Did something for the first time today (:

I VISITED A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. (At last)

HOLD THY BREATH.

THIS IS NOT MEDIACORP'S STUDIO.
THIS IS
*drum rolls*

CITY HARVEST CHURCH'S AUDITORIUM.
-MEGAAA JAAAW DROP-

Their main pastor in the centre, a charismatic guy called Kong Hee

A band named Mollucos, something like that.
I thought they were Americans, Rihanna style but Gabriel said they were from INDONESIA.
The way they sang the songs was ASTONISHINGLY nice and had the American accent but their flawed fractured English exposed their true nationality laa.

He's the only high one in his cell group.

Oh yaa I learnt that cell group doesn't only go by age, like in Yuheng's church. For Gabriel's you follow the cell group your friend brought you in. And his cell group has overwhelmingly TONS of guys. I was introduced to Chin Poh who was isolated from the rest cos he sat beside me (sorrie~) and I SERIOUSLY thought his name was Cheapo. Omg so malu okay, I wanted to act friendly and strike up a conversation so I asked him why the rest called him Cheapo. No wonder he stunned. Oh no I can't rmb the names of the people I met. Shiat.

Gabriel said most of his cell group members used to be gangsters converted back to Christians so when he brought me to meet them I daaamn scared luh. I remember one Jonathan who didnt look like Didi at all and he had a girlfriend named Eve so Gabe said Jonathan will definitely rmb my name. Then there was this property agent guy who kept introducing Gabriel's good qualities to me until Gabriel said "No laa, she got boyfriend already." Waseh I didn't get it at all please. Tsk. The guy eventually clarified he wasn't trying to pair us.

Ohh! And I made friends with one of the three girls in the cell group. She's totally awesome mans, she can suvive in those MASCULINE climate. Wasehh.




Back to the performances..

We had JAY CHOU

'S GOOD FRIEND, LIU GENG HONG.

Look right,

Look left~

Look front and whooo! MAGIC~
His wife came too!
And I didn't know he was married to HER.

She acted in Jay Chou's Fa Ru Xue and Geng Hong's Rainbow MVs wor.
Wahh Geng Hong lei, Act friendly hahahaa.

Surprisingly, we saw an OCEAN in the auditorium...

OU DE YANG.
Lol, Gabriel and I got exchanged the "Erm.." look then Gabe suggest they put the cartoon version of him on the screen instead of him on live. Totally agreed. LOL. Quite mean to him. :/


Then next up, we saw FIR~
Wasehh long time no see them mans.
They sang Fly Away and oh my goodness, I sang along too. Quite loudly :X

Emo living in the fantasy that she's opening her concert too WHOOO!~

Gabriel said that the two on the left are married.

OHH MYY HOOK.
I felt so swakoo that I didn't know about it lehh
(Still self-declared know a lot about Korean, Jap and Taiwanese showbizes)

Ah Shin's hair makes him look like a dying old man. OOPS.

There was this damn ZAI break dance group!
If I didn't spend all my memory space capturing FIR's cheena song I would have captured their dance perfomance for you all to watch, totally SPECTACULAR.

"I ain't no pot belly."

One arm push up!

OH NOOO.

COOL.

Then we had MILK.
As in not the drinking milk, as in MILK~

Get it?
He's called Niu Nai = Milk in English~

Wahh UNGLAM! Hahahaa!
I felt so proud of myself after taking this shot!

We had F4!

Okayy so sorry girls, your hopes have to fall drastically cos I'm not referring to the Korean hot like steamboat F4 but the frozen, sublimed into air, disbanded former F4 band from Taiwan.

1/4 of them, VANESS WU.

*ALAMAK*
headache siaa.

"Tell me whyy~ My F4 lost popularity~~"
T^T

"Aaaaaahhhhh!!... Noooooo~"

Sigh.

This is my desire
"To be popular like Korean F4..."


RED ALERT!
BORING REFLECTION AHEAD!
(you may choose to skip the blue part)

Learnt a lot of things in one afternoon. Made a conclusion that Catholic masses are more traditional and solemn while Christian services although longer, are more modernised with upbeat worship songs in pop style. I loved the testimonials, they really moved me. Just that I still cannot quite accept they have something called ties (I think it's spelled this way) whereby 10% of your salary or pocket money goes to the church. For my Catholic church, it's voluntary, out of individual goodwill. No wonder Catholic churches are relatively poorer and constantly in need of funds especially for church building funds. Wahh City Harvest is like some.. designer's building luh. *eyes bulge* Smells new and it's super big too. By the way, the auditorium is I think 5 storeys UNDERGROUND??

And another thing that kept me in doubt is that when the crowd prayed over Jacelyn Tay, almost everyone prayed for her in tongues, even a young boy was blabbering away but from my church's upbringing, tongues is a gift from God that enables you to converse in foreign languages, usually ancient languages like Hebrew etc and this gift would be bestowed upon you when you're religiously ready. But I observed the boy and I feel he's blabbering nonsense just to fit in with the rest. Then there were others whose tongues had no pattern so I was sure they havent received the Gift yet. The influence of this church was so strong that I had the urge to blabber too but I prayed to God - that although I came with an open heart to learn more about Christians and embrace the differences between Catholics and Christians, allow me and guide me to maintain a rational mind to distinguish between what is true and what is false.

Then there was the controversy over priests and pastors. Although letting religious leaders marry would be more humane to these leaders but to me, the priests who have chosen to dedicate their lives wholly to God, to maintain chastity and purity of body, mind and soul are of higher nobility. These Catholic priests have given up everything in service of their vocation except their parents (to exercise filial piety) while the Christian pastors live their lives like any of us commoners, just incorporating more faith into it and not giving it up entirely. Dress code was different too. In City Harvest, everyone seemed to dress themselves up with designer brands like Gabriel's friend who is a mega Zara fan from head to toe but they seem to over-monetize everything. In catholic churches, as long as you dress decently and in respect for God, it doesn't matter what how expensive your clothes are, anyway God sees inside within you and you go to church for God, to communicate with him. Yupp that's the word. For Catholics, we focus on communicating with God while Christians focus more on influencing the community through testimonials and sharing experiences which I admit I like, cos it's very impactful.

Nonetheless, Pastor Kong's preachings were good. He talked about humanity which is our conscience and this differentiates us from animals. Then he said it revolves around our SOUL. S is for spirituality where he linked to testimonials "With God, nothing is impossible", I forgot what O and U are but L is for Love. He said that the reason why these celebrities (link to theme: Celebrity Weekend) keep singing love songs and love songs and love songs is because love never dies, Love can withstand the test of time. Centuries later, people would still love each other, it's something that would remain forever. Then he linked to how God sacrificed his only Son for our sins. All I can say is he's a very charismatic speaker.



Thanks Gabriel for bringing me to experience a Christian service, had a lot of fun waiting for the fireworks but didn't manage to capture it everytime. It's super like a concert luh! And thanks for ice cream, eating ice cream in cold weather was weird but quite nice.

Went home by myself cos Gabe had to join his cell group for fellowship near Singapore Flyer and I could successfully take the bus to Pioneer, walk to the gantry without being lost, smsed Mama and Dabian for a little help to take the train from Jurong East then I was independent on my journey back :) Being independent makes me feel kind of grown up :) but it's too lonely and boring to bear. :(


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Rose from APW Captain Christine from yesterday's club dinner!

Kind of squashed since it was crushed in my bag all the from Dover to Ang Mo Kio.

Update for Club Dinner would come very much later after I kope all the pics.
And I doubt I'll add a lot of pics, this month is no photo-taking month cos of my screwed fringe :(