Irony, I’m avoiding writing the 5 essays due tomorrow. By writing another essay, albeit a short one. 

I’m feeling so out of my depth in JC. There’s so much so fast. OGLs weren’t kidding when they said it was going to be hell. Economics, Chinese and math are alien. Brain pushed to the limit in CSE, history and GP. 

A few things have remained constant. Firstly, church every weekend. Ignore whatever points to the contrary. I love church. Secondly, running. I love my thrice weekly runs. Thirdly, U2. Even Better than the Real Thing. 

Many things have changed. On the more humorous side, FNM. Yes, I finally got to play Magic: The Gathering. My nerd level has increased. Secondly, for the second time in my life, I failed a non-Chinese paper. I failed a paper. Sigh.

Lastly, if you told me this a year ago I wouldn’t have believed you, something I can’t really say. Too many people read this blog. Extremely surprising. This was supposed to be for me and me alone. 

But, I should be flattered, so many people actually read the ravings of an ordinary teenaged boy. 

The past two Saturdays have been pretty amazing though. I’m still thinking about what happened on the rooftop on the Esplanade. 

No I’m not about to tell the internet that. 

Back to work. 

 The phrase be careful what you wish for is extremely interesting. A girl has a crush on me, for what is probably the first time in my life. It’s an interesting feeling, being crushed on. 

That just sounds weird. 

But it’s amazing how strong my convictions are. I was surprised myself. It’s hard wired in my internal circuitry to avoid dating any girl not in church. It presents an interesting internal dichotomy. On one hand, my genes, hormones and masses of insecurities are screaming at me to get attached. On the other hand, my convictions are screaming at me and saying that I’ll regret it. 

I really like this girl. But I know dating her won’t work out. And I need to tell her something in what, 12 hours? I do not want to break her heart. 

So, interesting internal struggle and conflict. Isn’t that what makes us human? 

I need sleep. 

Typed most of this during the 20 minutes of intermission during Limelight 2012. Finished it off tonight.

Found a lot of the zone F girls here at Limelight 2012. I think i’m the only guy from church here. But anyway, that’s not really important.

Apart from the literal mountains of work I have to push through tonight, I’ve been thinking about what I wrote a couple of days ago.

In an unrelated story, while at Pre-u sem, I went to check out my photoblog. One of my friends asked, why’re you on DailyMoments? I replied, it’s my blog. She was stunned for a moment, and then said that she heard other people talking about it. Made my day.

So I’m at Erika’s choir performance, marveling at their amazing voices.
It made me think. And it made me extremely insecure again.

I come from a family of sportsmen. Dad played basketball, mom played volleyball, hermann’s a crosser, Sharmin’s a volleyballer, Terance, Ronald, Bryan, Astro all play badminton, Janelle’s a dancer, Darrell played basketball.

I’m not a sportsman. I used to be, but gave it up. Not only that, I wasn’t born with good looks either. I don’t have the natural good looks of like Jordan or Nicholas, neither do I have the body like Darrell or Hermann to make up for it. I’m a geek, a gamer, a book lover and a master of obscure references. Other than the book lover thing, that isn’t going to make me very attractive to the opposite sex.

But why the sudden preoccupation with members of the opposite sex? The main reason is probably biological. I’m at that state of life where my body and hormones are telling me to reproduce for the good of the species. Hence, I’ve become more self conscious in terms of how attractive I am to the opposite sex. It’s human nature. 

Honestly, I don’t think I’m the greatest looking guy. Neither do I have the toned body that other guys have. 

Okay, five minutes. Gotta wrap this up.

Simply put, I’m insecure. I’m not confident with the way I look. I do get quite jealous when other guys get female attention, but that’s probably biological as well. I’m not sure if anyone likes my slightly schizophrenic personality. Mom constantly telling me that I need to be taller, that my face is too pimply, that my hair is too thick, my pants too baggy is not helping. In addition, there are so many good looking guys and girls in my school already in a relationship or being chased after by someone else. 

I want that feeling too.

Sometimes, I just want to be in a relationship. To have someone, who’s not my parents, or God, who can tell me they love me; that they think I’m good looking; that they love my quirks and idiosyncrasies. 

Someone who’s attracted to me, simply to prove to myself that I’m an attractive guy.

Sounds pretty shallow, but there’re deep underlining biological reasons and there are basic human needs interwoven. 

I just want to feel secure about my looks, my body and my personality.

Not exactly sure why I’m on here instead of sleeping. 

Had a lot of stuff gathering in the junk drawer of my mind, hopefully I can get through that quickly. As long as I don’t get distracted my Magic.

It’s been a long day, my brain can’t handle coherent sentences. 

First off, I’m loving what I do in school. Everything I’m studying, Pre-U sem, HCCRI, Photographic society, writing essays every night. Everything I love, except math. Because it stopped making sense a couple of weeks ago. 

Secondly, the urge to merge in increasing. As much as I agree with pastors and believe that I am not in any situation or position to choose my life partner for now. But sometimes, my mind wanders. I wonder what it’s like to be in a relationship. To have someone thinking about you, misses you and thinks you’re the friggin awesomemest person in the world. Sure, you say that God does that. But as much as I believe God loves me enough to send Jesus to die for me, the thing is that He does that for EVERYONE. I want someone who thinks of me differently. I’m insecure like that. I want my existence to be validated and treasured by someone who isn’t God or my parents. I want a girl to fall asleep on my shoulder. Honestly, there’s not really anyone who has the same master or mission as me. Especially the mission part. 

Sometimes, I wish it was simpler and I could simply date a girl. 

Wow, those words are heavy. Let me try that again.

Date a girl. 

