Friday, February 27, 2009 Y 7:45 PM

I SURVIVED OBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AMAZING!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHA

YES.I MADE IT BACK ALIVE! (:

this is what i wrote in my OBS journal...
get ready...its gonna be wordy :S

MONDAY Day 1:almost died carrying the luggage.did belaying.it was fun (though not that high)seriously doubting i'd be able to complete the whole OBS course.we ate rice for dinner.and it was BURNT.HAHAHAHAHA.ate can food :S more relaxing day compared to all the others.
p.s.- i dint know there was land AND sea expedition. x.x
hungry.
TUESDAY Day 2:Kayaking starts!D: a bit worried at first.okay fine.VERY.T_T 4KM!!!!seriously wanted to die X_X havent kayaked since sec 2 adventure damp luh!somemore was so little de. :S
still hungry...& VERY tired...
[ubin(camp 2)---pungol]
WEDNESDAY Day 3:8KM!!!!STILL FELT LIKE DYING.EVEN MORE.X_X REALLY WANTED TO GO HOME!!!!! my fellow complaining gang consisted of cons and maryanne!hahahahha
smelly, tired & hungry!
I WANNA GO HOME T_T[pungol---sembawang]
THURSDAY Day 4:LAST DAY OF KAYAKING!!!!12KM!!!!thought i wont be able to complete it luh...): BUT I DID!!!!!! with the partnership of maryanne!!!hahahhaah.love u gal! (: by then we had ultra alot of weird bites due to the days of NOT BATHING.WERAING SAME CLOTHES EVERYDAY.KAYAKING IN CONTACT WITH SEA WATER.SLEEPING ON FLOOR WITH MANY INSECTS!anyways...charles cooked for us! (: celebration dinner! hahaha.btw, hes our instructor(my watch) GO ARMSTRONG!!!! HAHAHHAHA.armstrong rawks (:
itchy, tired, still hungry!
CANT WAIT TO GO HOME.
FRIDAY Day 5(LAST DAY!!!):GOING HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMMA GIVE MUM A HUG AND FINISH ALL THE FOOD SHE COOKS!NEVER EVER GONNA COMPLAIN BOUT SINGAPORE AGAIN!!!!!I BOUGHT THE PHOTO!AND BLACK OBS POLO SHIRT! (: CAN SHOW OFF! I COMPLETED OBS!!! HAH!HAH!TAKE THAT!!!!! HAHAHAHA

kayaked freaking 24km!!!!!!!!!!24KM!!!!! TWENTY FOUR KILOMETRES!!!!.anyways...we almost lost the trolley.had to pay for it!$192.80!!!!me marn becca and stell went to find at like very late.cannot find.then i told them i had a feeling the construction worker took it!then we told charles bout the missing trolley.he said he'll help us find.AND HE DID!!!! :D then on friday on the boat we ask him.TRUE ENUF!!!!HE SAID THE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS TOOK IT!!!OMG!I GOT 6TH SENSE!!!!!EVERYTHING WAS LIKE DEJAVU!!!!FREAKY!!!!!!!!!
dammit hav to write a bloody 500 word essay bout OBS =.="
cannot remember anything already luh!just glad im back to civilisation!
NEED TO GO APPLY CALAMINE LOTION!ITCHING LIKE SHIT!!!!! as u all know...my arms are damn skin and bones...but after kayaking...I BUILT MUSCLES!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA *proud* :P however... everyday raining!now im damn tanned! ): got heat rash, bites, sun burn and blisters!!! D: but on one day we got to see the rainbow!!!!!! WOOOOOOTS :D :B omg we saw dead fish and condoms in the sea!!!pink colour de!all same!duh from same person luh!damn sick man.=_= AND THE FREAKING FISH JUMPED INTO MY KAYAK.SICK.>_>was quite inspired by the stories charles told us and the quotes all around camp 1(the nicer, newer, cleaner camp-for land expedition) bottom are some pictures to inspire u too! credits to photobucket!(:

