You Are My Hero

I've seen you stand alone and face the fight
When others laid their weapons down
And headed for home
I've seen you face the fire and come out shining like gold,
And I want you to know...
I've seen you lay visions down for someone else
And give your life as a sacrifice, no fanfare around!
I've watched you weather storms that would have left others
drowned,
And this is what I've found:

You are my hero, my knight in shining armor
A warrior of God's grace, standing alone faithfully!
You are my hero, a light that pierces darkness
With love that's not afraid to fight for someone like me,
Encouraging me to stand firm and free!
You are my hero!

I've seen you look down the road and see beyond
The miles and head for truth in faith while bearing a load
I've heard your anguished cries for grace and watched joy
unfold,
And I want you to know:

You are my hero, my knight in shining armor
A warrior of God's grace, standing alone faithfully!
You are my hero, a light that pierces darkness
With love that's not afraid to fight for someone like me,
Encouraging me to stand firm and free!
You are my hero!

I've seen you face death with a deep burning faith
That stirs up the passion in me!
Your heart, like a fire, abounding in grace,
A beacon helping others to see; help set me free

Finishing 2008 and Entering 2009

Back from Bangkok, and I seriously think that I need a holiday for this holiday due to the shopping marathons that I have participated. Nonetheless, it was a great holiday spent with my girlfriend and buddies.

Anyway, coming back to my main focus of this entry, it's 2009! This is surely going to be a year of new things and new expectations. Even as we were praying and worshiping God together back in our hotel room yesterday night, I was reminded of the goodness and faithfulness of God throughout these six years. God then begun to show me about these six years, the things that were added into my life. Indeed they were resounding victories, however something really struck me. I begin to realize that although victories were sweet, but sometimes they will have the effect of blurring our lives, causing us to lose focus or distract us from our first devotion to Jesus.

Year 2009 is not just going to be a year that I am away to study, but it will be a year of coming back to where I first started this walk, it will be a year of going on a holiday with God, quieting my life from distracting noises and a year to learn to see things in the perspective of God.


Deut 8:10-18
"10 When you have eaten your fill, bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 "But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you don't forget the Lord your God and begin to disobey him. 12-13 For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large, and your silver and gold have multiplied, 14 that is the time to watch out that you don't become proud and forget the Lord your God who brought you out of your slavery in the land of Egypt. 15 Beware that you don't forget the God who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with the dangerous snakes and scorpions, where it was so hot and dry. He gave you water from the rock! 16 He fed you with manna in the wilderness (it was a kind of bread unknown before) so that you would become humble and so that your trust in him would grow, and he could do you good. 17 He did it so that you would never feel that it was your own power and might that made you wealthy. 18 Always remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you power to become rich, and he does it to fulfill his promise to your ancestors."

Born of the Spirit

John 3:6 (AMP)

"What is born of [from] the flesh is flesh [of the physical is physical]; and what is born of the Spirit is spirit."

Essential Upgrades

2 Peter 1:5-7 (NLT)

"In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone."

Updates

Well, it seems like I haven't been doing any updates for the past one month. AY0809 Semester 1 is over and the holidays came and now holidays are going to be over this coming Wednesday. Fast! Time slips away without you noticing.

AY0809 Semester 1 was rather exciting with 5 modules plus the time consuming, strength draining Final Year Project 1. I can conclude that though tiring, semester 1 has been rewarding. During this semester, I have gotten closer to some classmates and of course good results. Just on Monday, the results were released and God has done it again, 6As inclusive of my FYP. Even as I compared all my semester results, I saw a trend and the conclusion is, in God it's always from glory to glory.

Two more days and here we go again. There are many things in my mind now, and soon it will be posted here. Til then!

Cheers,
Desmond

Through It All

Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."

Even as I began to ask God to manifest His thoughts towards me, He started leading my imagination to a wonderful image.

In the vision, was a beautiful picture of a dad sending his boy to school. Even as the child entered into the classroom, the dad stood by the windows of the class watching his dear boy by the side, ensuring that he would be fine. To the boy, after parting with his dad at the door of the class, the presence of his dad watching by him could be felt strongly, though not seen.

