| . I N T R I C A T ' s . . |
| J u l y 7 , 2 0 0 3 . B l o g z t e r s so proud to open your eyes to the new and recent blogziousness of my chums! these gals are a bit of peer pressure to my site: lil' nic's: her only betelgeuse w w w . p b a s e . c o m / b e t e l g e u s e she's the one who's always got a picture to tell and a story to draw. lately, she's a bit upset at herself for feeling like a random bouncy ball jumping 'cross and 'round a squash court. jacqueline's garden with many tulips g r o w i n g f l o w e r . b l o g s p o t . c o m she's the flower who just as well, like everyone else, needs the comforting nourishment of the Gardener's water. now she's from "a garden showered by God's love". hm... so where's loretta's new website? she hasn't got one yet. she's up in white horse, but will be back in town again on July 11 (after three months of consolidation)! ! i can't wait to see her again. |
| J u l y 1 9 , 2 0 0 3 . W h y a m I a f r a i d t o . . . Give me work God, come and take my time! Give me work God, occupy my mind! I can't bear no emptiness. I can't bear no emptiness. Come take my time! This had been a little chorus that I have been humming and singing in my head to God for the past week or so. It came up to me when I was walking down Huron St. on one of those days when I know, "finding an occupation is my occupation right now". Roughly every other day, I've been going to the library to use wireless internet on my laptop to look at websites and information of humanitarian organizations, big and small, like "Kinark Child and Family Services" or "Children's Aid Society of Toronto" which are the two that have been of great interest for myself. And I use the Career Centre Website to search for part time positions for the year. So far, I've called up only one place called "East End Community Health Centre" to schedule for an information interview with their coordinator there. I guess I always had a theory that I am not going to jump right into apply for a job. I kept telling people, I want to see what's out there, how organizations function, how people work together, what type of services they provide, and how the professionals have developed their career to this point in their life etc. before I jump right into it. I wanted to show that I care about what they do before I claim, "Hey, give me that job, I can do it." But the results haven't been encouraging. Most large organizations do not have specific contact information for a certain managerial personel, except a general inquiry email address. They never respond to my question about scheduling for an information interview. Finding work has been hard. Plus there are so many other struggles that make me feel afraid of life. Last night, my Dad asked me, "So, what have you been busy with lately?" ("lately" - meaning this past week 'cause I call my folks every week or so.) I said, "ah... I don't know, I don't know what I've been busy with... it's been very scattered". Somehow, he was too busy to talk, so the conversation was over. Afterwards, I reflected upon those swift seconds of our contact. Truly, I thought in my head, I DID know exactly what I've been busy with: I have had an interview at my church for an internship position. So I have spent some time preparing my thoughts, reading up resource, praying, reading for this interview in the past several days. I have been thinking and worrying about next week's Bible Study at CCF, working with James to decide on the passage for two times, and taking at least two hours everytime trying to do that. Then I've been reading the book of Philippians, reading some references for it, and then scheduling and meeting up with the study leaders just yesterday to study the passage. The study itself was so challenging; we've stumbled on a few difficult verses at times. Now, we're hoping to let the questions sink in, and hopefully refine the study again a bit. What else have I been busy with? I have called up the Children's Aid Society to ask about their information sessions, so I can sign up, attend and get to know about how Child Protection procedures work, how to work as a community to prevent kids from being hurt. I have sat at the library, juggling with various opportunities in front of me, playing around a weekly schedule and figuring out how I could possibly be using my time from September and on if I will or will not be hired by so and so, how much volunteering work I'll do, how much income will afford me schooling in Social Work in the years after. I sat there, I had some plans. I reviewed my plans, and made them better. At other times, I worry and think and worry and think too hard about many things. I can't even stop my head from spinning and therefore feeling anxious in my head often times! I just can't stop it! It's so painful. I can't even enjoy the time I spend with my very good friends sometimes, just because I am under so much pressure, so many changes in life, so much anxiety. For various reasons, I do not like the society to put a diagnosis on someone, especially mental disorder, because diagnosis is a kind of labelling that puts the labelled individual into a disadvantage, a stereotype, and therefore prejudice and discrimination. Yet, sometimes, I can't help feeling worried, what if one day I will be labelled and diagnosed for a mental health problem as well because of all the anxiety and worries I am going through right now. I get fears about things like what if one day I'll be one who is diagnosed with a mental health problem, having to be institutionalized and mistreated and deprived of many rights normal people have. Okay, perhaps this is the result of too much studying, precisely too much studies of Psychology and Sociology. Knowledge, especially knowledge about problems of this world, has ultimately put me into many fears, many excessive fears about the potential pitfalls of this society into which I myself will also get into, despite that fact that such occurences are not exactly very