Knowing

I have been confused with this little thing. The possibility of the existence of  a  person so intelligent, so voracious a reader that he had read all the books; heard all the amazing sermons; been through all the religious schools and yet lack discernment of the ways of the Lord. That one may be "wise and prudent" without having true wisdom. I've been asking this for the longest time, what is lacking? lest under some circumstances i fall on the same trap. 

I can't remember how many times I told myself "Maybe i will understand this someday." Oswald Chambers said

Thank You, Lord!

(Reflections from The Place of Ministry by Oswald Chambers in Utmost for his Highest)

My place of ministry is here in the last moments of my life as an undergraduate student. It is the valley I must live in, and where I must live out the power of Christ. No ministry or service should separate me from Jesus, from knowing Him. If this ministry/hardship/problem/war, whatever it’s supposed to be called is getting between me and my Jesus, this I have to do: bring it in the presence of Christ. I really don't know how. To live supernaturally in the mundane-ness of life, i don't know how, but i operate in grace. I pray that in this ministry I glorify Christ. As quiet as I am in walking in the valley, his quiet and gentle love comforts me.

~^0^

On Love

A rainy day makes one write poems without rhymes.

Love is the strength that can climb thousands of mountains
and raises banners of victory
Hate cripples and sits one on a rusty wheelchair
Love is the ship that sails through seven seas
rides on top of collosal waves
and find treasures in the depths of the ocean
Hate drowns
Love is a garden in summer bloom
the rush of wind that brings fresh flower scents
the taste of crushed peaches
Hate is famine on a desert land
Love is the wink of a star
the orchestra of crickets
and a cup of warmth in the night
Hate is blanketless cold

I guess i can go on and on with love and hate metaphors but one thing is common to both of them. To love or to hate is a choice.

Ole Man Paul told the Ephesians

"In light of all this, here's what I want you to do. While I'm locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences." (Ephesians 4:1-3, The Message)

I've been off the exciting momentum of running towards the path to greatness for some time now. Good thing ole man Paul knows how to encourage and rerimand (with love) at the same time. And now we're back on the game.

~^.^

The Painter

Artist's block hit me today. I couldn't visualize anything hence i couldn't draw anything decent, plus i had this annoying headache from last night's oversleeping and last Sunday's molar extraction. I tried to draw but it was futile. A giant evil bird kept appearing in my drawings. Maiki said it was kind of disturbing. I hope it won't give nightmares to kids.


I didn't know what to do. I think the artists block is a spreading virus, three of my friends are currently experiencing it right now.I thought of doing something else but i wanted to draw but i couldn't so raaaaaaa. I didn't know what to do.  ~Frustrations~

And then, at dusk when Maiki and I left our room, the windows were glowing orange. It was very inviting. Like there was an orange party outside. I forgot to take a picture because we were running late for volunteer's call time.

Stepping outside, at the balcony, we then saw this.

Rokugatsu to Nanagatsu Projects Recap

We're still into shirt design these months and also, posters! Yay! Although it takes more time and creative-juice-squirting, i like to do posters.

Here are some of them which were produced in the past few months.

PubMats for inside the university , a total of seven (7) posters (seven shirt designs) with the same layout. I tried using different fonts since i don't have too many elements for the poster. This one was an experiment for me given that i haven't tried the technique yet even though i've seen this done so many times. It went pretty well, I guess. Whew. ^_^

Rokugatsu Recap

June was quite fast and all sorts of fun things happened! I wish I can tell them in detail, my june highlights are days that I wouldn’t want to forget even as forgetful as I am.

First off Rokugatsu highlight #1 Biodiversity Wall of Nature*. Next, Rokugatsu highlight #2 ToyCon 2012. Then Rokugatsu highlight #3 Japanese Lesson. And finally, Rokugatsuhighlight #4 Gurl friend Date.

Thank you Lord for the adventures!

*actually happened during the last week of May

Prayer of a wandering dreamer

Dear Lord,

You know how scatter-brained I am; how I want to do so much but with no particular strategy; how relaxed and free I am with two extremes of focus: very unfocused and very very focused. I believe that it is you who gave me so many dreams; and it will be your grace that will enable me to make them come true. It’s you who fuels the adventure in me, who overflows my mind with creativity so I bet that there will be no one else who will keep me moving towards that place but you.

