HAHAHAHA.

Today, we had quite a fun, lighthearted topic for conversation leading: Your ideal first date.
Of course, we proceeded in discussing date-related things after that.

Anyway, let me introduce you to Tom.
Tom is quite the character.
He is very jolly, has animated facial expressions, and dynamic tone when he speaks.
He is tall, not huge, but decently big.

So he shared about his ideal first date.
From beginning to end, all he could talk about was...




BUFFETS! and every time he mentioned "buffet"
his face would light up.
and you would witness a beaming smile emerge.
and i mean. a BEAMING smile.

HAHAHAHA.
and my immediate thought.
OMG! A MALE REPLICA OF MYSELF!

our group also shared about popular date-places in our respective countries. while others mentioned Disneyland, shopping malls, and you know, the other usuals, he talked about a semi-museum-esque "palace" where kings used to live. and another member of our group decided to poke fun at him about his buffet obsession, and said, "no buffet?" Tom paused, and added, THEN the buffet! (but we all know, it's his own "popular" date location and preference, no? hahaha :D) i guess you had to be hear to hear him, to see his face, for it to be funny. but i, personally, thought it was so funny i had to try real hard walking out of the classroom to not smile and laugh to myself, lest i receive strange looks from strangers all around campus...

OH, one thing worthy of attention is this... Another member asked, "wouldn't you want to be a little more reserved on your first date? maybe a little more shy?" but Tom seemed to have no problem with this and said, "you can know a lot by observing someone eat. i can perhaps know 95% of the girl after observing her eat..." now in my head, i felt quite exposed. Why? well you know, i was, as usual, starving after class, and decided to treat myself to some Santorini fries, in which I was trying to shove down quickly before class started. And guess who the first person i saw was? TOM. outside of class before it had started. HAAAAA. lovely.

so. what kind of information do people gather about my semi-messy eating? mmmmms. o.O

i didn't think it would be so hard to find a picture of me with my "did someone say buffet" shirt. ohwell. i should wear it to class next time. HA!

Hello.

Wow. it has been a ridiculously long time since I've last posted. Ahknow, cliche, but undoubtedly true. Many, many, many things have happened since I've last posted. In fact, so much I probably do not even recall most of it. Even Daniel Wu (my initial inspiration to re-explore the public blogging domain) is a married man now! Congrats to him and Lisa S - gorgeous, down to earth lady. Based off of my superficial understanding of them both, aka movies, media coverage and through their own writings, I must say... superrr cuuteee match! Anyways, I digress. Yes, busy am I. Hence the temporal disappearance. It is okeys. You don't need to hear about my life in such detail anyway. If you really want to, TALK to me and get off this blog :)

After much searching and applying, I have finally obtained a job at school, though I can barely consider it a job. For one, I, for now, only "work" around 2 hours a week, and two, it is just too enjoyable :) If my future full time job or career is something I can look forward to every day, oh what an awesome thing that would be!!! Many people I know have actually been involved in this - conversation leading - for a long time. Who knows why I've waited this long to actually apply?! Regardless, I am truly enjoying it. It has reconnected me with the rest of the world, and has finally taken me out of my super Asian bubble without me even leaving California! RIGHT HERE in my own backyard! :) how cool is that?

I have come to appreciate my confused, in-between cultural background, but it took years, and my interest in other cultures, languages etc. have accentuated throughout the years. I am extremely thankful for this opportunity to be a conversation leader. God continuously places opportunities in my life that are out of my comfort zone, challenging, but I really can't ask for better! It has opened my eyes to different cultures, perspectives, and people in general. It has taught me to love the lost and to see the world with His eyes. Pray that I will continue to do so and grow in this area. I only have about half the quarter left with these students - VERY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME. ):

nothing too deep.
nothing I can express fully in words.
but very exciting nonetheless!

Perhaps,
I should pursue a job or career where I can interact lots with international students, people......... mmms.

Interesting sites.

Hello. Just thought I'd share a site or two that I think are interesting.

Visual Complexity
my ICAM senior project collaborator introduced me to this site. it is all about the visualization of data.
Here is one project done on human trafficking - a topic missions ministry is focusing on this quarter, and also a topic Uyen and I chose to do our project on. You can ask me about the project, by the end of the quarter. By then, it will be a fully developed proposal with prototypes and we shall be ready to build the project in the sequence to this course next quarter!





