A Suffering World.

When I meant I am back, I literally, honestly mean, I am BACK.
So here I am again, updating yet another blog post. Yay me! Two consecutive days in a row!
It is nearing 2a.m. now and I am actually extremely tired, however, burdened by the many happenings around me. Because I am so tired, you might just find me rambling inconclusively. Perhaps nothing as insightful as you may expect at this point.

one.
I am sure by now, most of you are aware of the devastating situation in Haiti.
Having been struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and countless after shocks...
Needless to say, it is looking terrible. Unimaginable number of deaths, injuries, lost of this and that.
Communication lines broken, hindering much needed relief services. And all that the people of Haiti have is a seemingly endless journey of healing and rebuilding up ahead. It is heartbreaking to look through the photos, almost surreal... but unfortunately, it cannot get any more real. Piles of bodies everywhere... and each death seems to only add to a frightening statistic. While I am encouraged to see how the world immediately came together to attempt disaster relief, I cannot help but wonder what people are thinking about this "supposed good God", as it goes with any other catastrophic event. Personally, I believe that regardless the situation, God is sovereign and still good.
But how can that be explained to an unbeliever? Yeap. one of those common looming questions.
Either way, may His Glory shine through and may He use this tragedy to bring those He has called to Himself.

two.
I have been following the "Help Free Gao Zhisheng" campaign for quite a while now. If you are unfamiliar with the situation, you can pay this site a visit. Tonight, my heart sank when I saw the subject line in my inbox "Official Says Gao Zhisheng 'Went Missing' ". What is THAT supposed to mean? Immediately, the "help free Gao Zhisheng" tag line lost the hope of what "help free" had entailed, and is now only characterized by the fearful, uncertain "act now to help Gao's family learn the truth". He is a man of God and has definitely ran the good race, perhaps in such full speed it just might have cost him his very life. Mmms, uncertainties. In our humanity - control-freakishness - uncertainties are the worst. I find myself struggling to pray for him and his family, and by that I mean I don't exactly know what to pray for sometimes. "Dear God, if he is alive yada yada yada....if he isn't... da na na na naa". you know? And would I keep praying in that fashion until I receive more updates? What if we never get to know? It isn't even just for this situation that I feel this way, how about those I am not quite acquainted with. Their salvation. there just might be a high possibility that I'll never find out! Or those I have lost contact with, maybe the family that is so dear to my heart in the Philippines, yet not even P.John knows where they have moved to. the list goes on. It almost somewhat bothers me that I can only "i don't know... but... if... then.... if not... then....", rather than being able to pray for something more specific and tangible. Is that a lack of faith, a firmer grasp onto me wanting control, or some kind of fear that I won't see any fruits of labor type of deal? I honestly do not know.

See. I told you. I really am getting nowhere with this. too tired.
Perhaps after some sleep. I will return to this and think about it some more,
with some other additions to this chain of thought that i have no energy to jot down at this point.

goodnoights world.

Hilarious.

shuttle madness.

Star 94.1 was playing on the radio today while Yvonne and I shuttled to school. In a desperate frenzy to get to school - we woke up late. again. - we barely squished onto the shuttle. but it was good entertainment all the way to school. my favorites (but they are also kind of sad):

top searches online (i suppose in regards to relationships):
female: "How do I get my boyfriend to shave?"
male: "How do I get my girlfriend to lose weight?"

Also, thanks to the shuttle driver, we accidentally discovered a chance to win exclusive tickets (cannot be purchased!!) to a MICHAEL BUBLE acoustic concert at ANTHOLOGY, San Diego! We hope we can win. The adventure will start tomorrow. Lovely voice, beautiful locale. and free. what more can you ask for?

Control.

Hey. to whoever is reading, if any at all. I AM BACK! Ahknow, once again, it has been ages since I've blogged. And again I will say, I do blog within the confines of my um. local hard drive (though even those have become rare nowadays), but last night I was inspired to blog more frequently. HOW i was inspired, you may ask? Perhaps to your dismay, nothing spiritual, nothing big or dramatic, nothing awesome, in fact, I almost feel silly and superficial for saying it. You'll understand why in just a bit.

