disaster after disaster at the speed of a commercial printer

my goodness...

admin stuff, list updating, then hardcore shifting of cabinets, furniture, years worth of magazine stores, and been learning all about publication the hard way. Wrong file formats, problems with crop marks, publications manager giving me all the lowdown on not leaving enough gaps and spaces, file resolution, and all that...

talk about being plunged headlong into all that printing stuff... and to top that off... doing it with Microsoft Publisher and not having any Adobe Acrobat Distiller or PDF maker...

what a nightmare.

Rearranged the furniture and partitions upteen times and the usual computer repair work...

I can't even write in proper sentences anymore.

Computer's Maxtor harddisks gone haywire again... refused to spin up (yes, even the new 160GB one). I just don't get what the problem is, loose cable? bus overclock?

recently the Seagate ones at the offices experienced the same problems too... wonder if its just a coincidence...

but things should be settling down by now... sales manager is gg to push for more articles... he's a great help...

hope the office gets the publication facilities soon

ROPE - Rely On Prayer Everyday

Kudos to all the ppl flying off to China!

Godspeed and safe trip. Enjoy yourselves!

Nong Li Xin Nian

Happy Lunar New Year to all you folks! A good excuse to go around visiting people as usual...

Just sent the car for servicing...

Argh the right CV boot of my car has a layer of rubber gone and its spouting grease again... sucks... (1 CV joint=$135)

Brake rotors are worn out... sucks... (1 set of rotors = $70)

Let's sit down and consider these after the holidays...

My brother's school refuses to let him take Chinese B for the O levels although he's been consistently getting E8.... dunno what want to save the school's face or something... sucks....

Long holiday for me today from work but it seems they're making LE test computers right now to see if they're working and she has no idea how to do it... this internship thing is getting from bad to worse we're doing practically admin and other irrelevant work all the time...

ARgh. Lord help us through this nonsense please!...

But nevertheless, thankfully we have a long holiday now. Kinda sleepy now cause I accompanied my mom to the market in the wee hours of the morning... Good night~

Exploitus Maximus

Being an intern in my company is terrible. We are there as a cheaper alternative to temp staff. I've been so worn out I haven't had the energy to blog. The only difference in treatment from temp staff is that we get ADDITIONAL stuff like working on comic strips, advertorial, banner artwork and design, advertisements, webpages. Been working with the printing press and learning stuff about bleeding, pdfs and so on.

Actually, the stuff is quite useful on hindsight although as part of the entire package they kinda expect us to cover their admin and running around first priority. I just hope I gather enough working experience to be useful somehow. I'm learnin quite a lot of InDesign and playing with Webpages and Fireworks on my own right now heehee...

*sigh*

and they lived happily ever after, we pray

1st post of the new year...

So how's intern life in a 'children's mag'? getting used to it though I feel kinda cheated that there isn't even a computer that can run any sort of design or editing software that is production standard... the editing is actually outsourced completely to India...

doing weird marketing stuff instead... it's quite a small outfit where everyone sort of does everything... and the company is entering a new area to do with tuition centres... lots of saikang basically but its not that bad as our supervisor is trying her best to give us relevant things like poster design, interview... although the technical support and tools are still sorely lacking...

and we actually haven't had the time to sit down and meet the boss to talk about what we're really going to be doing that's relevant to our field in school...

right now I'm kinda not very pleased with having to contend with quite a bit of marketing stuff and I'm supposed to take over somebody else's job on tracking the response to some seminar event... oh well...

LE's very disappointed too but I think we'd just have to do things bit by bit and fight to do the tasks that are relevant to our field... we need to convince the boss to take back more editorial control of the magazine... I'm planning to go through as many past issues of the mag to find grammar, design insufficiencies and other things.

The standard of English isn't very good and in fact cumbersome at times. Must convince him such a standard doesn't stand a chance against Little Red Dot and What's Up? which are excellent Straits Times publications. Time to research on the competition...

