Liang Goes to Korean Church Pt. 1

Today was my first time at a Korean church. I’ve been blessed each time I attend my dear Korean caregroup. Here is the man that brought me to the caregroup, his name is Ji-hoon.

After a few wrong turns and a huge U-turn in a empty parking lot, I finally found myself at the carpark of Perth Full Gospel Church. While walking into service I could hear the sweet sounds of praise led by my brother Ji-hoon, they were singing Friend of God by Israel Houghton.

I was there slightly early and caught my friends practising before the actual service. It was a unique and beautiful sight because amongst the Korean worshippers was an African lady and she had a beautiful alto voice! Only in God’s family do you see people of different nations, language and colour join in one song. The love for God and his people overcomes these barriers.

At one point during worship, I had felt a certainty that God was in our midst and was simply relishing in God’s presence and Ji-hoon confirmed it by saying some words along those lines! God is good!

We sang Be Still for the Presence of the Lord and time was given for us to wait on God and felt God speaking to me with Philippians 1:6. Just as worship was coming to a close, the congregation was given a chance to speak what God had placed on their hearts and I went ahead took the mic and read the verse! I thank God for speaking to me, I thank God that he speaks even today!

I Miss Mummy

I dreamt of my mum, it was very real leh. I wanna go home fast!

I don’t really remember much of the dream, so I thought, “better blog before you forget that you dreamt of your mum”.

Haha, I do believe it was a mundane dream, but it is the mundane that happens all the time and that which I miss so much, like buying char beehoon for breakfast and having teh my mum makes. It’s just different from the one I make here.

I live in an apartment complex now and it’s never been different, I’ve lived in apartments ever since I was born.

But somehow, this time, it has taken over me. I am talking about the lifts. Like in most apartments, there are more than two lifts and naturally, one lift is nearer to my unit.

Let me tell you, I am obsessed with wanting to take the lift nearer to my unit. Let me show you what I mean:

I keep going the blue route when in fact both routes are about the same, I think it’s a design flaw to have only one lift button in the middle!

Why am I blogging about this?!

Thinking Back On Brooke Fraser

In one week I saw, Brooke Fraser, Pillar and… Switchfoot!!

Brooke Fraser first. What can I say she was great! She sang great, I knew most of the songs from Albertine and to top it off she was really funny, very candid too!

The show started with the band taking their instruments and starting an instrumental. Right at that moment I was reminded of the band Eight and thought to myself, “They sound very kiwi.” Because in my mind, I made the connection of Kiwi with Brooke Fraser and Eight.

Brooke then walked onto stage and the crowd cheered! She started singing the C. S. Lewis Song! That was a pretty good start!

I will try to describe her humour, although that kinda thing is pretty hard to write.

She changed guitars after the first song, and while replacing the jack there was some noise and she said, “Oops.”

After the 2nd song, she removed the capo of her guitar and signalled to her techie that she wanted to use the other capo. But the techie didn’t get it, so Brooke had to ask for it! Over the microphone!

She then apologised to the audience and said that she had meant to do it subtly! *Cue laugh* Ok. So I did not manage to capture her humour, just imagine she’s very candidly funny k?

Her other jokes included the facial hair one, her bloody green mucus, the drummer living at 7 and a half mile and drinking red wine with antibiotics. They aren’t jokes per se, just anecdotes that were very funny?

Highlights of the gig were not JUST the spoken parts but the sung parts! Her voice, even though she was not well she sang really well!

The band that accompanied her was really good! Nigel from Hillsongs was there too! Haha. Everyone was brilliant in their own right. The keyboardist stood out much! She played keyboards, sang backup, did some percussion and even played a mean viola. Listen to “Hymn” for an idea of how it sounds like, the viola.

It was a great night for Christian music, for God’s music. It got me thinking about what I want to do with my gifts and talents. I want to use them all for God’s glory. I want my music to speak of God’s greatness, love, mercy, His justice and holiness. I want my life to echo his character. Use me Lord.

PS: I uploaded videos from the gig!

Brooke Fraser – Deciphering Me

Brooke Fraser – Arithmetic

Cut Hair

Me, after almost a year without a haircut, I did it.

This was before my haircut:

And this immediately after the haircut:

With Vern smiling spastically, kinda cute, awww, I still love you!

