Valentines Day

     Happy Valentines Day to all the couples arond the world. May you cherish the love that you now have. And to those who are still single, just tag along...
      Well, this may be the first year I didn't receive any angpow during Chinese New Year, but it's also the first time receiving so much chocolate (or is it the first time) on Valentines Day      

      Strangely in Korea, most of the people who gives chocolates on Valentines Day are the females. Heard that there is another day when it's the guys turn to give away chocolate instead, but not so sure when it is. will update on it. 

      The pictures show all the chocs that I received, except the one that my piano teacher gave to me. Didn't cross my mind to take a photo of it before digesting it with my enzymes. Anyway, it was a mini ice-cream shape chocolate.

      All the ones listed are given by my friends, except the packet in the middle (ate a few from it) which was given by the church. And ya, talking about church, I  advanced from the »õ°¡Á· (New family Group) and am currently attending the normal group. Their discussion wasn't that diffucult to understand, at least compared to the sermon. Anyway will give more deatail about it next week. 

Chinese New Year

Summary of my first Chinese New Year being away from my beloved family.

New Year Eve
Went for a movie entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Jim Carrey with 2 of my church members in the morning. This is my 3rd time watching a movie in a cineplex after coming to Korea.
Went out with 3 other friends accompanying 2 guy from Malaysia. Brought them for skating at City Hall and after that to Myeongdong and tried out the squid burger at Lotteria.
Dropped by at Home Plus on my way back to buy my new year's clothes. After shopping for half an hour, got a pair of jeans and a shirt. Broke my record by buying the least new year clothes since my birth(?).
Lepak at a cyber cafe having Starcraft tournament with my friends till 2 in the morning then overnight at friend's house.

Da Nian Chu Yi (1st Day of Chinese New Year)
Woke up at ten and came back home.
The four Chinese girls came to visit and we chit chatted till late afternoon before watching a ghost story (The Grudge?) on my friend's computer.
Went to the girl's place at Gocheok for a combined Chinese New Year and Awal Muharram (Islamic New year) celebration.
Made a few calls back to Malaysia to give my friends some surprise^^
Went again to cyber cafe and came back at 1am.

Da Nian Chu Er (2nd Day of Chinese New Year)
Stayed at home all morning, then played a round of Generals before watching Spy Kids 2(dubbed into Korean) on the TV.
Went to the girls place in Daerim at 5pm. Their place have more of a Chinese New Year "flavor", mainly due to the cookies and keropok sent all the way from Malaysia.
Played cards, ate and talked till 10pm before I came back.

Thus ends my 3 days of holidays and New Year celebration. Well, hopefully it'll be better next year.... ",

"See You In Heaven"

Imagine these words coming out of a 14year old boy!
And I thought I was the only one who would use such a phrase...

On my way back from class last week, I met these bunch of people who were giving out leaflets about some gathering for Chinese during Chinese New Year at a Chinese church.
The first of the gathering was on Sunday, and those who are interested were to gather in front of the Language Education Institute at 5pm.
At first I planned to go, but then when I got back home from 고척교회(Gocheok Church, the church I'm currently attending), it was already 4pm.So I thought of going out to get my New Year's clothes instead.
Thus I called up a girl who stays near my house whether they want to go with me. But to my surprise, they were actually planning to go to the gathering. So eventually the 5 girls and I went to LEI.

When we reached there, they were not a single soul in sight. We thought we were tricked. Moreover when I called one of the phone numbers provided, the person had no idea of what I was talking about!
In the end, the girls decided to accompany me to buy my clothes.
But just as we were walking out, there came the guy whom we met last week. Seems that it's God's will that we should be there after all^^

BUT, to our surprise, the place that we were heading to was actually in Incheon! Well, guess I should have expected it, after all that's where the only China Town in Korea is located.
Upon our arrival, we noticed that it was actually some sort of Evangelical event, trying to minister to those Chinese who are working here in Seoul.
However, we didn't tell them that 2 out of the 6 of us are actually Christian, and they don't seem to expect Christians coming out of Malaysia...

