It is that feeling again.

Today is the first day of Lunar New Year, though me and my family did not do much. Pretty much sat around at home, sleeping, watching DVD's, hog the computer. Yet today I woke up feeling wretched and weak. Turns out I have gastric, which is painful, diarrhoea and slight bit of fever. Sick on the first day of CNY. Bugger.

Had some time to kill, so I went and read other people's blog. It hit me how time flies, how things can change in such a short time. How people change. It is inevitable. 2008 flew past and with it, the death of my old self. Then again I read Kim's blog. This particular sentence struck me:

What would you say if God asked you whether your life is any different from a non-Christian?

Personally, I have no answer to that. I realised I feel distant from Him. Why do I only pray when I was back at college? Why do sometimes I feel joy, yet at other times feel like my life is not any different when this whole thing have not happened? I thought I had found my purpose, but truthfully, I do not even know what that purpose is. To help others? To dedicate myself into servitude, serving a cause higher than my own? To be committed to a charitable foundation, then start my own once I have enough funds and volunteers to run it? I even seriously considered to specialise in accident and emergency so that I might go to any war-torn places and help all that I can.

Such idiocy. Hypocrisy can really make you feel ashamed of yourself. I thought to myself, is that what you really wanted? I do not even know how my future would turn out to be. I have some fuzzy images but they do not help much. Friends who are faithful would say: "Turn to God." Yet I do not even know how to do that. Pray? Check. Read the Bible daily? Check. Then what?

People say if you know a lot about Christianity, yet do not have a personal relationship with God, then you are not a Christian. For me, I think I have no knowledge about the faith, nor do I think I have any personal relationship with Him. It is terribly agonising and confusing, sometimes.


Alas, what I could do, ironically, is pray.

Enough talk about religion, then. I find it soul-sapping sometimes.


On the other hand, I went to read someone's blog. I seriously felt like banging my head on the wall and cutting my arm and inflicting all sorts of pain onto myself. I should not have done it. That particular sentence stabbed my heart, and there was only a murmur in my heart:

It is all your fault. You deserve to feel this way.

To hurt someone when BOTH of you were not ready for it. I seriously made a vow to stay off these sort of issues from now on. Let God decide.

I procrastinate, a lot.

Yes, I admit I am no robot. I decide to do one thing. Whether that thing gets done or not is another matter.

Since the start of the holiday, I actually wanted to revise on Chemistry and Biology. I set big plans and deadlines for myself. I planned to go through everything, at least once. I know that I am far behind my classmates.

Procrastination prevails. I simply do not have the will to force myself to study. There had been too many distractions. I am currently staying at my sister’s apartment at Petaling Jaya, by the way. So came the inevitable shopping sprees, morning breakfast, dinner at some fancy bistro - the list goes on. I never had the time to properly sit down and focus. Not that I had time nor the proper place to park my bum anyway.

To think that close to 10 days of supposedly fruitful break was wasted, just like that. Thrown down the drain like some gooey mixture with the stench of dead mice. Sometimes, I blast myself in my mind, the disciplined, prim and proper side of me giving the lazy, laid-back other a good, harsh telling.

“There you go again, wasting all your time, doing unproductive things!”

“Relax, dude, we still got time.”

“TIME?? Mid semester exam is coming. In two weeks you will regret this! Your friends have been grinding their bloody noses off books, while you have been loafing around, rotting and decaying!”

“Pfft.”

Yes, sometimes, all I could manage was a pathetic ‘pfft’ at the whole mind-boggling reality. The painful, cold and merciless reality that I am hopelessly behind schedule and yet could do nothing about it. I understood Yu Xin’s unbearable stress during the Advanced Subsidiary examination not too long ago. I felt the way she felt, though on a more manageable level. I simply restrained, with a considerable amount of strength, myself from collapsing emotionally and bursting out like a wretched filthy water balloon.

Yuck.