Here is an excerpt from the project description:
"The idea of the poster is that the closer the viewer gets to it, more detailed information is revealed, such as numbers of children of a specific country being involved in prostitution or child labor, or other information."

you can take a look at the project description yourself, which I highly encourage by the way, because these images do not do it justice in terms of the details of the project.

So that is that.
and here is another.

Obviously, I have been inexplicably excited for the World Expo, 2010 in Shanghai! For one, i love different cultures, languages, cuisine, you name it. secondly, i haven't been back to Shanghai since I left in 8th grade. sad times! Anyways, I was browsing through the World Expo site, yet again, and stumbled across the architectural mark ups for the various Pavilions! SUPER AWESOME. Initially I thought they were just having some GIANT booths for each participant, but even in my wildest dreams... I did not expect specific designs dedicated to each country's / corporation's pavilion!

The China one looks like half our Geisel Library or something.
I don't know why this image is so small. I didn't do it on purpose ):



A few of my favorites thus far:


This is Mexico's! Not your traditionally looking structure either!


Israel's! I don't quite understand the significance though ):
Not knowledgeable in Israeli culture.


Artist rendition of Cisco's pavilion. Digging the lights.
LOVE city lights! BUT. sad, not-sure-if-worth-it trade off for the beautiful night sky ):

This past week, I found out that my middle school friend, who now attends USC, got a position as a customer relations person (and someone who will be helping the organizers) in the American Pavilion and will be working there for the duration of the Expo! HOW FRIGGIN COOL IS THAT. and. he said he could give me a tour when i go :) woohoo!

Dang. how did it become. almost. 10pm. need to get my butt back to work! adios amigos.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

and that is how the apostle Paul, for the most part, greeted those he addressed in the NT.
This past week I experienced abounding Grace and inexplicable peace from the Lord.

Somehow technology and I repel each other at times. only at times. but when those times do come, they are quite disastrous. I've left my cellphone in my pants-pocket in the washer before...and needless to say, poor cellular hit the grave. In the middle of my second year of college, my dear lap top's hard drive failed on me out of nowhere and left me with no farewells to half of my music and photos. This past Saturday, I left my lap top out (different from the one that experienced hard drive failure) while I attended a meeting. Upon my return, what I thought was a dead battery, turned out to be some corrupted index of sort, as Kenny Chin identified sunday night / early monday morning. Either way, I could not start it up even after a gajillion tries - yay. panic panic! Then of course, a flood of "oh crap, missions ministry meeting notes and reflections time line are on my computer... um, senior project proposal is due within the day...oh no vis141a project update due wed... oh freak cogs midterm on thurs... all my notes... no i cannot pay for another lap top... NO!" and the list goes on. you get the idea. Thankfully, Lynn gave me the brilliant idea of asking Kenny to take a look at my almost-lifeless lap top. So I did.

To make a long story short, he graciously lent me his net book (which by the way, looked INCREDIBLY small on my desk compared to my, as others have commented, "as big as me" lap top) for the weekend. After a roller coaster of possibilities, zee comp went from kind of dead, to a possibility of being quite dead and i would just need to get a new one, to it coming back to life - with a bunch of corrupted office files, malfunctioning NetBeans (a programming platform i needed for class) etc etc.

This technological mess definitely brought great inconveniences to my week, and I found myself continually apologizing for bothering kenny so much. In fact, did I mention how he just repaired the laptop and fixed the corrupted files while I was in small groups earlier? However, amidst the hectic schedule, greeeeat inconvenience for my school work (like 2hrs wasted trying to figure out what was wrong with netbeans when I could have studied, or slept), and inconvenience for others, God was gracious in constantly reminding me to not let circumstances dictate my stress level and emotions. SO, it was i guess a "bad week", but it didn't "feel" so bad in the end :) WHY? because His Grace is sufficient & His peace transcends all understanding.

now to catch up with my work this weekend :] and sleep :D

i shall leave you with yet another 王力宏 piece :)
I must admit, it is a bit strange and i suppose cliche at times.
and he's not necessarily the best rapper in the world.
but i am definitely sporting the food incorporation HA. of course.
and you have to admit, it is a creative piece.
I shall give you some background.