likely. Irrational fears then I should call it. Thanks to my problem of not having learned how to take education with a grain of salt sometimes! Coming back to my father. If I have been so anxious, working so hard on various things, having busy with things that are constructive in my own terms and opinion, then why am I afraid to tell him? Why did I dismiss his question by saying "I don't know that I am busy with", which is outright lying to him? Why can't I tell him exactly what I have been doing? Why am I afraid to tell him who I am? Why can't I let him know outright, "Yes, I have been working on Bible Studies for my fellowship, I have been reading the Bible and some website references about discipling to someone for my church internship position, I have been researching and working on getting to know about some humanitarian organizations for some volunteering work, and hopefully employment work, I have been worrying, I have been having trouble enjoying life, I have been stressed out, I have been very anxious, can't you see that, Dad?!" Perhaps then, for my Dad, I am just a mysterious entity that claims to be busy all the times, yet does not reveal exactly what she is busy with. Perhaps my Dad thinks that he is paying me several thousand dollars per year to maintain my living, yet not feeling sure exactly how I am making use of my own time and his money. Perhaps, he just thinks that I have become such an inscrutinable, unpredictable and frustrating person to talk to. Perhaps, it's been getting really hard for him in that sense as a father, still even more anxiety provoking having become the secondary bread-winner of the family. Well, for the latter point, I cannot be sure because I haven't asked him that. I'll have to verify with him how he feels about his role in the family now. I guess it's just hard for him as well. Not being able to break out of the self-centredness of a 20-something year-old, let me come back to my own question. Why am I afraid to tell him who I am? Who am I? I am to the world a practicing Christian who is very involved in my fellowship's ministry work, and is examining whether I will be involved in my own church's ministry work in the coming year. I am a Christian who is partly using this year to explore possibly direction God has for me, including the time that I will spend doing His work, and not just employment work. All this is part of the person I am. Yet, I can't tell my Dad. I must be afraid of some kind of consequences. But what are they? ... (Okay, I have written a whole long spiel following this paragraph above my own struggle as a practicing Christian, yet with unbelieving parents, and then comparing to even to friends who have Christian parents themselves. I resolved to see how a typical Christian mom can't even immediately accept a son's intention to become a pastor one day. It takes a phenomenally faithful and loving mom to say to a son who tells her that he wants to be a pastor, "okay son, it is a little bit hard for me to take this. But if that's where the Lord is taking you to, you have my support. I will need some time to get over it." Then how can my parents, having disliked Christianity for several years in their life, having prohibited my church going to several years in my life, having been unbelieving for as long as they have been married possibly say something of total approval to what I am doing at church and at fellowship like, "Wow, Cat, great job, that you're writing BIble Studies for your fellowship and possibly work at the church." My parents won't possibly say something like that for a life time unless I see them in Heaven for eternity one day. ) But some girl behind me in the library just so carelessly unplugged my power. So my laptop died suddenly and everything I have written after the last time I saved is gone. And all she did was giggling alittle bit, and said a relatively light-hearted, "oh, sorry", as she left for somewhere else. I am so darn mad. I have written a whole paragraph of something so important to me, something that could have helped me relieved a lot of the distress I have felt inside me for such a long time, and shared with others who would be visiting my website. Now, it's all gone. I was angry, and wanted to screamed at the girl who was so careless in plugging someone's laptop. You can't possibly let someone go like that. I vented to the person who was sitting next and beside me. In my mind, I am thinking honestly, I feel like sh_t. I've been feeling like sh_t for a long time already. Life's like this sometimes. Okay, it's been like this for a long time. Just that nothing's been going easy. Nothing's been not a challenge for me. Okay, and this morning I just had this beautiful image of me being able to enjoy jus some time of my own, venting and expressing myself on my website. Who knows that some careless person is going to ruin it for you just some split seconds like that? Oh well, life's like that. You can't possibly get everything you wanted. Or precisely, say that you can get everything you wanted, you can't always possibly get everything you wanted they way you wanted to get them. I was talking to BC. We were talking about about interpretation of an event or an environment anyways. What happened or what is surrounding you is actually very objective. It is your interpretation of the thing or the environment that is very subjective. You can have a fresh water fall coming down, green leavy trees around, and small birds chirping in the air. One man can think, "oh what beautiful site, so fresh and rejuvenating". He delights in it. Another man can think, "oh what heavy noise the fall is making, what repetitive chirping noise of the birds, oh what suffocating trees making me feel claustrophobic!" He disliked it. BC and I were talking about how interpretation affects one's emotional reaction toward something, and how our belief system, the values, rules, beliefs and thinking about this world, affect our interpretation. I used to think that something, something