Rokugatsu Highlight #4: Gurl Friend Date

I didn’t know that I was a patient person. Now I know how a guy feels when he’s waiting on a girl on their date. This girl friend of mine made me wait for an hour! But the funny thing is that it didn’t felt like an hour –and I was standing that full 60 minutes! Maybe I was really excited to see Khu again.

Since I don’t have much office attire for the upcoming seminar and being the tee and jeans girl that I am, I had to do an emergency one piece shop with my trusty ol' pal. Here are things I learned at the date:

Rokugatsu highlight #3 The best things in the world are free: Japanese Lesson

This post is to thank my sensei. I prepared a haiku for him.

My sensei is kakkoi and kind but disliked the heights.

If his kindness was a building and he was on top of that, he might have a fright.

The effect would be so much better if the haiku was written in Japanese, though. I hope he likes it. Thank you Kevin-sensei!

~^.^*

Battle with the big boss: Ooki Mushi and the Knight in the Darkness

After the magical Toycon lights had gone, I was transported to the cold and stormy campus of Black Out. Except for the jeepney lights, all one can see were the evil yellow eyes in the dark. I mustered my courage to trudge on the 89 steps towards our dormitory room, amidst the harsh cold wind, the rain, the thunder and lighting and the semi-pitch black darkness.

There I was resting on my bed chambers when suddenly, it attacked: the Mushi Emperor. Weighing as heavy as a half-full Yakult, brown, and having 6 inches total body length (with antennae), the Mushi emperor flew back and forth the room; attacking every wall and locker that it can with mighty tantrums and and panic. I did not know what disturbed it. It stayed well-behaved like a high born lady inside our room for almost a week. I was the one who caught the Mushi King and now it is attacking it’s captor.

Why?

~when i say, "because I'm a dreamer,"
i don't mean that i'm hopeful and positive or
that i have a lot of dreams. I'm talking about the hope
he gave, the dreams he makes me see, the inspiration and
reason from which all passion came from, for the one who made me a dreamer is he.

it's a wonderful rainy july

Whew! Right now the rain's pouring like there's no tomorrow on our dormitory roofs. I kind of just woke up after last night's project cramming. I slept at 2AM and woke up after oversleeping a bit. Should be 7.5 hours not 8. Hmmmm.

I noticed that it's almost a month since I posted. June was one crazy roller coaster ride! And July is wonderfully rainy. Hope to post even just a summary of joyous June. I feel like last month was a turning point, the beginning of something historical, so it's tantamount that i record it. I thank the Lord for so much inspiration. In my first minutes of waking hours today i thought about the things that passed and his kindness ---his mind-blowing kindness! And I realized that the reason for all --the excitement, and momentum and the high dreams is no other than his love. Love does make the world go round, i guess.

And so the adventure continues.

~^.^*

Wake up, sleeper

bingo noob ~ftw!

*disclaimer: i am not promoting the game mentioned below*

Yesterday my dear grandmother asked me to go with her to the magical creepy world of bingo. I haven’t been there before. Of course I can’t say no to my grandmother. I prayed hard to the Lord for a great tropical storm to come to stop me from going to the bingo place but only light showers arrived.

Lesson 2: I am a student

*These are student's notes and are not recommended as reference. For educational purposes, consult the experts*


~^0^

Last Sunday, June 3, 2012 I was privileged to catch sensei online. Mwahaha. So there happened an impromptu lesson which was (supposed to be) scheduled on a different day. We covered quite a lot. Here are my notes.

Right now, I'm practicing kana so there aren't too many romaji here. Gakusei is the word for student, sensei for teacher and yasahi for kind. The kana on the right are sentences: Watashi wa gakusei desu (I am a student); Anata wa sensei desu (You are a teacher); and Anata wa watashi no yasashii sensei desu (You are my kind teacher). LOL. Though I am not very sure with this sentence. Here are my other notes.

Kana Drills

I’ve finally memorized hiragana! But I need more practice since I’m the forgetful type. Sensei gave me a copy of Minna no Nihonggo. Yay. I also found useful resources from all over web 2.0. This channel helped me with the strokes and this page provided kana pages. This site also provided lessons as well as this one. I also found proficiency tests, with MNH as reference.

Here are snapshots from my practice notebook. Kana drills FTW! ~^0^

Date with Maiki-chan

Pizza-chan, tenen!