But Kevin, you scream, you’re gonna waste a lot of time, get your heart broken and get really awkward with the girl once you break up with her. I’m not going to say I won’t break up with her. I probably will. I know it’s stupid, but I want to do stupid things before I grow up. 

So, obviously I’ve been thinking about girls. Because, the way it’s going now, I feel like I won’t get married. 

Which helps me transition nicely to my third thing, me being supposedly gay. Half my class think I’m gay. Not much to comment there. I’m pretty damn straight. I want to date girls, but I don’t want to at the same time. So guys are my go-to physical affirmation people. People, I’m friggin straight. 

Four, Chinese diary got me to write about relatives who died and if I missed them. I don’t exactly have many. Eventually I wrote about friends who I lost contact with. Thought about Ren Hao, Wayne and Genghis in that order. I miss them. I really do. Nearly brought me to tears thinking about them. Wayne is going or is already in National Service. G is finishing NS. Ren Hao is probably studying in poly now. 

Numbah five. GP is friggin amazing. Been thinking about culture, society, education a lot. Interestingly, these are the things being covered in GP, CSE and history right now. Thought of a lot of things that, if I put them here, the ISA would invite me for a cup of tea.

Lastly, I need God. I need Him more. My spiritual life has collapsed. 

Pray, shoot, study. 

PS: Need to take lots of pictures. Been itching to shoot a lot more. 

Had the most amazing dinner yesterday.

Fun-o-rama was great. By the end of the day, the class pulled together and raised money TOGETHER. Proud of them.

After an insanely long day of Fun-o-rama, Tuan Sin, Aaron, Valerie, Adlina and Adlina’s two friends, Kady and Cheryl went for dinner at Pastamania. 

First time I’ve gone there actually. 

Anyway, got teased about being a good match with someone else. It’s been a long time since that happened. Enjoyed the attention a little too much I guess. 

Other than that, had a great conversation with Kady and Cheryl while everyone else was playing cards. It was about movies like Back to The Future, Inglorious Basterds, Fight Club, and old music like U2, Beatles, Led Zeppelin. The conversation drifted towards dreams, life choices, ambitions and family. Enjoyable, thought provoking, deep and yet still filled with laughter.

This made me analyze. I never had such conversations with people in church. Maybe it’s the lack of experience. The people I know in church are great people, coming from varied backgrounds, but they’ve been homogenized by the church culture.

But that could also be because I don’t know many people. The people I mainly talk to are my CG. No one else actually. Certainly not girls who’re studying theater studies or loves to save turtles. No one who gets excited about what they want to do in the future. It feels like my friends in church never talk about deep stuff or don’t talk about it often enough. I’ve felt moments similar to last night’s dinner, like Nic wanting to do film, Kenn in his exciting school or Leonard working in Reuters, but they are usually with older people and come few and far between.

Maybe I’ve just fallen in love with these people. I know how people feel when they talk to me. I struggled to figure out how old Kady and Cheryl were, both looking and acting older than their age. That is a good thing. 

Intellectually stimulating, thought provoking conversation. 

Can I have more of that in church? Pleassseee.

Pastor Bill Wilson revived my spirit and me. 

I realized that me running back to football and school to give me a purpose in my life is essentially running back to my life before God and without a purpose. I wanted to live a really inward-looking and selfish life. I forgot I wanted to be a journalist to change lives. What’s the point of being a journalist if I lose the reason and the heart of why I wanted to be one. 

Pastor Bill Wilson revived the desire to love others and to look outwards. He reminded me that I want to be a journalist to take pictures to change lives. He reminded me that at the end of the day, it isn’t even about the pictures, it’s about the lives changed and in heaven. 

Even as I venture into JC and maybe do all those crazy things, I won’t make the mistake of treating JC life and CCA as a purpose in my life. I may be busy doing it, but I know only God can fill that hole. I’ll engrave that purpose in my heart. 

Pardon the below-standard writing. Distracted. Haha

This was supposed to be a post filled with teenage angst.

Earlier today, I was feeling frustrated, confused and depressed. Now, with a great evening of playing Magic, The Gathering and Manchester United beating Liverpool, I just feel confused. 

I’m now a JC student. I’m no longer a secondary school student. I’ve been adjusting pretty well to my new school environment. The workload hasn’t piled up YET, so I’m not sure if I can cope, but knowing me and knowing God, I WILL cope. 

A really big difference in the choices I’m making in JC compared to secondary school is that I’m actually joining CCAs and picking a subject combination that will stretch me. The reason for this is that I used to have church work to keep me busy, push me and stretch my capacity. Since I’m not doing anything HUGE in church, I’ve decided to join football (A SPORT OMG) and take one of the hardest subject combinations (History, Economics, Math and China Studies). I plan to also run for student council later in the year, but that decision’s for another day. I want to push myself harder, better, faster, stronger.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I made the right choices. I hope I did. I hope I didn’t mess up my future and destiny by making the choices that I did. 

You could tell me to find God. But as I’ve said before, I’m wrestling with it.I know I’ll never leave God, and I’ll always have a relationship with Him. 

But… it’s simply frustrating to be a Christian. 

In Jane McGonigal’s book “Reality is Broken”, she discusses what makes games so fun. Reading it, I could see why people love serving in church. It’s essentially a huge MMORPG. Everyone has a role, kinda has xp points, works together for a larger, viewable purpose. People have a clear goal and steps to achieve that goal. They view their efforts as going towards a greater good and can see their actions influence the world. 

All this is very good. 

But, for me. I no longer see the goal as “achievable”. Being Christ-like feels like this unachievable goal. It’s like playing a game where the last boss is broken and unkillable. 

So, I feel like I’ve switched games. I’ve switched from “Church” to “school”. I constantly ask if I’ve made the right choice. I feel pangs of regret. 

Reality is broken, read it.