Posting Two Weeks Later..

Close up! XD

I never remember what I pray for precisely but man... I must have prayed to be broken because God revealed in me through my roommate, all the things I need to work on in my personal life.

Honestly when she first shared with me all the character flaws she saw in me, I was really surprised which turned to anger/frustration and then hurt. At that point I stopped talk to her all together because I wasn't too sure as to how to respond. I decided to confide in my 'oldest' friend (as in the number of years we've known each other) and who has some idea of where I am spiritually/mentally. Basically he Mark Driscolled me (need I mention names?).

There were a lot of things I initially wanted to say in reply to her opinions of me. Yet the only thing I could really think of saying was,
"I'm sorry, I'll change."
The strangest thing happened: I became really happy.
Last night we became a lot closer in a way because we were able to talk about our frustrations with each other and each other's character flaws and how we could work them out.

Who needs powers when you have what God already gave you? Seriously. I don't need to fly or stop time or kill people with my eyes (yes I'm making Heroes references so if you don't watch it then.... it's going to blow over). I've realized the gifts/talents/abilities that God has already given us are more than enough for us to manage/control.
I've realized my strengths are also my weaknesses.
For example, one point brought up was that I am really sensitive. I've been told that all my life so I would bottle up all my feelings and then explode. I get hurt easily by people's remarks that may come out really blunt or in a joking manner. So you can imagine what happened to me last year when I decided to get out more socially. Not good. Anger turned into hurt which turned into resentment which then harboured self pity and bitterness. Yeah I'm bitter; I'm actually bitter with a lot of people right now. Not that I'm holding grudges against them but I've refused to initiate any conversation with them unless they speak first. Recognizing is the first part of the healing.
On the flip side, my hyper sensitivity is also my love language; if you mention something you like or a particular activity you enjoy doing, usually I pick it up and file it away in case it's your birthday or for some special event. Yesterday I went to a vegan bakery and remembered my friend who just yesterday told me he was allergic to all dairy/cow related products and wheat so I bought him gluten free cupcakes (so good) because he couldn't have any of the birthday cake we baked. My sensitivity is what makes me as a designer- I'm very detail oriented and conscious of design as a whole and as a system.

Another flaw of mine is that I'm judgmental. I don't mean to be most of the time but because I'm sensitive, I'm critical and when I'm critical I usually pass a strong judgment on one thing or another. I'm also very calculated with my words, I actually think before I speak and sometimes it takes me so long to figure out the exact damage that would be done through my words, I never end up voicing them hence they get bottled inside of me.

Anyway I was talking to my friend and she said this to me which was really encouraging because I never saw it like this before:

"see thats what i find so interesting about you, you are shy and you are so afraid of rejections, yet you love people and you want to be with people cus ppl i know that are shy and afraid of rejections usually isolate themselves
not just by talking
but with like..
everything!!!"


White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake for my friend's birthday

Inexpressable Joy

Running out of pics...

HALLELUAH! Hosannah in the highest!

Finally finally finally!
God has spoken to me in a bajillion ways this week- I am soooo pumped right now with all that He has done for me through me.
I cannot express the joy that stirs within me right now- a peace that does not come from human love but from above. Hence I am blogging YET AGAIN (I was going to save it for sunday or monday but thought it would be appropriate to offer whatever thanksgiving to God so I do not forget in times of loneliness, sadness or depression.

At the beginning of the semester I was praying the wrong prayers. My requests were honest yet in hindsight, probably not the best ones. Weeks into the semester, my focus began to shift from human centered prayers to self-centered prayers- prays for myself to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to place God as my center; to remember my first love and that love, being God (Rev 2:4).

As I began my day today (only slept four to five hours due to text message from friend and couldn't fall back asleep.. lately have been so wired by all the convictions that God has brought to light that I'm pretty okay with the lack of sleep), I cracked open my bible, picking up at the part I left off in 1 Corinthians but decided to bounce around looking for passages to enlighten myself. I fell back to 1 Samuel and realized as a child, I loved the stories about David and Saul thinking that God's anointed one, Saul, was evil and cruel. Yet looking back into that passage in which Saul becomes envious of David because the crowds were comparing and singing praises about his servant rather than the king, made me realize how much I related with Saul more than David. When others praise my peers, I become jealous that I am not praised in the same light. Another thing I noticed when reading 1 Samuel was the way in which God spoke to David compared to Saul and God. God would respond immediately to David while God would, at times, ignore Saul for a few days before answering (one point Saul takes matters into his own hands and consults a medium and as you can probably guess that was not the brightest idea). I read about Saul conquering the Akaemelites (or something along the lines of that tribe name) and God orders him to destroy everything. To destroy is to sacrifice all those things to God however Saul saves the best of the cattle, sheep as well as the king and creates burnt offerings to the Lord which displeased him because Saul disobeyed and held onto the material things of the world.