It happened as follows:
It was probably around 12.am and I decided that I was way too bored from reading about netart, how to use notepad++ and how to code javascript, sooo i succumbed to looking at what blogs i had bookmarked in the past. I glanced over the "blogs (others)" category under my favorites. you know. the bloggers you don't personally know, but want to follow - NO. I am not a stalker :) I know it must be running through your head as you read. I am sure you guys wouldn't label a Piper-Blog-follower a stalker right? Right. Rats, I probably should not have given such a "holy" example. Well, as Guh listens to Ne-Yo while Justin listens to hymns, others follow Piper's blog while I... well. decided to go on Daniel Wu's alivenotdead site. If you do not know who Daniel Wu is (perhaps only Terry Chow would be extraaa familiar with him hahaaa), though he sounds like any average Asian guy you can pick up from the street, he is neither a friend, nor an acquaintance. In fact he does not even know that I exist. ha. This Daniel Wu guy is an American Born Chinese actor who is reasonably involved in the Hong Kong Show Biz. Oh, I advise you not to google-image him. I tried before, and some slightly crude, vulgar, scandy-candy images showed up. On a side note, he is a canto celebrity, who for some reason, after being involved in HK showbiz for quite some years now, still has yet the worst American accent EVAR. So there you go, my inspiration ran oh so deep. I was inspired to blog more often, all thanks to a Canto celebrity by the name of Daniel Wu.

But hey, if you read into some of his blogs, they are quite hilarious I must say, and I would deem them quite interesting, humorous yet to the point. I especially like his collaborative architectural project, "The Stage", which is now an installation in HK for the HK/ShenZhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture. You can read about their design statement from the last entry on the first page linked right up there under his big name. I particularly enjoyed his insight on acting as a career vs. being an architect (which is what he was going to pursue). Both allowed for creativity through different mediums and it is quite interesting how his intended career now became a hobby. He gets the benefit of both! It never was the plan. Funny how life pieces the puzzle together.

Here is a short documentary on the project. I love the concept behind using bamboos and LEDs. However, this structure does somehow remind me of the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

The Stage: Short Doc from Daniel Wu on Vimeo.

So anyways, I digress. After I read his post on how "having lots of money doesn't make you rich" (funny read, very true, but kind of mean on his part at times), I realized how much I let life fly by. Rarely do I take time to reflect on my day. Rarely do I take time to even process the small events that happen throughout my day, and there are so many that are extremely interesting and thought provoking! It is possible that I avoid much of this because sometimes, it just requires too much mental and emotional capacity that I rather not deal with - not necessarily a good thing. WELL, here i am - inspired, so I shall write something. Or else, I'd be writing about how i was inspired to write about NOTHING :)

Today, in my Vis141A Class - the one I was reading netart, notepad++, and javascript for, our professor introduced a guy who will be sitting in on our class for the rest of the quarter, in hopes of understanding more of the technical side of things, while scouting out volunteers from my class to help him develop his 199 independent studies project with my professor. Apparently the project is an experimental performance arts piece based off of the concept of "self help through the internet". Essentially, he would have his friends help him choose one random person over the internet (i suppose of the ones that do apply for this "position") who will dictate his course of actions for the next month and will do so by texting him the commands. Freaky, is it not? Oh, that person would also have control over his online identity as well - ie: facebook, AIM etc. Of course, there will be boundaries. He obviously would not go punch someone in the face if the dictator commands him to do so. But still, I cannot even imagine! My initial thoughts were man, what kind of FUNDED project is this? then came, what is the point? this is SO absurd! However, I later find out the undeniably personal aspect to this concept. He explained how he was failing all of his classes last quarter, and wanted to play on the "asking for help online" idea in this particular project. My heart kind of sank when I heard that. Self help books, in my opinion, are stupid. Having some other human being control your life FOREAL, is even worse! scary and also kind of. i don't know ): it is so sad! What if mr. mrs. dictator is a jerk? Perhaps I should apply and make him read the Bible :) hope & cure for the SOUL are there, not in self help books or in google search, or in another person for the matter. What more would he be than a robot, or some kind of puppet? In the end, what is it all? Superficial, temporary happiness and satisfaction? I am glad that my life is not in the hands of another person, technology, or even in my own hands, but in God's. What an awesome reality to live in, to know that God - the Creator, the loving Father, the Sovereign, Gracious & Merciful - is the one who dictates my life. I can trust Him. I have His promises to cling to. I have the hope of the Gospel. It is a reality I constantly need to remind myself of because so often, I find myself worrying and stressing about the future. I was very blessed by CJ's sermon on The Troubled Soul (Psalm 42). It did much for my soul and in times of discouragement and frustration, God put things back into perspective.

"The Psalmist may have felt abandoned by God, but the Savior was forsaken by God. The Psalmist's soul may have felt downcast and troubled, but the Savior's was crushed. The Savior's soul was uniquely troubled and tormented so that the soul of sinners like us would know freedom from the fear of eternal torment in hell. He was forsaken so that we might never be forsaken"

Spurgeon also encourages us to "cash the banknote of Divine Promise"!
in Psalm 42, the Psalmist says "Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him".
what hope we have in the midst of a troubled soul.
The future may be unclear, but slowly I am learning to entrust it into God's hands.
In the beginning of the post, I mentioned that it was funny how life pieces the puzzle together.
Well, there is nothing really funny about that because God is a sovereign God :) and for that.
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!" - Phil 4:4

This is getting quite long. again.
Perhaps my blogs will become shorter if i post more frequently.

