"Update ur blog more often...."

"Update ur blog more often.... " that was what Wolfy said in between cigarette puffs last night....

"What on earth is there to talk about????"

Well, the holidays have been quite a washout for me. Christmas was snoozeville.... and if not for the fact that I asked Wolfy to organise something for the New Year, it would ALSO have been another night in snoozeville.

The only thing that happened over the Christmas - New Year holidays was that a senior student at the swordfighting school who moved to Finland because he found love is back with his wifey for a visit.  The amazing thing is that for a guy who was.... "a really really BIG GUY" (as in really really round)... he's now slimmed down so much he has almost no belly to speak of.... and yeah... arms with a lot of muscle. But that's not the most amazing thing.... he coincidentally... (now, in the world of karma there is really no true coincidence.... ) he looks remarkably like Clar, a friend of mine who moved to Edinburgh for study/work and who ALSO learns martial arts...

The similarities between the two guys is pretty amazing... both are gamers, both like similar games, both are equally well-educated... and er... both seem to have similar taste in women.... 

Of course, karmically speaking, I figure that with the senior student, K, am just now meeting the guy I am supposed to meet.... and Clar my friend who moved away was not truly the one I was to meet in this lifetime. Sometimes, your old friends, acquaintances, even enemies return to you, but just not in the form of the same person... its more like... the same set of personality traits (even in appearance), just in a different body.

There is a spiritual reason for this, but I think I won't get into it here. It's pretty complicated and requires a lot of explanation and ideas that you might find truly hard to accept.

Anyways, I kinda enjoyed my first meeting with K. Firstly, he brought some truly tasty liquorice-flavoured alcohol (terribly strong though) and I had a taste of Elk meat. :D And true to rumour, he is pretty eloquent. I don't know what the lesson is here for me... IF there even is a lesson, but I think the Source is showing me something about the whole situation, I guess I'll just have to figure it all out.

Martial arts wise, I think K and wifey have taught me some useful things. They also made it simple to understand.... gosh I wish people would use less words and just summarise some concepts... I realise that if I am to learn the er..... "medieval Italian martial arts system" taught at the school, I'll have to try and remember the info in really simple terms.... I mean, when you ARE fighting (either for your life or just to win)... can you even remember ANYTHING??? It's got to be simple with simple principles......:P

And no, I cannot for the life of me remember all those Italian words.....:( I mean, that whole walky-thing-with-the-scissor-legs has a similar sounding name to the system of unarmed combat..... haiz..... it was not until I did some googling that I finally figured out the difference with the spelling...... :P

Despite the terminology, and the fact that I'm probably the second newest and least talented student at the school... I am in fact rather enjoying the experience... I do admit, I like physical combat.... even though I look nothing like a fighter. I think I am starting to learn my own strengths through this...

The strangest thing is that everyone in the school is like some kind of karmic mirror for me. Perhaps I am in turn a karmic mirror for them... but.... oh well... we'll see.... I am learning lessons from each of them... from the smallest person to the biggest.... Now, being a smallish person myself (Wolfy I'm sure will not agree with this) who is ... height-challenged... I learned that it is important to not be fixated on conventional means of fighting but to capitalise on one's strengths and find a way around things, no matter how impossible something is.... but more important, not to build the belief that because one is physically challenged, one cannot win a fight by force of arms...

Okay..... well, maybe this kinda thinking only works for me and no one else.....:P So far its been okay..... I did manage to make a few lucky stabs at some people and I'm sometimes surprised at what I can do....

I am pleased with the progress I have made ... even though the triumphs are pretty mini compared to... some other people... but that's related to another lesson I gotta learn.....

Okay... the last thing... before I end this LONG post....

I did another stupid thing today and visited LP to make another outfit......:P

I think when it comes to er.... the outfits, I must have lost all my brains or something....

Anywho, the outfit I got LP to look at is the one below:

My original intention was to make another Ezio outfit like in 2012... but I realised that with things being uncertain in this world, its probably better to do what I wanna do now and not put it off till later. 'cos later might mean that "resources" now available might not be available at the time I want them..... (I'm not talking about money here)

Also, after wearing my silver doublet with the poofy sleeves for like 3 days in a row.. I sorta realised that having 2 outfits is better in terms of look, feeling ( yeah... even if I used the Peppermint to limit odours and sweating, the inner shirt can get pretty grimy after 2 consecutive days in Singapore weather.) and er... heh.... smell.... *grin*.... some gal at STGCC actually commented that I smell an awful lot like cheesecake.... eeeeewwwww... she also remarked that it made her feel hungry... I don't know if that is a compliment or.... 

Well.. she was a pretty weird little girl anyway.... she asked me if I would give her my Ezio outfit.... :P

SOOOOOOO.... I guess I've got my work cut out for me, since I also decided to make the armour myself... (this is to lower cost and er.... I don't really wanna wear PVC armour anyway)

Lastly, I did also think about perhaps getting LP to refurbish my robes instead. It WOULD be cheaper. However, the more I looked at my robes the more they started to resemble.... a nightgown. I mean, its okay for Dumbledore to walk around in a nightgown because he is an old fuddy-duddy.... I think I'm FAR from fuddy-duddy-ism...