Yes I'm blabbering so that was just a brief note so I don't forget what I learned in my devos today which included 1 Timothy and a few chapters in Psalms and a couple of passages in 1 Corinthians. Anyway.

I believe I'm finally praying for the right things- the Spirit has convicted me of the things I need to work on (through Christ) which I am now giving to God to work through me. And darn if you pray the right prayer, God moves swiftly. Ask and you will receive if the desire stems from God. He gave me the words today as I prayed- I don't even recall exactly what I asked for, all I know is at the time, it gave me peace.

So I went about my day- made lunch- and then a friend called to ask if I wanted to join her and Joon to eat out. We went to Grey Dogs- I couldn't stop laughing or smiling. Ridiculous I know but I was feeling really giddy. Anyway, my friend offhandedly mentions she wanted to get a pedicure done so I asked her if she wanted to in the afternoon after she got her sewing down and she agreed to meet later in the day. And then I went home.

Remember I have been praying to God for an opportunity to talk to my roommate, and for me to recognize it and seize it. He gave it to me today- an incident occured yesterday that was so coincidental, though it was painful and too sensitive to share here, it was a Godsend. But all that I wrote here in my post of late concerning my roommate- all that I shared with her as I rocked her in my arms. I shared with her all that God has convicted me of these past few weeks, my daily prayers for God to fill me love so that I could love her because, I told her, that I could not love her on my own human effort. I told her about the hurt I felt last year, not only with her, but other friends whom I felt wronged me and how that made me realize that placing hope in any relationships be it friends or boyfriends, was meaningless. I told her about her mother and how she talked to me about taking care of her and how I was having a hard time being there for her because I did not understand the nature of her relationship. I told her I disliked him from the start because I didn't like his moral character.

Exhausted from crying, she went to take a nap and I went to get my nails done with my friend. This friend of mine is actually my accountability partner's roommate whom I only got to know at the beginning of the semester. I didn't really know her but by the grace of God, He gave me the opportunity to hang out with her with my archi friend and then later on, one on one. And I sincerely believe that because she also went through relationship issues, she was able to understand my roommate when I shared with her and gave me advice as to what to do next to help support her. And I felt like we really did connect- realizing her spiritual maturity and the struggles she had to overcome this past summer.

I go home to do homework. Another friend (david) asks if I want to watch a movie later on with a few of his other friends at 9:40. Yes! I will do my work asap (I already watched 'Rachel Getting Married' last night with my former roomie... we walked to 72nd st to see three celebrity apartments... so on friday we walked... 60 something blocks and then watched a movie before going to a Ukrainian diner for dinner and frozen yogurt). So I plugged myself into Mark Driscoll's new sermon series on the Song of Songs and painted my boys. ;)
Get to the theaters only to realize his friends dropped out in which he promptly (and bluntly) says, "So I guess this is a date!" He said it in such a frank manner, I burst out laughing. I love the guy but only in a platonic sense. Oh, the movie we saw was called 'Blindness'- the driving point being that we often judge people by what we see but when our vision is taken away, we are left to judge people through their character and how they act when they are faced with problems. Yes, I read about this in 1 Samuel too today when the Lord told him to anoint David as the next king. We then walk to my place to discuss the movie further and then went on our separate ways.

Now I am exhausted but full of joy.
God has been so faithful, and nothing can take away this joy I feel for it is does not thrive on human approval but on Him alone.
Amen.

Spiritual Intimacy in Him: A Prayer for Brokenness

I have ceased to buy Vogue, rather, overpriced Japanese urban menswear fashion magazines T-T

Listening to: Kaba Modern's own remix from their audition dance

Proverbs 4:23
Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So we did our preliminary thesis presentations. Towards the end of my friend's presentation, we were asked to write down a necessary object that we couldn't live without (it could be a person).
Looking at my small sheet of paper, I instantly thought of writing down "my friends" Suddenly God convicted me, why did I not instantly think of writing down 'God' as my first answer? Why was that not the immediate, instant answer? So on the paper I wrote something along the lines of,
"God (if He can be considered an 'object'). But I am still learning to make Him necessary in my life."

