Via Dolorosa

I don’t quote songs or mention church often here (I think), but my church choir sung this for the last two Sunday services, and it’s beautiful.

走过维亚多勒罗沙

过维亚多勒罗沙，
那日在耶路撒冷，
兵丁们尝试开出一条窄路，
但群众拥挤不堪想看，
这将要死在加略山的人。

祂因鞭打不断流血，
背上布满了鞭痕，
神的头上戴着荆棘的冠冕。

祂每步都要承受轻蔑来自想处死祂的人。

＊走过维亚多勒罗沙，
称做受难的道路，
基督君王祂来像赎罪羔羊。

但祂选择走这条路，
因着爱为你和我，
走过维亚多勒罗沙，
一路到那加略山。＊

祂宝血洗净所有的灵魂，
使祂甘心走过那路撒冷。＊

The instrumental versions on Youtube are just played too hurriedly, too fast, and/or are of lousy quality for my taste. I hope this was captured on the CD recordings of the services, I’ll go extract it and pair it with the lyrics if I can. I’m not going to link to Youtube, if you want to hear this now, go get it yourself.

Via Dolorosa – Sandi Patty

Down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem that day
The soldiers tried to clear the narrow street
But the crowd pressed in to see
The Man condemned to die on Calvary.

He was bleeding from a beating
There were stripes upon His back
And He wore a crown of thorns upon His head
And He bore with every step
The scorn of those who cried out for His death.

Down the Via Dolorosa called the way of suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah
Christ the King
But He chose to walk that road out of
His love for you and me
Down the Via Dolorosa
All the way to Calvary

Por la Via Dolorosa, triste dia en Jerusalem
Los saldados le abrian paso a Jesus
Mas la gente se acercaba
para ver al que lievaba aquilia cruz

Por la Via Dolorosa, que es la via del dolor
Como overjavino Cristo, Rey, Senor
Y fue El quien ir por su amor
Por ti y por mi
Por la Via Dolorosa al
Calvaria y a morir

The blood that would cleanse
The souls of all men
Made its way through the heart of Jerusalem

Down the Via Dolorosa called the way of suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah
Christ the King
But He chose to walk that road out of
His love for you and me
Down the Via Dolorosa
All the way to Calvary

On Sunday too, there was an extended sharing by the founder of a certain Christian outreach organization which I won’t name.. to sum my thoughts up, while he’s definitely entitled to say that we don’t know that it’s like to laugh in the rain, given his experiences, he comes across as exceedingly conceited in certain aspects, with a good dose of cynicism about the Establishment and lots of faith in God.

To borrow his word and turn it around, ‘narcissistic’. He and his organization is doing good work, yes, but.. I don’t see why something which resembles a (poorly done) corporate video has a chunk at the end, of the founder doing what appears to be a staff performance review. Please. I’m touched by the stories of the children, their living conditions and their lives, but that just turns me off. Spare the world the 20 minute “10 minute” video.

Anyway, criticising worship immediately after it’s over and when people are still in that mood.. it’s really not very nice. I am vaguely offended and will not be changing the direction of my current efforts and quasi-involvement elsewhere. There actually are other groups which also do extremely meaningful and impactful work out there – it’s amazing what can be accomplished with two people, versus an entire organizational structure, complete with board, layers of management and large amounts of funds. Nimble and agile. Bug me if you want to know more.

Choice quote: “I have never received a single cent from [my ACS classmate(s)|a Methodist].” Enough has been said.

First Look at CI

Hmm. This CMS problem. Last Saturday was entirely spent on evaluating about 20+ systems – including the rather nice SilverStripe – but eventually all of them were discarded due to some weakness or another. Silverstripe is worth your time and has a very slick admin interface that doesn’t break in Safari 3. Really. Go take a look if you’re shopping around. It just didn’t feed my needs – particularly my need for subsites and finer grained access control, as well as >1 level of URLs.

I spent three hours plus this evening playing with CodeIgniter, and building half the frame of a content management system with it.

It’s been quite fun, especially with a bit of code from Blaze CMS to peek at. But, what I’m building is on the other end of the spectrum – extremely customised for a particular use case. Because it fits/feels best.

So, what I’ve managed to do is basically implement the front-end of the system, with URL routing to give pages nice names, pulling subsite and page info from a database I sketched out on foolscap during the test today. To top it off, the existing template was a quick 5 minute job to pop in – actually, I did that before starting on the code. Adding textile support into the mix was literally drop the Textile class source in, add 1 line and change 1 line in the controller.

