who dies first?

The health gap between men and women widens every year. Men die sooner. Each of the 15 leading causes of death is more likely to kill them. Men have growing rates of psychological problems. Men are more likely to die as crime victims. Men shun doctors when they are sick and avoid checkups when they are well.

 

Are men going extinct? That’s the provocative question posed by the First World Congress on Men’s Health, being held this week in Vienna, Austria.

 

And yes, men’s famous unwillingness to grapple with their emotions plays a role.

“Often for both physical issues and emotional issues, men have trouble dealing with their emotions,” says Kasson, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “I don’t go along with all the men-are-from-Mars-women- are-from-Venus stuff, but it is true, by and large, that men find it difficult to get in touch with their own emotions and confide in others. There is this problem with admitting the need for help and seeking help — it isn’t seen as manly.”

“Men want to be better men,” Bonhomme says. “We have to reverse the paradigm. Men see going to a doctor now to be admitting some kind of weakness or personal failure. Instead, they should see it as an ally of masculinity, something that can help you manage their independence, their vigor, and their functionality. And we need to stop shaming men and boys to always have to deny their pain.”

 

So moral of story? 

Tell me about your feelings!!!!!!!!

 

I wonder what are Your thoughts?

Hey you, I sat beside you and laid my hand across your cheek. Did you know I’ve been here the whole night? You were quivering in your sleep. What a nightmare I had to help erase from your memory! You are comfortable now. Will you get up? It’s time to watch the sunrise I’ve painted for you. You are wondering about my thoughts. If only you know that I’m waiting for  you to quickly arise and feel the air. For I’ve freshened up the earth for your arrival to daylight, I’ve made the sky a different shade of blue. I hoped all of these made you feel special. I guess I’ll just wait. Although I know what you’re doing and what you are thinking I like to be near. Who likes to watch their loved ones from a distance? I don’t. That’s what I feel. You are asking when I feel happy. When I see you take a slow walk and trail your fingers along the leaves and flowers that I’ve sewn with the gentlest colours of a coming spring, it makes me smile. When I feel the kindness together with you as you smile at a bubbling child or scratch a purring kitten’s neck, there I felt at ease when you are at peace. You wonder when I’m sad. And my omniscience being blazed up with a dull discontent and shaky grief as I gather memories of you in my big god hands.

blast from the past!

Was doing a random google and chanced upon this!!!!!!!!! (NOT ATTACHING THE LINK)

Was on some article about an academic bursary I received from church. …This was a small write up they did on each of the awardees!

 

 

Saturday 19 June 2004

(insert big ugly picture of me (i)before braces (ii)before i discovered the magik of hair conditioner) 

(MY FULL NAME) is currently studying 1^st Year in Catholic Junior College. She’s from our Youth Group, YNEB3, serving as a functioning UL taking care of a pioneering group in the North East group. She also serves in the Creative Arts Front/ Drama (Acting) ministry.

After JC she hopes to study law or political science at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her future dream is to have a chance to study theatre arts aside from the main major, and to be able to have the opportunity to script-write, cast and direct a movie or play in her lifetime!

 

Ah, me when I was 17!!!  Man, how far have I veeered from what I wanted to do since then. Never did end up in NUS. Ended up taking the Mass Communications route instead. But well, I did end up doing Political Science! Even if it meant routing an entire circle before I got here…  And as for creative arts… and scriptwriting or directing a movie/play in my life time……. Woah, something that has almost become otherworldly! :/ 

Ahhh… Wish I hadn’t deleted my old blogs. Would have been interested to track back on my youth and peer into my past hopes, dreams, blah blah blah. It’s insane how different we become when we grow up… And it hasn’t even been that long! Just..5 years. Wow. 

 

redefinitions

I keep thinking about this. I want to do something and I always want to do it right. I want it to be the best. I want my assignment to be perfect when I hand it up to my teacher. I want my projects to be spotless, flawless. If it’s not, I don’t want my name on it. I’d rather not have anything to do with it. I want it to be right. I want it to be perfect. If not, I’m done. I’m out of here (cue dramatic spinning, hair flippin’ and walking towards the door). I don’t wanna do it anymore (cue melodramatic sound effect) . You know, I’m one of those. 