At times when it comes to prayer requests, God moves faster than the FedEx man.
Yesterday (I am writing this two days later; I've been gathering quotes from here and there to write this entry), I was doing my devos in the morning and I prayed to God that He would break me (but if possible a little more gently) in order to grow this faith that He has placed in my heart as well as this gift of love to be able to love others.
That evening I went to Small Groups which was significantly smaller than usual- about six rather than ten or so. We did a Bible Study on Ephesians; honestly I didn't find it really... inspiring. I myself cannot relate to passages of scripture if it is not set into its context so I found it extremely difficult to dig into it deeply. One of the questions accompanying the passage was "what is your deepest fear or daily fear?" Everyone shared save myself- at the time I felt as if people were rambling on so much about themselves, I didn't really feel the need to contribute. It is in my nature, if there are a lot of people talking, to not say anything at all. Anyway so the girl next to me shares. Her fear is the fear of being forgotten; that people would forget to invite her to events and that eventually she'd be forgotten completely thus she goes out of her way to reject people first- to hurt others first before they hurt her.

As those words spilled out of her mouth I felt a rising surge of anger, resentment and bitterness against her. That friend- a close friend- said the EXACT SAME THING to me last year: I hurt others (you) so you cannot hurt me first.
Do you not know that people like you are the ones who have made me this way? You are the cause to all the hurt and pain I feel- the stem at which all my fear of trusting people are derived from.
Yet as one girl tried to reason with her, the one who was sharing insisted that it didn't make sense outloud but in her head it did. Then I knew, I couldn't really be friends with her- deeply being able to share? No, I can't.
At that moment when I was quietly nursing my feelings, I heard God speak,
"Though you are healing and trying to place Me in the center, this anger and resentment you feel shows that you still have not completely healed from this"

In closing, we prayed individually and then were asked to get in a tighter circle and hold hands and were asked by the leader to each pray for something. The girl on my left, my Boston friend, went first and as she was praying I was trying to think of what to pray for.
Honestly at that point I didn't really have anything I wanted to pray for but this verse popped up in my head:
Psalm 46:10
Be still, and know that I am God...
My church is known for praying out loud- crying out to God. Although I think it's fantastic, on the other hand it really makes it difficult to focus on your prayers when a thousand voices are talking all at once. And often times the whirlwind of voices drives me to not desire to say anything.
Anyway when it came to me, I really had no idea or plan in regards to what to pray for. So I started praying for God to fill us with His love- a prayer that has been on my heart since the sermon last week. For some reason or another, I started praying a personal prayer for forgiveness- it was purely a selfish prayer that was directed to no one in the group other than myself. And at that point, beyond all human understanding, I started weeping.
To put it in plain language (because the act of crying transcends all verbal description) I have not cried like this since the RHCBC Church Retreat. This crying was the type that I couldn't control- the crying which makes your voice crack, your body shake and your lips to tremble. It's not one where you can pretend to dramatize. Nor was it the crying that I have done out of fear of the future (times when I miss my family prior to leaving them which is more like a few fat tears but nothing like this). This kind of weeping was from the sadness I felt from the hurt that has built up within me the past two years. The previous time came from a sadness derived from the loneliness that I felt without any Christian friends.
This is how much I let others affect me through their actions- how much I let them in and placed them above God.
I have NEVER cried while praying but it was one of the weirdest experiences that has ever happened to me.
Then I prayed for God to let us be still. I have a hard time being still in New York- a REALLY hard time just saying nothing and allowing God to speak because I'm afraid that God wouldn't speak if I just sat there with my eyes closed. O how little faith and patience I have.

Well after SG, I went home to realize God had placed another event into my life with my roommate to have to figure out.
Talk about FedExed prayer request shipments- God broke me, convicted me AND filled me with His love all in a matter of.... ten hours. You never cease to amaze me.

In sum, I have been convicted by these words from the song 'Hosanna' by Hillsong:

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours.
Everything I am for your Kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity.

I don't think, in my life now, there is anything truer than those words. I love the bridge to this song. It enlightens me daily and renews my mind. Lately I have been constantly hearing God in my life, renewing my mind, healing my heart and talking to me through my thoughts and actions.

I took this quote from gummi's blog which I found extremely encouraging as God has been working through me:

If your treasures are on earth, each day you are moving away from them. If your treasures are in Heaven, each day you are moving toward them. He who spends his life moving away from his treasures has reason to despair. He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice. "


"We think we own our possessions, but too often they own us. Nothing makes a journey more difficult than a heavy backpack filled with nice but unnecessary things.

