Afloat

1. Afloat
2. Eternity
3. Be Still
4. Yours
5. Burn
6. My Soul Waits
7. Treasures
8. Dedication
9. Goodbye
10. Sunday
11. Rescue
12. Rags to Robes
13. It is Well
14. Barabbas

gosh!! Caleb and Solomon released their album! it's really great music and exhilarating for me that a friend has made it :)

i heard Solomon perform this track live before he left last summer and it was breathtaking. it's gonna be my favourite track on this album but the rest are great as well.

Eternity


Afloat


Be Still

art hero!

The invisible man rescuing art

By Simon Worrall BBC News, Philadelphia

Mr Wittman recovered Rembrandt's stolen self-portrait in Copenhagen

There are about 100 of us packed into a restaurant in Upper Holmesburg, Philadelphia - art experts and curators, museum security chiefs, and a phalanx of FBI agents with 9mm Glocks concealed under their G-man suits.

We have gathered to say farewell to a man few people have heard of and even fewer could recognise or describe.

That is the way Special Agent Robert "Bob" Wittman prefers it.

For nearly two decades, usually masquerading as a crooked art dealer with links to the Mafia or the Colombian drug cartels, he has run undercover sting operations, luring criminals into selling him stolen works of art.

Protecting his identity means the difference between life and death.

In one operation he found himself in a hotel bathroom in Copenhagen hugging a Rembrandt to his chest as a Danish Swat (Special Weapons and Tactics) team burst into the room to arrest an Iraqi-born hoodlum named Baha Kadhoum, who was trying to sell him Rembrandt's self-portrait from 1630.

Every country has a different cultural heritage and saving these things brings us closer together as human beings Bob Wittman

Painted on copper, the size of a paperback book, and worth tens of millions of pounds, it had been stolen from The National Museum of Sweden in one of the most daring art heists of modern times.

Housed in a Renaissance palazzo at the end of a peninsula, the Museum is surrounded on all sides by water.

And as families strolled through Stockholm's Christmas markets and skated on frozen lakes, Kadhoum and his gang set fire to a vehicle blocking the only access road.

Wearing ski masks and brandishing guns, they then stormed the building, cut the Rembrandt self-portrait and two Renoirs from the walls, and escaped by speedboat.

Lone operator

Art crime is big business. Estimated to be worth between $1.5 - $6bn (£1- £4bn) annually, it is now the fourth largest international crime, after drug dealing, gun running and money laundering.

Kadhoum and his gang spread nails in front of the museum before they fled

It is a fully globalised industry. Paintings stolen in Europe turn up in Japan or America.

They are easy to transport and hard to identify. If challenged by a customs officer, a thief can always say he bought it at a flea market for his wife.

And as yet no beagle has been trained to sniff out Old Masters.

Bob Wittman has been on the frontlines of the war against art crime since 1989.

In a distinguished career he has recovered stolen art worth millions, in more than a dozen countries.

Paintings by Rembrandt, Goya, Brughel and Rothko, Geronimo's eagle-feathered war bonnet and a piece of solid gold Inca armour are just a few of his trophies.

One of his last assignments was to investigate links between the sale of looted art from Iraq and Afghanistan and Islamic terrorism.

For most of his career, he was a lone operator. Today, the FBI's Art Crime Team has 12 agents spread across the United States. Scotland Yard has four detectives - France has 30.

Not surprisingly, in view of its vast cultural patrimony, Italy boasts the world's biggest team - 300 art-hunting Carabinieri, including agents who use helicopters to patrol the country's myriad archaeological sites.

'Regular Joe'

Like a spy, Mr Wittman's job is all about befriending and betraying.

Fox-like cunning, nerves of steel, a silver tongue and the ability to convincingly pretend to be someone else are essential.

So, too, is having a face that is easy to forget. No scars, no cauliflower ears, average height, average build.

In September Italian police recovered a Renoir painting stolen in 1975

What the Americans call "a regular Joe". Put him in a crowded room and he would blend into the background, like a camouflaged moth on a piece of tree bark.

Now, at the age of 53, the king of heists is hanging up his silver badge and gun to write a book and spend more time with his wife and three children.

Even in retirement, he will not allow his face to be photographed.

He is forging a new career as a private art-security consultant and may still need to go undercover.

Besides, there are too many criminals who would love to know the true identity of the smooth-talking FBI agent who put them behind bars.

"It's about saving the cultural property of mankind," Mr Wittman tells me, when I ask him why he chose such a dangerous job.