With this impression, I was led to another thought. This time, I saw myself in several occasions. One was when I was in primary school, where I was so naughty, constantly being punished for giving problems to my teachers and bullying my classmates. Another one was in secondary school, so lazy, not studying all the time. One funny one was me doing all sorts of crazy things for this girl whom I thought I will marry. A depressing one was where I lost all directions in life, wandering all over the place. A joyful one showed the time when I first came to know God, critical in attitude, but touched by His love.

Though all of the scenarios look so diverse, with happy and unhappy ones but the common thing was, my Father was there looking through the window ensuring that I was fine through it all. This time round, I am assured that He will be there too.

Updates

It's been some time since I last blog and I must say that this period is the busiest of all my entire 3 years in Republic Polytechnic. FYP submission is just around the corner and I have been spending the last entire week coding and writing reports til late into the night.

However I must say that I am rather pleased with the accomplishment of my group. For the majority of the school, everyone is doing web applications and if they can shun any project requiring the use of Java they surely will! For my team, we are a little adventurous. We undertook a project that enables users to share images and chat on a peer to peer network. The entire project is Java based and utilizes JXTA for the networking portion and Swing for the GUI portion

The process of developing the application is tough, very tough but it's tremendously enriching! I have definitely enjoyed the fruits of it and I am looking so forward to the day of presentation! I will be back blogging more and I promise more down to earth stuffs. LOL!

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Title-less

Unbounded is Your power, Lord
All things You have accomplished
Those things which appear to be impossible to me
They are very possible for You
The very second I have no strength
It's your love that is perfect
The moment I believe
The miracle is real
Not by might, nor by power
but by Your Spirit, oh God
The moment I believe
The miracle is real

Broadband on Mobile and Essential Softwares for your E61i

Recently, I subscribed to Singtel's broadband on mobile, and it's has been working wonders for me! At just $22.42, I am given a limit of 50 gb to utilize every month (It's really impossible to even use 2 gb on your mobile device). With it, I am now able to surf, IM and check my emails on my E61i all over Singapore. Don't belittle these functions because they surely come in useful and can even help you save up on communication costs if used in a smart way. Some suggestions:-

• MSN Live

With MSN Live on my handphone, chatting with all my online contacts has never been easier. But the amazing thing is not just common instant messaging. Did you know that it can turn your handphone into a 'walkie-talkie'? How I do it, is to send voice clips over and vice versa receive voice clips from the other party that I am communicating with. Although there is a latency of about 10 seconds due to data transfer, but it surely does come in handy when you need to communicate non urgently. I fully utilized this function together with Jason during the last zone camp, when one of us is in Singapore and the other in P.Ubin. In this situation the conventional walkie talkie doesn't work due to the distance, however as MSN Live sends data via network, the distance did not matter at all.

• Twitter

As I shared in one of my previous posts that Twitter is able to send your updates to the devices of the people following you. One great way is really to use it to send free SMS. With Fring, you are able to utilize it just as if you are sending a SMS. Very convenient! However, make sure your counterparts do not reply to the number that sent the 'tweets' as it is an international number.


With just some brainstorming and creativeness, your E61i can become a powerful tool that makes communication more affordable and life more interesting.

Some links that might interest:

1. Singtel Broadband on Mobile
2. Mobile One Broadband
3. Starhub Mobile Data Services
   

E61i

I have been using E61i for about a year and it is still continuing to amaze me with it's amazing capabilities. In the next few posts, I will write about how you can use your E61i to enhance your productivity and tips on using it as well. Stay tune!

Twitter - A Great Way To Stay Connected

Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "tweets" or updates to the Twitter website, where updates are instantaneously posted on to the user's profile page and also delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them via SMS, instant messaging and etc.

Personally, I felt that this service is exceptionally useful especially in groups that constantly need to update members within with new information. Simply by logging on, typing in a 140 character length text and clicking update, anyone who is 'following' you will be notified immediately through the means they have chosen to receive updates. Did I also mention that it is FREE?

Imagine this senario:-

In a cell group of 20 people, everyone subscribe to Twitter and is a follower of the rest in the cell group. If there is a message that needs to be passed on to everybody, going through Twitter saves you 20 SMSes. In a month, this method can easily help you save up to 100s of SMSes. Cool right?

Suggested way to implement: -

1. Get everyone in the group to create an account with the group's name as initials. For e.g. N363_Desmond or MJ_Desmond
2. After the creation of account, start 'following' others in the group.
3. Start sending "Tweets"!