It's been a habit to go to the mall before going home lately. Today we've almost forgot our bags in the baggage counter. We were happily eating at Frech Baker when angelic creepy sounds started playing 

Rain

As Maiki-chan and I walked under the rain, I paused, looked up the rainy night sky and felt the raindrops on my cheeks. I felt like a happy froggy. *Kokok*

Convergence

The 2012 Regional Convergence was super crazy awesome! It's the first time that LifeBox Los Banos hosted the event. I’m excited for the mighty moving of God in South Luzon. Priviledged to have been a part of it. And I was with Maiki-chan here. I think she was the one who took the picture. Yay!

Gum and Sky Sketch

Dreaming of a magical place unseen and of a story untold! Here are characters for the world of Ido: Gum and Sky -with SJ. I think Gum here is about 14 years old while Sky would be 12. Gum has this potato backpack that looks like a grumpy potato. ^____^

Mails

I love mails! When I was very young I had a thing for letters. My friends back in grade school find it weird and cute. I don’t know. I was a different kid (not sure if in a good or bad beautiful way) but maybe the letters were “ink and paper bridges”. I was not very expressive and affectionate and I thought hugs and kisses were yucky –and I was not very eloquent –so I guess the letters were the best way to communicate my love.

Gift

The beauty of a gift is that it tells something about the giver; just as a story tells something more about the author and not the reader.

Say, a college student’s parents gave her a car as a birthday gift. The car wasn’t given to the daughter because she was awesome. The car actually tells something about

Utmost for my highest

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.  I’ve been mulling over this text for almost a month now.

Reading Galatians 5, I realized a lot of things:

1.       If I try to add up something to my salvation, to become more worthy of that salvation, then what Christ did –I have made worthless. (Galatians 5:2)

2.        If I feel inadequate in righteousness and this feeling of lack pushes me into filling it in by good work (e. g. volunteering, ministry, being a good person), then I have overlooked grace. I wanted to be justified by my own means, it’s as if I don’t acknowledge the complete justification that I have in Christ. (Galatians5:4)

Practice!

And I thought it was gonna be easy... until I answered a self-made quiz. Haha. But before i falter, i must remember what sensei said: "all it takes is consistency and dedication". So here goes. Hiragana drills FTW!~ ^0^

Hiragana

Oh! It's my first japanese lesson on my 22nd birthday. Yay! This is super. I need to make sure that I don't forget this. I can't forget this! Here's my notes:

Day 1 - 24 May 2012

あ　い　う　え　お = A - I - U - E - O

やさしい = yasashii = kind

ｺｺﾎﾞﾙ = kokobor

22

It's the 24th of May and I'm 22! Here are the first 22 things I did:

prayed
wrote in my journal
e-mailed Pish
sang
cried
messaged my friends
slept
woke up
sang
ate
blogged

 

Gotye made me cry

Gotye. I like him a lot. His song Bronte and the mv made me cry. That was 3AM and it made me cry.

~T_T

Studio 6212

We've been dorm hermits for days now. It was triple X. Exciting, exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. You see, my rummie Nina Mikhail and I were learning new stuff. She's into Ps CS4 and I'm into Ai CS4. This is her post about working on her very first digital painting. It was pretty amazing for a debut. Yay!

Here's her picture while working on her project.

Anyway here's our manifesto, lol! It's an expanded version of this one here. It's so silly, i need to apologize.

*intro mysterious space sounds*

We are the intergalactic creative warriors (Bleop)

First five, fun five, high five

Done with the UP Shirt project Sets 1 and 2. I'm a happy novice! It's like I finished a quest or something!

Bob is done

Uwawawawawawaaaah! (screamo lol)

After so many sleepless nights, I was finally able to finish the UP shirt project set 2 May 2012 with the third shirt: Bob.

Mr. Excellent Client was pretty impressed, something I did not expect. I'm a happy designer, and it's a happy collab

Skyping

I miss my friends. A few days ago I had the wonderful chance to skype conference with Mikay, Kevin and Kyle. It was quite a long call and we talked about all sorts of unimportant stuff haha, I was practically LMAOing all over in the early mornight.

I know there wasn't anything special to that conference but I feel a tingling in my heart --the happy kind, I miss my friends. It's encouraging to know that even though you're far from them you're still so near. It's lonely to think about running a race alone. But when you know that there are people running to the same one love, it gives your heart an extra boost.