"Every country has a different cultural heritage and saving these things brings us closer together as human beings. When it comes to art, it's visceral. It affects us in a deep, emotional way."

i am a little restless and frustrated now that exams are over and i am still stuck in an in-between kind of existence. Now that i'm back at home without an agenda the negative energy pops out of nowhere and floats around, concentrating on me. i feel like i am carrying with me an aura of hate-me-if-you-can. i don't think i did anything wrong by wanting to live my life as a separate -but not separated- entity from family. i want the space to take up painting and sketching and work on my thesis and shop and laze around doing nothing when i wish to. In many ways i wish i was living alone so there's no tension arising from my mum trying to micro-manage my life.. she knows she can't anymore but she still tries in the small ways which causes a fair amount of tension. i know she can't anymore but i still instinctively try to compromise on the small things... And neither one of us ends up being happy about it. Home just isn't a relaxing and detoxifying abode for me right now.

a little more breathing space and time to space-out will be very good. i wish to spend more time outdoors next week when i get better. I want to do some watercolouring and figure sketching. spend more time in the museums.

Therie and I met N and his graphic designer friend K at the museum the other day. Quite a pleasant surprise; i always appreciate knowing that there is a community amongst people i know who enjoy art. (although the term community is quite an oxymoron since we pretty much don't know that side of each other until we bump into each other in the galleries) N always strikes me as a very irregular kind of guy.. he's almost hyperactive in an understated sense. Not very loud or disruptive, but spaced-out, short attention span and lives in a world separated from us. I gave up trying to understand his thought patterns sometime ago. Very Keanu Reeves-like, now that I think about it. very artist-like, in another way.

As for me, more introspection and revelation from God recently reveals facets of myself i didn't really think about or realise. I'm an abstract thinker, but there's a part of me that needs a fair amount of practicality. I will not be happy painting landscapes or drawing portraits for a living because of my need to systematize, apply and analyze. i realise this at work as i learnt the ropes of watercolouring on my own. My intellectual brain and artistic brain fight for airtime 24/7 and i need to suppress one of them depending on what i wish to accomplish.

playing the tug-of-war in my mind.

dans la tete

a little morbid, but sets you thinking about the choices you make in life.

my protector

alot transpired between me and God over the long weekend. So much, so emotional, so deep, that I sense my own spurt of growth in those brief moments of realization that God broke me and revealed some of those hidden layers underneath the calm surface. How my attraction yet immense uneasiness around powerful and handsome men had to do with my hurts and pains in the family, my struggle to be attracted to people less than that, my own laws of living i had erected to protect myself against imagined threats and karmas. it's amazing how there's so much still, to learn about myself when i thought i had mastered the trades of psychology in my teens through wide research and prolonged introspection. Only God Himself has the unobstructed view of my soul and the amazing thing is, He loves me with all my ugliness and sins, when i myself am unable to. I felt cleaner inside-out after basking in the presence of God.

I love having my head patted and hair ruffled protectively and affectionately. But much more important is a life surrendered to God isn't it. All these other gestures are heartwarming but none as warm as seeing a man's life broken and restored by my Father in heaven. That's what God meant when He said not to stir up or awaken love until it so desires i guess. i believe that God had touched him at some point, but he has chosen to drift for abit. My prayer is that he will soon return to that point where he left God. I am sure he will find God waiting patiently there.

I had some deep talks with some brothers and sisters, overheard some conversations, did some reflection. suffice to say that one realization is that criteria lists that girls reveal about their ideal partners have a huge impact on brothers in Christ and that might be stumbling for their faith. I think the reverse situation is also true. One sister said she would like her man to connect and communicate with her, decently smart, bonus if he had kind eyes ( all of it sounds painfully familiar to my own list no doubt) but the brother who was in conversation with her later confided in me his low self esteem as he felt he had to match up to some ideal list he felt he could never fufil. it seemed to have caused him a fair amount of frustration over the years and in his relations with girls he liked.

I then asked myself if all the criteria i listed were essential. till i realize, no. just a life broken and surrendered to the Lord is all that's essential. God will lead him to be all that he should be, my lover and protector, whoever it might end up being.

family.

NUS NAV is family. Bernard prayed a birthday blessing for Peter on Gala Dinner night and he said these words in his prayer (I paraphrase), “people always say that blood is thicker than water, but the spirit, the bonds that we share in Christ, is for all eternity”. It is in much agreement with this declaration that I participated in the NUS NAV Family Conference from 5-8 Dec 2008. I thank God constantly, for placing me in the NAV family for the past 3.5 years (and counting!). NUS NAV is family to me in a very literal sense; having received Christ 2 weeks before the start of university, NAV was where I learnt to utter my first prayer (with clumsy words of course), where I first learnt to do a bible study, where I first learnt to memorize Scripture, where I first understood the meaning of “fellowship” as more than food and fun, where I came to realize that a simple question posed like “how are you doing” is less of a nicety, but more of a sincere enquiry of my well being. For others in the ministry, NAV might not have been the first place where they took baby steps towards God, but I believe this is the place all of us found a genuine spiritual family that was not ridden with cliques and factions; rather, one where sinful but redeemed people came together in love and acceptance, despite our own struggles and brokenness.