***ho xueqi u scolded alot of four letter words during these 5 days.thats the only exception!NO MORE!!! or u better slap urself in the face!!!>=( AND IM VERY PROUD OF U!!! GO XUE! U ROX! U COMPLETED IT! and u built muscles!!!!(: u survived on 1.5 litres of water in 5 days!!!! (:

*sammy is damn cute!hahahha (:

with love: xue (: Y7:45 PM

Sunday, February 22, 2009 Y 10:31 AM

Service yesterday was ultra fun (:
after service our cell had dinner together ^.^
after eating halfway some guys from other calls came to join us too!xD
and we played loads of games with cards.24...indian poker...
sister elaine,jing and some others had to do forfeit!HAHAHAHAHAHA ;X
ULTRA FUNNY.AT MACS SOMEMORE.HAHAHAH

my sueyness seriously amazes me
i seriously duwwana go for OBS T.T...

with love: xue (: Y10:31 AM

@Take My Hand
it was DA BOMB
those who missed really should kick yourself in the butt (:

anyways
it was really meaningful
every single word hit me real hard
then i realised.
hey.all this is true...
in fact, it happened/is happening to me

god fills our cups with love
it really is ultra super true.
been dissappointed too many times
but never was it by god
the show was so touching i wanted to cry
(partly cuz i realised it was like my "life" story)
today really meant alot to me
wanted time to just stay still ):
but when it was all over i realised it was back to normal.
reality.
sighs.i hate reality.
everytime i go to trinity i find myself walking out free of troubles
its really ultra amazing
no wonder jing was so inspired to be a christian
god above all.
so anyways it started with a balloon game.
throwin balloons around and when the music stopped people had to stop throwing too
(i was hit on the head MANY times)
(somehow it was still fun)
alas.red balloon was on ME WHEN THE MUSIC STOPPED x.x
i hurry throw to kay ;x poor girl was sitting next to me.hahahaha
she obviously didnt want it either so she threw it and it landed on the ground.xD(poor balloon)
shhhh dun tell anyone the balloon stopped at me! ;x
well.u see.people that got the balloons and are picked have to answer a question
and duh i did not want to answer x.x
anyways one of the questions was
"what is the bext valentines gift you have ever recieved"
Pastor Andy:"listen up guys.learn some tips"
hahahhahahha
girl:"erm...i think words mean a lot to me so when i recieve cards with really nice words in it i think to me its the best gift."
its the same for me.hahas.
words whereby i can feel the sincerity
totally touched~(:
i HAVE recieved touching ones.
a few...
two...
._.
nevermind.
hahahaha
anyways pastor andy is ultra funny!!!!(:
i shall not post any here cuz i aint gonna let u lazy bums who dint go gain!
xP
your fault for not going!!!!!!
so anyways after the whole thing jing recieved a rose from her fren who dint wan it o.o
so i stole it for awhile and ended up taking pictures of it ;x
and ended smelling the rose for 20 minutes.hahaha
really ultra super nice smell!
i officially love roses!(:
on top of that.it was PINKKKKKKKKK!!! ;x
hehes ;x

Happy Valentines Day!

So why DO sisters hate each other?

Sisters can be the greatest rivals and the closest companions

Cambridge University psychologist Terri Apter has studied the extraordinary bonds that unite and divide sisters for a groundbreaking book, The Sister Knot. Here she tells TESSA CUNNINGHAM what she discovered:

My sister Marion, a hugely successful dermatologist, rang the other day. Her voice bubbling with excitement, she started regaling me with details of her latest achievements at work. Listening to my clever sister talk, my heart swelled with pride. But there was another much more uncomfortable feeling, bubbling under the surface.

While I dutifully told her I was thrilled for her, a tiny part of me also wanted to scream: 'I hate you.' Quite simply, I was green with envy. How dare my sister, who's four years older, do so well. If she's such a success, what sort of failure does that make me?

I know, that instinctive reaction was mean, nasty and irrational. After all, we don't work in the same field - and, at 57, I'm surely old enough to be beyond such petty jealousies.

