Living Creatively Ever After

This was supposed to be three posts, but, I’m too tired to actually post three times, basically this is a cognitive diarrhea/diarrhoea (I can’t get the complicated way it’s spelled in British) type of post.

So I suggest you read the top posts for April first and then continue reading at your own risk, whether it be for boredom or for a sincere concern on a) WOE (what on earth) am I up to/have been through, b) a recent spiritual spanking that I had undergone; and c) Other random stuff that don’t fit in the previous categories.

So you have been forewarned. This is a looong post, a post which violates what ProBloggers have set forth as ways to keep the reader’s attention, but I am kind hence there will be a cut after the top posts section .

Top Posts for April

5.  Cantare De Tu Amor Por Siempre : This was posted after FOP last year. *Shakes head*. I love Delirious, very much. Their songs are very real and super anointed.

4.Like Broken Mirrors: A fairly recent post, this is about the excerpt I have read from Dutch Sheets’ book on a Christian’s authority in prayer. I would like to buy the book he wrote on Intercession too. But yeah, no buying books until I finish my To Read stack.

3. Library Finds 01: When I cracked open my first Moleskine Cahier just last week, I started with the purpose of achieving perfect balance with text and visual journaling. The book which I mentioned on this post, provided countless of ideas for me to use and a lot of journalling fodder too. Pictures will be uploaded soon!

2. On Fictionpress: I admit that I haven’t added much to my Fictionpress account. The reason being is that I haven’t written anything in ages! As for short stories, the last one I wrote was last year, May 2007, check it out here. But I am working on my writing, as someone has encouraged me in that area!

And the pleasant surprise winner goes to:

1. Wacky’s New Home: Wacky was recently jailbroken again, and now I have tonnes of apps inside him. I am surprised that this bagged top post this month. I kinda thought it was lame, I mean the words I used and you know, I could have made it more exciting!

 Read For More

(more…)

I am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles
In our eyes are mirror images and when
We kiss they’re perfectly aligned

 Yep, it’s a picture of Ned and Chuck. They are demonstrating the newfound purpose of plastic wrap – sanitized kissing! If you’re still not sure why they would both go to this extreme lengths, you can ask my second online BFF, Wikipedia.

I wish PD would be shown in this part of the world. Even if it’s the pre-Writer’s Strike episodes.

And if you’re wondering why I posted the picture, well, it’s my LJ user icon made by Karen. I have been getting a lot of props from this icon. I changed it from Evan Rachel Wood’s Across the Universe icon to this, after a few months and still going strong Beatlemania.

I can now (barely) play some of my fave Beatles songs, Across the Universe, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Hold Me Tight and Hey Jude!

What else? I finally caught Juno! After a loooongg time! But I’m still wishing for an Across the Universe DVD (hint! hint!) or at least the Deluxe soundtrack!

Anyway, I now know why people fell in love with the Juno soundtrack! I have been playing Anyone Else But You by the Moldy Peaches on my guitar, c’mon, with two chords, it’s really easy to play.

And the lyrics I posted is from the song, Such Great Heights, by The Postal Service. The song made me smile the first few lines, pa lang.

More updates to come!

The show is called Pushing Daisies and it stars one of my faves, Kristin Chenoweth! It sounds very interesting where a pie-maker and his friends solve murders by using his power of to bring living beings from death to life (with a few technicalities).

The love story between the protagonist, Ned (Lee Pace) and his childhood sweetheart Chuck (Anna Friel) is also notable. If he touches her, she’ll die for good!

And I also think Digby is adorable!

You should also watch this, I am loving this song because it’s so funny. Youtube also has the reply from Taylor, the Latte Boy.

The wise counsel God gives when I’m awake
      is confirmed by my sleeping heart.
   Day and night I’ll stick with God;
      I’ve got a good thing going and I’m not letting go.

Psalm 16:7

but first a poem,

We Do Not Breathe

No, No, NO!

