MP set on fire, man caught

I never expected this to happen in Singapore. Aside from the fact that it is grievous hurt at best and attempted assassination at worst, this attack came as a genuine surprise and a reflection of just what some people are capable of.

“Yio Chu Kang Member of Parliament Seng Han Thong was in stable condition in hospital yesterday, following an attack in which a man poured thinner on him and set him alight.

Mr Seng ran onto the stage at the Yio Chu Kang Community Club, where he was attending a community event, trying desperately to put out the flames on his back and head.”

Hope he recovers and justice is done.

 

59 dead in Bangkok nightclub fire

2009 hasn’t lost any time in taking lives. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the Bangkok fire; a terrible reminder of how soon revelling and fun can descend into a hellish nightmare.

More than 200 people were also injured early Thursday at the nightclub in the Thai capital’s lively Ekkamai district, in a grim start to 2009.

"The updated death toll is 59. Of the injured, 86 remain in hospital with 38 in intensive care units," Chatree Charoencheewakul, secretary of the emergency services headquarters, told AFP.

Lord, have mercy on us. Be ever with the injured and their families, and may Your healing reach out to them. If ever Your servants can help, may You touch all they comfort in the painful days to come.

And let the families of the dead find their peace in You, however hard it may be right now.

Amen.

 

Far Cry 2, water and Imation thumbdrives

Procrastination. I’d have written this last month but kept putting it off, or so the saying goes. It doesn’t really speak well of my preference to hole up for hours and hours on my third play-through of Fallout 3 (which seems set to be my longest, since a Perk I chose has revealed EVERY location in the Wasteland on my map). Which means that Bethesda, darn them, have stolen another 12 hours of my life at least!

I’d have reviewed Far Cry 2, but compared to Fallout 3 it’s just a pretty little imitator. True, its animations are better, the African savannah can rival the Capital Wasteland in beauty and exceed it in colour variation, but monotonous gameplay ensures it all comes to…

Not much.

It doesn’t help that FC2, for all its open-endedness, is simply a labourious repetition of the actions over and over. Okay, there’s a ten-minute intro where you’re driven into town and you can do precisely nothing, and then a lengthy tutorial you MUST sit through no matter how many times you’ve played the game before.

It was during said tutorial I noticed something fishy. Why was it EVERYONE, without exception, hated me and opened fire on sight? Well, later I met someone who didn’t, but she was my in-game buddy and so didn’t really count. In an entire country, there are only these 11 (at most) different people who won’t use the very sight of you as target practice? I know the team visited Africa and did their groundwork, but I’m not too sure every native they met pulled out Kalashnikovs and sent rounds flying their way.

Despite its logical oddities, Far Cry 2 has its fun moments. With such a target-rich environment, it isn’t long before you master the ins and outs of combat from machine-guns to flamethrowers to sniper rifles, and it’s nothing short of glorious fun to watch an assault pan out exactly the way you plan it. Stalk your African militia targets by day or night—rush their camps guns blazing or strike from afar, then finish up the job by burning survivors from their hideouts. You’re given tremendous freedom to accomplish your objectives, which is further boosted by the sheer simplicity of its gameplay. At its best, Far Cry 2 is a powerful, engaging ride.

It also isn’t long before you weary of the long, long stretches between powerful, engaging rides where you do nothing except drive around the gargantuan map, occasionally pausing to put down each and every local you meet—because they’ll open fire for no rhyme or reason. Correct me if I’m wrong, but pointing a weapon at a complete stranger—without national identity or wartime conditions—isn’t something an entire country would do. Right?

 

Sluggard, Way of Life, Lewis’s Danger and Superficiality

OK. I’m sick and tired of mediocrity. One night a nasty cough kept me awake; what a way to start the New Year. My GPA kept me from celebrating our Lord’s Advent and the New Year as I should have; time to think things through I guess. I was going to reflect on Proverbs 6:6-11, seeing that laziness was one of my chief sins this year; its fruit dullness of mind during the exam, carelessness in homework, and forgetfulness in this or that. I’ve lost count of embarrassing failures to accurately recount information, think through my schoolwork, and make notes I could actually understand before it was too late.

I quote from the NKJV:

Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider its ways and be wise,

Which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.

How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of your hands to sleep–

So shall your poverty come on you like a prowler, and your need like an armed man.