Attended a church wedding on Saturday of Mervin my Sunday school teacher. Admittedly I had missed a lot of lessons in the later part of last year when they were doing Ephesians but I remember quite a bit of Daniel. It's interesting to hear what gets said, what's in the oath and we learnt a lot about the significance of the institution of marriage as an ordinance of God. The catered lunch reception was fantastic the chicken wings were excellent and there were brownies with Ice Cream... Mervin's 29... and I'm already 24... *nooooo!*

More recently organized an A53 outing and guess what - Carol and Shawn tried to apply for a flat hahaha~ who would have guessed. It was unsuccessful but both of them are doing great and I really wish them the very best. Also, somebody in our group bought an OSIM U-Zap... HAHAAHAHAHHA

and the usual yadda about which gym is better and discussing workouts while we wolf down Ribs at Cartel... after that... a midnight supper at Simpang too...

... the girls from our batch are all working people and suddenly I feel so much older.....

Really have to put in effort to finish the worksheet before this Sunday's bible class... Wing sure left us quite a bit of preparation to do... but I think it really helps how the class is closely related to sermon...

Till next post,
Jerry.

PS: Happy New Year.

:P

Journey back in Time

Hi folks looking forward to the New Year?
Some photos from our church event on 23rd Dec at Elder Hanson's house. Enjoy!

1. The welcome committee warming up for the 'herding in' of our guests

2. A busy day 2000 years ago...

3. "How would you know if cows didn't look like this 2000 years ago?"


4. Taking shelter from the rain and in God's word

5. An angelic visitation during the skit performance by our youths

I'm sorry but I couldn't take any pictures of the sumptious spread we had because I was 'indisposed' at that time (takes one hand to hold the plate and the other to grab the food yanoe)

Btw, Happy Birthday again Esther! You are a great sister-in-Christ!

Till later folks!!

A grumbling mood of discontent
Gives way to thankfulness
When we consider all God's gifts
And all that we possess.
- Sper

Joy to the world!

Thank God for Christ... the promise of freedom from bondage to sin fulfilled! Thank God for my baptism! Thank God for my Christian friends and family members whom God placed in my life!

Our Christmas sermon had an evangelistic-out-of-logic twist in it this time round - and I want YOU to consider the underlying message said - The Christian faith is either :

1) one big lie and that all of us Christians are believing in utter nonsense - salvation - Christ - God - and celebrating and proclaiming absolute foolishness all the time

2) the truth and thus for all who refuse to believe their damnation is just.

No halfways - your God is yours my God is mine what you believe to be true is true kinda Sophist reasoning...

There is no neutral ground. If you think its a halfway or here there not sure kind of thing then you just simply don't believe - you are saying that the Christian faith is 1) one big lie...

I know its unlike some other kinds of faith where oh... there is a way... but this way isn't the only way... kinda thing... so if you think another way is better for you then well and fine...

Because God isn't a liar when He says He is the only true and living God...
Because God isn't a liar when He speaks of the wrath and judgement waiting for us sinners after death...
Because God isn't a liar when He says He will send a Messiah who will save us from damnation...
Because Christ isn't a liar when He says that He is the fulfillment of this prophecy of salvation
Because Christ isn't a liar when He says He is the bread of life... the only way...

Because God is not a liar, I can be assured He is who He is and will do all the things He says He will do... both in judgement and in wrath and in mercy and in wisdom...

Will you consider this absolute truth?

Wishing you folks a meaningful Christmas!

Btw, I'm really glad to have met up with Guoliang and Shirley who came to attend my baptism... look at them feasting below!
yes I did it on purpose heeheeheehee...btw Shirley is a full-time very 'fierce' Chinese teacher now hohoho! Just what the doctor ordered for recalcitrants like me...

let's end off this post with another photo of other Christian friends who managed to make it yesterday too! Michelle, Shenzhi, Simon and Yongjie. Thanks for your prayers even those who couldn't make it and enjoy your holidays!
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la...

Directions to Moriah Bible-Presbyterian Church

Hi all, my church christmas and baptism service starts at 9.30am.

I've posted a map here which shows how to walk to my church from Simei MRT because that's more convenient for most people . Ok so the green EW3 is Simei MRT station and the church location is on the extreme right side of the map next to block 231 (the partial building marked as 'MBPre'). Get off the MRT and just follow Simei St 3 and cut through the blocks to 231 and enter by the back gate.

Any problems or confusion please call me. Thanks so much!

For direct bus routes (I think only service no. 12 and 290) please visit my church's website at www.moriahbpc.org

Do dress appropriately for a place of worship and there'll be a lunch reception after service! See you all on Christmas day!