I shall leave you with a very cute song.
I did not notice how cute it was until i listened to the lyrics carefully!
This is from his very first album, over a decade ago :)
i believe I was still in elementary school back then! ROFL.



So you think you haven't seen WLH 王力宏 in my statuses, profiles etc. for a while?
And you may comment, "you're STILL in the WLH 王力宏 PHASE????"
let me clarify things for you so there is no further misconception.
there is no phase. I am way past the phase.
because he is permanently in van's book of most admired, talented, favorites :)
never going away! heeehe.

here's the translation for those of you who do not understand.
you have to read all of it. it's not as shady and bad as it sounds :)

You care less on how jealous I am,
you also ignore my protests
He is your constant subject of conversation
I suffer in abundant grief because of him,

you can be as late as you want
whether your mood is rain or shine, it doesn't matter
is that enough to exchange more of your time
so we can have some alone time

anyone would want their lover's entire heart
don't say I am childish
if there is someone playing the piano crazily outside your door another day,
don't doubt. it has to be me.

i don't fear going against stronger love rivals,
they must defeat me before they can steal you away
but when it comes to Ludwig Beethoven
all I can do is shake my head and sigh.

你不管我有多妒忌　也不管我怎麼抗議
他永遠是你說不膩的話題　你讓我為他受盡委屈

愛遲到多久都可以　你陰晴不定沒關係
夠不夠交換你多留點時間　讓我們兩人單獨一起

誰都想擁有情人完整的心　別說我太孩子氣
改天你家門口有人瘋狂彈琴　一定是我別懷疑

我不怕跟再強的情敵試著比一比　打敗我才能搶走你
碰上了LUDWIG BEETHOVEN　卻只能搖頭嘆氣

the end! :)

煩惱到受不了

幾年中，我終于等到我逃避了極久的時刻了- ICAM Senior Project. 這是完成我主修的最後衝刺，也是我最怕，最沒有頭緒的一門課（還要span two quarters, 死定了）。其實，不只是要想project那麽簡單，因爲一開始想的時候，一大堆未知數都牽連在一起往我而沖。我漸漸發覺我對這個係並沒有特別大的興趣。這也未免遲了一點吧？ 也不算是沒興趣，但我想象不到自己在以下的日子裏做這些酷，但又沒什麽用的edgy, front-line art projects. 或許，有一些的是視在人爲的，可是我真的想像不到花一輩子的時間來做這些事。

也許我想的太完美了。
也許我沒有我想象中那麽堅決。
又或許我是個面對困難會退縮的人。

一直以來，我覺得那些“缺點”，我通通都不是，可是我現在卻懷疑我是否一個意志力很強的女生 – 我喜歡設計，但學軟體的時候就好像失去了一些興趣因爲在自學的情況下覺得太難。可是反過來，在其他事上，我通常是堅持到底的一個人。就算其他人都要放棄，我還是會繼續奮鬥下去。因此，我到現在還是搞不清楚我是沒興趣還是真的臨陣退縮那樣子。

恕我又reference我最愛的音樂家。我真的很羡慕王力宏這樣的人。他對音樂的熱愛給了他一個無可否定的將來。他把我一生想做的事都做出來了。我不是想當歌星或作藝人，但我真的想在這一生中為神做他賜我天分的事。如果是graphic design 那我會用賺到的錢來幫助有需要的人跟事，或者用我的設計來表達一些在我心上的信息。這一些王力宏都做到了。可是我知道他成功的背後付出了很多奮鬥跟努力， 經歷了很多我根本想象不到的寂寞。他出道十幾年到現在才真的得到爸爸的認同， 有時候因怪點子多，所以作品沒一些其他歌手的作品受歡迎，但他從來沒有向那些外界的壓迫低頭，遷就，反而繼續做他覺得對的事。他不但不創作“fluffy pop” ， 還透過他的歌，行動，跟他賺到的錢，正面的去影響亞洲的青少年，還不擺架子的， 很真誠的去幫助有需要的人。也許這些都是令我喜歡他的因素吧（不但讓我當abc的感覺很舒服，很驕傲，很有歸宿感，還作出我一直在想的事）。這些正是我想做的。一直以來，在學校的project我都做不出那些 ”fluffy art”。 這一次那麽龐大的project我都很努力去想一個對我有意思的構思。 技術方面對我很困難，所以如果沒有了那個passion，我根本一點都做不出來。可是到這個地步我真的有些灰心，因爲怎樣想我都想不出來。我真的開始懷疑自己有沒有這方面的天分了。