God is the God who uses our imperfections. He is the God who sits with the tax collectors and who associates with the prostitutes and sinners. He didn’t come down for the perfect. He came down for the imperfect. It wrecks my definitions. An idea so life-giving, yet I entrap myself so often with this. 

I think, has God been trying to use my imperfections. Has He been waiting all along to use me but I’ve just been holding on so tightly to these things and trying to ‘perfect’ things that can never be, that I end up missing up on letting His glory be shown in my weaknesses? Have I nullified the work He would have done just because I refuse to hand up ‘imperfection’, just because I don’t wanna be associated with anything that would maim my name? Because it’s my name that’s on the line. Because it’s my capacity. Because it’s my work. It’s what’s mine’s that’s on the plate. Is that what? It’s that why we walk away when we think we can’t do it. It’s that why we hold back? It’s that why it takes a lifetime of mulling and rumination before … …. 

I had such a great time during presbytery last saturday. It was so wonderful to hear words of encouragement spoken over so many people I love and have prayed so hard for. And in the midst of it, I feel extremely humbled. KNowing that God has revealed the heart of some of these young men and women in my family who are just so… good, and who just have so much in store, and who just have so much to give. 

I had to admit at the back of my head, I wondered if I’m any less because I didn’t get any. I know it’s not. But I do wonder if I’m any less important, or any less good. Or maybe because I don’t have that much in store, or that much to give..

I think there’s something bigger and more important to learn from this, for me at least. I think things might seem all murky and undefined for me. My future might not seem so bright, nor my path any much more defined. My achievements may not be grand, nor may my heart be made of gold like those I know, but if this, by being small, or by converging into the fundamentals of a silent simplicity, if I had to renounce my definitions of greatness, of good, and renounce my dreams and plans, my visualisations and imagination of that life I’d have, even if it’s a life I”d have with you, if I’d have to renounce my definitions and take on a new one, a not so big one, a small one, but a definition that’s yours, that’s yours for me, and if that’s what’d make me your kind of girl, then ok, I will be still and quiet, I will give this life to You. I don’t have to win. I don’t have to be big. But I will surrender. I’ll let You redefine me. I’ll let you define me, if that’s what makes me your type of girl. I will. I will give me to You. 

 

 

same incident, different media

…. we derailed NGO visits?! 

 

Two interesting articles on a same incident by done by different media. Worth the read, I think. 

because men is created in the image of God…

 

Epitome of dreaminess!

……hmm, what do you think?

raising my voice

i know it’s supposed to be exams time and I’m supposed to be studying(!!!!) but I cant hlep but just read everything and anything that’s UNRELATED to my studies!!! sometimes I wish I can be back at singapore with my mugger friends who’d motivate me to study all night with them. Always remember those days where I crash at serangoon macdonalds till past midnight and Changi Airport…Ooooh. Now there’s anyone who’s up at night! How to be motivated…. 

Anyway I was feeling pensive last night. I chose a bad bedtime story to read to sleep to. Am on now to ‘Raising My Voice’ by Malalai Joya, the extraordinary story of an Afghan woman who dares to speak out. She’s the youngest MP in Afghanistan, and a true activist who grew up during Soviet invasion in Afghan, spent most of her youth in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan and returned thereafter to work as a women’s rights activist and run underground classes for girls in defiance of the ruling Taliban, risking torture and execution if she’d been caught. She made world headlines when she spoke out against crimes of the warlords, escaped 5 attempted assassinations and move from house to house every other night with a host of guards to think ahead of her assailants.  Despite it all she continues to represent the voiceless, the oppressed, victims and innocents of Afghanistan’s endless cycle of violence.

I think of young women all over the world like that who were not raised or blessed with the most flawless or opportunistic of circumstances but who still chose to fight and rise above what they had to embody the virtues of truth, justice, freedom. I think of myself and my privileges in this relatively democratic society, the fact that I had the freedom to believe and not be persecuted, that I dont have to fight the right to education because of my gender and the fortunate contexts of which I am in, that I could have been born in a time of war, or be smacked geographically in the middle of civil strife. The odds of where I could be positioned in this world is incalculable such is the will of God and His call for where we need to be and go. I find myself feeling really awful about my petty concerns worries and definitions of misfortune or poverty. I could go on and on about the stories I read and how else I feel but I think that would be unnecessary. I think it would remain something that continues to stir my heart.