this Yi Jian Ni Jiu Xiao 一見你就笑 is a modern remix of Deng Li Jun's old classic, and this new version of the song is specially made for Taipei's "theme song" (smiling power) for the World Expo, 2010 in Shanghai. If you still don't know what it is, get on with the program!!! it is a huge world wide event!!
So, moving on. Deng Li Jun (鄧麗君) was a famous taiwanese singer back in the day - she is now dead fyi. if you are even slightly connected with your chinese roots, you may have heard of songs such as Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin (月亮代表我的心). i'm tellin you. it's OLD SCHOOL. like. my parents & GRANDPARENTS know of her and listen to her kind of old :) anyhow. she is undoubtedly a Taiwanese icon so what better representation than the incorporation of both the old and the new icons (aka WLH for the win!) of Taiwan along with the old and new style of music?


he pretty much did a 穿越時空 duet with her, meaning a duet that surpasses the limits of time. because she obviously cannot physically be there to collaborate with him :) Back in the day, music was recorded differently, records were produced differently, the tracks weren't always clean-cut and separated, so it actually required a lot of technology to extract her parts of the Chorus out. not to mention the need to speed it up as well! kind of crazy huh? much different than having some girl do a cover of the song. it is the authentic 鄧麗君 vocals. pretty awesome huh? i suppose these reasons alone allow me to overlook the actual piece. it is not bad though :) though you may think otherwise. hehe.

on a side note. why is their "I love taipei sign" the same as the L for looser sign HAHA. awesome...

the weather is WACKED.

2 storms. 2 more to come. and an ex.Tornado warning in San Diego? WHAT is going on here?! California has earthquakes, not tornadoes. come to think of it, we're right off the coast too. mm. Tsunamis! It is such a relief to know that we would have absolutely no where to hide if a tornado does decide to eat us up. Californian architectures have no BASEMENTS! woopee.

the wind was quite crazy today, instead of flipping my LARGE umbrella inside out, i almost thought it would force it to close in my face and break the extensions in the process. Because I tried to block the wind & rain with it (more so with the intent of not having a big blue umbrella embarrassingly flip inside out in public), I could not see a thing and almost got ran over by a car driving who-knows-why-so-fast at the Peterson loop, and in the mean time also worrying about logs and branches falling on my head without warning.

I seriously need some rain boots. All thanks to my hole-y shoes, Anna graciously lent me her pretty water-proof platform shoes. unfortunately, i discovered that my feet are weaksauce and i now have two pinky-toe sized blisters on both my pinky-toes from wearing those shoes. BUT i also utilized anna's princess band aids. HA. it is unfortunate that I got snow white. she freaks me out. just a little.

I think I am avoiding school work and feeling a bit screwed for it. hence I am here.
OHWELL. Procrastination is about dealing with it TOMORROW roights? :)
I'm kidding. I was productive these days. Just didn't have the time to get to these assignments.
and now. well. i suppose I'm a bit screwed and will deal with them manana.

oh oh oh. i hear that OVT's Super Quesedilla is BACK.
they were the BEST and most WORTH IT thanggg to order!
swipes anyone?

WorldView: the 'First Globals'

Here is an interesting excerpt from something I read a few days ago.

“What are your goals?” asks C.J. Mahaney, editor of Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World (Crossway, 2008). “Do they move you forward — to financial security, more friends, successful kids, a certain position at work, learning a craft or trade? Or do they drive you upward — to obeying and glorifying God above all else?”

There’s nothing wrong with helping a young person prepare to earn a living. But there’s more to life than earning a living, even in hard economic times. That’s what Jesus meant when He said we do not live by bread alone, but by the words of God.

We cannot force our children to serve the Lord. Neither should we unwittingly push them toward worldliness and materialism with the best intentions of helping them achieve “success” as defined by the world. Rather, we should model lives of love and service — and invite our children to join us in the great task of sharing the Gospel with lost and suffering people everywhere.

There’s plenty of data indicating they’re open to the invitation.

Pollster John Zogby has renamed the so-called Millennials (18- to 29-year-old Americans) the “First Globals.” They are “the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history,” Zogby reports. “First Globals are also the most cosmopolitan age group in America, the most international, and the one most concerned about the environment and human rights.”

By and large, they’re comfortable with the different skin colors, cultures and languages they encounter every day. A fourth of them expect to live outside America at some point in their lives.

They sound like potential missionaries to me.

If your children fall into this age group or mindset, why not show them the unprecedented opportunities they have — not just to pursue a career, but to pursue the glory of God among the nations?