A Song For Lana Krost (Can We Be Friends)

Go ahead click play, you know you want to!

A song for Lana

I was thinking of writing a song after I saw Lana’s audition clip on Youtube, and I did! Leave your comments ya?

Here are the words to the song:

A Song For Lana (Can We Be Friends)

I saw you on the tv screen
O those eyes, those eyes
And you, you’ve got this air about you
You seem to make everyone like you

I know this might sound crazy
I know this might sound mad

You I saw you on the video
And I notice how you bite your lower lip
That air that is all around you
I think I might be infected

I know this might sound crazy
I know this might sound mad

(Can we be friends
That’s all I ask
Can we be friends) x2

And I know, I know, I know I could be singing to myself
and I know I could be singing to myself

If you know Lana, please tell her about my song, thank you!

The Lord Is Good And Has A Sense of Humour

Sometime last week, I wanted to start on Inductive Bible Study (IBS) on my own. I had brought Jenn’s copy of Kay Arthur’s How To Study Your Bible, intent on doing some sort of Bible study.

Before starting to studying I also read a sermon by Pastor John Piper, titled ‘Open My Eyes That I May See’, which is part of Psalm 119:18.

After reading that sermon, I memorised and prayed Psalm 119:18 everytime I read God’s Word. I prayed the exact words of that verse, “Open my eyes Lord that I may see wonderful things from your law”.

Did you know God answers prayer?

You see I haven’t been able to sleep well for the past few nights, and I’ve been wondering why, asking God why I can’t fall asleep and why I wake up at unearthly hours. (3:07am yesterday and 5:17am today)

Then I remembered today, reading in that sermon Psalm 119:147, it says “I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words”.

I see now, why I couldn’t sleep. Hahaha. Hallelujah, praise the Lord, I am grateful to God for being my personal alarm clock, nothing happens without God allowing it.

-8x– edit -8x–

The more I think about it, the cooler it gets, God literally opened my eyes! Hahaha!

Dreaming Awake

I know I miss my father when I imagined that he was in the house I was in.

I had just woken up from a nap and I thought I heard my dad talking, outside my room, my heart skipped and I wanted to run out there and greet him.

Then I realised, we were a couple thousand miles apart.

But like Chick Benetto’s mother said, I quote from memory, “You can never lose your mother”.

You also can never lose your father.

I love my mother and father.

Some trivia

Yesterday, something interesting happened in my professional communication class, we had to pick these cards randomly, and on these cards was a random word. My word was death.

What we had to do with these words was to prepare a two minute speech and present it to the class, while everyone picked out the features of the speech. Mine went surprisingly well though.

I did some research and found out that:

1) 2500 left-handed people die each year by using products for right-handed people.
2) 3 people get killed by coconuts each year.
3) 7 people get killed by 9v batteries each year.
4) 10 people get killed by vending machines each year.

I do not have data, and you should not quote me on this! It’s damn sad to be killed by those things I just mentioned.

Fab Food & Fab Friends; A night at Tiger Lils

Thursday evening was a fun-filled evening! A bunch of us headed to this upmarket place for dinner, we went to Tiger Lils! It is a restaurant/bar bursting with a fusion of Eastern decor.

I found it a little weird because there was a big clash of cultures, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, like everything lah. Almost. Not. But I guess they pulled it off pretty well!

That is the exterior of Tiger Lils, check out the lanterns!

That’s the bar, complete with alcoholic happy buddha and angkorwatish lookalikes. Man, he looks really happy surrounded by all those bottles. Hehe.

And here is a closer look at the lanterns of many shapes and sizes!

Anything remotely Eastern made it in, haha. But it’s really a colourful burst of asian flavour. Nice.

We were all relatively on time, after circling a good area, 4 times, for parking, no less. The menu that day was its first day at “work” and so we had the honour of trying out the new food.

Theodora and Sharolyn (on her right) plus Sean (not in picture) had some teppanyaki beef thing which was actually a beef steak cooked medium rare with rice. I don’t think they enjoyed it so much, someone almost barfed, hehe.

Here’s my dish, a chicken caramel thingie, it was good! The colours are bad in the photograph, but it was good! The beautiful aromas of the grill were infused into the chicken. Mmmm!

A few more pictures from the night:

All the pictures can be viewed and downloaded from my Flickr!