Friendship

This was the topic of our fellowship tonight. We didn't relate that to the Bible, because our lovely mentor hadn't figured out the connection yet. But all the same, it hard started me thinking...

I wonder how good of a friend I am? I know I'm disgustingly loyal, and when I make friends, I intend the friendship to be lifelong. Yet at the same time, I don't make the effort to keep in touch. Yes nowadays with e-mail and msn, I'm not left with that much of an excuse. Maybe that's why I don't have a single friend dated from my elementary school years or beyond.

My friends have drifted in and out of my life, and sometimes back in to stay again. Others have yet to come back to stay. I almost never talk to them when they are away, be it on the phone, or through e-mail. Nor do I expect them to take the initiative either. But when they do come back, even when it's like 5 years later, we can somehow reconnect and conversation will flow again. I have a best friend (I don't even know what a best friend is, but we sorta call each other best friends) who lives in the States, and we send each other like one e-mail a year and that's it. But I know I'm one of the first people he calls up when he's in town, and he's one of the people I never refuse to hang with, no matter when or where. I wonder if I'm too slack to be called a good friend?

The other food for thoughts that came up was that everybody agreed that as he/she gets older, it gets harder to make friends because everyone becomes more protective and picky about who he hangs with. Well, everybody agreed except for me. But I guess I pose a different case because of my past and my adventurous nature. But my reasoning is that as I get older, I become more disillusioned and open-minded (or I'd like to think so), and therefore more accepting towards different kinds of people (all except Hongers, as most people know that I'm tenaciously biased against them for reasons that I still have yet to pinpoint). Of course, there's always a baseline, as with all things, that I wouldn't trespass.

So do I make a good friend? I don't know. But if I put my heart into the relationship, I guess (and dearly hope) I can't go too wrong. Have a few laughs, a few tears, a few fights and a few hugs, and there you've made a good friend!

"Life is Beautiful"

A great movie. It's a marvel how some people can conjure up hope and laughter out of the most depressing circumstances in life. It's an art. A skill. A survival weapon.

Within the past couple years, I've come to believe in beauty in simplicity. And life is beautiful, because it is simple. It really is quite simple, contrary to what most people think, if we're willing to look past all the wrapping papers into the core. Trouble comes when we complicate things, when people read between the lines, when mind games roll around in political circles...

I don't want to end up being one of the zillion people who bustle about all their lives without stopping by to admire the beauty in life. I'd like to grow together with this beauty, rather than apart from it. It probably comes easily to some people, being able to see beauty in the simplest things, I mean. For me, I had to learn it like a skill...except that I didn't know I was working on this skill until a couple of years ago. Again, pain is good. If it wasn't for all the "bad" things that happened, I wouldn't have tried squinting my eyes so hard to catch a glimpse of what good was left.

And what's at the core of life? What keeps things simple and imparts beauty into life? Is it faith, hope and love? "And the greatest of all is LOVE."

Back to Work

Today was the first day back to work after my trip to the East. Still not quote up-t0-date with all the outstanding backlog from before the trip and what crawled onto my plate during my vacation. I'm trying to slowly ease myself back into my working mode and staying alert.

Almost everybody at work asked me about my trip, at different times over the day too. It's funny...towards the end of the day, I was almost thinking that I should've called a meeting to deliver an exec. summary speech on my trip. Would've saved quite a bit of time. But all the same, I was thankful for the chance to share my joy with so many people. And also for the fact that so many people cared to know about my trip.

I'm still very tired. All the staying up late over the trip must be taking a toll on my body. It's not quite 9pm yet, but my eyelids can't seem to resist gravity anymore. I'm hitting the bed. Good night, everybody!

Thank you Mom

Spent yesterday with our hostess here in New Jersey. She's a full-time mom, W, who gave up her architect career to raise 3 kids, one 7-year old boy, one 3-year-old girl, and a baby girl whose age I have yet to find out. Such women have always "wowwed" me, but after yesterday, I realized that these women deserve way more respect and appreciation than they are due...or at least than they are due from me.

W, for the first time in my life, opened my eyes to what it means to be a mom. I know I only spent one day with her, so there must still be a LOT more than met my eye yesterday. But already, the responsibilities that are on her around the clock overwhelm me. The sacrifice of sleep, the rushing here and there to get the kids to school and various other classes, the crying that you have to put up with, the whimses of the kids...and the list goes on and on. I went to bed last night thinking about my own mom. She must've gone through something similar as she had 3 kids and our age gaps are about the same too. Yet how have I shown appreciation for what she's done over the years? In fact, until last night, the thought of appreciation for her changing my diapers, patting me to sleep, etc. never quite made it across the threshold of my mind!