I also think my personal tastes are changing. I used to think robes were okay.... until I realised that er.... one of the guys I dislike wears robes at cosplay too ... probably because it helps to hide fats.....:( Also, during some of the conventions, when I met some of the OTHER "Ezio"s I am pretty glad I don't have 3 spare tires on my tummy nor do I look like a stick in jeans.  :P

I tried googling for a nice robe design, but for the most part, the concept art of most robes look nasty... (they mostly look like crumpled and oversized pjs) and the robes on most neo-pagan and larp sites look even worse than the one I have now.....:P

In fact, the black Ezio outfit does really look much nicer .... and if I wanted to, I could just take off the armour and wear them like robes... heh.

Mannnn.... if designers could just take a totally unconventional view on wizard fashion... we could have some pretty nice things.... I did like the outfit below:

 

But I just didn't want another PVC coat. Yeah probably this design would require a lot of PVC for the leather effect. And what's more, how on earth am I gonna clean this crap???

Holiday That Was Not...

 

It's almost the end of the new year period and that means that I'll be back in my job next week :P I had anticipated spending some time during the Christmas-New Year season getting some rest and getting some stuff of mine straightened out.

That never happened.

The holidays this year was ....  very busy... I ended up meeting hordes of people I did not want to meet......:(

After that highly unfortunate incident with that "person from my past" my folks announced that a family friend had died and we were going to attend the wake and funeral. As he was the minister of a church, well, there were hordes of people at the wake. Unfortunately they were all the people that I grew up with :(

It was also unfortunate that we went to the wake on Christmas day :( I had never seen so many people that I had wanted to avoid.

The minister was a good person and I remember him best as an excellent counsellor. I think he had a good understanding of human nature... (something unfortunately that I did not develop in my younger years... and that resulted in me making the acquaintance of people that I today REALLY want to avoid) he certainly could see the issues in the people that I knew... (something that I failed to see for many years)....

However, it seemed (for me at least), this event was like Fate or Karma or something asking me in abstract terms if I wanted to turn back now and return to where I once was... in fact I had people asking me to come back :P 

Honestly... I hadn't thought a lot about why I left it all behind... When I did leave that life so many years ago, I had done so because I felt terribly unhappy about being where I was. Reflecting on my decision, I realised that being with that particular community did not make me happy because my faith as it was back then was based on fear and not on a belief that this was what I had decided to stand for....

The problem with the community I had come from was that for the most part, it attracted people who talked more about hellfire and brimstone than the love of God. In fact, my own father was of the opinion that Hell was an important concept that was not preached enough in some "modern" churches because he felt it helped to "save souls" :P

I should have listened to Mr Cow in the university I attended. Mr Cow was a lecturer who taught a minor module in my course of study... He was a very very strong minded chap who had his own unique views and did not take any crap from anyone... not even the authorities... He was also a man of uniquely strong faith and I believe his grasp of theology was also pretty sound...

One, he had proposed to myself and some students of similar faith the following notion...

Were we believers because of fear... in particular the fear of burning in hell.... or did we choose this path because it was something that we felt was worth standing for?

He was of the notion that it was a poor poor basis for faith... if the reason it existed was because of fear.

Unfortunately, I had not really understood his reasoning back then because I was too deep into the whole thing... I think I even felt a little bit... surprised that he had even raised that question...

I think I asked him if he wasn't afraid of Hell at all... i think he said that... if his faith was based on fear alone... he'd rather be in the fire .....


If I had understood him earlier... I could have avoided all those mistakes.. years of it... 

The problem about having a faith that is based on fear is that... you are always wondering if you have "made it"... so to speak... Honestly, the standard of holiness that was advocated by the community that I was in is... in today's world... unrealistic... Moreover, as the community was fringe and not mainstream... they held to the belief that the religion as practiced by themselves was of far superior quality than in other groups of similar belief.... 

To most other people... the community I was in would be considered extreme or purist... :P

Naturally, being human and Singaporean... I found it terribly difficult to uphold the standard of holiness that was advocated... (there was one time I remembered a view advocated by some members of the community that - going to the movies was undesirable because most movies weren't exactly moral and the environment of the movie theatre was one that led to people, especially young people engaging in immoral acts... thus, some members did not go to any cinemas at all... since movie-going is a national pastime for Singaporeans... you can see how that presents a huge problem) ....that led to constant failure... and constant doubt regarding my own faith... half of my childhood was spent learning religious doctrine from members of the community and my own father... and because of all these views... I was never ever secure in my own faith... 


Kids aren't dumb... and certainly I understood what I read and studied... unlike many of my peers, I never had a problem with Shakespearean english especially when I started learning it in secondary school because the scriptures I read was in the same type of language... (some members of the community felt for the longest time that the only accurate translation of the scripture was the king james version, and rejected all other modern translations)...