對於人生要走的路，
我感覺實在太迷茫了。
成就來得不容易。
成功的背後都是常被人忽略的奮鬥跟努力。
可是如果沒有那種熱情，哪來奮鬥的推動力呢？
誰來教教我。

神阿，我真的需要你的指引。
無論是逼迫在眼前的project,
或是將來的calling, 請你帶領我。
我真的不知道該怎麽辦。

現在只感到無奈。

在這一些以外，我還有其他的煩惱。對於人際關係我真的有點累跟disappointed. 可是哥提醒了我要記得我已經擁有的美好。Jon Szeto 上星期天也說對了。Contentment 真的很難學吔。而且每次我覺得自己是受害者的時候，神都會用不同的方法來提醒我的糟糕。

其實這是在 Christmas break 的時候寫下來的，只是當時沒有post而已。回頭看，真有點 emo 吔.

modnar. random.

Some interesting things that happened this week.

• oddly COLD weather. not to mention the ferocious wind.
  i fear for the life of me that i will fall victim to a branch. or a tree toppling over from the wind.
• Attended the Nicholas Kristof event at school on: turning oppression into opportunity.
  He focused on empowering women through education etc. much of what i have heard before, but inspiring nonetheless. You can pay his blog a visit. I also purchased a signed book (he. just for the heck of it) Half the Sky, coauthored by him and his Chinese American wife. I'll let you know if it is good. It will be interesting to read something from a non Christian perspective. Ultimately, however, the whole event reminded me more of the importance of the Gospel. Even if we could change the world one person at a time, even if the "temporary" change lasts a life time, all of it counts for nothing. nooothing. in the eternal realm if they don't have the Gospel. The event also triggered more what-to-do-with-my-life thinking, again. Perhaps, i'll save those thoughts for another more thought out entry, rather than one such as this, crammed into 15min or so.
• On my drive home from ARTS volunteer, I was waiting for a light under an overpass when a small boy with a proportionally large backpack skipped in a lighthearted fashion towards my direction, down the street. very, very heart warming. can't resist a smile to that, can you?
• On my way to the shuttle stop to school one day, a very tall father was riding his bike towards me, while his tiny, and i mean TINY little boy (perhaps the size of a 2 year old?) "rode" his TWO WHEELER (more like waddling his feet on the side - it was definitely the smallest two wheeler i have seen in my life), not tricycle, not a bike with training wheels, but a two wheeler, next to him :) VERY CUTE. i tried to resist the smile because I was walking alone, but failed. Oh well. At most I probably looked retarded :) but it was for a legit reason :]
• On the same drive home from ARTS volunteer, right before I entered the 5 freeway entrance, i saw two college-age-looking-doodes out of the corner of my eye, hitchhiking to Oceanside. random.

good grief. the 15min is up already. out for dinner, and back home to the nut tomorrow <3

Sanctification.

"the hotter the furnace, the more refined the silver comes out"

Purify my heart,
let me be as gold and precious silver.
Purify my heart,
let me be as gold, pure gold.

Purify my heart,
cleanse me from within
and make me holy.
Purify my heart,
cleanse me from my sin, deep within.

Refiner's Fire

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" - Matt 16:24-26

not easy.
I was going to jot down some thoughts. but headache looming. Perhaps I will return another day.
in any case. i will leave you all with a song dear to my heart. a comfort. a reason to rejoice.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong, a perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.

Because a sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me

Behold him there, the risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One in himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God

p.s. i think i listened to F4 (i am a bit ashamed now to admit that) so much in high school that almost four years of not listening to them still has no effect on me - the lyrics have been ingrained in my long term memory. haaa. amazing.

Fuzz madness.

I was about to leave for church today, when upon opening the car door, something fell into the "crack" beside the driver seat and the door - something in which i thought was a leaf of some sort. So boldly and not-so-wisely, I stuck my hand down and tried to grab it. It all happened ridiculously quick because I was in a hurry to do campus pickups for church. Before I knew it the so-i-thought leaf was a fuzzy, almost weightless, jumpy MOTH that fell into my car!

EW! EW! EW!
i hate moths. and i touched one.
initial thoughts: i'm traumatized!
call me dramatic. but i really hate and fear all kinds of bugs.

finally i scouted around for long sticks alongside the road.
and flicked it out after several tries. yay me. all by myself!
instead of "ANNAAAAA!!!" or.
scream scream scream with rest of apartment.
or. "JAAAASONNNN" - apartment mate's boyfriend.
well. i suppose i didn't quite have a choice.
can't holler at some stranger for such help. hee.

ha. what a way to start the day.