I wonder how many people out there in the world have given themselves to noble causes such as raising a kid and yet have received no appreciation for their labor. I look at myself and shame comes on me because not only have I not shown gratitude where it is due, but also many a time I've complained in my mom's face about her close-mindedness. And I remember all those times over the dinner table when my sibling trash my mom's cooking. Sorry Mom, for MY close-mindness and lack of understanding. And thank you Mom, for finding reasons to love and for loving such a wretch like me!

Saving Grace

My mom had 3 kids, my sis, myself and my bro. My sis's about 1.3 years older than me, and I'm about 2.6 years older than my bro. I grew up being the sore thumb of the family in many ways, with my own unique way of thinking and looking at things. I never desired to be different or difficult, but somehow always struck out my own paths that didn't conform to my parents' or my siblings'. Even now, the difference, or should I call it "uniqueness" by euphemism, is still quite pronounced; but I've slowly learnt to appreciate normalcy and adapt to it.

I used to blame this on the middle-child theory. But if the truth be told, I know that I never quite suffered from deficiency of attention; in fact I liked running from attention and hiding in obscurity. Maybe this had to do with my mom's over-exercising of her bragging rights. Or maybe this shying away from attention was the beginning of my uniqueness because it left me a lot of time to toy with my own thoughts.

I remember there being 3 distinct periods in my relationship with my mom. First it was a period of worship when I thought my mom was the world to me. Then came the period of disillusionment when I realized that reality and ideal almost never overlapped, and with this realization, the breakdown of the mom-daughter relationship. The 3rd period, which happens to be the current one, is the period of restoration. This period made its beginning less than 2 years ago when I decided to move back home to salvage what was left of the relationship. To many people, it was a stupid move; but to me, it's definitely God's saving grace. In fact, I consider it the bravest adventure I ever took. I remember crying literally everyday, but I also remember God telling me "Don't be afraid for I am with you" almost everyday for a few weeks. Joshua was the book God guided me to, and I held on to it for life, reciting that verse many times over the day. I'm still not where I'd like to be or where I think God'd like to see me with my mom, but @ least I'm on the right road. Those people who survived broken relationships will be able to echo my sigh that picking up the broken pieces and re-patching them together is definitely harder than starting off on the right foot by a zillion of miles!

Hm...I sat down meaning to blog my life yesterday...but somehow my fingers decided to write something totally different. Must be the pouring rain earlier this morning that prompted these mellowed thoughts. Let me return to what I intended to write...

NY/Boston

Today's the 2nd last day of my NY/Boston trip. This has been a one-of-a-kind trip in so far that I didn't really know what we were doin' most of the time, and that I actually made friends with two cool kids, and one baby whom I don't think will remember me.

NY has always been a city that I wanted to visit, it being a metropolitan with all the glamour and hype. Reality, however, always strikes a different tune, but a better tune in this case. I like the cool buildings, glittering lights, cultural mix, and yes even the stuffy and sometimes smelly subway (which I heard has improved a lot). We've run into quite a few friendly New Yorkers, and I later on found out that NY is ranked the most friendliest metro in the world. What a disillusionment. Some people say 911 has mellowed out the New Yorkers quite a bit; which may be true, as tragedies always have a way of "awakening" people.

Boston is quite similar to New York, but cleaner and neater. We checked out Harvard and MIT, and even bumped ourselves into a Lit class for a few minutes. It hit me quite hard how differently the students in Business/Fine Arts dressed from those in the Techie faculties. Funny how I never picked this up when I went to UBC. The only shame in Boston is that we didn't get to immerse ourselves in the night life there. We got into the city too late and too tired on Sat, but we noticed how the city was just bustling with people dressed up and lining up for clubs and stuff. It's truly a place you could feel young and alive!

Don't want to write too much cuz I'd like to go to zzzz soon. But this trip has been a timely break from work, a good exposure to quite a different life (more on this later), and a great disillusionment from the stereotypical idea I had of New York. Extra special thanks to A, G, G, S, and W who tour-guided/hosted us and who proved to be awesome travel partners.

Strangest Thing

The strangest thing happened on Monday morning. Got waken up by a phone call abt 2am, which I thought was a LD call from a friend of mine. The fact that it showed up as "Restricted Number" didn't exactly dawn on me - even though I did make a comment about it - esp. since I was still half-asleep. And a few times it struck me that he sounded more mellow than usual, so I kept asking if he was OK, and he kept reassuring me that he was...

Then the question came...about 15 minutes into the conversation, if I knew who it was that was calling. Immediately I was as awake as I ever could be. But all facts given, I think the whole thing was just a mistake, rather than anything freakish to be alarmed about. I have no idea how my phone number made it into his cell (probably by mistake), but in retrospect, it's so stupid I had to laugh. For like 15 minutes, he thought he was talking to a friend of his, and me talking to a friend of mine. Yet the whole time it was 2 strangers talking to each other!