To cut the story short, we had a good time fellowshipping with them the first night, except 2 of my friends, one who didn't really understand what was being said and another who seemed to be offended by the message.
But what caught my attention most was the pair of twins who were present there. They're Korean Chinese who went to study in china last year and back for New Year gathering.
And it was due to their persuasion that the four of us went again the following night.

On the second night before dinner, I was talking to one of the twins, saying that we wouldn't be able to come on the last two days as we have other things planned.
And again he came up with the question that he pounded us with the previous night "What happens if you die tomorrow night? Where would you be going?" Imagine, a 14year old child!
But in reply I said that I'll be in heaven if I were to die. And he asked "And how can you be sure of that?"
So I said,"Because I believe that Christ died for me and took away all my sins."
And my, he was so shocked, saying to himself " hey! He answered correctly!" (I had the feeling I was bullying a small kid:P)

And after confirming it several times, he was so shocked and happy, but wanting to make sure of my salvation, he dragged me to few of the adults, but who seemed to think it's too offending asking me directly, except his dad....
But I was really touched and encourage seeing him. Though we know that heaven rejoices over a sinner who's save, it was the first time I see someone being so happy about my salvation.
And I was encourage seeing someone so young yet so passionate about God and the salvation of others.

In the end when we were about to come back, he came up to me and "See you in heaven."
My I was shocked! But indeed very happy^^

Visiting Minister

Was at and Indian restaurant, Ashoka Restaurant, located in Itaewon's Hamilton Hotel this evening.

Our Malaysia's Menteri Perdagangan Dalam Negeri dan Hal Ehwal Pengguna, Datuk Shafie Apdalis in Seoul.
As such, the Malaysia Embassy organised a meeting between the minister and student. Due to the number of seats available, only 100 students were chosen, and I was one of the lucky ones.

The meeting was supposed to start at 4pm, but as usual he and his wife were late for about half an hour.They just came right from shopping.

In his speech, he spoke about the recent tsunami issues, that the department donated money to the MERCY team in Aceh. He said that as Indonesia is our close neighbor and that Aceh was one of the main factor that our country diidn't suffer much the tsunami caused by an 8km wide crack on the bottom of the sea. Unfortunate for Aceh but fortunate for us because if Aceh was not in the way the states of Kedah and Pinang would have suffered much etcetra etcetra.
Followed by his speech was the normal questioning session. Among some of the questions were consumer's right, doing business as a student and women's role in our country's economy and politics.

All in all it lasted an hour and ten minutes.

And after that was DINNER. Great food. I liked the fruit custard best.
Ate till our heart's content^^

Grandma's Care

I was coming back from class on Thursday when I saw my neighbor who stays on top of us. And as usual, I greeted her.
So she was like asking me, what panchan ( Korean side dishes like radish, kimchi, spinach, bean sprout, ikan bilis) do we usually eat at home. And I told her that we usually just have one or two main dish without any.
So she says she'll bring us some kimchi and cuttlefish later on.

And when she arrived at our home, she looked around and told us that the way we handle our garbage is wrong should separate the bottles, paper and plastic. And so she began to dug out our garbage one by one and put in into several plastic bags.
Then she opened our fridge and saw that it was dirty, and asked us to clean it, saying that we'll fall sick easily with a dirty fridge. She even kindly "adviced" us how to arrange the items in the fridge.
And finally, seeing that we have barely anything in our fridge to cook, she asked us what do we usually eat? And proceeded to make some kimchi stew with the kimchi that she just brought for us. She even returned to her home and brought some tofu and gave it to us^^

End of Starvation : )

Finally, after bearing for a few weeks we can come out of our starvation :)

Got out allowance today, just when I have no more than RM 3 to spare. Praise be to God.
But we thought we would be getting our January and February allowances at one go, but it seems that February's allowance will come in much later....
Anyway, at least now I don't have to depend on pineapple porridge to survive and six growing youths don't have to share a can of sardine.

