yup, it's "boulevard of broken dreams" by Green Day. think if i listen to it too often it's gonna make me blue....so i'll try not to. haha. btw most of sarah mclachlan's songs make feel miserable. haha. which is why i try not to listen to them.

n before i forget, i bought a new fighting fish last sunday nite at carrefour. i dunno how...but my brother was just talking about getting one on the way there n before i knew it, i bought it. actually at the time of purchase, i was thinking in my mind that maybe i needed to handle more responsibility in my life. i'm like the guardian / co-owner of the fish, but for now my bro's the main owner...i'm jus there jus in case he gets sick of it n starts to neglect it. i noe, strange rite? me, getting along with my brother? me, buying a fish out of nowhere? but then again i am a very impulsive person.

on one hand, that's good, cos it's made me jump headfirst into the things i'm supposed to do without letting fear convict me first, n it's benefited me in that sense cos i've realised it's not so bad once i've done it, but on the other hand, i do stupid things without a rational head, things that i regret later....stuff like....well, not stuff that leads me into sin, but stuff that...messes things up.

[btw, i did own a fighting fish years ago, n so did my bro, but both of ours jumped to their deaths a year later, due to unclosed glass ovaltine jars of water. but i was more careful with mine...until one day i wasn't able to watch it anymore. i remember pestering my mom to go and get a cover with holes for air to enter, but she's the type of person that doesn't care about these things. n the next thing i knew is, he had jumped out the next morning. i cudn't find him amidst the dusty mess of boxes n things my mom put beside the table, which was where the jar was, n my mom didn't even like, care. i remember feeling really bitter when she finally found him there, all coated in dust, three days later. but oh well. my mom didn't even allow me to go near my old dog daisy when she lay there dying in the backyard, and it's always killed me that i was not able to be there when she called for me. i still feel sometimes like i can never forgive myself, but thankfully i don't feel this so often anymore.

this sunday, "ah patch" (my mom called him that becos of his brown patches over his white body, dun ask what's with the "ah"), our hse's latest stray puppy-dog, just got bundled up in a car n taken away....hopefully by a dog owner that cares. so it's a happy ending (i hope) to yet another homeless dog who has lived outside our hse. n after i learnt of that, this thought jus came to mind: come to think of it, almost every stray dog that has lived outside our hse has found a home. i think it's something to do God in our hse.

wait, i know it's god. starting from the first stray dog, this yellow ocre-coloured dog called "brownie" (my mom is jus plain fond of giving dogs names, even the stray ones), started living outside our gates. like all our stray dogs that made our gates a home, he depended on us and the neighbour across the road for meals, n always treated us like we were the owners -- he'd bark when our car came home, he'd jump around when we got out of the car, n he'd even accompany us for walks whenever we went walking ard the neighbourhood. at first it was ok, but after a few months (i can't rem, but i do recall that it was an overstay) it sorta became too long.

not that we wanted to kick him out, but the dog-catchers in malaysia are ever-ready to kill dogs n put them to sleep. (in fact last month there was this new straits times article of some MBJB [jb town council] ppl coming by someone's hse when the person wasn't ard n clubbing the poor toy dog to death jus for the fun of it). so of course it was risky for brownie to be living outside our gates, as we are all dog lovers and we didn't want to see him end in a terrible death. there's another reason to but you'll have to ask me.

so i started praying for brownie to find a home. i dunno who else in my family prayed, but within one month's time or so, the neighbour at the corner shack a few roads away kept him in a doggie cage (they do that to all their other dogs too anyway) n started feeding him there n taking him in. they don't keep the dogs forever in cages, only at certain times, but most of the time they let the dogs out n since their shack has no gates, they let them roam all over the neighbourhood. these days sometimes my parents will purposely drive by to see brownie, n even if we don't, he still pops by once in a while jus to say hi to us.

happy ending number 2 was when the next dog, blackie (self-explanatory name) started being our resident stray. the only clear problem with blackie was that he was always looking for ways to get into ppl's houses. for us, we were always present to guard the gate when we got our car in, but for the neighbour across the street, not so. so it was not uncommon to find blackie sleeping inside the gates of our neighbour, only to be discovered and chased out later. but one day last yr a blessing came in disguise: the neighbour's hse got robbed.

i thank god the neighbour n her family were unharmed. but immediately after that, they took in blackie. n yes, now we see him sleeping with permission inside their gates every day. n now "ah patch" is gone...hopefully to ppl that care. my aunty was gonna take him in anyway...i heard she even came yesterday n my parents tried to find it but they cudn't, n then the neighbour told them what happened.

and saturday was...eventful. i learned new things in my walk with god. but in my impulsiveness i did a few things which, though did not cause that much damage, are things that i cud've...handled better. but i did find help in god, directly n indirectly. n i did get surprised...i wudn't say pleasantly, but i did feel comforted, n it immediately led my thoughts to christ. anyway thank god He's working it all out.

meanwhile i've got 2 exams left to go, i haven't studied yet...i've only jus been trying to collate my notes cos i've chucked them everywhere in my room. they look like a whole ton to study....and the advertising notes look extremely boring...jus whole big chunks of wordy paragraphs that look like they wanna bore you to death. media research notes don't really help either....i don't know how to calculate a chi-square, pearson's r, or whatever other confusing stuff they have in there. the formulas look like greek to me....and i think they literally are, if you count alpha, beta and delta as greek.

also, i haven't really got down to being serious about funding for my mission trip.....i need to raise $350 sing, which means that's more than twice the RM notes, before the trip, which is on 9-20 may in some student centre in singapore. anyone wanna chip in? email or call me.