Sometimes I think I'm like a black hole for strange happenings. At least more so than most of my friends. O well, they sure keep my life interesting!

Adorable Couple

Had lunch yesterday with a friend of mine and her parents who've been here for a few months from Mainland China. We went to Boston Pizza and I ordered for them since they couldn't read the menu. I must admit that I've never quite seen such an adorable couple. They were curious about everything!

I introduced them to Nachos which they'd apparently never tried before but are totally in love with now. Also got them to try tea with cream and sugar, and they liked that very much too. I guess they'd never tried their tea with cream and sugar before today either. The daddy put in so much cream that I thought he might as well be drinking milk. Let's not even mention the sugar. He tried the brown sugar, the regular sugar, and would've tried the sweetener if I hadn't stopped him.

We had an interesting conversation too, even though I didn't understand every single word. I forget how it started, but we somehow got onto the topic of the periodic table. Imagine that! How would I have thought that I'd be talking about that, out of all things, with a couple in their sixties or seventies? The mommy kept repeating this element whose Chinese name I couldn't identify, but which is no. 32 in the periodic table! As if I had the entire table in my head!

Anyway, I consider myself blessed that the people I meet in my life are so interesting. It reminds me of the lesson I was teaching at Sunday School today - the wisdom in the great works of God. I can't help but marvel at the creativity God displays in people. So many different peoples, and even with just one person, there is a myriad of different facets... Just how boundless is the creativity of God?

Hippo - Not One of the Big Five!

I was very surprised to find out the hippo isn't one of the Big Five of the safari. Even a bit disappointed becuz the hippo has always been one of my fav animals.

Caught an interesting fact during the IMAX documentary on the Big Five - that no human has ever been able to tame a buffalo. That the buffalo is so dangerous that even the lion is scared of it! Yet you can see little birds perching on the buffalo's head and back, picking at its skin, feeling totally at ease. Hm...that's some food for thoughts!

Think I may add the leopard to my list of fav animals. In a way, I find it quite "sexy". It's always so alert & focused when awake prowling for food or checking out enemies; yet it looks so cute and vulnerable when asleep. Aren't some of us humans a bit like that too?

Downtown was not as bustling as usual today. It's kinda nice to see a more leisurely side of it. Wonder if traffic on my way to work will be more hectic tomorrow with all the kids goin' back to school.

Well salute to Sept, and I wonder what life has in store for me this month!

Gift of Celebration

Hm...what shall I write for my first blog? Thought about duplicating some thoughts from my diary here. But I'd rather start fresh.

The reason I finally made up my mind to publish my own blog is that in retrospect, it surprised me how much my thoughts and outlook on things changed from university years to now. This must be part of growing up. Hopefully these are all changes for the better. Maybe when people read my blogs over time, they can comment?

This summer has been an awesome one, and in fact, quite hectic in ways more than one. Many interesting episodes in life. Sometimes it really amazes me how God engineers all the intricacies of life to allow us to grow and to make sure that we keep growing. I've come to realize that growth almost always goes hand in hand with pain, some yanking and pulling, but the sense of freedom and the feeling that you've somehow made it over another hurdle is just so rejuvenating. I think this may be why I like hiking so much...there's always a higher, tougher, different mountain. And when you feel like giving up, there's always someone else or something else to urge you on.

As this summer comes to an end, I can't help but thank God for every new friend He's given me, and every old friend He's brought back into my life. Hm...4 years of being a Christian and this is the first year I actually started hanging out w/ some Christians. I used to wonder why I am so different from the norm. Don't most Christians hang mostly w/ Christians once they are converted? But still about 96% of my friends are non-Christians! All the same, I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter - I believe "all good and perfect gifts are from above", so every single friend I have is a blessing. I know I love all my non-Christian friends (ok maybe 95-96% of them, I'm still learning), and that's the key. Once a guy told me that he believed that a kiss could change the fate of the world. Now I'm beginning to see that in a different light and definitely would tend to agree w/ him now.

This summer marked my best birthday ever. I don't remember ever feeling so touched and loved. Thank you to all who remembered and even reminded me of my birthday! Thanks to those who made the effort to come across the border, thanks for the LD calls/text msgs to those who live a bit too far, thanks to all those who took me out to lunch/dinner/dessert, thanks to all those who wanted to take me out, thanks J for the b-day song in my voicemail (sorry I didn't give you my work #), thanks E for the cactus (you can come and check on it any time), thanks N for offering to take the day off to spend with me, and thanks to all those who don't know my birthday for simply being in my life...@ least for now...thank you so much. You guys are the best of the best! I have the coolest of cool friends. I'm blessed beyond belief!
And most of all, I thank God for giving me tears so I may know what joy is, and for giving me joy so I may know who He is.