Links lately (May 2018 edition)

-This song "Oh My Soul" by Casting Crowns which Tristan shared in cell group last Friday.
"There's a place where fear has to face the God you know" <-this line hit me with a punch. It's so powerful to recognise that fear has no hold on us because Christ has won the battle and we are His redeemed.
-Bought tickets to Hong Kong last night for the BIG MOVE. It's scary (to be honest, more scary and sad than happy before) and exciting at the same time but I'm trying to instil a positive and looking-forward attitude to this big change. Yes, I can call it leaving home but that I've done when I went to uni years ago. Instead, I will call it moving to Hong Kong to start a new life, a new adventure. It's something to look forward to, not something to fear because fear is irrational and with God, there is always hope and peace. He has been guiding me and will continue to guide me as I enter a new season of my life and there's much excitement to it!
Of course I will be sad to leave my parents but like Vins said, my mom had to leave her parents' home when she got married to my dad too, and they've lived overseas faraway for a while too. It's okay and I will treasure the precious time with them more when I visit them in the future.
-I'm excited for GL & Ben's wedding reception this Sunday.
-This was inspiring for instilling gratitude
-This Kuching blogger. I discovered her while looking for dinner recommendations for my mom's birthday last year and only slowly warmed up to her content, and lately I've been inspired by her creativity.

Links lately

A beautiful day in Hong Kong

-This coffeeshop jazz playlist has been great for keeping me focused while working and reading lately
-Loving the new layout on the Cakies blog and her honest sharing of living life by God's grace
-These really helpful sermons/talks by 余德淳博士 related to EQ, how to deal with anxiety etc
-This winter song by Roy Kim that has been on repeat
-This Krist Soup pantry organisation video because I love organisation and those mason jars
-My rediscovered twitter account where I share my thoughts and reflections on history, music, and theology
-Other than that, I've mostly been on instagram

Links lately

Autumn at Regent Park, London 2013

#theautumn2017version #thesecretlifeofPhebeversion
-Have I told you guys about my obsession with K.choi's vlogs and videos recently? Watching her study, cook, go outdoors, travel, exercise always inspire me to be more proactive in doing things/living each day more fully. Her video editing style is so on point (the music and the way she captures the footages) and I like the way she talks (as if to a friend).
-While young people all over are loving BTS, I am excited for the Nov 6 comeback of the ajusshi boy band *cough* Super Junior. Seriously, you just can't go wrong with your first kpop boy band love.
-Creative, get-to-work, documenting memories kind of inspiration from Elise's blog again.
-I'm always dreaming of the UK and going back to visit the cloudy, dreary good-ol' grey weather country. The Londoner with her beautifully-taken photos and adventures help with this.
-My recent favourite instagram people to follow: kerriganwade, jo.sophia & flynnandfancy
-Just finished this really sweet kdrama set in 1979. I love simple stories like this, with a dose of heart-tugging sweetness to the directing and acting which capture the viewer's (my) heart.
-Song on repeat lately: I shall not want by Audrey Assad
-Learning: How to sketch at this really helpful page I want to draw for beginners
Ok, that's it for now.

Links lately

Spring in full bloom-College Green, Bristol, May 2014.

-My friend's music. We were college mates in MBI and it's super cool because he's the only Egyptian friend I know of. His guitar and composing skills are really good.
-Kyuhyun's farewell album "Goodbye For Now". He just enlisted in the army so it will be a sad two years without new music from my favourite Korean singer. :( Watch the song's mv on youtube here.
-I've been really into creating planning excel/spreadsheets after watching this video tutorial. ;)
-This Chicago photographer/storyteller (her genuine sharing about faith and life is quite inspiring)
-Kdrama: Fight For My Way is quite cute and fun to watch
-Just finished reading Howard Gardner's "Changing Minds" and it's cool to think about multiple intelligences and read the stories/examples of leaders who have changed people's minds with their rhetoric etc.
-Just getting into this Goblin ost "Beautiful": Crush's original version & Kyu's cover of it
-more lifestyle/real people instagrammers: erin & kristyu

Links lately

Spring, outside of the Natural History Museum, London, 2015.