Pilgrims travel light."
Randy Alcorn.

Amen. I once was despairing because of my relationships but now I see. Let us all set our eyes on things that are eternal.
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To those who have set their eyes on here for the first time: please do not mention the existence of this space to others. I like my mental/emotional privacy.

A Heart of Faith

I love love this picture: the pose, the lighting and the absence of colour. I know people must think that I like these photographs because of the subject itself, but really I have a greater appreciation for the way it was photographed.

Don't have any Boston images uploaded yet so....
Edited: I wrote parts of this a few days ago and now I'm just finishing it


An image from a lovely series of photographs featuring the korean hanbok in a simple clean layout. Come to think of it, the colour scheme and lighting looks really similar to the Matsuyama pic above. :S


A bakery three minutes walking distance from our bed and breakfast

So my friend and I decided to go to Boston for a couple of days to get away from the city. Well her intentions were to see more trees, relax and to take a break from the crazy life as Manhattanites. I, on the other hand, just wanted to see Boston and take advantage of the fact that I lived close to other cities in other states. So we took the Fung Wah bus ($15 one way, baby! I love the Chinese XD) and stayed at this really cute 19th century red brick building (yes our room was covered in flowery wallpaper). We only had a full day there so we ran around looking at Harvard (not impressive: Columbia Uni here is even prettier), Harvard Square (omg the most awesome store full of knick knacks and design objects... I bought $100 worth of souvenirs for people including a $16 patisserie tour guide of Paris for 'research purposes' XD), ate the most delectable Florentine cookies from Cardullo, went to Quincey Market (quite boring), browsed around Arlington, dined on seafood at the historic Union Landmark restaurant and dessert at Finale. But the best thing about this trip for me was getting to talk to my friend; we sat at TeaLuxe, a tea cafe, for an hour talking about our struggles as Christians and our struggles as Christian designer seeking to find meaning in what we create.

Personally the trip was less about the things we saw; I wasn't really impressed by Boston though it is a very nice city to just relax in. I wasn't expecting it, but God really did speak to me those two days I was there. The first night I was waiting for my hair to dry, so I cracked open the Gideon bible that they left inside the night table drawer and came across these verses:

Philippians 4:6-9.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

The first paragraph cut right into me. And the PEACE of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I was relying on myself, through my own effort, to draw friends closer to me when in fact I had totally forgotten to ask God to sanctify them and to do as He pleases with them. I was doing the exact opposite of what the verses instructed. And I was miserable. That night I felt a huge burden lift from my shoulders; feeling a sense of peace that someone greater was in control of my relationships and not I.

Secondly, God spoke through my friend to convict me of my struggles to love people whom I resisted loving.
To be honest, it's been hard to love my roommate.
The past couple of years have not exactly been easy yet I have failed to voice out my concerns, just pushing them aside, hoping it would fix itself. Although the majority of the time I pretend I don't care what happens on the other side of the room, I know that we are intrinsically bound together in a way because we live in the same 300sq foot space. But the past year I've felt very hurt by her including a few trust issues and because she chose to spend all her time with her boyfriend, putting all her efforts into nurturing that relationship and basically disappeared on me. And what did I do? I focused on building friendships that had nothing to do with her; to show her that I didn't need her.
And now that it has ended, I felt though I had to be supportive in her loneliness, the bitterness that I had against her was still there and still quite strong.
You see, we used to do a lot of things together: rainboot painting party, watch movies, go shopping, have afternoon tea, and explore new york city. Virtually all that has disappeared: I rarely hang out with her and we rarely speak as friends.
Do I really care that those things are now nonexistent? Not really. I've learned to become independent in a sense where I don't feel like I really need her to have fun. However I cannot call this place a home because I feel estranged from her. It really feels like I'm living with a vaguely acquainted stranger. Moreover when I returned from Boston her mom, when her daughter was in the bathroom, in her limited english said this to me, "Thank you for letting me stay. Please please take care of my Bonnie. She's very depressed."
I said I would with a smile, but knew it would take more than "yes" and a grin to do so. But that really was the icing on the cake: I felt for her mother.