I was researching a completely different topic, the Bible version debate (specifically the King James-Only debate and the need for textual criticism) when I came across Fundamental Baptist preacher David W. Cloud’s literature ministry, Way of Life Literature. While browsing I found an article that helped me tremendously in my reflection on this passage and the New Year itself: http://wayoflife.org/fbns/the-sluggard.html

Take the time to check out the rest of the website. Remember what I said in my mention of The Berean Call about your favourite authors skewered Scripturally? They’re called out for unsound doctrines and relationships, and Way of Life does so as well.

(Not even C.S. Lewis is spared, and for good reason. I’ll let the relevant article speak for itself.)

Do a little digging within; you may not agree with Cloud on everything, but you will find solid arguments grounded on the Bible–and its King James translation–as God’s supreme revealed truth. Again, be sure to "test everything; hold fast what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

And as for the KJV-only debate itself, it gave me pause which Bible I should pick up. More later, especially on a book that helps clear things up somewhat.

#

I’ve been gathering books of late, much to my mom’s consternation (my bookshelves, like David’s cup, overflow). This year… well, this year I’ll stop buying them and start studying what they have to say instead. Too often we read superficially and think we’ve grasped a concept when we haven’t. We can remember it intellectually, but unless it be true to God’s Word and rooted in our minds and hearts it remains nothing more than a drain on the memory, to be washed away and replaced by whatever comes down to the pipe.

Too often I’ve been guilty of superficial understanding, as my results slip well attests. That, I pray, ends now.

 

Results, Fallout and Christmas

I just saw my exam results. And it’s frankly getting harder and harder to say with the angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14) And that’s all I have to say about this semester.

#

Don’t be fooled by its title. Fallout 3 does not require past experience with, or even an understanding, of the past Fallout titles to enjoy. Call it an open-world RPG; call it The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with guns; call it a heretical abandonment of the turn-based gameplay of past Fallouts; but the fact remains that developer Bethesda Softworks has done an excellent job of creating a game that will rob you of hours and hours of time. You don’t have to have even heard of Fallouts 1 and 2, or any other game in this universe—FO3 is not part of an organised trilogy and so stands on its own.

 

Hindsight, Nano, and Blasphemy

[This allegory was written during my exams, to get some of the regret from my very first paper off my chest. I like to think it worked… but then I took another paper 2 days after that which went even worse. God help me.]

It’s 4.30 pm on the 1^st of December. I’m swimming laps in the pool, cooling off after my Biotransport paper when I see Hindsight sharing my lane. He’s got a stormy look on his face as I come in and grab the wall. At least he’s waited till I finished my 200m set, the bugger—all the better to hit me with the news. He’s staring hard at me, working my mind over as I approach him. I’m sure the bastard knows everything I’ve been up to the entire three semesters of my NUS life, and is making his usual three-monthly series of appearances.

He is exam fear, personified. You know the saying that you learn from your mistakes? If your mistakes are a module in the so-called ‘university of life’, Hindsight is its lecturer. And he has a long track record of telling me everything I needed to know hours or days after it would’ve made any difference.

“Still worrying about your BN2202 exam?” Hindsight smirks. “All that horror, all that fear of questions you couldn’t answer… it’s all in the past. Am I correct?”

“Screw off,” I tell him. “Just because I’ve still got three papers doesn’t give you the right to bother me now.”

“But I have to. Look, it’s not exactly rocket science—wait, mass conservation and stuff. Maybe it is. Anyway you derived the second-order differential equation of velocity in a pipe from the Navier-Stokes equation all right… but you’re a damned idiot. You forgot to do the integration.”

Oh, shit. Oh, every word I could think of too unprintable to put here. “So the answer I put is the double differential.”

Translated for non-engineers: I am so screwed.

Hindsight’s fingers gently slide over the water, and he forms a circle with his thumb and index finger; lets water slosh right through. “Yep. Now we’re talking. How much is your little… spot of carelessness worth? Three marks? Four? That was a ten-mark question, and one of those you actually studied. I’m not bothering you with those ridiculous diffusion flux questions at the back, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I don’t need Hindsight to show me that. The only people with any use for my lecturer’s notes are those with PhD’s like him (who don’t need them) and the folks at Mensa (for wrapping their fish in). Us poor second-year students don’t have a chance, and without practice questions we’re in even deeper hock.

 

Are these your heroes?

I sure hope not. I think this article speaks for itself–the whole shoe-throwing incident would be funny if not for the fact it’s a grave insult and its response across the region. Who exactly do these people count as heroes anyway?

BAGHDAD —  Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush, as Arabs across many parts of the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the U.S. president.

They call it the “butterfly effect”–a butterfly flapping its wings in Singapore can lead to or avert a tornado in Kansas, according to chaos theory. Well, who knew it was true?

