyes on the unseen."what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal". i can't rationalize the connection, but i suppose having a feeling about it is enough for now.

the point is that i can't wait to travel again.

Memories of India

a few photos taken from my trip to india for last two weeks. It was also really nice to catch up with Hemanth and Sudipa in New Delhi!