God convicted me of all this; my friend urged me to try to love her despite all that she has done in the past. On the flip side, she did not realize how difficult it was to love the unlovable until she shared with me her struggles with her relationship with a particular leader at church. And suddenly she discovered loving others was harder than it was to say. I think we both, sitting in front of the Boston Public Library that evening, realized what we had to do.
But I cannot do this alone. The sermon on Sunday also convicted me. Here are my sermon notes:

The Danger of the Debtor's Ethic
WHAT EMPOWERS US TO LIVE THIS CHRISTIAN LIFE? WHAT FUELS YOUR WALK WITH GOD?

Lie: Power of Christian living is through thanksgiving and gratitude.
-we forget to be thankful so it is hard to get rid of the temptation when it arrives.

A. Danger of Debtor's Ethic: owing God something, earning faith through works. This is a subtle form of self reliance.

B. Faith should be the basis of our obedience.
FAITH should be the fuel which runs our Christian life NOT gratitude and thanksgiving. The following verses talk about acts derived from faith (or lack of) rather than gratitude.
1 Thess 1:3
Galations 5:6
Matt 6:30

C. God cannot be served for He doesn't need us. We need Him.
He doesn't need our acts of service or praise but He wants it.

His message was borderline blasphemous at times: he told us how he was sad to see so many tired Christians serving out of a gratitude of nothing who did their devos and prayers diligently in order to give to God (despite the fact that they probably felt as if they were doing all the giving and none of the receiving). Who was Jesus most harsh on? The Pharisees: the ones who were perceived to be the most religious of them all. What has God done for you? How can you praise and say words of thanksgiving to a God who has done nothing for you? Or in his words he said "How do you glorify a person if he has done nothing for you? You glorify an NBA star when he makes the winning three pointer, you glorify a firefighter when he saves you from the burning house. So how do you glorify God? You glorify God when you allow Him to deliver you, save you and love you." Too often we rely on ourselves to give, to give, to give and we have learned to expect nothing in return, but deep down in the hearts of the most earnest Christians, we need to be given something back. So what do we do? We try and try to be filled through the fruits of our own labour, hoping that would ignite the gratitude within us to allow us to get closer to God. The Christian life isn't one of paying back, the Christian life is one of getting more. GETTING AND RECEIVING MORE not GIVING. Yeah, as you can see, one can perceive this as borderline blasphemous. In faith, we ask God because we are the ones who need him, not vice versa (1 Peter 4:11). Gratitude is no the primary stimuls of the Christian life. If it is, then you're going to get tired fast.

That sermon hit me square in the face: I was giving, without receiving resulting in my stress and anxiety in people. I was tired, I was frustrated, I was stressed, I was dry. I now ask God to fill me with His love because I know I cannot love my roommate on my own. But I pray that the love of God will overflow in my own heart so that I can love her despite all the hurt that's built up these past couple of years. It's a paradigm shift: I expect God to give me more because I now know that people cannot give you what you seek. I sought for steadfast relationships, people that would realize your earnestness in loving and accepting them and reciprocate, when in fact I realized that at times they will never try as hard as you do thus leaving me high and dry. My heart was tired of trying to love, trying to reach out to people. Perhaps I was nourishing them by my own effort, but I was tired.
I became the tired Christian running on fuel of gratitude and human effort. Looking back at my testimony through my blog entries of these past two years have been a testament to this exhaustion. I know all this may sound really apparent and many of you must be thinking "duh, I realized this a long time ago" but the peace that I now feel transcends all the words I use to try to describe the ways in which God has convicted me this past week.

God, love me, let me see it, and let me be able to love others. Give me the faith to trust in all that You are. Let faith be the fuel that runs my walk with You. Amen
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So, three of my friends and I are gonna see Wicked! I saw it once already but I think it's worth watching again. :D
Sunday was a tiring one: church, went to eat burgers with two of the Canadians, went to Starbucks and talked over coffee, bought musical tickets, went to one of the guy's house to wait for Betty and roomie to come over to film our friend's audition tape to get into the Vancouver School of Film (didn't show up) and then went to Basta Pasta for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner (which they all liked!). There was a mix up and we had an extra guest whom they couldn't accomodate for so he had to find another place to go and eat at (we felt so bad) and then we all met up to have Red Mango (for the 100000x time). Since they had not filmed the audition tape, six of them came over to my place until 1:30am to film. I was exhausted.

Side note: On Saturday, my friend told me that Armani Exchange was having a sale so him and his two roomies and I went shopping... and hooray this hoodie that was initially $98 went on sale for $70 with an additional 30% off making it $45! It's rare to see something that I like go on sale that quickly. Yea yea. At Kenneth Cole I spotted this awesome silk tie with a trompe l'oeil painted on it. You know the back of the time is the edge of the fabric, with a couple of stitches and reveals part of the lining at the bottom... well they painted the back of the time on the front of the tie. It was so clever I bought it and two of the other guys also bought skinny ties. HAHAH. Needless to say, I was thoroughly amused.