else, something out there whether it be the situation or the thing that happened to me, made me crazy. But no, BC was saying how you feel, how you react and interpret the situation all comes from you. It comes from inside you. You have to see that what you think comes from your head. In other words, you can change it because it's what you're thinking and what you're feeling, and not what the situation is feeling. For BC, being herself means that she behaves according to what she feels because what she feels come from how she interprets a situation, and how she interprets a situation comes from what she believes about the world. To be herself is to align everything, from thinking to feeling to behaving. You can't help but think that she is a very logical person, from the way she works inside her and lives her life, to how she talks about these things. Yes she is. Okay, after all the babbles, I'll call it the spieling of the day for I can't possibly say everything that I think of, share every struggle that I have on this page. But one of the consequences of not blogging for a very long time is this outpour of entangled thoughts. Nic always jokes about "brain diarrhea": when she was cramping and cramping for the few days before an exam, and then when she went to the exam room of the day of within those two hours, she couldn't wait splashing all the stuff and things in her head out onto the exam scantron sheet and essay booklet. I guess today, no matter how incomplete I think the expression of my thought is, I have done some kind of a "cardiovascular diarrhea", or a "heart diarrhea" more precisely, pouring out chunks of the anxieties and fears I have, the tangled up clogs of troubles in my head. You can't help doing something like that when you are 20 something years old. A lot of questions are troubling me. A lot of questions coming up inside my head everyday. I want them answered. I have to say them. You can't just let me live in this entangled split-mindedness for such a long time so that one day I become very sick inside. You can't let that happen to a friend. Can you? |
| Who am I? I am Catherine Tin, a fresh grad from the University of Toronto, and this is my website. I maintain it myself -- meaning I type everything in it, and arrange how I want things to look on it. Welcome. In school, I have majored in Psychology, minored in Sociology and Linguistics, and I am now walking into another stage in my life right at the multi-ethnic metropolis of Ontario, i.e. Toronto, Canada. How is that like? What am I like? What do I like to do a lot? Apparently, I think it's pretty obvious in this website. |
| P o s t - I t - N o t e s o f L o v e ( INTRICAT 's Yesterday ) W h e r e t h e a n c h o r l i e s Archives: tracing down the strings of thoughts that the present moment anchors upon what challenge it is for me to give up on the past? i live in the past, don't i? i spend hours today thinking about what happened in that one hour the night before, the good and beautiful things and the bad and annoying things. i am the kind of person who can't throw away anything (or most things) in the house. there is always those traces that i want to keep so i can always look back upon the routes that led to the present. i still have the 3 antique reference books my english teacher gave me for free since grade 7. i still have the embroidery bookmark with a the figure of "Mr Crap" stitched on it and given to me as a lil' gift by my sister when she was 12. yesterday she turned 18. if it wasn't because I have moved so much and so many times: (In Hong Kong: Mongkok to Cheung Sha Wan in my Kindergarten years, Cheung Sha Wan back to Mongkok in my early elementary years, Mongkok to Kwun Tong at my middle school age, my Dad moved from Kwun Tong to Tuen Mun when part of my family immigrated. Moving from Hong Kong to N.A.: Kwun Tong to Unionville, Markham to Middlebury Connecticut, Middlebury back to Hong Kong for two summers, and then Hong Kong back to Middlebury, then Middlebury back to Richmond Hill upon high school graduation, Richmond Hill to New College, Downtown Toronto when I start university, New College to Markham for the summer, Markham back to Downtown for school, Wilson Hall to Wetmore Hall in three other summers, Wetmore Hall back to Wilson Hall in three of the falls, now Wilson Hall to Huron and Dupont for this summer, and soon possibly Huron and Dupont to Bathurst and Dupont) And who know in a few years, where else I am gonna move again? If I haven't moved so many times and so many places my lifetime so far, i would have kept more things in my closet right now ! I just realize truly my life has been one of a nomad. I kept moving. I kept losing a home. I kept losing an anchor. Or I never take anything as a home, and kept looking for an imaginary idea home that never happened. Maybe I never truly had an anchor. Because the immediate surrounding cannot be held onto, therefore, I tend to hold onto some thing else, memories, things, feelings and meanings that happened in the past. Perhaps, one day I'll discover, or a couple months ago I have already discovered, that not even those memories, meanings and feelings could be held onto. They get lost, they get twisted, and they get replaced by things to come. What are you going to hold onto now, Cat? CTjuly 19, 2003. |
| Right now at this vary moment ... (16:14 july19, 2003) i want to go for a hot dog for a lunch (a very delayed one, i know). and i feel like a 'roasted marshmellow' ice-cream at Greg's right after. a craving i guess since the last time there was quite a while back when elaine treated me with all of the different flavours and any toppings i wanted when she was working there during the late afternoon shift, and caught me walking on bloor and so she came our calling my name, "Cat!" and i wondered who was calling me in the middle of a busy street downtown. i turned back, saw elaine and went with her into Greg's. that's how we just chilled for a hour or two while she served customers. |