Well... I was a thinking kid and really..... knowing all of THAT... never helped me feel like I had actually managed to attain the whole "salvation" thing...


So what happened was that I ended up wallowing in fear, guilt and doubt for years... and when a person becomes afraid and guilty, they also become extremely zealous... I can honestly say that I probably spent more hours "serving God" than my very faithful father....:( 


Seeing all those people made me remember my own childhood... 

I never want to go back to all of that... it was a terrible terrible burden being in that community... I could never ever really be myself in all of that... in fact, I had to invent this person who never really existed.... just so I could have something to show people on a Sunday....:P 

Now, I don't have anything against the religion in general and I think some of the best people I know are in it... but.... it is certainly not my cup of tea... and certainly not with the community I grew up with.... 

I shared my experiences with F who felt after listening to all of it, that.. well... my community was considered a very non-mainstream sect in christendom... 

F was once an ordained minister... it is pretty ironic that she's the one I talk to the most now about spirituality and stuff...


I think I have a huge hangup over this entire "faith" thing... in fact, F noticed that people who were once monks or nuns in their past lives or who are now in a religious order generally DO NOT like me at all... it's like they can sniff out my hangup without even me opening my mouth... 

well... but that's really something for another time...:P

A Post Before Christmas,,,,

Once, many years ago, this festive season used to be the busiest time of the year for me... but not because of work... I used to have a lot of religious commitments... which is really really odd, because my family doesn't celebrate this holiday at all. They just go through the motions of celebration when invited to other peoples' homes for the sake of politeness (for some people)... or fun (for the rest of us...)

The thing about a having a father that reads a lot about his area of interest is that well, he found out long ago that decorating Christmas trees probably had its roots in ancient druidic practices... (I've wanted a tree since I was a kid but thanks to my father, they are out because he felt it was a heathen practice... ) Also, he felt that Christmas was a christianised version of the traditional pagan holiday of Yule and other similar year-end winter holidays celebrated by ancient non-Christian Europeans, so we have no celebrations at home except for a big dinner IF he and my mother feel like it... In fact, I remember working on Christmas day when I was a teenager trying to scrape together enough cash for stuff in the new year... because there was nothing else to do on that day...

Being a "by the book" kind of believer, my father felt that the only festival worth remembering on the Christian calender was Easter... It commemorating the death and resurrection of his Lord... since, as he said... it was the only thing that was commanded for believers to remember... and he does have a ton of theological knowledge to back his view.

You know, we don't ever have easter eggs or chocolates or bunnies at our house either... :P I wonder why since my father never made the whole Easter - Ostara connection.

I guess its because my folks aren't too much into having "fun". Or maybe its just too much effort to get stuff ready..... I dunno.... I see some gift chocolates on the table now, but I think its just in anticipation of returning someone's gift since it is likely someone will give  my folks something on Christmas day when they go for service... :P And believe me, my folks don't like making social boo-boos.

Anyways... so what does this season mean to me now? Actually its still one of the busiest times of the year for me 'cos for some weird karmic reason, the universe or Source makes it such that I see a huge parade of all the people I've either had issues with or who have issues with me...

In the past week, I met a person from my past I really didn't like.... and fell really really sick afterwards... yeah , I've got the stupid f****** FLU again with the slimy green phelgm. Some people are just "toxic"... as echoed by a friend who works at Da Bear's... I heartily agree.. I think next time if that m***** f****** b**** is gonna turn up at a meeting of old friends, I'll just be very rude and say "I don't want to make it".

Honestly, I have never been insulted in the face as many times as on that Thursday night... by that B****. But in an effort to save the rest of the innocent bystanders and pretty decent folk...from discomfort over me flipping the dinner table and walking out, I had to ignore all of that... I have no idea why that b**** seems out to get me this year since I don't think I ever did anything nasty to her.... :P

F says I am slipping in my meditations and spiritual practice and that's why I met those people... don't say I disagree with her... its been a very very hectic end of the year.... no time to consider stuff which I should be thinking about... I've still got a painting dateline and that sure isn't helping 'cos all I wanna do is sleep :(

But despite all that I'm feeling now about these very short and not very fun holidays, I did learn quite a lot about myself and managed to overcome a longstanding fear. I used to be afraid of meeting or confronting that nasty b**** .. and I really don't know why, since she isn't really anyone powerful or important... unlike some of my other old school acquaintances in the government... but now, seeing her after so long, I find myself laughing at my own silliness... why should a very very bloated, spiteful, lonely person cause me so much consternation? 

Perhaps, as F would say, "it is something energetic she is putting out..."... maybe she is right since none of the other normal people seated at the table said anything in retort when she started throwing her arrogance around... I mean, I used to think I was arrogant and self-absorbed, but now I think I'm pretty normal by comparison.

In fact, I think that in comparison to all the people from my past that I have met these past few weeks... most of my friends now are "normal" by comparison....

Anyways, I anticipate that this Christmas I'll be meeting more people from my past that I do not want to meet. I hope I don't end up punching someone.... cos I really don't have any more patience for people who for some stupid karmic reason, have some kind of issue with me.