Anyway, yesterday (Monday), the Canadians (plus one) got together inbetween classes and met up at Bryant Park where we bought onigiri, bento and japanese pastries at a nearby japanese cafe and sat at the park to have lunch together. It was nice to sit and relax there in each other's company for a couple of hours before class. Friggin nice weather. :D

Ok time for class. I did illustrations of my previous collection this week: as in I selected 8/25 outfits and did a more detailed study of those. Mb I'll post it up later. But class!

Flight LGA// The Skinny of It// I Am

Flight LGA


Well this is the collection I'm going to submit for my Fashion Portfolio class in about 45 minutes. Honestly this week I wasn't really inspired or gung-ho about it as I was the previous week. The idea of travel still hung with me after the Howl collection so this week I decided to do one based on travel hence the name 'Flight LGA'; LGA being the airport code for 'La Guardia', one of the hubs I always go to on my way back from Toronto. This one was loosely based on Hong Kong street style (no I did not take the inspiration pictures- I found them on this Chinese lifestyle website. I joined it because they have a street style gallery) and origami paper airplanes. Check out the pockets of the jackets and the denim. A lot of the cutting and details are derived from the folds of origami planes and the fabrics chosen were predominantly on the cooler colour palette with lots of blues and greys. It makes me a little depressed looking at the figures compared to the Howl collection I did last week. Ah well. Lots and lots of hoodies this week with a lot of cable knit integration. The jerseys and knits are super soft with extra thickness and pile. The weather is getting cold quickly so I designed this collection so that girlfriends all over would want to snuggle closer to their boyfriends in these clothes. :D
Enjoy:


Inspiration page, fabric swatches and first set of croquis


I feel like this collection came out a lot more sober than my previous one



The next time I want to play around with sheers and translucency. I know: tricky tricky. But I have some ideas swimming in my head already.
And no, Rin, it does not mean their bodies will be exposed for your viewing pleasure. -_-
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The Skinny of It

I got out of my fashion portfolio class an hour and forty minutes early so my friend from HK and I decided to get lunch at Murray's, the local bagel shop near school. As we tucked into our bowls of lentil/chicken noodle soup and bagels stuffed with cream cheese, we talked about the pressures of being thin especially being Chinese.
I admit it, I feel enormous pressure to be skinny.
Surprisingly this pressure is not derived from Britney Spear's sudden weight loss nor the supermodels gracing the magazines. In actuality, I feel the pressure from all my friends around me. My roommate last night mentioned that she didnt want to get fat this weekend because her mom is visiting and they'd have to eat restaurant food; because she's losing weight, her body would naturally collect more fat once she started eating. She doesn't eat lunch, she snacks.
And then there are other people who are more subtle in their tactics: they eat a small portion of a given meal and saying they are too 'full' to finish it. Technically for any of those people who are environmentalists and wanting to diet by eating only a fraction of it, they defeat the purpose of eating 'healthy' or 'organic' or 'no red meat' by throwing out consummable food and wasting all the energy and material used to make the food in the first place.

It drives me nuts when friends watch their weight in order to be skinny. It annoyed me so much last year that in reaction, I gained weight by eating a lot. In defiance of the fear to gain weight, I would eat a lot to make the point that I thought they were really stupid. And then I went to HK, ate five meals a day and lost all the weight I gained in NY. Now I'm back and people have noticed my limbs got thinner and I guess they feel pressured to lose weight too. And I wasn't even intentionally trying to lose weight either but I know people are affected by it.

It's why I like to hang out with guys more- they eat a lot though they have faster metabolisms. I like sitting down with a slice of cake and a cup of tea and talking but it spoils the mood when I see my friend hesitantly looking at the pastry and calculating how many calories are in the cream and how much to shave off so it doesn't show on her face the next day. When I'm having Red Mango, I don't have to watch girls picking at it slowly waiting for the ice cream to melt so they could toss it out. It also annoys me to no end when we intentionally go out to eat something unhealthy, like a burger, and have friends sigh and comment on how fat they feel. Dude, get a grip.
I haven't gone to the gym in ages here because I realized I could lose weight just standing around in HK, walking up and down the slope to my apartment and shopping. XD So why pay $70/month in a smelly sweaty gym exercising like hamsters on a wheel?