Yet, all I could manage was a ‘pfft’. Or a ‘meh’. For I, being ever the lowly, undeserving and overrated student that I am, simply could not believe the impossible odds.

Looking back, somehow I could manage all that. Managed to pass last year’s mid semester and Pre-AS without being bruised much. Higher power at work here, I would sometimes think. Truth is, there had been times when something seemed so doomed to failure and cannot be salvaged, and yet it turned out better than what I ever dared to imagine.

Conclusion is, even when I feel so helpless, like being on a tiny rickety boat on a raging sea in the midst of a ferocious storm, I somehow can be the lone sailor who whistles happily, tending to the riggings and checking the sails while holding on to dear life. Yes, Ian the worry-free sailor. Sometimes it would become an oxymoron. I could have won The Best Oxymoron Award for it.

Just kidding, there is no such award. If there is, do inform me.

p.s. this post can also be found at my other blog - www.ianbong.net

p.s.s please visit the other site if you can afford to. Thanks for your support!

Important changes.. and a whole lot of theology.

I would like to announce that I decided to close this blog to the public. I have invited only a select few and given them access to this blog. If you have been invited, know that you have exceptional importance in my heart.

The reason I close the blog to the public should be very apparent - I need privacy. Privacy is a commodity few would give up. I thought that with fame, privacy needs to be sacrificed. Fame in the sense that people know you and it is only natural that they come to your blog (this sounds so vain, but I have had strangers dropping by). Well, regretfully, that has brought me countless troubles. From hate mails after getting JPA scholarship to insults from unknown, anonymous people, I endured it all. The last straw came when I posted the last entry.

My testimony sparked fury from my family such that I have not known before. It was quite daunting to face them. My heart ached when my father called me and gave me an earful. He forbade, I repeat, FORBADE me from being a Christian. My sister tried to talk me out of it. My mother, though she did not say it out loud, expressed her disapproval through her tone (she is excellent at that). The only person liberal enough to respect my decision was my brother, although he was a bit disappointed too. This was since two days ago. Little would I know that God has planned everything out.

Now, most people would prefer celebrating the New Year's Eve with friends or family at a countdown festival. Even my fellow friends at KTT spent time together at the famous Star Walk. For me, I celebrated my countdown at the most unlikely place - a Buddhism prayer mass. My siblings brought me there. Now I know why my mother was so adamant about me coming to KL for the four-day holiday.

See where I am getting to?

They wanted to change my mind. Knowing them, my parents and sister would probably stop at nothing to get me to change my mind. I assumed so, yet it was not so. Thankfully.

Such hostility towards Christian faith. Such unmerciful, uncompromising intolerance. From my own family. Could you even imagine the pain it causes? I had been waging a silent protest for two days. I only talked when need arises, to the point my sister doubt that I was having a severe bout of headache. We had dinner, and then came the tipping point: we debated, we argued, and she almost cried while I held my stand. I refused to budge.

When we got back, I was left to go back to her apartment alone with her housemate while she left to cool her mind. I prayed vehemently, seeing that if this crisis proved impossible, the rifts between me and my family would grow to such an gargantuan scale. I plead desperately to Him because I needed a way to tell my parents.

Then, as always, He knew best. As amazing as it sounds, as insurmountable the odds seemed, it was settled in an amicable way. I called my mother and talked to her sincerely, such that I never had before. We shared our views, she telling why she opposed the idea. I told her my side of the story. I told her my testimony myself, from my own heart, even though my whole family had somehow read my blog before this. I tried to reason with her, and I think it somehow worked.