So why was I seething? Why on earth couldn't I simply be happy for her? It all comes down to the knotty problem of being sisters. As I've discovered during my research for my book, the relationship between sisters is one of the most complex there is.

It shapes our relationships throughout the rest of our lives - with our friends and workmates. In short, we play out the sisterly role with other women. If that sounds all sweetness and light, forget it. Our sisterly feelings are likely to be a seething mass of resentment, fear and envy.

And that famous idea of the 'sisterhood' - promoted by our mothers as they battled for equality in the workplace - is more likely to be a mask for rivalry and infighting, which explains why even super-successful career women feel so threatened by each other.

There's no doubt there is something uniquely wonderful about the sisterly bond. Your sister may be your best friend who will fight to the death for you. But she's also the one most likely to begrudge your success. As a teenager she stole your clothes. Now she may even steal your husband.

Other psychologists have exhaustively investigated family relationships and their impact on shaping us. But until now, no one has examined the intricate relationship between sisters.

For my book, I interviewed 76 sets of sisters aged from five to 76 and the results are both shocking and fascinating. I started my research because I was fascinated by my feelings for my sister. I wanted to understand what lay at the root of our love-hate relationship.

Most women - particularly those without sisters - have an idealised version of growing up in a huge female family. Literature is full of examples of gangs of sisters supporting each other through thick and thin. Think of Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women. Encouraged by the saintly Beth, the March sisters inhabit a world of cosy companionship, revelling in each other's qualities and basking in each other's successes.

As a child I used to read Little Women and wonder what on earth was the matter with me. Why didn't I adore my sister, Marion, the way Jo adored her sister Beth? Now I know. It boils down to deadly rivalry. Interestingly, this has nothing to do with your place in the family.

Most parents realise that an older child will feel threatened by a new baby and try to soothe any jealous feelings, but I'm convinced that having a sister at all - regardless of whether she's older or younger, is enough to cause paroxysms of angst in any woman.

One of my earliest memories is of watching my mother and my sister hugging each other. My mother bent low into the embrace and I seethed. I was determined to separate them. Racing forward, I charged between them. My mother was so shocked, she pushed me aside. I felt my shoulder hit the wall but I was more stunned by her fury. 'Don't be so petty and jealous,' she chided. How had she seen through me? I was red with shame. It never occurred to me my feelings could be so common.

I vividly remember on another occasion, aged six, looking at my sister, busily brushing her hair in front of the mirror, and wishing her dead. My parents, who were both doctors, were scrupulously fair to us both, but that didn't matter. To me, she was so clever, talented and pretty that I was convinced nothing I did or said could ever matter to anyone.

My sister would take every ounce of love and attention that I needed. She was quite literally destroying me. Envy like that is primeval. Our sister is our biggest champion and greatest companion but she's also our most deadly competitor, and while every child vies for attention and love from its parent, the rivalry between sisters goes much deeper.

With a sister - someone of the same sex who looks and acts like us - we are fighting to establish our own identity and personality. They spark a fear of being usurped, because a sister threatens our place in the family and in the world.

A girl looks at her sister and thinks: 'If I have what I envy in her, or become her then I will be loved by the people who matter to me most. If I don't have what I envy or become the sister I envy, then she will rob me of the love I want. And then no one will protect me and I won't matter to anyone.'

Envy between brothers is subtly different, I think, because boys are less likely to feel their whole personality is undermined by a brother. Boys are more objective, less sensitive, and more goal orientated.

With women, the rivalry can become all-consuming. One woman I interviewed, Jane, now 32, still shudders when she recalls the hatred she felt for her sister. As a sleepwalker, she was frightened she would murder her - acting out the aggression she could control when she was awake.

'I felt utterly repulsed by her,' she says. 'When we sat in the back seat of the car I would look out of the window so I couldn't see her at all. But one sound of her breath, or that disgusting noise she made when she pulled her thumb out of her mouth and sighed, made me realise she was there.'

'I'd kick her or kick the back seat and someone would shout at me and that would make my blood boil and I'd really know what it's like to explode with anger.'

