This Is Not Really A Goodbye

Anyway, yes, I’ve finally moved to matthaeus.tumblr.com

As with the previous blog at blogspot, I’ll just leave this blog hanging around. It’ll also serve as my link page since tumblr does not appear to offer this functionality as of yet, or maybe I just haven’t discovered it yet. Do remember to relink me. Kthxbai.

Matthaeus out.

Forget And Not Slow Down

Another overdue post to cover non-YF camp stuff. Camp post is below this one.

So anyway, after YF camp was all darn shag and all. I had beautiful plans of crashing my bunk and knocking out but just then I checked and responded to a missed phone call and all of a sudden I found out that I’m going to Sports School for the last Wesley YM Camp message. Pretty much.

And then on Sunday, rushed to church for PA duties. Thereafter immediately departed for Gopeng which is kinda near Ipoh. We were planning to arrive in time for dinner. 1.5 hours wasted at the customs and 50km of traffic jams near Saremban (an hour before KL) put paid to that. If that wasn’t enough, we took a wrong turn at KL and found ourselves wandering aimlessly in Cyberjaya. We spent half an hour navigating out of that, only to take wrong turns and get back on the correct road twice more.

So we finally got to Gopeng at 10.30pm, more or less, and promptly found out how eerily remote our lodging was to be. A full 7km from the main road, which itself was a couple of km from the town proper. We drove through pitch black and stumbled upon a mansion, literally in the middle of nowhere in a oil palm plantation. Alright, it wasn’t too bad, there was a pool (which we never used), a basketball court, clean air-conditioned rooms, a library and even wi-fi. Wow.

Enough of my rambling about the first day. Monday, we went white water rafting. Water levels were rather low so river wasn’t as challenging as it was supposed to be but had tons of fun in the ice cold water.

Next day, we went caving. Since it was only 22 RM we decided to take the most challenging and longest package. That lasted over 4 hours, during which we covered 3km in, 3km out. The cave was A-W-E-S-O-M-E. A wonderful way to witness God’s creation. We climbed and descended 125m in the glittering cave, then our guide led us out of the paved area and into the total darkness. We didn’t want our shoes wet and wore flip-flops. Paid for our smartness with many cuts and we squeezed through numerous tight spots. Then suddenly we emerged into the underground river and followed it upstream into the exit of the cave on the opposite side of the mountain. Frolicked about for a while, then we went back in and trailed the river all the way back, which turned out to be even more challenging as we had to squeeze through even tighter areas.

Last day, drove back. Finally saw the parts of the highway which we had driven in darkness previously. The Gopeng-Tapah segment was breathtaking. All those limestone hills and mountains. Didn’t go shopping in Yong Peng with the rest of the convoy, instead went to Peter’s uncle’s farm and makan in some random eatery in JB. Then briefly visited Peter’s place and saw his O Level art piece LOL.

Okay as you can see my ravings have gone out of control. Shan’t talk about Christmas to spare any readers still reading. Night.

Alter The Ending

My rather overdue post is finally here.

Anyway, YF Camp was a blast. Totally. As the assistant workshop group leader aka AWGL, I can say that I had a great time and benefitted a lot spiritually. Especially since I had drifted away and somewhat lost the closeness to God which should always be central to a christian’s walk with Jesus.

Coffee Bean was an awesome group, surely. Although my favourite coffee drink is java chip from their competitor. The evil stepsister Samantha reached new heights in her quest to be TUB or Teh Ultimate Bimbo. Hope she isn’t reading this blog :O

We came in second in the amazing race through Singapore. Though after counting the bonus points we weren’t in the top 3, the fellowship we had by sidetracking for makan and staying together as a team (ahem ahem Ben&Jerry’s) whilst telling each other riddles and lame jokes was priceless. The ‘boat’ that we made for the Vivo segment was epic.

As for the bible studies and messages, all I can say is kudos to everyone who spent so much effort preparing them. It helped me grow spiritually even in a period where I’m beginning to grow out of YF. Really thank God for that.

ZYF Camp 2009. Take Up. Coffee Bean.

Samantha Lou

Matthaeus Lim

Brandon Chin

Carey Lim

Edmund Lim

Lindsay Yap

Rachel Tan

Ryan Lim

Shaun Chiang

Timothy Ong

Reuben Ang

Although Brandon and Edmund ain’t in this photo :X

Back From Sarimbun

Camp was fun and all, will elaborate more on it after I’m back from Ipoh which will be Wednesday. Or maybe I’ll blog about it if there is internet access over there.

Either way, I’ll be leaving wordpress really soon.

Post-’A's

So yeah, as I did mention to someone, it’s a long story how I ended up playing LAN with Fock, Lukas and David Yee. Not bad, 6 bucks for 6 hours of zombie killing madness. That’s how we finished L4D2 in one afternoon. We started the first campaign as total noobs and came out as half-baked-decent FPS players with some semblance of teamwork. Awesome fun guys.

Anyway since I finally dragged my sorry ass down to the random Yamaha shop at Thomson Plaza to get some guitar picks (and pick up a free Starbucks beverage, pun harhar), I decided to celebrate my return to guitar greatness with… a (mostly) fingerstyle song aka Why Georgia by John Mayer.

Major breakthrough today as I finally figured out how to play the second riff in the intro. But noooo, stupid John Mayer and my rusty acoustic guitar strings conspired to make hammering on the 5th fret of the D string with my pinky (since all my other fingers were occupied) nigh impossible, or at least until the skin and tendons of my fingers toughen up after months of guitar neglect.

And as I just discovered, after not using a guitar pick for 3 months, I have lost most of the little guitar-picking skills that I have. Sigh. Oh wells.

Anyway, starting from tomorrow, I’m gonna be so busy for the rest of the year due to church or church-related stuff. The year end has always been a happy period for me :)