Echoes along the corridor walls

twenty-eight pairs of ears tingle

hands rapt in attention

bodies frail yet rigid

eyes feigning bravery

And we do not breathe

Until the long idle hand,

sweeps across the line

and stands till,

for our moment where time

is only ours to live for

[Freewrite: 23 April 2008]

~o~

Sometimes, I want to write like crazy, but once I take out my Moleskine Cahier, I draw a blank. I believe that my words come from my heart and not from my mind, and they go out through my mouth. Silently, the verse falls on to the paper, written with invisible ink – then it materializes. But what happens is that on the way from my heart, I am stuck and my hand is immovable.

I’ve been thinking of the impersonal tone of my blog sometimes. And I’ve also been thinking of what matters to me most.

This Sunday, was awesome, you can feel His presence all over the sanctuary. I was in tears. First, because I was assured, then I felt the love which I had craved for cascade down to my broken heart, and lastly for the knowledge of the price I needed to pay to get from where I am to where I should be.

And I’ve been wrestling with these thoughts, do I dare? Do I have what it takes?  But I never asked myself, is it worth it? Because I know that what He had gone through for me was the worst thing that any human being could ever go through, and there’s nothing that I am going to face or be subjected to will be equal or greater than the sacrifice that He has made for me.

 photo credits:

musicmuse_ca

I have been journaling regularly now. Most of the time I’m a pure text journaler, as I had been for most of my life, then I started to include ephemera from my everyday life. This started in uni, when I attended symposia, film showings, and a lot of org/frat/soro and I stapled/pasted/glued  all those tickets and invites on my journal. From there, colours, doodles, magazine clippings and lots of glue were needed for me to journal.

This uber coloured page is what I call Opposite Page. I made this page at one of the craptastic points of my life. I was sad, stressed, tired and very apathetic.

I wanted to journal, but I didn’t want to journal any of the negtavity that I was feeling, because it seemed so tiring. So I thought to myself, why not make a spread that is OPPOSITE of what I was feeling?

I took out a magazine, watercolours, paintbrushes, markerpen brushes, a glue stick and scissors. It took me about one week to complete this spread and I find it very stress relieving, to be feeling bad and create something so positive out of it.

But I don’t dare try this when I’m feeling top of the weather though!

And congratulations to Dani, her artwork was displayed at the MDC art show:

One of those moments, looking at my friends’ multiply sites, I know that they’ve already graduated from uni yesterday. Four years at the premier state university, I am so proud of them.

It had been my dream to wear the sablay a sort of sash, a dream which I put on a shelf…gathering dust haha…

I am so relieved I can laught at it now.

I am supposed to be sad about this, but I know  somehow in my future, like what Steve Jobs said, I will be able to connect the dots from the past. Maybe the maroon dream (maroon being the uni’s colour) wasn’t meant to be.

But I’m very happy for them! Yay! Especially for Ding, Kwekie, Janel and April! They won Best Thesis, Best Thesis Group and Best Oral Presentation which is like the equivalent of a box-office sweep of awards!

The Group with their Thesis Adviser (she’s wearing the sablay)

Browsing through their grad pictures I admit that there is this bittersweet tinge of pain, the it could have been me too drama and all that, but accepting what God has planned for me is better than to wallow in yesterday’s dreams.

Yes, I am alive!

And yes, I am done with the hiatus stuff, I realized that I should be open in this blog, the good, the bad and the downright ugly .

Updates to come!

I need more time and space, for the better. Like bouncing back, somehow I feel like everything about me is artificial. Wait, that didn’t sound right. Let me rephrase that, I feel like opposite forces are warring within me. Which makes me confused and completely out of tune. You know how my mood swings are. I don’t feel like it’s me. Not me at all.

And this time, I need to make a choice. Making choices is usually painful for me. Because it stings, whatever I decide will have repercussions (hope I spelled that right).

So in my solitary seeking state, I will have to cease blogging for awhile. I will still be checking my email and all that, but blogging will have to be put on hold, because life matters need to be addressed.

Argh…everything is…PAUSED.

Here are a few blogs/sites which I go to almost daily. so you may want to check them out while waiting for me to come out of my cave:

Ragamuffinsoul : A worship pastor in the US, I love his videos! and his lovely wife blogs too! They have cute children.

One Little Word : A nice place to look at scrapbook layouts and stuff. I am inspired.