First UI Project

It's a Saturday! A day when you're supposed to clean your room, yay! Today, I decided to declutter my disk instead of my room. Rummaging through last year's files, I found something sweet and cute and gummy: my first ever user interface design project, SkypeGum.


My friend, SJ was working on this app and he needed a designer for the UI. I remember how pretty excited I was. Here was the sketch for the initial design.

I was asked to create the logos, the buttons

danaArt

I'm currently Novice Lvl 5 and is gaining exp to become High Artist Lvl 99. This portfolio shows some of the roads passed and the thousand more miles to go towards realizing dreams. Join my journey towards the creative universe! 

~^0^

Lvl 99

It's 3 AM and I just finished two out of three shirts for the project set two, wooohooo! I think I'm gaining exp, but I'm out of energy, and billions of brain cells have died already.

A while ago, Miko told me that i needed accessories (I'm so tired I couldn't spell accessories right) for this game called journey towards creativity, so he 'gave' me these:

head: +99 art goddess tiara (grant 99 inspiration)
chest: +99 divine robe of minerva (auto master-level crafting)
feet: +99 eternal heels of the seraph (grant 99 beauty)


I don't understand more than half of what he said-- +1 mana would be enough I guess.

kokobor?

Kokobor!

I have this mission to remember. My memories are like cotton candy melting under the sun, under the rain. This blog serves as an umbrella.

I think I have to say what kokobor means, else I forget it myself.

Feel free, fear-free

I'm into this wall-breaking, wall-smashing endeavor. The giants walls shout their magnanimity in the face of my  smallness. I felt the need to identify what walls i'm supposed to break, what weapons I'm supposed to wield, what power I'm supposed to call on to.

I told the Lord that this dealing with the walls makes me lose a lot of brain cells. I really need his wisdom for this,  and a lot of exercising-of-faith-muscles. 

Generally speaking, i told of these walls in terms of relationships. I really don't know how many walls will I be breaking, or how thick and big and wide they are. But I'm absolutely sure about two things: (1) my insufficiency and (2) the victory that lies ahead. I'm perfectly aware  of my inability to do this on my own power and means.

wonderful mishaps

OH YEAH!

Today I continued learning Ai while finishing shirt #1 from another set of shirt projects. This time, the design includes the sun from the Philippine flag and since it's not your ordinary sun I had to create one from scratch. (I tried downloading PH sun vectors but they were not satisfactory).

As I said earlier i'm novice lvl 5 in Ai so I had to google another how-to and guess what, I found this draw the Philippine sun tutorial. The instructions were for Corel but the basics were there. So I said, (with deep radio announcer voice) let there be light and there was light. Here comes the sun! wahahaha ^0^

Much Courage, more faith

while chatting with a friend (we were talking about projects) i blurted out ala Starwars movie:

"This is the journey towards the creative universe, much courage is needed, sir. I too have times of doubt but we must exercise our faith."

novice 101 lesson 2

Learning is a very humbling experience. ^_^

Novice 101 Lesson 1

Today I realized something! It's not about following the step-by-step tutorials by the letter. It's more of learning the idea behind the technique and applying the techniques to achieve a desired effect while also combining/redesigning other techniques to maximize creative impact. Yosh! ^_^

need to gain exp and new weapon XD

The adventure in the creative universe continues! Need to level up skills and fight lots of monsters such as the one named tardiness. Still praying for a kind merchant to give me a new laptop (oh! my birthday would be in a few days!)

It's a rainy Sunday and after my weekly cleaning-the-washroom chore I was able to catch up on manga reading and tutorial reading. I was reading through this list of retro and vintage effects tutorials in illustrator. These are great stuff (!).

Novice lvl 5

I'm into this wachamacallit journey towards the creative universe. It's like an rpg.

Map: AI CS4

Job: Novice

Weapon: Atom Notebook (another way of saying v. crappy notebook)

Skill: lvl 5

Passion: lvl 70

Walls

8 May 2012

It's choking me. I seem to have developed too many walls. I'm beginning to see the prophecy that was told to me may months ago (I guess I need to listen to it again).

I really did seem to develop a particular sensitivity to people that if they happen to do one horrible thing against me, iron walls come up. It's like an automatic defense mechanism against pre-programmed air missiles. Or like an overactive immune system. But then you know what happens to the heart that protects itself too much. It becomes hard and unloving after its spontaneous ability to trust starts to rust.