This is interesting

An exchange over facebook for a few days led to this. I will not reveal who the person is of course, I ensure confidetiality to whomever I quote from.

Person:

I don't know if it is really all that wise to start a group claiming to be out to search for the terrorist guy.. they have internet access you know. For all you know, they may have seen your group already and you might have endangered yourself (and others who actually joined your group) unnecessarily... remember, terrorists don't think reasonably...And for the record, while you were away from cg yesterday, ivan lim (the new member guy) smsed Shan Shan at about 8pm telling us that they have info that the guy was spotted at Ten Mile Junction about slightly before that time (in case you didn't know, that is the other mall across the street from my house. the one that is NOT bukit panjang plaza.) So yes, i wouldn't advise you to do something like this for your own safety.

My reply:

haha it probably isn't him right? if they caught him it'll be in the news. probably hiding in malaysia or indonesia liao

Person:

i don't think they caught him... i think that was just someone saying they spotted him. The last update before that was that he was seen at choa chu kang. But yeah, he's probably in malaysia by now. Especially since my mom's friend's husband is the cabby who dropped him off at marsilling the day he escapes. lol

My reply:

you're kidding right? or is it like some gossp fabricated by aunties to make life interesting? =P anyway most imp thing is that he's not in a position to cause any harm to singapore.. imagine how the economy would suffer even if there's an unsuccessful attempt at terrorist activity!and the facebook group thingy is just out of curiousity n boredom. work gets mundane n i need to do something different or crazy every few hours. i dunno, post-teenager syndrome perhaps. lol.

Person:

dun think it's a fabrication... my mom's the epitome of a legalist rmb? n there is this bible thing abt lying being a sin and all tt.... hand in hand w gossiping n rumor-mongering.then again, she's also quite gullible when it comes to current affairs and such hahawell, let's jus hope ur insanity as a result of stress doesn't endanger ur life yeah. smts it's onli prudent to think before u act on anything - esp on e net. it's not as ellusive or annonymus or wtv as u may thinik. n it has been proven terrorists n terrorist sypathises do check e web for anti terrorist comments n such

My reply:

whats wtv?

Person:

wtv = whatever

My reply:

so like, honestly, what's yr take on our cg? lets say a few criteria, spirituality, commitment, unity, friendliness, and erm, probably punctuality? hahaha...

Person:

punctuality is a big big BIG problem.... -_- I'm not as anal about it now as I used to be cuz I'm not really the cg seat-booker anymore, but back then, i was really really annoyed about how people woll come strolling into the hall just before service or in the middle of praise and worship and how the usher is always chasing me about the members and when they're coming. But those days for me, are over - for now anyway. If a day should come when I don't need to serve choir every week anymore, and I go back to booking seats, I'm going to return to playing the game of "who comes first gets the seat and who comes too late will have to find his/her own". Anyway, considering I haven't been with the cg during P&W for a while, I guess it would be inaccurate on my view of the cg punctuality since I can't exactly see what is happening from stage.

commitment wise, I think it's a problem for all of us from time to time; you know, how sometimes you just have this thought that goes "argh... again?" and you cringe when you're told we have another conference call or another prayer meeting (happens to me alot especially cuz I'm busy busy busy juggling ever so many things) Overall... well I guess my beef with the cg int his area would be how even someone like me can be more regular for CG and service than... well.. let's not list names. You know who are our regular MIA cases lah (and they're not exactly 'new' members anymore yano)

unity... well... I can tell the NTU people are pretty much united together, and Chen Guo is pretty much integrated with them, watching them, sometimes makes me feel left out. But oh well, I suppose it's my own fault too cuz I don't have the time to hang out with them isn't it. The working people naturally spend even lesser time with the CG (especially Grace and Qing Ni - I only see them like super briefly once or twice a week before they run off for work/usher) - bad question to ask me actually, I keep having lingering memories of my W283 days and the kind of unity we had then. yeah I know it's unfair to compare CGs but you can't help memories after all. I guess with that phasing through my mind from time to time, I don't really feel satisfied lah. I don't expect the same thing from this CG though, after all it's true that quite a bit of the unity from my ex CG comes from us being the same age, and going through the same phase of life at that time (so we automatically totally understood each other), if not we just really had the same interests, plus as less than uni students (we were mostly JC kids) we had more free time to fellowship, chill out... just spend time with each other doing fun things lah. Think the only person back then who wasn't really in the loop was Ai Ming. ironically. lol.

Spiritualiy-wise, we're all wanting right, who am I to judge? I have my ups and downs, and my own difficulties keeping the spiritual disciplines sometimes as I'm sure everyone else does. So yeah, i don't have much to say here.

Friendliness... err... ok lah. People are not hostile; they will have reasonably fun conversations as if everyone like really knows each other as long as you're willing to participate, so ya, it's ok lor. Maybe we can treat new friends better? I don't know... I suck with the new friends thing cuz I don't know how to talk to strangers =p It's a problem I have even when I myself am put into 'new' social situations.

My reply:

haha wow i honestly didn't expect such a long reply.. its almost like blogging a new post.. (by the way do you blog? i know some pple who actually don't blog.. lol!) but i guess u want to know the reason why i asked right?
for u coming from W283 and then into this new cg was a pretty drastic change right? and since u grew up with them n everything, the feeling in this new cg is like, a bit weird, a bit distant, a bit unfamiliar right? and reading yr reply, was like assurance that i'm not alone in feeling the same way..

a bit of history of my life in CHC (haha if u're bothered to continue reading this snoozefest) since I came into CL zone.. I was under yujie in W173, then we multiplied twice, then i ended up in shaun's cg cos yujie step down from CGL to go to BBG, then we multiplied again, i ended up with Ivan, then with Valerie Lim, now with Aiming.. and i was playing in the zone band with Faji, so you could say i'm quite close to the leaders cos i know all of them personally. but then thing that bothers me a lot is that the cg isn't very close as my previous cgs.. i've been in many different cgs, but after a short while i usually warm up to them cos the cg is already quite united. but in our cg when i came i already felt the disunity when i stepped into yr house.. i know it may sound exaggerated n maybe its just that i miss my old cg members or perhaps fatigue from work or what.. so i dismissed it as nothing. i was pretty eager to do something, to bring in new friends, etc.. but my enthusiasm died down after awhile. not entirely dead yet of cos, but its dwindling.. haha.. of cos i've talked to aiming n she really is trying her best to get everyone to fellowship more n such, but she's working n pretty busy too (n still single to boot) so i guess its really up to the members to make things happen.n yes i know what u mean by feeling left out when the NTU pple start talking among themselves n doing their own thing. n while having fun conversations can be good, i don't like superficial chatting all the time, u know what i mean right? haha.. no, i am not mr spiritual n only talk serious stuff, but it feels weird just talking lame jokes all the time with no substance.

as for punctuality, u're pretty much right. i was shocked literally, one week i was gonna be late n took a cab down n reach 15 min before svc, i was already apologising to aiming for being late, but only hanning was there, with the choir pple getting ready to go on stage. i don't know about this cg, but in previous cgs, we always arrive 30 min to an hour before svc at least. n for goodness sake, most of them live in the west right? then there was one time before svc the only pple there were the NTU pple n they were talking so excitedly among themselves n when i tried to join in they just replied politely n resumed their conversation. u know how that feels? if it wasn't for God, i would've walked out of the hall. but of cos i gotta learn to accept that i'm a stranger to them, as far as they're concerned.