From California to Vegas

Shao put up some of the photos from our road trip in August/September and the shots have got me dreaming all over again, filling me with a yearning for the open roads, the hours of driving, where every mile promises new sights and adventures.

I still have my thirty-odd rolls of film from the trip still undeveloped. I think my reluctance stems from a fear that to do so would add some sort of grim finality to the whole journey, but I know that that is not true.

I know that in this lifetime I will embark on something like this again. And this statement is not because I will make it happen, but because Abba knows the dreams and desires of my heart and He will make it so.

AMEN!

Got burnt to a charred brown crisp in Venice Beach

Ate 7-11 hot dogs outside Spaceland in Silver Lake, LA before grooving to post-rock El Ten Eleven

Watched kids play in the fountain during the sunset at Universal Studios

Ingested way too many calories with Denny’s Americana portions

Froze in the chill & fog on the ferry trip in San Francisco

Snuck our way to a favourite local spot hidden up in the hills that gave us a panoramic view of the entire San Francisco city

Used maps to make sure our GPS wasn’t taking us to Mexico or Canada

Walked in the misty fog in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia

Drifted on two-lane curving roads in the dense fog in our Cadillac Escalade

Ate more burgers than any normal human being can consume safely in his lifetime. This here is Krystal’s burgers, rival of White Castle

Me sporting my Austin, Texas haircut as I ruminate on democracy and freedom on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

Joshed and jostled with the tourists in Times Square

But driving towards the Texas sunset is still the secret love of my heart.

If my 2008 was a year when I travelled to Thailand, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Malacca, turned down an invitation to Kuala Lumpur and also drove the breadth of the United States of America in a single month,I can’t wait for 2009.

Because my Dad loves to outdo Himself, every time. Yes, amen, let it be done!

Sigur Rós – Glósóli

I always kind of resisted listening to Sigur Rós after hearing more of their hype than their actual music. As if listening to their record would been buying into the hipster nonsense and turning me into some sort of sell-out. But I’m glad I have, finally running the album Takk that has been lying in my hard drive for years (yes, years) through iTunes and being suitably blown away.

I think their appeal, for me, is the distinct child-like quality pervading through their music. The keyboards add to that, even contributing to that sense of epic grandeur in the rousing crescendoes of certain tracks. It is lovely to listen to, alone, during the festive season.

Writing now is a brief respite from the unexpected ardour of personalising my Christmas (belated, of course) cards for the year. I was kind of surprised at the time I took to complete even a single one, and really, I am beginning to get  a little worried at how I might not be able to finish all of the cards in time for the gathering on New Year’s Eve!

But it’s immensely satisfying to write all of them, and not a task at all. I’ve given up trying to impress people with depth or aesthetics and instead have incorporated all manner of random nonsense into it, Frankensteining artwork from the internet into the cards in a blatant attempt to disguise my shameless plagiarism.

I arrived at church earlier today to grab tickets and sat myself down at Subway to continue writing the cards. But before I could begin, Coach M bumped into me and asked me to join her for lunch – which was really an answered prayer because I haven’t talked to her for the longest time and have been meaning to catch up with her!

I just love this woman whom God has placed so divinely and opportunely in my life. I probably would have left the ministry and even the church if not for her, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman of God. I would do it with no questions asked. So it was a blessing to be able to sit with her and talk.

And Lord you knew how much I needed it! She confirmed, perhaps not even knowing so, so many things that I was deliberating over within, putting a clarity to my situation that I know could only come from You. I went into the fourth service doing a little ditty in my head, feeling so blessed even before receiving the word for 2009.

And this is how You love me. Catching me by surprise, with moments of delight and pure joy, knowing that I am rich for Your love, and that I can love because You love me.

“Don’t give your heart away so easily. God closes one door because He’s got a better one open for you. Because He has His best choice for you.”

And with the word from today still fresh in my heart, I will say, ‘Amen’.

Jo & HY recently introduced me to Left 4 Dead – possibly the most awesome FPS to seize my inner game geek since Quake and Baldur’s Gate and transforming me into a ten year old boy all over again, yelling and screaming over the din of the LAN shop as we fought for the survival of the human race.

“Help!! Help!! A Smoker’s got me!!”

“I’ll save you!” (Jonah begins to fire off a shotgun blast)

“I’m coming! DIEEE” (DoOku dashes across Jonah’s line of fire)

“Thanks!” (Giggles shouts his gratitude as the Smoker gets blown apart)

(on screen: Don’t fire on your team-mates!) “Noo! Why’d you run in front of me!”

“Oh. My. God. I just lost 40 health.” DoOku mourns as his avatar begins limping visibly.

“Aaaah! Sorry sorry!”

“OH NO! The Witch! Don’t startle her!”

(Giggles/HY sees a crouching, red-haired figure amidst the blackened, charred ruins of human civilisation. He steadies his crosshairs against her, ready to level his righteous, human fury against one of the living dead)

“What?” (Giggles taps his Mouse1 button, pumping the zombie full of buckshot)

(on screen: Giggles has startled the Witch!)

