Friday, June 06, 2003

 
All I gotta say is that IV Large Group was awesome tonight. We went over to Golden Gardens which is this beach with places to make a bonfire and sand. There was a ton of people there. It was so beautiful and I got to use my new camera too. After finals I will post some, or you can check online at Danger's website under Intervarsity and there might be a section for it, otherwise, there's about four pictures of me scattered throughout, one under Fall Conference, and the others for Spring Day 2003. Speaking of finals, no more blogging till after Monday afternoon after my last final, Physics. I need to cram my brains out. Puff it up like a marshmallow in a microwave set for 20 seconds.

Unknown @ 1:25:00 AM

 
For those of you that are amazingly observant, you might have noticed that there is a change to my top 10 wish list :). Yes, I am now the proud owner of a Canon G2, bought from my Bible study leader last night. Here's one of the first pictures that was taken on the camera while Brian was trying to show me how it works:

The guy in the background is Dan, Brian's roommate, he goes to CRU. He was doing CS.
So sweet, now all I need is a MP3 player. It's fun having high tech toys. In other news, ahhh, my formal lab report that I finished last night is beautiful. Lots of color, it's a masterpiece. And only 7 pages this time. The formal report before that one was 19 pages. Sure, it sounds like a lot, but data tables take up a lot of room. Don't start stressing out about it when you can just ignore it.

Unknown @ 11:57:00 AM

 
It's really amazing, it seems like if you're Asian, and you meet this new person and they're Asian too, it's almost guaranteed that you'll both have at least one other Asian acquaintance in common. It's a really cool thing, because of the interbonding, creating lots of covalent bonds, like a diamond, but sometimes Asians can be too cliquey and all you ever see is a big mob of Asians. I don't know, I really want to be a part of an Asian mob, because they're so loyal and cute and fun and considerate, but I also want to have a non-Asian friends too, because they're really truthfully blunt, crazy, funny, and good conversationalists. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Asian group lacks the qualities I just listed for the non-Asian group, or vice versa, but that for some reason, those are the qualities that stand out to me when I think about them. But there's problems that I can see with being too much a part of one group and not the other.

I don't know if I know people who would do this, but it would really suck to have other Asians talk about me and say that I've "sold out" and don't appreciate my Asian-ness or want to be white because it's superior or something. Which is pretty old fashioned thinking, but some people are really traditional. And on the flipside, it would also really suck for non-Asian people to look at me say that I think Asians are superior so that's why I hang out with them more, that I harbor generational resentment against them, or that I think I'm so different from them that I can never be 'real' friends with them.

I look back at my life and I realize that I've always been a part of two groups of friends. In elementary school, it was my best friends Whitney and Emily, and then my "Football Club" which consisted of a bunch of guys. In middle school, I hung out with my best friend Jie and her friends, and then my other friends like Michael. In 8th grade, there was my 'smart group' and then there was Jason, Bryan, and that group. In high school, for half of it, it was Jared, Ryan, Aaron and that group, and then there was Jamey, and Megan, then for the latter half, there was Bethany and her group/Minh and everyone else, and then Dan. You would think I'd get the hang of this, but I think it's gotten progressively worse every year.

It's hard enough feeling like you're a part of one group, without trying to feel like you're a part of another group that's completely different from the first group. And there's definitely the temptation to be completely different when you're with the other group. I mean, some changes to be considerate are fine, but it's a thin line between small changes like that and big ones. What it seems like is that the Asian group all live in Terry-Lander, and all of the non-Asians live in North Campus.