That probably sounds like peanuts to a seasoned PHP developer, but hey, I haven’t touched PHP for quite a few months, and this three hours is with frequent food/water breaks and surfing CI forums/wiki/guide alongside. Yes, I could have done this with plain PHP, but I’m trying something new here, just like previous experiments with Ruby on Rails.

CI is actually pretty lightweight and there’s quite an active community going on in the forums. The user guide is a joy to read (but has some errors which have yet to be fixed) – and easily found, unlike some other frameworks. And since it’s on PHP, it doesn’t get as embarrassed as the RoR wiki which complains about overload quite frequently. Having looked at some benchmarks after turning caching on with code acceleration, it seems quite scalable.

Well well well. The journey continues. There’s permissions/AAA/versioning to be settled as part of the backend admin panel. Those in particular are collectively a huge headache. There’s the rest of the admin panel to be dealt with as well – page creation, editing, moving (weighting), deleting. Rich (or not so rich) text editor. User roles and groups management. LDAP as part of user authentication.

Image (‘photo’) support will come in a later release. It is not of high priority now, not with around 1 week to scheduled launch. We must constantly strive for improvement, create opportunities for further improvement where necessary, then capitalise on them. This is progress, towards the ideal.

Meanwhile, I shall catch up on sleep.

Bright Blue

Life is either an interesting journey or road. When it looks bad, it’s all in the mind.

I’m not thinking, eating, or sleeping well.. therefore, I conclude I am stressed out. Sleeping regularly and eating properly would probably help, but that just doesn’t feel like an option.

I wonder how people can live 2-in-1 days and still remain sane and happy. Or at least, on the surface. Amazing. I couldn’t keep that up for very long.

mememe2

Q1. Do you take any pills?
Ans: Not regularly. I bring my salbutamol around though.

Q2. Do you plan to do anything interesting tomorrow?
Ans: Attend my third Computer Studies lesson of the week. Eek.

Q3. What was your elementary school called?
Ans: Nanyang Primary.

Q4. How many hours do you work a day?
Ans: Something between one and four for an imaginary Organization.

Q5. Have you ever seen any giraffes?
Ans: Yeah. Squishy soft ones.

Q6. Chocolate, Strawberry or Vanilla?
Ans: If that’s ice cream, vanilla. I’ve never had any nice chocolate ice cream.

Q7. Where will you retire to?
Ans: Somewhere with good healthcare and social benefits.

Q8. Last person you lost your temper to?
Ans: Some P3 kid during a chewren’s camp. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but he was bullying this smaller kid..

Q9. What name will you definitely never call your kid?
Ans: Bomberman. or Kirby. Sounds like a plush toy.

Q10. How many people you know called Lester/ Cheesebuns/ Lunchboxes?
Ans: I knew someone called Shanghai. That’s even more unique.

Q11. What are you supposed to be doing now?
Ans: Not being somewhere else.

Q12. Which is your favourite planet?
Ans: Earth. Not much of an argument.

Q13. Do you ever say “your mum”?
Ans: Even if it’s not in front of a joke, next to never.

Q14. How about “that’s what she said”?
Ans: “.. he said”, maybe.

Q15. What’s getting on your nerves now?
Ans: Communication, management and leadership skills, or the lack thereof.

Q16. Are you normally quite patient?
Ans: It really depends who I’m dealing with and whether I’m sick. My temper doesn’t get to act up when I’m woozy and not on paracetamol.

Q17. Do religious people bother you?
Ans: Depends. I have reservations when they’re beyond certain personal markers.. tongues, and such. Plus, do I have a face which makes disgruntled elderly strangers come up to me and start ranting about the state of Christianity in today’s society and the Church?

Q18. Tongue piercing – hot/gross
Ans: Gross.

Q19. Lip piercing?
Ans: Gross. This reminds me of a recent conversation about Thaipusam. Sorry, cultural sensitivity isn’t across the board class.

Q20. Is happiness a choice?
Ans: Definitely. I really think so. Doesn’t mean that I always choose it.

Q21. When did you leave school?
Ans: Early for a Friday.

Q22. When it comes to opposite sex, what’s your type?
Ans: It’s been suggested (and studied) that females prefer to chase males which are very different, theoretically for strong offspring. On the other hand, they supposedly prefer long-term partners which are similar to them. Incidentally, I have a cousin who married someone in the same industry.

Q23. Do brush your hair before breakfast?
Ans: Nah.