Sighing and telling me your stomach is so small it can't fit anymore is a bunch of crap.

I can't stand it.
It's complicated; not only is it a physical tug p' war, but a psychological/emotional one. I don't want to ask those 'dieting' friends to eat stuff I bake in case I seem like the devil tempting them. As I said the other day, I show love through doing and making things- baking being one of them. And if do only accept it and eat only a portion of it, I feel a little offended because they didn't seem to really enjoy it because they were too worried about how many cups of sugar I used for the frosting. --

I am going to Boston today! Hooray! Back on Friday. My friend (not diet conscious thank goodness... I seem to get along with these people better. This may sound odd, but I open up both spiritually and emotionally to these people A LOT more because they are more secure in their personhood than those who are constantly harping on their own weight. My closest friends all love to eat) and I are staying in a Bed and Breakfast and we're gonna walk around the historic parts of the city.
Oh yes, I have also found a good dessert cafe called 'Finale'. ;)

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I Am

Whether or not we are aware of it, we are constantly having an inner dialogue with ourselves. So it's interesting when you become conscious and catch yourself putting yourself down or becoming smug because a friend did something wrong, and you did it right.
Yesterday I caught myself thinking about my friend and how I couldn't measure up to her socially. That brought on a whole slew of other reasons why I couldn't measure up that in a logical sense weren't really related but in my head somehow jumped the line; I'm not loud enough, I don't know any korean, I'm not pretty enough, not open enough, not cute, not sexy, I don't like to dance or sing, don't like to drink, don't like to go clubbing...
And as I was trying to pull anything out of the air looking for a reason to try and understand why I wasn't as socially attractive as my friend, I realized that I often focus on everything that I am not rather than all that I already am and can do.

I am a child of God.
I am a descendent of one of the Song emperors of China (at the climax of China's development in art, baby)
I am Chinese.
I am American.
I am Canadian.
I am fluent in English.
I can speak conversational Cantonese and French (Mandarin in progress!)
I am majoring in fashion.
I am majoring in sustainable design.
I am tall and relatively 'thin'. Wait- make that 'slender'.
I am memorable (for reasons see above).
I have anime hands.
I can bake.
I can draw; both realism and illustrative.
I can play the violin (well, used to)
I am a super fast walker- catch me if you can.
I lived in Chicago.
I lived in New York.
I lived in Toronto.
I lived in Hong Kong.
I lived in suburb.
I live in a city with millions of people.
I am a designer.
I am a photographer.
I am an artist.
I am Sam.

Letting Go: I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned... my soul, Lord, to You surrendered, all I am is Yours.

"in this world we obey to be accepted by others but if God is in us, we obey because we are already accepted"

Talk about smacking me in the face.
Personally I do not find the sermons my pastor preaches really relevant in my life; I mean things that I don't already know. I know this sounds bad but he doesn't convey his words in a fashion that I can really understand. There's not much structure in his sermons which makes it difficult for me to follow. I know he knows his theology but he doesn't say it in a way that allows me to understand it. But today the entire sermon pretty much nailed down everything that I've been struggling with this past year.

I think God has revealed in me several things that I should be working on. You see, the past year I was very up and down depending on the state of my relationships with other people in Toronto and New York.

Sometimes I think we don't realize we are sinning until God reveals to us the idols in our life.

This past year has been difficult. Correction maybe the past two years. I was having dinner with a former roommate who wondered how people outside of New York perceive New Yorkers: they probably see us as depressed, uptight and neurotic. I agree. I've become really neurotic in my relationships: I call people several times and if they dont pick up, I text them. I was sitting at my desk working on my croquis (to be posted up tomorrow) and thinking when my friend was going to call me to confirm dinner. I was so scared she was going to bail that I called her three times and texted her twice. On one hand I see it as myself being a control freak trying to take ahold of every single facet of my planned schedule but on the other, it's only fair that you communicate with someone else if you have set plans. I've been flaked on so many times the past two years, the reason why I call and text over and over is because I'm just paranoid I'd be dropped at the last minute.

Anyway the past year my relationships became an idol. Friendships that I perceived as stagnant or people who were not reciprocating in my attempts to reach out to them really got to me. I realized, within this month, that this has got to stop.