#

Oyah, I just got back from the Annual Teach-In Camp. 6 days of studying the book of Eccelsiastes. A detailed reflection is too long to put here and now, but let’s just say here… that if you want wisdom and the meaning of life the Preacher tells us where NOT to look.

Again, more soon. I was going to write it but I’m really tired and zzzzzzz…

 

Terrorists made it personal.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,459004,00.html

As the terrorist siege ends and the gunmen go to the hell prepped for them… I think we can say the carnage is over. For now.

"We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work."

– John 9:4

And… our country isn’t spared their bloodthirst either, seeing a Singaporean hostage was executed… the first of our citizens to die in an overseas terror attack. There can be no compromise, "negotiation" with them–they have made it very clear they don’t care who they kill, where, when or how.

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/289827.asp

As the smoke clears, the world may change, the weapons may change, but the human condition, the consequences of sin, and the mandate of our Lord have not. God rest the souls of those who enter into His kingdom, comfort and guide those who are left to pick up the pieces of the terrorists’ handiwork, and damn all who turn to the darkness of sowing terror and fear.

I’ll reflect more later, and I’ll have something to say about my recent Nanowrimo win. But these won’t share a post with the news coverage of such a tragedy, or time with my exams. Those’ll have to wait–and in the meantime, God help us all. Without Him we have no hope.

 

It’s Coming

OK right, so Epi has this blog I must update sometimes. It appears time is not lacking, but rather how I spend it.

It’s Sunday night, and I haven’t even done my Nanowrimo word make-up yet. And as I write this I’ve an Econs paper in less than 11 hours… I like to think my revision is finished here, so I reward myself with a few rounds of Call of Duty: World at War.

Now there’re two reasons why I can’t study at home. And I have to admit CoDWaW is one of them, the other being Far Cry 2; between running around Africa gunning down militiamen, running around the Pacific gunning down Japanese soldiers, and running around Germany gunning down Nazis, one thing leads to another and here I am procrastinating when I should be getting back to work.

I am now in my twelfth chapter of my as-yet-a-secret novel, though any friends I’ve met probably know the plot by now. As of tonight I’m near 40k words in, but it’s turning into a struggle to meet daily wordages. The temptation is there to slack off, and God protect me from it.

Again, more soon. On the cards after the exams:

– reflections on the effects of books like InterVarsity’s Shining Like Stars and God of the Poor on this too-inactive Christian;

– full reviews of Call of Duty: World at War, and the radioactive-hot new game Fallout 3

– an overview of the VCF Fellowship Teachings so far,

– and of course, some blogging on My Hope Singapore. Christmas evangelism at its most hopeful, and I hope most effective.

Whew, there you have it; this week’s long-overdue update. I leave you with a prayer for the exams, into which all us students will be thrown:

Heavenly Lord and Father, we thank and we praise You for Your sustenance, saving grace and forgiveness of our sins both public and hidden. It is our prayer for all students from every faculty, that they may find unity in their friends, joy in their struggles, and peace in their results. Especially we pray for these Your servants, Lord; stand with us in love and guidance as we prepare for every paper, and may Your guiding hand be there as we flip the title page. From the daemons of stupidity, sloth and carelessness, Heavenly Father, be there to deliver us; that whatever we yield be useful, pleasing, and sanctified to Your name.

And as we exit the exam hall, let it be with Your peace, which passes all understanding, keeping our hearts and minds in the knowledge of Your will. May each of us have done our very best; and may what we reap be acceptable to You and the University in whose honour we work.

Lord, forgive us our sins, heal and cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, and remain always ready to extend Your mercy and wisdom to all who ask. May You hold us in Your hand throughout this difficult time, that we shall glorify You.

And dear Lord? One more thing. Helping me rescue my GPA from the sewer will be deeply, deeply appreciated.

In Jesus’s most precious and holy name we pray,

Amen.

God bless you all.

 

11/11: Veterans’ Day

Dear heavenly Father, in Whose name and to Whose praise we live and work:

I was just wondering if I could thank You for something that isn’t mentioned in church but resonates with our freedom to worship You still today. It’s just been Veteran’s Day—and dear Father, for these men who sacrifice their freedoms, their health, limbs and lives that we won’t have to, and that the fruits of liberty remain ours to enjoy, I thank You.

To those who have fallen, dear Lord, grant them eternal rest forever. To those who are still with us, and those still fighting as I type this, may You heal their bodies, their hearts and their minds, that more should turn to You without fear or favour, as befits the liberty they battle and bleed for.

To fellow believers; remember what has been done on behalf of our country, of others, and in mind the respect a veteran deserves.