Q24. Name 3 places you will go again.
Ans: There aren’t many places I’d like to return to (other than The Daily Scoop), but I’d like to visit Subway and Island Creamery, since I hear they’re soooooo nice. You can bring me there if you like.

Q25. What’s the sweetest thing a guy has done/said for/to you?
Ans: Pushed me into someone’s lap. (Joking. I think.)

Q26. If you were marooned on a deserted island, how long would you survive?
Ans: Without a copy of the internet and an infinite supply of new hardware, not long.

Q27. What colour dominates your wardrobe?
Ans: I like single coloured shirts with minimal grunk on it. It’s more of (non-)design than colour.

Q28. What’s your comfort food?
Ans: Chocolate. But that’s for really bad episodes only.

Q29. Do you ever sing into your hairbrush pretending it’s a microphone?
Ans: No.

Q30. Speaking of hairbrushes, is yours metal or plastic?
Ans: I said, I don’t comb my hair.

Q31. Is your house key silver or gold?
Ans: Silver coloured. All my keys are.

Q32: Did you ever play pokemon?
Ans:

Q33. Trade cards?
Ans: My airline poker playing cards are mine to keep, thanks.

Q34. What colour is your bedsheet?
Ans: Lavender.

Q35. Did/does your school make you support charities?
Ans: Yeah. I’m never sure which.

Q36. What music did you listen to 5 years ago?
Ans: Nothing other than 92.4FM. They actually played classical then. And HMV actually had a properly stocked and staffed Classical section.

Q37. What colour ink do you usually write in?
Ans: Blue-black or black. I don’t really like blue ink.

Q38. How do you style your hair?
Ans: I don’t.

Q39. Who did you spend your last Christmas with?
Ans: Me.

Q40. If you were a cast in a movie, would you be lead role/someone important/irrelevant/NIL?
Ans: The guy crouching behind the mixer with the pen light.

Q41. Aliens are going to eliminate one country, which country would you prefer?
Ans: Oceania.

Q42. Who cooks your dinner?
Ans: My mum.

Q43. George Bush?
Ans: Scram.

Q44. What TV show should be canceled even before it was viewed?
Ans: Whatever local detergent is showing on tvmobile now.

Q45. How many kids do you want?
Ans: I don’t intend to start, but I’ll stop at 2 if I ever get there.

Q46. Are you happy with life?
Ans: On the whole, yes.

I tag: 7, k, the cake-lover, and И.

White/Pink/Red

My left leg still isn’t functioning properly after LDP. Various bits keep acting up now and then.

Just a thought after today’s news – there is a time for everything, but this isn’t a time to point fingers and gawk, dump blame on laps, stick ‘idiot’ labels, or keep going, ‘it must be that particular person, it’s because of him’.

Don’t you think this person is already taking the brunt of the fallout? Don’t you think life is like a living hell for them, now that they’re probably sitting in a lot of guilt, self-blame, and did I mention, blame from everyone else already? There’s no need for you to add the proverbial fat to the fire.

I’m not telling you to forget. Just shut up, if you’re one of those who’re not directly connected to this (like me). I might not be saying this to your face, but it’s still very disappointing to see and hear the itchy, gossipy mouths.

On a lighter note, a quote from our favourite character:

“If I have a bun and I squish it… you don’t call the bun malleable.”

Greatest Gift

I wish for you my friend, this happiness that I’ve found.
You can depend on Him, it matters not where you’re bound.
I’ll shout it from the mountain top,
I want the world to know; the Lord of Love has come to me,
I want to pass it on.

That classic campfire song that lots of people don’t know. Learn. You never know when a guitar will pop out of nowhere.

There’s this curious invention known as Agape Week. The ulterior (but presumably good) motives behind it are as clear and obvious as muddy water. Unvalentine’s Day – spread the word.

Selling the Best

Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon is a “Kinokuniya Bestseller Recommendation“?! 

Five Four

When someone tells you to ‘go away’, do you think that’s really an invitation to sit down, and listen? Or are you really supposed to just go away feeling concerned, but not showing it more than an “Are you okay?”

I think that when someone wants time and space alone they’d disappear off somewhere for as long as they need. They wouldn’t sit around, mope, and put on some broken hearted look. Much as they don’t want to admit it, it’s most likely either a (silent) plea for help or an expression of whatever’s going on inside. Sometimes it might just be too much – or all too sudden – to hide it all behind the shopfront. 

Next time, give it a try – reach out to a friend. If that person knows you and trusts you reasonably well, chances are, they’ll open up to you – and perhaps vice versa. Who knows?

Just don’t go and get yourself all depressed if they don’t talk to you, yes?