Since I have been busy with piano practice, teaching, conducting the newly formed church choir for our evening service, and organising our home (unpacking boxes) lately, these links are mostly related to travel, photography, organisation, videos editing, and spring!
-These two vloggers: one based in London/LA (she brings back good memories of studying masters in the UK and traveling in London) and the other in Seoul. Their recent travels to Europe motivated me to look through my photo archives for the many photos I took in Europe and edit them using lightroom (see my recent uploads on my Europe blog)
-Bellywellyjelly and Jessica Whitaker are two bloggers/photographers who made me want to edit photos in adobe lightroom and take more portraits/tell more stories.
-Music: the free music archive to discover new music done by individuals and available for downloads for personal projects; I enjoy listening to the OSTs of the kdrama "The liar and his lover", IU's new 'Palette' album, and Roy Kim's 'Bloom' album lately. For a less upbeat spring music, listen to Yesung's Paper Umbrella album.
-This home organisation/cleaning method that I had heard before in the UK but watching a youtuber does it and explain it makes it more motivating to follow (partially of course because any method has its strengths and suitability)
-Favourite instagrammers: Imkristen with her family stories, Lydiajane and her travels/art stories, and sigridsminde (the kittens! & her blog).
-Book: D.L. Moody's "The Overcoming Life"

Links lately

Dusk in York city centre, UK, 2012.

Here's another edition of "links lately", featuring blogs and other things I enjoy this season.
-I have been preparing and leading our church pianists' training workshops these few weeks and came across this very helpful blog written by a church musician and piano teacher, with lots of resources.
-I was reminded of why I could browse through photo blogs with few writings in them because film photos are just so pretty and they speak of the places and things pictured with their stories evoked just by looking at the images. Words are not as needed as compared to digital photos on Instagram for example. Here are two I came across: ClickAThing and Dreamingdaydreaming; + this flickr account that I used to follow and rediscovered recently
-It has been months since I finished watching the Korean drama "Reply 1988" but I still find myself nostalgic for the nostalgic 80's songs in it and so I've been listening to a playlist of songs that were played in the drama.
-She Reads Truth's Lenten devotionals

Links lately

Leafy view from the Elephant Ground cafe in Sheung Wan, HK. Dec 2016

The start of January has been a busy one, with lots of family/relatives coming, and post-trip missing blues. Somehow, I still found time to discover photography blogs and dream a little about home organisation and time for meandering. I'm down with some sore-throat/headache (feeling unwell) again after a busy weekend of work, so I thought I will take this down time to write about links I found and liked lately:
-This blogger's "life in a tiny apartment" series.
-The art of taking a stroll.
-Hilda Grahnat, a Swedish blogger who inspired my love for fika.-With my love for food and buildings with history, it is a wonder why I have not visited Penang. I think the fear of getting heat stroke from the hot weather and eating too much street food is deterring me from going. ;) Penang, through the eyes of a travelling photographers duo from Seattle.
-A rainy day engagement photo session in Paris. I love the setting, the photography and how the couple just exudes confidence and sweetness being together.
-Hello Jane Lee photography (Malaysian photographer). I'm looking forward to when she posts more photos from this shoot.

Links lately

Moon during the day, York-summer 2013

Looking at beautiful photography on blogs is one of my favourite past times since my days in the US. I want to share some of the blogs I find lovely again, since I realised I have lost some of the nice blogs that I used to visit as I did not keep track of them.
-This photographer and particularly this photo session in Scotland
-Beautiful design and calligraphy of these wedding stationery.
-This unique and vibrant orange backdrop to a wedding.
...and rediscovering some blogs I used to visit:
Sandra Juto (one of the earliest blogs that taught inspired me to take pictures of random buildings, signs, the road etc)
Curating cuteness
My Haru
Hei Astrid
3191 miles apart (a diptych blog by two friends)
Mieke willems

ps: I will try to blog more often again because blogging is a good way for me to stay organised.

I can only imagine

 I have known this song since I was in the teens but I never grasped the meaning of the song until today in our afternoon prayer meeting at COCM. We read the passage from Revelations 21 and then sang it. I was struck by the picture of one day meeting my Saviour and a deep longing for the day when I finally see God. We often live our day to day life just by the day to day. We focus on the struggles of today, the frustrations of the challenges we face now, or the pleasures we want to pursue to make us happy at this moment, and the successes we would like to have in the next few years. But we rarely remember to look forward to what we are to look forward to the most--an eternity with the Glorious and Almighty God who loves us so much that His plan for those He loves is to give up His Only Son Jesus Christ to give us hope for today and for eternity. It is good to imagine that day. That day when we will meet our Saviour. What a glorious day that will be.
Revelations 21: 1-6

'Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 
2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.'