Easy as abc! Technology certainly helps to save time and maximize productivity!

Counting Down - 246 Days

Another 246 days or to be specific, 16th February 2009 will be the day in which I will be embarking on another phase of my education journey. This time round, the difference would not just be in the level of knowledge I am going to receive but mainly the difference in location; Melbourne: 6076 km away from home, from church and from friends.

Having personally been to Australia, I guess that I did not really enjoy both trips there. Probably the main reason, is going there with the Singapore Armed Forces and the destination was some 'ulu' place called Rockhampton. In addition, the lifestyle there did not really excite me. Being a typical Singaporean and City Harvest member, who lives a fast paced life running from place to place and having late nights, the thought of seeing empty streets at around 5pm daily, with shopping centres closing at 4pm except on Thursday 8pm and doing gardening on Sunday certainly is beginning to strike fear within me.

The thought of being away from church, the zone and my cell group is also a thumbs down. I guess that apart from home, they are the people that are constantly on my mind. To calculate, being away for 10 months from February to December, I would probably miss so many big days and major events; Easter, Emerge 2009, etc. :S

However, I guess on the brighter note the chance to do a fast tracked degree from one of the top universities in Australia does not always come around, especially when it is going to help me win back time which I have lost previously. As I look at coming back home during December 2009 and commencing with my career, I am greatly excited! I certainly hope that I can perform as well or even better during my stint in Monash as compared to Republic Polytechnic.

Greater Is He Who Is In You, Than He Who Is In The World

Laminin, a protein in the human body that is vital in making sure the overall body structures hold together. Reminded me that indeed Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world. What a coincidence, anyway a wise fellow once said coincidence is when God choose to remain anonymous.

A Friend In Need, Is A Friend Indeed

People rarely quit simply because of adversity, but rather because of the lack of encouragement during times of adversity.

2 Cor 7:5-6

5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn-conflicts on the outside, fears within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus

GSync

Symbian 60 users, have you ever felt frustrated with the speed of your mobile phone device? Most of the time, the amount of SMS/MMS messages that are stored on our mobile phones actually take up precious memory space and even chalked up lots of processing power. However the issue is that many of these SMS/MMS messages contain important information and we would love to keep them for reference. Well, fret not! GSync by Psiloc is here to save the day!

GSync is an intelligent, convenient and unique way to backup all your SMS/MMS messages. GSync allows you to automatically archive all of your SMS/MMS messages on the Gmail™ account. The SMS/MMS messages appear as e-mails, are marked as read and labelled as SMS/MMS. Messages exchanged with the same people are grouped into threads. It even separates your sent and received messages very cleverly.

An example of a MMS message after being processed by GSync:

However, good things don't come free. The software comes with a 10 day trial period, after which it would cost SGD26.70 to activate it.

(PS: If you are thinking why my gmail interface look so cool, well you can leave me a comment and I will teach you how :D)

Big Bang!

It's time to Build A New Generation!

Baby For Sale On eBay!?!?!

Just read up on this in the news and I thought some people are just ridiculous.

BERLIN - GERMAN police are investigating a couple after they offered their eight-month-old son for sale on internet auction site eBay.

Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach west of Munich, said on Saturday the 23-year-old woman told them it was only a joke.

But he said police were nevertheless continuing their investigation and the baby was put in state custody.

'She says it was a joke,' he said. 'That's not yet clear. Detectives are investigating on suspicion of child trafficking.'

A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: 'Baby - collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.'

The opening bid was 1 euro ($1.57). There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, police said.

The mother was quoted in Bild newspaper saying: 'It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They've taken my son to hospital and I've got to take psychiatric tests next week.' -- REUTERS

Visual To-Do List

As the saying goes, "A picture speaks a thousand words" and having camera phones so easily available, it can be a great idea to have a To-Do list that has its contents represented by photos instead of words. Furthermore, snapping a photo of a task that needs attention takes much less time than penning it down and it makes life much more interesting too, since people are visually oriented.

One way to implement a Visual To-Do List:

1. Create a To-Do folder within your phone.
2. Begin snapping tasks that need to be done (Packing your desk, an uncompleted project, toothpaste that is running out, etc).
3. Upon every snap, transfer it to the To-Do folder.
4. Have a look at the To-Do folder from time to time to ensure that tasks are completed.
5. Upon completion of every task, delete the photo.