Coincidentally, today's my piano teacher's birthday. Having no present prepared in advance and no money to spare, I cracked my head and finally had a great idea of changing a card I made some time ago into a birthday card.

After our lesson, she brought us for dinner. We had some sort of fish stew and kimchi beef stew. And my, after not being able to eat such a decent meal for a week, I wallop up 3 person's portion.

Anyway, it's good to be able to live a normal life again^^

Starvation

Thanks to our scholarship sponsor, JPA, we have the rare chance to experience what starvation is.

We thought that we would receive our January allowance around 18 of January, so we budgeted just enough with hardly any to spare.
BUT according to the information I just received, we'll be getting our January's allowance around the first week of February.

So my housemates and I had the experience of eating oiless fried rice, plain porridge, pineapple porridge, plain rice with chicken-less curry and much more.....

Thanks to that and the cold weather these few days, I'm feeling sick all around. Malnutrition. I'm so tired I slept for 12 hours today and am feeling tired even right now....

If the money doesn't come any sooner I might become a skeleton lying beside the main road....

Salt vs Sea Water

A way to look at things:

Which is saltier: salt or sea water?

Which ever your answer may be, the point here is that some sea water can taste so salty that we chock at it.
But the truth is, even the saltiest Dead Sea contains no more than 8% of Sodium Chloride(table salt).
Such a small amount of salt when dissolved in sea water can produce such amazing result!

We as Christians are the salt of this world. Shouldn't we be able to produce great impact towards the society around us?
Yet according to this, the world percentage of Christian is dropping.....

Wasted Time

I used to like holidays a lot, but now I think that holidays are more of a life wasting than fun thing.

I'm coming to the end of my week-long holiday. I actually had a lot planned before the holidays: revising my Level 2 Korean, doing some preparation for Level 3, finish Odyssey by Homer, wake up early and exercise at the park near the place I'm staying....
But in the end I only manage to learn some basic typing...with a hopeless speed of 60+ per minute. I can type faster using just two fingers.

One week...so much that I could have accomplished....

Incheon: Korea Open Badminton Championships & China Town

Went to Incheon to watch the Daekyo Noonnoppi Korea Open Badminton Open Championships Incheon 2005.
There were all in all about 30 students who went. I, for one, am not so keen about badminton, but just to give support to our own Malaysian players, which we were not able to wait till their turn to show up.
Anyway, we met a Malaysian couch who's couching the Korean national team. He told us that most of the interesting matches with Malaysian players will be on Thursday and asked us to come back again on Thursday.
Still haven't made up my mind whether as to go or not this Thursday, but we'll see.....

So about 3pm, we decided to go to the beach, since we were already at Incheon. The idea was quite tempting, as none of us have been to the sea since our arrival in Korea.
As one of the tourist guide book told us that we could reach the sea at the next station, which is the second last station before Incheon station, we decided to save 800won and walk there instead.
So off we went, and the whole journey to the sea actually took us more than 2 hours, because there were no beach or sea at Tong Incheon station and we had to walk further down to Incheon station.
The view at the seaside was...erm....not bad, BUT the air pollution there is horrible. You can literally fell the dust sticking on your face.
We took a walk around, then went back to China Town, the only China Town in the whole of Korea.
As it was near dinner time, we decided to have our meals there. While the others wanted to try the Ajumma restaurant, those typical Korean food stall,my friend Weng Joe and I insisted that we try some Chinese food since we were in China Town.
So after much debate the rest gave in and we went to a Chinese restaurant. At first we had only Jajang Noodle in mind, which is about 2000won. But after entering the restaurant and looking at the menu, we ordered set dishes for 6-7 people, which cost about 10.000won per head.
And so the 12 of us Chinese celebrated our Chinese New Year's Eve dinner way in advance^^