Singapore Sling

Hey guys!

Yes, I'm still alive! Wow it's been like 13 days since I last blogged. That's not normal is it? It says I'm blogging at 12:56pm but it's only actually 9:56am, I felt it necessary to make that distinction.

But yes as many of you know, I'm in Singapore and have been here since last Saturday. I came back for my grandma's wake and funeral and it was all pretty last minute, left the very next day. Thanks for all those who've offered their condolences, it really means a lot.

I hope everything back in Melb is okay. I kinda miss Melb but at the same time I could stay in Singapore for a very long time. I don't feel like a foreigner here, maybe that's because I was actually born here! So despite my passport saying otherwise, I'm happy hanging out here. I guess it's a huge factor when you have most of your relatives around you as well. At the wake, I met SO many relatives, some of whom I hadn't even met before in my 23 years of existence! And we're not talking about like great-grand-step-uncle styles, but cousins! I guess that tends to happen when you move overseas and one set of grandparents had thirteen children!

I also decided early this year when I was staying with my cousin in Toronto that we would do a family tree. Ah, the Wong family tree. Where to begin? Well my dad encouraged me to find out more from all the relatives who were gathered for my grandmother and I found out some really interesting stuff! Like I had a great-great-great-great (don't know how many generations) grandfather who was a scholar or minister of some sort for the Chinese emperor and basically he began a family tree. Since he was educated, he also wrote a poem and that poem, I was to find out, has significance in that each word of the poem was to be applied to the first character of a certain generation's name.

For example, say one line of the poem was like "xin boon chang" all the people in my dad's generation ie. him, his brothers and sisters, and cousins would be named"Wong Xin-something". Then all the people in my generation (myself, my brothers and sisters and cousins) would be "Wong Boon-something". In turn, all our kids would be "Wong Chang-something". Not everyone's followed this but it's pretty neat I think. This comes in most useful when determining whether a certain relative is actually your "senior" or not as some of my nieces and nephews are like 10 years older than me and it tends to get confusing.

Anyway, this family tree and poem, written in Chinese calligraphy has been passed down through the generations. So this book was passed down to my grandfather by my great-grandfather. Later, my grandfather re-wrote this book twice for his two brothers. One of the brothers remained in China and died there. That book was lost. Another one moved to Malacca in Malaysia and my grandfather had the other which he brought to Singapore. Anyway, my grandfather passed the original book to one of my uncles and he has it in his possession. Now, not anyone can have access to the books since it's seen as a really important part of our family but somehow, one of my cousins, Francis who's also known as "Lau-Hoh" which means "tiger", was allowed to photocopy the rewritten version that my granduncle in Malaysia had. Lau-Hoh heard I was interested in doing a family tree and has allowed me to photocopy it and I now have it in my possession. Even though it's in Chinese and I won't be able to read anything other than "wo", "ren", numbers and my surname hopefully I can get it translated by my cousins who know Chinese back to front because they learnt it at school in Singapore.

Okay so that's about all for today's lesson in the Wong family history. Hope you all learnt something today but remember, stay in school kids and stay classy San Diego.

The Mirror

our youth group has a blog now.

far out!

it'll be even harder keeping three er...i mean two blogs updated.

and it doesn't help when someone just vanished from the face of the cyber-earth on Sunday, November 13th never to blog again!!! maybe they have other issues to contend with...hmm

in other news, i woke up at about 12pm today. had a late one last night when heaps of people came over to play pictionary. we managed to also hit up a game of angels and assassins also known as mafia. thanks to all those who came and even for offering to help clean up in the end. i remember hearing monica say "no, we should help you clean up" which spurred everyone into action hehe

tonight will possibly be another late one for a friend's birthday. haven't been clubbing in a looong time, and sorry to Cat, Cliff and Garry for piking on Amber last night. but hey didn't i hear one of youse say that you've given up drinking? or was that clubbing? or was that the drink-and-club? you bloody idiot.

it'll be interesting to see where we go tonight. could happen across a club that is holding that exclusive event - the sausage fest. i had enough of that after "Euro-Trip Uncut" and then again at a spa in Marysville. and we don't want those ones.

Yes, a new post - Anna, you win but I had to blog because I respect my audience too much to just go AWOL for a week without telling them. I'll be blogging a lot less in an effort to cut out my procrastinating/lazy ways - this is a trial period only so if I pick up my game and fit in all the stuff I have to do, I can come back and blog as often as I like. Yay!

Hmm an interesting turn of events over the last week or so. I left for Marysville on Friday evening to attend a cell-leaders retreat which was way too fun. It was good to get away and get some admin stuff sorted out for this coming year as well as hang out and have fellowship with my peers. I'll spare you guys the details despite what some of you may have heard/seen regarding the shenanigans that a few of us got up to, but overall it was a good refresher.

Came back on Sunday morning in time for church and I was sooo tired! I also had a dinner with Anna's family and we ate in Glen Waverley. Heng, I think I saw your new Accord parked outside Rock Kung that evening - H3NG licence plate?

Other issues have also popped up, some not even mine! But it's interesting to see what will happen in the next few days. Meanwhile, I have some disclaiming to do. Cryptic indeed it is. May the force be with you all.

Dashed Hopes

Far out my body clock is so out of wack.

Slept at about 3:30am this morning and woke up at 10am only because I've been used to waking early for work these past three days.

And I've still got a lot to do! Namely clean my room which looks like a bomb hit it. It's been messy since I came back from the States which was like January 9th. And today is February 3rd. Hmm...

Which also reminds me that I'm going to be a year older this coming week. Damn I'm starting to get really old now. But this is what I now call the festive week because there are like five people from church whose birthdays are between Feb 5 and Feb 9 inclusive. Maybe we'll do a massive shindig and invite anyone and everyone. Still haven't decided on a place yet seeing as there'll be lots of people.

In other news, I feel guilty because I forgot Nabi was going overseas till last night...the night of her flight! When she told me on MSN while I was at work (don't ask) I was like "Oh...WTH?" But after that I vaguely remember her mentioning it. Sorry Alice! You'll still get something for me overseas right? Hehe...

Oh and a welcome back to Lena after her little voyage overseas for the first time. You know I was having a conversation last night about how easy it is to get worms in Thailand, but hey, I'm sure you had a great time. Just don't be offended if I don't wanna go out and eat with you for the next few months.

Well tonight I'm driving up to Marysville for a cell-leader retreat which promises to be fun. It's always good to go away for a while, come back refreshed! Hmm, I'm in charge of the activities for a three hour block on Saturday but all I really have is playing this card game I played on New Year's Eve at a YMCA in New York. Far out...haha but yeah that was fun.

OH! And I found out that Zach Braff and Mandy Moore are engaged. Why? WHY??? *Sigh* Yep, no words to console me. I'm speechless.