Sadly this means dropping a few friendships that I've been holding tightly on to. I can safely say that I really did try in these relationships, trying to be as considerate and generous as possible as well as transparent and honest with how I felt. Oh I gave; I gave so much this past year that I gave more to these human relationships than to God. I'm not a hard person to read; my love language to others is through my hands. I like to make stuff for people as an expression of friendship. Which is why I bake. And write. And plan events and gatherings. But what can I say? Some people just don't have the same priorities in a relationship as you do. And all I did in the past was to watch them slide and as they slid, tried to grab onto them, became bitter and was consumed by some in particular because they weren't going the way I wanted them to.

Our pastor quoted from Colossians 3:1-3:
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

Not by human effort.. not by human effort. In the past I was afraid of being too passive; that God wasn't providing because I wasn't creating opportunities for myself. It is now my daily prayer to ask God to reveal new opportunities as they come as well as opening my eyes to recognize them when they come.

The past week my accountability partner told me to bring my Bible to the chocolate restaurant so she could share this with me when I told her about my struggles with friendships:
Jeremiah 29: 11-13
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

Most people know this passage for verse 11 because it sounds as if God is about to hand us a life of luxury. The part where God tells us that He will listen to us when we come and pray, and when we seek Him earnestly with all our hearts, we would find Him really convicted me the past week.

He said, "is it 'cause of a guy? It's always a guy."
Our church retreat is this coming weekend (Fri to Sun). I decided not to go partially because I am going to Boston from Wed to Fri and that means I'd have a mother load of homework due the following week. But another reason that I haven't really shared with anyone there is that because of the struggles with relationships I've been having this past year, I don't want to be surrounded by more people 24/7. My natural inclination now is to try hard to build those friendships and yeah... as much as they call it a 'retreat', it's going to be socially and emotionally exhausting for me since I know I will start focusing on the people around me than with God. I'm trying to figure out what to do for Saturday. I do want to do a private retreat but I'm unsure of what to do right now. My accountability partner goes to leadership prayer meetings where they pray nonstop from 10pm to 3am. Sorry, I am not that spiritually 'strong' and my attention span is a little short. I'd rather figure out a method that works best for me in getting me focused and connected to God. Any ideas?

My devos have been good. I've been doing them consistently; going through Romans (so Calvinist XD) and am really encouraged by Paul's words. Prayer wise I am trying to keep a list of people I pray for daily; most include my closest friends, certain people who are ill or fighting a disease and someone in East Asia doing missions. I'm not really into the whole springboarding from one person to another at sporadic, random times like a side dish. Rather, I want to continually ask God to reveal His will in these particular people and watch them develop as Christians. And it's nice knowing that when people say they'll pray for you, they're ACTUALLY PRAYING for you. I tell those people I am praying for them because I want them to know that I'm spiritually there to support them. I want more friends that pray together rather than just talk to each other.

I don't know who is praying for me, but if you want to pray for me, pray that I put God in the center and not rely on human effort to build friendships; that I'd seek Him first before others. I want a hunger for Him not for anything else.
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Small Group Wars today. Our cheer went well. Everyone was really wowed by our concept. I'll see if I can post it on youtube some day but my internet keeps dying on me as I'm trying to upload it.

Yesterday was fun. An archi friend and I went to the MOMA where I introduced to him the amazing cafeteria and its food (while eating pasta, I went to photograph the desserts for the book we're putting together). Went to the H&M flagship store later in hopes of finding him some more casual clothes but alas, nothing interesting waist up. We then bussed to K town where we spent a ton of time in a Korean bookstore and Morning Glory waiting for our other friends to come meet us for dinner. Finally: Betty, Joon, Yobi, Karen, David and I went to some Korean restaurant to eat: I got bimbimbap :P. After that we subbed down to Chinatown where we were misled to think we were walking the Brooklyn Bridge when in fact we were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Ah well. It was fun; David sharing his japanese and korean music with me and attempting to dance with shared earphones. We talked about what to do for Halloween: our eclectic bunch of friends could do well as Alice in Wonderland characters. It was 10pm when we arrived in Williamsburg- the hipster area of Brooklyn. I remembered there was a cafe I once went with a friend, we found it and behold! It was still open! So we got cake, soy shakes and tea there. ^^ And then we all hopped onto the train back to Manhattan; stopped by David's friggin amazing new NYU dorm to interview him and his roommate for my thesis and then walked back home with Joon. Overall, super chill and fun although I'm sick now. -_-

Now to plan musical, Epiphany and birthday party.
Note to self: DON'T GET STRESSED, TRUST IN GOD TO BRING US TOGETHER
Amen.