“CRAAAAAP”

“Ahhhh heeelllpppp!” (firing blindly with dual Colts as he lies incapacitated)

“Die! Die! Die!” (consecutive shotgun blasts resound through the air)

“A SAFE HOUSE! Run!!”

“Where?? Cover me!”

“I’ve got your back! Go!!”

“Close the door! Grab the medi-packs! Heal heal heal!”

(all of us breathe a sigh of relief in unison as the screens blurs and fades, signalling a brief respite from the undead, and a time to heal up, restock ammo, and choose weapons)

“I’m grabbing the sniper rifle. You?”

“Shotgun!”

“I’m crap at that. I’m getting the assault rifle!”

“Okay! Wait, let me pick them off from here!” (DoOku shatters the window glass with his Melee attack, and begins picking off wandering zombies from the relative safety of the safe house)

(Jonah can’t wait. He opens the door, charging at the nearest zombie.)

“For humanity!!!!”

(Before he can run towards the zombie in the distance, he is waylaid by a zombie who was hiding outside the door.)

“AAAHHH ZOMBIES! They’re right outside!”

(Three or four more zombies rush him. Jonah puts up a valiant fight, wildly spraying rounds from his M16 and riflebutting the zombies back.)

“HY! Let’s rescue him!”

“Ok! Go!!”

“Noooooooo” (Jonah screams)

“Hey! Where’d you go? I can’t see you on the screen!”

(Jo/DoOku turns to look at me. I am staring at a black abyss from a third-person perspective, which means I’m dead)

“I got pushed off the cliff….”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA”

Yes, that’s how gaming works. We keep each other alive, protect each other like brothers, but just as quickly we revel in one another’s misery, simply because it’s too funny.

*

It’s been a good, quiet Christmas. Contrary to all appearances, I don’t know what I’m doing. Or rather, I don’t know how things will turn out. Reading what you’ve wrote in the past makes more sense now, even if it’s in a way I don’t like it to be.

A brother was telling me how during this season of the year makes us want to give pieces of ourselves to the people we love or admire, but what also exists is the truth that you can’t take those pieces back. You squander it, willingly, regardless whether you expect anything in return or not.

What did You feel like, when You loved me? Teach me to love like that.

Someone told me that you flutter your eyelids to compose yourself when you’re angry. I wonder how come I’ve never noticed it.

It’s always a mad rush leading to Christmas. Every year I tell myself that I need to get started earlier, that this year, yes this year, will be smooth and easy and without the hair-pulling, the late-night bleary eyes, the self-flagellations of whyohwhydidn’tIstartearlier. And every year I find myself at the same place.

This year seems to be no different. Even with my two and a half months of chilling out, sadly.

But it’s a good kind of place to be in I think, to want the people important to you or who’d blessed you to be able to have that simply joy of receiving a little something on Christmas, however mundane or ordinary; I like to think that every card and every gift matters, that you were thought of in a fond or kindly way, which then leads, perhaps inevitably, to thanksgiving.

So thank You for being asked to serve in the skit. It’s funny how I enjoyed the rehearsal thoroughly, when acting is the last thing I’d ever think of doing, let alone volunteer for. But I like how in acting you put on a face, you roleplay and make-believe and pretend, and in doing so create a gulf between your part and your true self. This way, you can let go of your inhibitions or your fears and inhabit the character in the space of your time on stage. Your stage self becomes the one accountable for its flaws, its mistakes and behaviour.

I guess that when I look at it that way, I find it easier to slip into ‘acting mode’ and not be so self-conscious, as loathe as I am of being in the spotlight.

In any case, it’s been fun

I’m dreaming music tonight, hearing notes and words and crests and dips drift into silence and then tiptoe gentle across the streams of my consciousness.

Listening to light-year songs beamed across the universe by deep space explorers who compose lyrics from the slipstream of a blue streak comet, riff and distort in time with the pulse of atmospheric gravity on meteor shards that twist and turn and roll, tuning tempo from the groovy dissonant beat of a white dwarf going supernova; all this I hear in the peak hour train and its dreary-faced passengers, secret smiles as my mind roams elsewhere on the journey made by those same intergalactic adventurers.

The air tonight was a clean and crisp kind of cool, filling your lungs with a sweetness that says it’s a joy to be alive. New sights and sounds and people who didn’t sideways-glance at you. So I sat down beside them at the curb and sipped soy milk from a can in silence, watching the crazy neon lights flash in bizarre, tacky ostentatiousness. An old lady with grey-dusted hair and geeky specs and the kindest eyes I’d seen in weeks sat in a yellow chair by the carpark. She smiled as I asked her for directions and waved me on my way, wishing me well.

So many years of age and yet so young and full of brightness that I walked away carrying a bit of it with me. And in that moment I learnt that I had so much more of it to do.

The world can beat me down or I can have my heart chewed on and spat out or I can face a seemingly-endless stream of disappointments but that’s what the world does. It doesn’t faze me at all, because I know I have You. And I know You have already laid better days ahead of me.