Ali Edwards : The first professional scrapbooker I ever read about.

Sabrina Ward Harrison: She made me interested in art, self-expression and journalling. I love her!

Lifehack.org: This is the productivity site for you. It has everything from GTD, advice to uni students and even problogging!

Daley Hake : He takes awesome pictures!

Basically that will keep you busy in the few days or so that I am off to war . I don’t have a clear picture of the outcome.

Yes, I’m keeping it inside of me, but how can anyone understand when I don’t even know how to make sense of it all. I am not talking cryptic, this is my heart, my life, my passion. And it’s time to really know for sure, or at least vaguely.

This leaves me with more questions than answers, but I’ll take that as progress…

image credits:

Collaborator

I ♥ my iPod Touch.

I bring it everywhere with me. But aside from listening to the Beach Boys singing God Only Knows or having my faith muscles flexed when watching Pastor Ulf’s podcasts, Wacky has helped me improve what’s inside my head.

 It has literally changed my life.

Many of you know that I want to take my SAT I and II this year. I quit my job so that I can focus on reviewing and maybe work part-time (in hours). It has been almost two years since I attended formal schooling, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve learned.

Aside from taking practice tests and improving my English, Math and reasoning skills, I have also started to get a feel of university by downloading podcasts and videos from iTunes U. I can download sessions from universitites such as UC Berkeley and Stanford. Now I can actually listen and take notes in subjects which I enjoy such as Psychology and Media from well-known universities!

Just yesterday I listened to a poetry reading of Lee Young-Li, I thought it was very enchanting. I especially liked Have You Prayed, I am not good at interpreting poetry, but I “feel” when I heard him read his poem.

And oh, oh!

I listened to Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. I may be 3 years late, but I just have to say, it totally inspired me. It was unlike all the commencement speeches that I have ever heard! You can download the audio version at iTunes U or view the text version here or watch the video here.

I’m still looking for other educational content to download into Wacky. Now, it’s more than just songs, more than just podcasts but real quality information.

I ♥ Wacky.

Where should I begin?

Ugh, my legs are so sore.

#1 Cellgroup @ Hideout Cafe . I told Jael that I may be humiliated beyond words, based from my previous track record on games – today was no exception. It was a combined @351 and E99 (Sandy, Jee Hae, Xiao Li and Roy).

But it was super fun! The place is very conveniently located and the hosts were awesome. The ambience was also superb!  Definitely would want to come back there again. The games were so fun, I was OK with the charades part. Then came the telematch thing! Which would have been fine if it were not the puzzle was very hard to solve, it took two more people before the thng was figured out! I’m not a visual person . There was a lot of laughter and I really think the cellgroup became more united. Anyway, my group came in overall third place…which is fine by me! I didn’t want to do any forfeits!

Unfortunately, we only remembered pictures when Team B (Birdie, Wendy, Melvin, Joel and an import – Sandy) were doing the forfeit (Twister)!

It looks so FUN!

Not Really…

JOEL sang, “God Will Make A Way“

#2 After that Birdie, Fiona, Jee Hae, Roy, Sandy and I went to Bugis to grab a bite at Pastamania. Then us girls went to Bugis Street to shop. And this is why my legs have lost blood circulation! Walking, walking, walking…searching for Sandy’s perfect bangle. Jee Hae also shopped for some tops. While the W351 girls were looking into a gift for someone.

#3 Snail Mail Alert. I am a bad pen pal! I am now swamped with five letters…gah!!! I just can’t seem to write a reply without my heart in it (naughty-naughty!). WHY o WHY? They come in spurts. Anyway, I love the sweets that Clare sent me, and the Canadian stuff that Tee sent. Must send replies by next week!

#4 Birthday Birthday!  I know a lot of April babies – from my snail mail pals, but I can only send two cards as the letter will never reach in time. So here’s what I did:

I need to get the cam fixed, the camera phone isn’t really doing this sweet card justice! The word is celebrate and the dots are actually those jewelly crystal things.

And this one is more of an art journal style card, it’s still a work in progress though:

Overall, it has been a tiring, fun-filled, fruitful and blessed (wink, wink) day!

Ciao Bella!