Turns out, the whole problem with them objecting was their bad experience with Christians. During their university days, their Christian acquaintance showed some attitude and conducted themselves in a manner less than what true Christian faith would approve. Most recently, my grandmother passed away and some of my cousins, being Christians, did not even turn up. My mother told of how one of my cousin refused to pay last respects by way of kneeling and refused to hold the joss stick. Some of them did not even come back for the remainder of the funeral ritual. She told of how my whole generation, that being those who are somehow related to my grandmother, including my uncles, granduncles, aunts and 2nd or even 3rd cousins, personal friends and relatives of my grandfather's side saw how my Christian cousins behaved. They were disappointed and angry at such disrespectful manner. To think one of my Christian cousins would hold his wedding, right after 1 or 2 weeks after the funeral!

I do not know much about Christian faith forbidding the joss stick and kneeling and such, but for me, personally I think that tradition and belief are two totally different domains. Being a Christian does not mean I cannot hold the incense for the sake of respect for the ancestors and elders. It does not mean I cannot go to the temple anymore, though of course I would not kneel before the deities (that would be wrong). Yet it does not mean I cannot go, because it is a cultural practice. It does not mean narrowing and limiting your world to such a point that all other tradition and culture becomes demonic and Satanic. Why the intolerance? My parents fear the worst: that I would become a fanatic, a mindless self-proclaimed faithful believer who would forget his own roots and Chinese upbringing.

After what seemed like an eternity of reasoning, we came to conclude that what I believe in is different from what my roots are. I could practically believe in whatever I want, so long as I do not forget my roots and do not abandon my family traditions. In my opinion, I could practise both without affecting my faith in the Lord. On official matters, I would write 'agama Buddha' as my official religion but in effect, I am a Christian at heart. Does it matter? We all proclaim our faith to the one true God, yet in the process, rejecting all others. Where is the tolerance? Where is the kindness? Where is the understanding? Does not the commandment, Love Thy Neighbour hold? One Church, One Faith? It is poppycock for all I know. Countless branches of Christianity see to that. Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anglican, 7th Day Adventist, Pentecostal, Evangelical. The list goes on. Compared to Buddhism, we Christians should be ashamed of ourselves before we start condemning other faiths.

Therefore, my family and I came to a precarious compromise - I should not forsake my family bonds, traditions, culture and ancestral Chinese upbringing, much as they should not forbid me from believing in Jesus. I think that balancing both is the key. Practically, culture and belief really are worlds apart, but it would be pointless to try to let one be the priority and let it dictate how one lives life. If I follow Christ to the point of abandoning my family roots, what good is that? I would be as good to burn in Hell than to proclaim myself righteous. If holding incense and kneeling to pay respects to elders grants one a place in Hell, then I personally think that would be a matter between God and me.

I might be wrong and for all I know, I am almost 100% wrong in my thinking, yet, I see no other way. I chose to believe in God. Were it not for my belief, none of this would have happened. So, in order to believe in Him, I have to compromise by doing things supposedly disallowed in the Holy Bible. Ironic, I know. It becomes a vicious endless cycle where none would gain the upper hand and neither side would be right.

Thus, after much thought, I decided that it is best for me to close this blog to the public and open another one. It all started because of the blog entry. I realised how important privacy is, especially when it comes to spiritual matters. If this blog were to be private, I have to open another one to display the other side of me. In effect, I would maintain two seperate blogs - one for private musings, the other for 'official' updates. It is the best solution, in my opinion. Although it is not free (the domain name and hosting for my new one is not free, mind you), I guess it is worth it.

So, effective today (ironically, today is 1st of January 2009), The Grey Haven goes private. Ian's Journey of Life goes online. I would post my thoughts, my spiritual journeys and my private opinions here, whereas the other would be for my usual updates.

My new blog is at www.ianbong.net . You are most welcome to go there, though I must add that it is not really complete yet. Wordpress is so different from Blogspot system, but it is fun. I had to build everything from scratch. Lucky for me, I had some experience with it so it was not all that difficult.

Anyway, thank you for listening to my ramblings. Currently I only invited 15 people to this blog, so count yourselves lucky because you are included in my private, inner circle of close friends.

... Okay take that back. I was just joking. Lolz.

On a more serious note.. I do appreciate you all. Thank you =)