I was talking to a good friend about how things change and even looking back 5 years back on our life is huge. Yes you know who you are, friend. I thought about my worries and some of the deepest concerns and conversations that I’ve had with people whom I’ve respected and held great regard for and for some reason I can never imagine ever bringing up the renewed visions in my heart or expect some of my friends to feel the same way about some things that I’ve began to start feeling for now. It feels like we’ve been blown apart so much and that I’ve been so spiraled over to a different side by different revelations over the years. It pains my heart that I can’t have a deep felt conversation with my parents about these things, misfortunes around the world, how to better help the world, civil strife, violence, and my perspective on making life count, without them drawing me back to tight confuscious values on filial piety, doing my duty as a daughter and remembering my roots and that the world should worry for themselves but we should fulfill our duty to our parents. It’s all good but sometimes I believe they can all exist together but I am vexed when I’m told that I’m wrong and sometimes even be dismissed by incredulity or see that crease of worry on my parent’s face when they caught the whiff that I may not be that daughter who’d take a nice stable 9-5 clerical job at a local firm , come home for dinner every night and be there by their side 24-7. it’s also mirthful, my discussions on economy, investments, life plans and directions with my older cousins in the family and how they are so hard pressed on fidning that first foudnation of stability and holding on to it as tightly as I could. The pressing encouragement for me to just ‘be contented as long as I get any job because the economy is so bad’, and telling me that ‘job security is for the idealistic’, becuase the Gen Y are too pampered and we should keep pressing on in discipline and duty in whatever work we do. I think they are all good. I love my family for constantly inspiring me with their spirit of perseverance, diligence and sense of duty and honor. But can they not all exist side by side? 

It sucks that I’m the youngest in my family tree and the only one born in the late 80s! Should explain why? :/

 

Anyway check this out! You gotta try this. 

be brave

 

to break that cycle of resentment, of emptiness, of nothingness. 

to break that cycle of poverty – invest in your impoverished soul, triumph the generational sins, shoot at the enemies of defeat, disappointment and discouragements. 

I always believe that if you want radical change, you need to do radical things. And I am also a firm believer of you can do anything you want as long as you work as hard as you want it. I believe nothing is impossible. It is only impossible if you resent the pains of toiling or  look down upon hard work. 

 

Some habits are hard to break. Some virtues take time to acquire. Some good things take time to develop. But if I’ve wasted some years, if I’ve let loose on some grand subsets of epochs – would I bend triply hard to make up for what I’ve missed, to win back what I’ve lost, and to bleed now for the falls I had refused to stand up from? 

I gotta be brave and take that leap.

rough around the edges

As I lay in bed I thought about how I’m like a ragdoll. I’m like a worn out stuffed animal with torn bitten edges and rough molten fabric. That in its own value it would never have gotten any far. It’d be deserved to be put to rest in the garbage. It should be too filthy and unhygienic to be placed beside anything remotely fresh or new as my ruggedness might be contagious. I smell. I’m unsightly. I’m unfashionable. I should be tucked away in secret attics, under dusty floorboards or in corners of large closets together with old lego boxes and barbie dolls from 2nd grade. 

But there in bed I lay  and I saw my saviour. That rugged as I am, He loves me. And just like a ragdoll He is the reason why I’m still laying in the lap of luxury and enjoying the intimacy of my master. He’s my King and I love Him. And He keeps me close though I am valueless and there I find my identity, my security. He’s the one who gave me a room in his palace. He prepares my place for me. I have my little spot close to His resting place. And when I sleep His breath will be a soft breeze that caresses the top of my head. I will feel His kiss from heaven and find Him in His secret place. I will hear His secrets. I will feel his heart. And He will know my everything.

Rough around the edges and that’s how He likes His girl. So who am I to complain? It’s the best place I can be.

love lies bleeding

 You have me befuddled

when you sent your love lain bleeding

and when im a fool and still you love

so i’ll be a fool for the king for love.