It is an interesting way to put it, no? Sometimes it is hard for me to see this "acceptance" he describes, but perhaps it really is happening and I have yet to open my eyes to such a reality. shrugs. Being in Harvest for almost four years now, I seriously STILL think Harvest is this crazy church and fellowship that somehow managed to congregate a bunch of individuals who aspire to commit to full time ministry as pastors and missionaries. It is amazing, needless to say EXCOITING, to see and hear about these dense... desires and passion in such a small church! I have definitely been blessed by these individuals through conversation, their actions, their service, and the list goes on. God really used them to open my eyes to what it means to be a global Christian, what it means to shepherd, and often times the difficulties in ministry. All of this have given me all the more reason, and no excuse, to pray.

on another note.
If I ever have a family of my own, I hope I will not acquire the “Hyperactive Parent Syndrome” living out [parents'] dreams through their kids (it was mentioned in the intro of the article above). It is such an easy trap to fall into, don't you think? Scary! I seriously think it is even applicable for me now. I have a bunch of younger cousins and they've always been the baby brothers that I have to nag on, discipline, and watch over. I feel like I'm their second mom sometimes. But it's so easy to think about what they might do in the future. Would my little cousin pursue music? He's so talented! Would that little cousin be some mischievous street smart individual engineer type of person? You get the point. They're not even my kids. And they're all way young - like 8th grade, 6th grade, 5th grade, 3rd grade young - meaning looong ways to go. By God's Grace, He'll remind me who they are as individuals in Christ, not kids that have the potential to live out something I can "brag" about. ha. That must be a challenge for parents.

Yet another note. but the last one for the noights. Speaking of globalization and cultures and languages and all that good stuff, I was extremely happy to find that my Chinese professor posted a link to this: jointhewall.org! Go read for yourself if you want to find out the details. Basically it is going to be a video display wall on Chinese Americans who reside in the U.S. and the display will be organized by surnames :) HA. thank goodness I'm not a Chen, Chan, Lee, or Wong. Anyways, it will be in the American Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo, 2010! HOW EXCOITING is THAT? I cannot wait to go! Here's my share of the wall! I guess you can't really see the details of the photo (i don't know why it's so small on blogspot) but it basically has a template and you fill in your info :) see! on the left corner ish there's my last name in Chinese! On the blue part, it also says "place of Chinese origin" which would be Hong Kong in my case, and "Place of U.S. residence", which would be Walnut, CA! pretty dang cool huh? 8]

Owneeeeed

I think i have repeatedly told this stories to various groups of people by now, but I suppose I'll reiterate to the online community.

This past Friday, two of my apartments (Nina & Gloria) and I decided to make a Costco run. There's this awesome Gelato booth outside of the entrance that everyone has been talking about - $1.5 for 3frigginSCOOPS of Gelato! Costco style. So Glo decided to get some (more so because the waffle cone had caught her eyes) and this doode finally comes out to serve her. They do their ordering, paying thing, he starts scooping and seeing that I had my Harvest sweatshirt on, he asked "Harvest huh? where is that?" I was quite surprised he didn't ask OH Harvest Crusade? because I've gotten that about three times over winter break. So I told him Solana Beach. A few seconds later he asks us "Oh so you guys are Christians?" and of course, we replied yes. Another few seconds (somehow, this all just adds up to the time span of scooping three scoops of Gelato into a waffle cone. strange) he questions, "so... Christians believe in.. Jesus right?" - yes. Yet again, another pause, and he finally asks "So who's this JESUS?"

And you just might think. WOAH. evangelistic opportunity, initiated by the other person!

needless to say. we were caught off guard, and quite surprised.
i looked around and said... "wow, that is a loaded question"
and nina asked glo if she wanted to explain. but all three of us kind of...
stupidly just stared and remained silent.
in my mind, i was thinking how the heck do we explain who Jesus is without leaving out the whole picture in the time span of 3 scoops of gelato???!!!!
seeing that we were silent. This Gelato doode suddenly flipped his hat up and says super loudly and speedy manner.
"BAAAM!!! ROMANS 1:16 FOR I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL.... JESUS IS LORD OF LORDS, and KING OF KINGS!! GOTTA BE READY TO SHARE!"

OBVIOUSLY shocked. i think my jaw pretty much felt the rough surfaces of the concrete.
and we started laughing hysterically and saying OMG. WE JUST GOT OWNED.
Glo proceeded in asking him, "so you're christian too?"
and he says, "no, i just have a personal relationship with Jesus.."
-___- we later found out that he attends the Rock.
and there we were. and i had just told him that we are from Harvest in Solana Beach too.

SIGHHHH. talking about MAJOR OWNAGE. haaa.