Our Glorious God

It is always good to take time to focus on our glorious Saviour, our Sovereign God who loves so extravagantly and to be reminded that we trust in a God who is Risen.

I was really blessed by these songs this weekend, so I just want to share them with you.

 Have a blessed week ahead!

Before I forget

You see, I'm not very good at documenting my life at the moment. I tend to forget to appreciate the things I have in front of me until months later when I look back to see how blessed I was to be at that place or doing that thing at that time. I've been trying to do a better job at this by keeping my instagram up to date, but I thought I should compile a little bit about life in the first quarter of 2014 here too so here are some random stuffs from my life in Bristol lately. Since the year started I have been busy with school. I haven't been on a train at all so far because I didn't travel except on a field trip with my monastic culture class to visit four abbeys that used to be monasteries. The first 6 weeks of this year was rainy and the sun only came out a couple of weeks ago.

 I walk a lot because that's my only mode of transportation here.

CNY celebration

'gardening'

The most snow we got this whole winter. There were plenty of rain though.

Looking down at the Avon River from Clifton.

Free lunchtime concerts at the music department-this one's the Jazz band.

Christmas steps.

I am learning things like this this term.

St Nicholas market during lunchtime

Sunny day on Park street

Starting to take vitamin supplement every day, and nearing the end of my Malaysian milk tea supply (I still have milo though ^^)

Dinner with my housemate. Meals with multiple dishes like this is a luxury for a uni student.

Field trip. The archeology professor drove this land rover.

Singing medieval chants in a chapel.

Horse year.

A Cistercian Abbey at Abbey Dore.

Inside the old church.

Spring's arrival.

Breakfast

Studying...

On my desk.

And here are some links that I like lately:
-Bristol in fog yesterday and today captured beautifully in pictures here 
-Many scenes of the beautiful Italian countryside in this blog
-A Tennessee food blog
-this photographer makes me miss Chicago

Christmas break up north

I'm back from my one week visit to the north--York and Stokesley.
It's time to prepare for Christmas and the year-end student camp at COCM, along with working on my never-ending assignments that are due after Christmas break.

I was so happy to see sheep again.

visiting Mic in Stokesley

York Chinese Church's Christmas party

 and here are some photography blogs that I enjoy lately:
-Curating cuteness
-the minute moments
-Hei

Identity

 

Listen to this. I was so blessed to hear this sermon. You can go to the website to listen to it for a bigger screen and read the transcript.

A dose (or two) of inspiration today

-old and new project
-words and designs by Josh Byers
-this song by two Moody alumni
-another song by my Moody friend, Krista
-this article about beauty; A quote from it:
"Excellence, it turns out, is not elitist. Excellence is the most inclusive thing. It is beauty and beauty reaches everyone. It’s a bit like books that way. At least picture books. The best ones are completely designed to seem as if they aren’t."
-"crux sola" cross illustration project for each day of the Lent season.

"Home"

This is a song written and sung by my fellow Moody alumni and produced by my friend Lulu. What a blessing this song is for me because it reflects what I have been thinking about often in my Christian life. I especially love the chorus:

"I've searched the world for that feeling of peace 

but I've got no solution and I feel no relief 

Someday I know I'll taste the death that's quite sweet 

for Your death on the cross took out all of the sting. 

Try as I might seems I cry everyday 

for my plans all fall out and I can't find a way 

Maybe the point is I'm not on my own 

and to try by myself is to claim this as home."

And this relates to what I read recently in a pastor's blog about his reflection on the book of Ecclesiates on how to live with joy: "What we do in this life matters. What we do in this life has real significance, but nothing here will ultimately satisfy because nothing here will last forever. Earlier in Ecclesiastes the Preacher says that God has put eternity in our hearts. How could anything less than what is eternal give us ultimate satisfaction? We were made for this, but we were made for so much more than this. "

May we not forget that we should seek real satisfaction in God in our everyday life and live in a way that reflects our eternal perspective.