5 months ago, I'd wait till the wee hours of the morning for that exciting curve of a name to flash onto MSN. Complete with the red iconic avatar that would tell me that my wait is over.

Now it just tells me I must wait a lot longer.

Evenings with Glen.

No, I never mind silences. They say lot in themselves. And as the dusk scatters across the sky the quiet calm still fails to grant stillness. Only restless souls left, like leaves being blown about by the wind. Apologies and acceptance here go hand in hand. No fear. Cross roads come and you go home and to the library. I walk the other way.

By then the evening fades away and night comes like a cloak. Giving blindness to once-happy eyes. Too attuned to light, they stumble in the dark.

Expectations suck.

I love my new job although sometimes it gets a little tiring. Now I know why they wanted two people. I am one.

Funny, I used to dread Wednesdays. It meant an early morning waking at 8.30. Now I am grateful for the extra two hours of sleep.

Oh, and I am raising funds for the UBC Navigators. Work day - I will be working for a whole saturday at homestart. I need funds. Please contact me if you're willing to help out the Navs.

God, fundraising is so hard.

To Sabbath is indeed a very good thing. I start work tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Finally! Word verification is alive.

The past week has been simply wonderful. As if the world is taking the extra effort to let me know that I am loved and that I will be loved. And it has truely been a pleasure.

First up, meeting with Simon and Mel at some distant end of Richmond. Always knew that we'd be friends in some way shape or form, and meeting Mel completed the Simon picture. Through all this, I was reaffirmed of global and distanced friendships. Simon and Ting feel to be like the two other points of the triangle that traces the globe.

And then today. OH GOD TODAY. MURC was in full swing and I found myself needing to present without a compatible computer system to run my presentation. I almost expected to be repremand for my lack of foresight and preperation. But instead, it seemed that the entire organization swept down to assist me. Oh wow was it beautiful. And then to have rambled through my entire presentation on an adrenaline high, only to leave feeling very non-academic and undeserving of a degree.

I was affirmed left right and center. This is what education, and life, should be.

Well now. I'm back in the library getting back to the grind. I'm smiling.

Oh, and of course, I have a wonderful boyfriend.

It might be the sun coupled with a gorgeous Chai Latte in the regent atrium reading a pleasent story for one of my classes. This is THE life. The one I've been looking for. I think to myself as the comforting rays bounce off my table, refuge from the frost outside. It would be -8 later tonight. Insane! But whatever it was, it made me feel a sense of peace. That for the first time in my life, I felt... almost sure. Actually, I felt perfectly sure. Sure of what? I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do for grad school, I don't know what I'm doing in the summer. Hell, I don't even know what part time job I am capable of handling well.

So I guess being sure wouldn't be an accurate description of that very empowering state of being I found myself in today. Whatever it was, and whatever its cause, I'm glad for it. Tracing my way across Buchanan to HIST 403 today - late -, it dawned on me that I have acomplished what I wanted to have acomplished by this point. I've gotten the education that I wanted. I did not shrink back in struggling to get my Grandmother's story going. But the most pleasing thing about that moment, was the recognition that I had become what I wanted to be. I had told myself, before leaving for Singapore last year that by the time I get back, I would have grown. I would be confident in communiating with people, in bringing my identity across clearly, in just being. And it has come to be.

To date, I've been through at least 15 interviews for a part time job, along with a three hour test determining my ability at MS word (Come on! I am a student! I know that programme like an intimate lover!). Nothing. But still, I found myself quite sure of my capabilities, and found no reason to doubt myself. It did help that I have been getting acceptance letters from universities and that my interviews have been very encouraging. But even the monumental 'B' grade on my essay proposal on the Nuclear Bomb that I got today scantly moved me.

I was very sure, that it was all going to be alright. I was a capable person, going places and being alive. I have people who love me and a God who is everything. Why worry? Later, I received a job offer (which I accepted) and an A grade for my term paper on Chinese Religion. Not that these really matter. But what was really encouraging was biblestudy today. In the midst of Curt0 expounding on something, a realization of my personhood came creeping over me again. I am here, I have a life in front of me, I make things move and take responsibility.

Ahh... these days at UBC, when I was birthed. I thank god for everything. For the navs whom I found by chance at a booth near vanier. It was meant to be. :)

I don't like hanging out there. Everyone is just so.... Christian.
Haha yeah! That's the word I was thinking of to!

Oh Curt, what a journey.

I have been spending too much time looking for a job in this stupid city. I thank god steph was on the bus on the way home to make me feel a little happier. Oh well.

I look back and I think that no one is blameless, except for the very center of the storm. Who is, in effect, the cause of it all. Dark situations bring out the blackness in the human spirit.

I'm hungry and craving for... ginger?

"[During the Soviet Union's first nuclear test, two tanks were procured from the army for the purposes of analysing fallout effects.] A.I Burnazian... wanted to remove the turrets and add lead shielding to give the crews greater protection, but the military protested that this would destroy the shilhouette of the tanks. Kurchatov overruled the military, declaring that an atomic test was not a dog show, and that tanks were not poodles to be judged by their appearance and posture"

P 214. Holloway, David. Stalin and the bomb. New Haven: Yale University press (1994).

I do not understand how Christians can read The Cost of Discipleship and not sell all they own and live with the poor. I am so scared of my perceived calling sometimes.

That's it, no good, no evil. Just follow.
(and not YBHs either)

Harris, who wrote The End of Faith, said that religious moderates are just fundamentalists who have failed. Quite true. So what am I? And what am I to be?

Thank you. It is a wonderous thing, being loved. And the knowledge of being precious and sought after, to be considered dear and beautiful, to share life with, is astounding.

There is deep peace here.