Unknown @ 11:48:00 PM

 
Although I have gotten started on my formal chem lab, I was searching on Direct Connect and I noticed that someone had the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ". So I looked it up on the Internet Movie Database. Noticed that it was based off of a book so I searched for the author on Google and was ultimately lead to this college essay dealing with two books, The Satanic Verses and The Last Temptation of Christ by different people about different things, but they were both banned. It is a very long essay/thesis, but the first parts, about the history behind the protests against the two books are very good.
The essay:Satanic Verses and Last Temptations
Of course, as with all things online, have open eyes and a discerning mind, not all 'truths' are accurate.
My thoughts on the matter? Quite shocked at points. I'm not altogether sure what's going on with The Satanic Verses but for the other book, I could possibly believe that the author struggled with issues concerning his faith and the book just happens to be a very honest, but too indulgent representation of that struggle. It's one thing to wonder but it's another thing to craft a book playing out that confusion. What was his motivation for something like that?

"He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity."--Proverbs 21:23

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."--Ephesians 4:29

Unknown @ 7:30:00 PM

 
I always end up blogging really late at night huh?
The room is always:

Yes, this is what I can see when I look out the window. Next to Haggett is McMahon and they have clusters which are a group of rooms that have their own little living room and bathroom and balcony. Actually, Diane and I tried to be creative one night last quarter and since I have some blue lights, we tried to use them to write the word COLD in our window...and I went outside in the rain to take a look when we were finished and all I saw were a blur of blue lights. We were sad.

Unknown @ 2:19:00 AM

 
One of the best Saturdays I've spent in a while. Although in terms of school, I have gotten absolutely nothing accomplished, in everything else I've set a world record (okay maybe not). Today was IV's Spring Day and I woke up, took a shower, Aimee came over and we went down to QFC and bought a cake to bring to the picnic and then Laura drove a huge group of us down to Greenlake and we proceeded to play a kickin' game of kickball. I scored the very first homerun! Then all of the other times I'm at bat/kick, I get the 3rd out :(. But then we ate hamburgers...speaking of, a random little rabbit trail here, why do they call them HAMburgers? I have never seen one made with ham, they're always with BEEF so thus they should be called beefburgers. Anyway, then we played some very extremely crazy, group games with various moments of mass confusion and people basically running around yelling, what's going on? I managed to get myself into a 4 layered human pyramid. I was the "O" in the picture below:
X
XO
XXX
XXXX
The weather was beautiful, we went down to the lake which is totally awesome because it has steps leading down to the water instead of a shore and we all sat on the steps, sang a few worship songs and then three IVers got baptized. It was a happy event. Then there was again mass crazied anarchy. All of the seniors there got thrown in the lake, almost all involuntarily and then random people who looked "too dry" got victimized and thrown into the lake as well. Yes, I was one of them. Believe you me, I struggled but not so hard as to pose a risk to being dropped on the sand/concrete. It was a lot of fun in the sun though and throwing the frisbee around with Wendy and Aimee afterwards really made me change my mind about how much I hate frisbees. They're really not that bad I guess, once you get the hang of catching them and throwing. We stopped at a garage sale afterwards too! Ahhh, reminded me of my childhood when I was still an only child and my parents used to drag me out of bed on Saturday mornings at 8 so we could be the first ones at the garage and yard sales, they would have like ten newspaper clippings of the addresses of the various sales going on all over Laramie. Laramie is in the practically square state of Wyoming btw. I bought a $1 book. Then I took another shower so I wouldn't have gross Greenlake fungus and alge on me and ate with Rachel, Anna, and Diane. Then it was off to the Senior Sendoff which was sad but SO incredibly eye opening. I would have never thought that there is so much community and family in IV, or in any type of setting. These people have lived together, gone on missions together, prayed together, played crazy games, laughed, cried, shared wisdom and advice and solved problems. The stories that everyone told were so moving, so funny, so insane. It really made these people 4D. I'm almost amazed at myself and at others because I realize little by little that these other people that I see, they really do lead LIVES and are really just as crazy as I am. It's really hard to grasp sometimes that everyone is fundamentally just like me. Confused, eccentric, needing to love and be loved, thinking, breathing, eating beings that have their own little world.

And I just got back from doing laundry, one more thing accomplished! Now I just have to go and hang it all up. It's kind of crazy knowing that I'm going to have to do that once a week, maybe even twice, for decades.

Unknown @ 1:05:00 AM