Peter shared on the second day of the conference on ICEBERGS. Each of us, whether Christian or not, carry with us baggage; icebergs that look innocuous and presentable enough, but underneath the surface lurks layers and layers of unresolved issues, fears, pain, insecurities. Other people can only relate to us and see whatever little that surfaces. These different hidden layers underneath the water surface have resulted in modes of thinking and behavior that might not be conducive for our lives and relationships but we bring them with us wherever we go because they are pretty much a part of us. But God cares about our suppressed layers and is interested to help us break those layers to grant us true freedom in Christ. If only we are willing to be vulnerable and prepared for the brokenness that has to come before fruitfulness. In a loving community where God is the only reason we call each other “brother” or “sister”, I was allowed the space to make mistakes, to break down and share my deepest struggles, to grow closer to a loving God, to learn to pray and intercede instead of despair, to know my brothers and sisters as spiritual siblings and not just hi-bye acquaintances. There was discomfort, pain and tears in the breaking and molding, but much joy, love and peace in the restoring thereafter. God does not break us only once in our walk with Him however. The process was possible and bearable each time, only because I had family to see me through.

I really appreciate how the graduates came back to participate fully in this Family Conference; their mere presence communicated to me that this spiritual family is for eternity and all “barriers” to communication (age, gender, nationality etc) are imagined. It doesn’t matter if I was a year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. We are all related to a loving Father, redeemed by the blood of Christ, led by the Holy Spirit. Through their input and sharing, I gained new perspectives on who God is and what a community is. My ties in NAV are not going to expire after I graduated from the 4 years I spend in university. The prayers we utter for each other and the praise we give God in unison will ring for all eternity before the throne of God. The one definite commitment that I am making to God after this Family Conference is to continue to be part of this big family. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

But of course, NAV is not a perfect family, just as how our own natural families have their quibbles and difficulties. There might still be people in the ministry who feel that they are but outsiders looking in, who believe that their ICEBERGS are too shameful to be surfaced or that they cannot “click” with the family. There are still times when I feel like an outsider and struggle with meeting up with others or even coming for camps and retreats. But God has placed us here in this family for good reason. That in the occasional collision of icebergs manifested through conflicts with brothers and sisters, God can chisel away at the massive ice layers we each carry. That when God does deal with the hidden layers we are not alone, that we can pray for one another and allow others to pray for us. I’ve come to realize that people can only show me their love for me to the extent that I allow them to, and I can sense acceptance only to the extent that I am willing to be open and vulnerable with the spiritual family I have been placed in. We are a Grace Community because we learn to give grace to others, just as how God gave us (and is still giving) His grace, where we learn to receive grace from others so that we might receive grace from God, where we learn to trust others, that we might trust God. This commitment to community is more than warm feelings, but a conviction. I believe that what eventually emerges from God’s chiseling would be sparkling GEMS, the most perfect cut that God had in mind when He created each of us. It is my sincere prayer that God will continue to strengthen the ties in this loving spiritual family, that lives would be transformed and be set free in Christ, that we will continue to grow together to love as Christ did. (John 15:17)

goody goody

I'm gonna take up FIGURE DRAWING!

http://www.nus.edu.sg/museum/eflyers/FigureDrawing.html

very excited.

which also means i need to get a part time job to pay for the fees. Let me know you have recommendations please!

bang bang, my baby shot me down.

For some reason this song has been playing in my head for days. i dedicated it to tzing because i think she'll like it :) and i like it too. each time i listen to it, it speaks differently to me. for some reason the first time i heard it i thought it was a really dark song. the second time it was passionate like tango. the third time playful like 2 kids on a merry-go-round... and my sister just walked past threatening to shoot ME down if i keep replaying it like that.

family violence, i call it.

woooooosh.

i'm starting to think that I am becoming the Rousseauian natural man who is by nature asocial and made corrupt when interacting with people and hence becoming ridden with amour propre, the love of the appropriate, over love of self amour de soi. i went out of the house today for my Contemporary Politics of Southeast Asia paper this evening and i felt like i didn't know who i was, relative to the larger reality outside of me. To quote Jian's sms after our paper: "OMG it's the Real World! It... Looks. So... Different." It just took me a while to figure out i had a self separate from the rest of the world. it's almost infantile and a little scary. It was good to interact with the yoshi-ians for a while before the paper and goof around with the Nav sailors more after my paper. I need a social life or i might wither. i might have to deal with my corruption but that's Real Life and i would like very much to be a real human beings dealing with real issues.

T called today and we talked for abit. He's nice and comfortable to talk to and be around with and i think we hit off quite well since we knew each other. He still owes me a date and reminds me periodically that one day it will come to pass. but anyways my threshold for conversation capped at 30mins. i think i'm becoming old.. but i think it's because i've acquired a distaste for long conversations unless i'm ready to go deep.. and there are only so many people i open up to.