Simple as that. This idea is not unique as there are people using it already. Do go try it and let me know if it works for you.

Being 'Right' and 'Wrong'

Peter came from a family where there was much conflicts and quarreling. Because of it, he was very troubled and tried various ways to try to solve this problem within his family. However, there was no result.

On the other hand, Peter have a friend, named Ryan. Ryan's family hardly quarrel and were always very understanding towards each other. Thus Peter decided to seek the advice of Ryan and he asked, " Ryan, tell me what is the secret behind your family? As compared to many others, you guys never seem to have much conflicts and would always seek to put yourselves in each other shoes. How did you all do it?" Ryan answered, "It is very simple. It is because your family possessed all the right attitudes while mine having all the wrong ones."

Upon hearing the reply, Peter got upset as he thought Ryan was trying to be sarcastic. Ryan quickly explained himself, "Don't get me wrong, I was not trying to be sarcastic. Let me give you an example. If there was a glass of water placed on the table by my wife and I accidentally spill it, I would quickly go to my wife and tell her that it was my fault and I am the person in the wrong. Upon hearing my apologies, my wife would also apologize immediately stating that she is in the wrong for placing the glass of water at a place where it was not easily seen thus causing the spillage. We have all the 'wrong' attitudes because we chose to admit our mistakes. However in your family, the problem lies in that everyone always thinks that they are 'right'. None of you would want to give in and apologize when something goes wrong. That is why there are always so many conflicts."

Bobby Lee Waihong would always say in Hokkien, "Saying sorry would not cause you to lose a part of your flesh...". True!

Communication

Communication is essential in every relationship. When one refuses to communicate, it is indirectly bringing death to that relationship.

An interesting story about relationships that lacked communication:

A man was elected to be a Minster of Parliament and was to give a speech before his constituency. Thus he spent a great deal of time in preparation for his speech. The faithful day came for the minister to deliver his speech and his entire family was there to support him.

That very night before the minister's wife fell asleep, she began to think in her mind,"Well, today my husband gave a great speech and the entire audience was greatly motivated. However something seems to be wrong... What could it be? Ahhh! I know, he was pulling up his trousers all the time! His trousers must be too long for him!". She turned and look at the minister and realized that he was deeply asleep. Thus she decided that she will go and alter the trousers and not wake him up. The minister's wife took the trousers and began to cut off a portion of it. After which, she placed the trousers back to where she took it and went to bed.

At about 2am in the morning, the minister's daughter woke up. She started thinking, "Dad gave a wonderful speech today, but I just feel that something seems wrong. What could it be? Ahhhh! I know, I know! His trousers was too long for him! I remembered seeing him constantly pulling it up. I better do something about it." The daughter looked into her parents' room and realized that both her father and mother were asleep. She decided not to wake them up, she took the trousers and went ahead to alter it. With it, she cut off a portion and placed the trousers back. After which she went to bed.

At 4am, the minister woke up from his sleep. As he had to deliver another speech at 8am, the minister began to evaluate how he had performed the day before. He thought to himself, "Yesterday, I gave a good speech. The audience were excited and greatly motivated. But, something seems to be wrong. What could it be? Yes! I was pulling up my trousers constantly. It was too long for me! I better do something with it!". He looked at his wife and daughter and realized that they were fast asleep, thus the minister decided not to disrupt their rest. He took the trousers and cut off a portion of it and place it back to where it was originally placed.

At 6.30am, the entire family woke up and the minister began to dress up to go for his speech. By now, he realized that his trousers has become a pair of bermudas! However as time was crucial, there was no time for him to get a new pair, he went ahead with it. At 8am, the minister started delivering his speech and told the audience, "You must be thinking that I look funny, wearing a pair of ultra short trousers to give a speech.". He began to tell them what had happened throughout the night and he commented, "My family loves each other alot, however because we failed to communicate, this happened.".


Although this story is not a true one, but it does indeed reflect many of our relationships. We often love and care for the people around us, but we fail to communicate or express it out. Eventually, it led to many funny happenings and even misunderstandings. All these can be avoided, if only communication take place.

Part of loving is to communicate and to express it out. Start communicating today! :)