We all remember in spine-tingling detail the hideous acts of meanness we inflicted on our sisters. The simple truth is that, thanks to our sisters, we learn as tiny children exactly how to use our empathetic skills to torture each other.

Sisters know each other inside out - so they know exactly how to humiliate and embarrass each other. Meng, now 27, recalls her outrage when she discovered that her sister, who's three years younger, would be coming to 'her' school.

'I told her that anyone who went into the toilet at break time would never make any friends,' she admits. 'So she didn't go to the toilet all day. I ran home after school, knowing she was in no state to keep up with me, and when she cried and wet her pants I felt the most awful pleasure.'

Of course, one of the cruelest ways to score points against a sister is to steal her boyfriends, something which, I discovered, is all too common. Annette, in her 30s, admits she regularly stole her older sister's men - just to prove she was as lovable and desirable.

'I never thought about whether I liked them or not,' she says. 'I liked them simply because they liked her. My entire sense of what I was worth was related to what my sister was worth. Eventually of course I grew up. But even today my sister can't believe I won't steal men from her. When her marriage broke up, she accused me of having an affair with her husband - which I wasn't.'

With time we learn that, even though our sister may be our deadly rival, we are perfectly capable of being every bit as successful and happy as her. But the jealousy can run so deep that we never totally lose it - with unexpected consequences.

Sisterly envy is, I'm sure, at the root of why women find it so hard to be supportive in the workplace. They won't even offer a helping hand to women who can't possibly be any threat to them.

Women at the top often act as though there isn't enough room for anyone else. Sounds familiar? It's a habit learned in the nursery. The unconscious feeling is: 'If my sister (for which read colleague or friend) is pretty and successful, then that makes me a failure.'

One woman I spoke to was acutely aware of how sibling tensions still affect her. Donna is 25 but she still struggles with a form of envy that bears all the hallmarks of the nursery or the playground.

'When a woman called Susan came to our company for the job interview, she immediately set my nerves on edge because she was attractive but also clearly very intelligent and switched on,' she says.

'I tried to be dispassionate, but how could I? I just felt blinded by irritation. Maybe even rage. She's the kind of woman my mother would love me to be.

'I could see her becoming the star of the boardroom. She'd make me invisible. I was deeply ashamed - but she frightened me.'

It also helps explain why women are so critical of the way other women choose to live their lives. Sisters grow up comparing not just their appearance and skills, but their choices. And underlying the comparison is the fear - have I made the wrong choice myself?

That's why, at work, women don't just question whether another woman's going to oust them but whether another woman's got a better life. Is she managing to juggle career and motherhood better than me? Again, her success doesn't threaten us in any rational sense. But we can't help envying her - the way we envied our sisters.

Sisterly rivalry also explains our love-hate relationship with our female friends. We model our behavior with them on the way we treated our sisters. So, if your friend gets a promotion at work, you'll be thrilled for her but part of you may also be envious. Her success doesn't threaten you, but nevertheless, you fear that her success will somehow diminish you.

Having said all that, I do not want to paint all sisters as hellcats. While they are liable to bring out the very worst in us, they also bring out the absolute best too. Because they are our flesh and blood, we glory in their triumphs and share their pains.

I know that if I'm in trouble, my sister will always be there for me. That's the glorious thing about sisters. It's impossible for parents to eradicate rivalry between sisters but they can do a lot to help girls grow up confident and secure.

I spoke to so many sisters who loathed the way they were labelled by their parents. Instead of finding their own personalities and qualities, one was told she was 'pretty' while the other was 'clever'. The scars run very deep.

I'm also convinced that, while sisterly rivalry may be painful, it's healthy. To say it's character building is true. Through jostling with our sisters, we learn who we are and - equally importantly - how to stand up for ourselves in the wider world. My sister and I are close now, but I know that even when we're ancient, she'll still be telling me to put my coat on when it's cold, and I'll still boil with anger every time at her bossiness. But underneath it all, we know we do it only because we love each other - to death.

I HATE YOU. the older one gets the piggybacks and the younger one?I SERIOUSLY HATE YOU.