Greetings fellow tumblrites.

Writing on Tumblr seems to be the best outlet for updates in my life. I only post silly videos and make equally silly comments on facebook…

Today, I come bearing news that I am in the process of going into Praise Team co-leadership with an awesomely talented buddy of mine. It felt like almost my whole life, I was leading praise of some sort. Perhaps a calling?

High School: Led praise team

I admit wholeheartedly: I’m not the best praise leader around. One ear to my singing and you will wonder how I even started out. Pretty sure my high notes were the equivalent of nails to the chalkboard. Our youth group did have musical talent, but when the band was half the congregation, it was somewhat of an issue. It is difficult to lead such a small group and feed off of the energy from the crowd. Not only that, but in a church full of Asian parents, it is not easy to request some time aside to practice the set for that week because the kids were too busy becoming superstars in other areas. 

College: Led Children’s Praise

Sunday School during college were some fun times! It was always a challenge to raise the energy of the kids to a level at least 10 times mine (especially during prelim and final weeks). But in the end, it was rewarding and I don’t regret even a single moment. 

Post-College: Will co-lead NLCF (New Life Covenant Fellowship)

Now fast-forward my life to the present. The calling has once again come to me and this time, it will be a tough road. As you may or may not know, I am planning to start school part time as well. With so much to juggle, one can only imagine how the heck I am supposed to do it. Not only that, but as the new leadership steps up, I hope that our leadership, with God’s direction, help bring revival to praise and worship. 

So, I come with a prayer request: Let me be reminded of the Grace of God and to persevere, knowing full well that I am in His hands. Often times, it is so easy for me to see my shortcomings overshadow his Glory. I ask for the ousting of my egotistic mindset and the ability to see the whole picture.

Time to wear the study hat again. GRE’ing next week.

To some, this will actually be very old news. But somehow I managed to dig this up while perusing engadget.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/25/two-more-fake-apple-stores-spotted-by-officials-in-china-two-ge/

Now, I’m not too sure whether they are selling authentic Apple products or not. I am sure that even if they are, there are under-the-table deals going on for these products.

Giving credit where it is due is clear-cut: someone does or makes something, they deserve recompense (or reprimand). Fairly straightforward, yes? It straight-up does not feel good when others copy what you do and rake in what rightfully belongs to you. Living in a world of patents and engineers, I can testify to that. 

Now let’s put a different spin on it. How often do we give credit to God? In retrospect, I’m no better than these faux apple store people. Of course there have been times when I have tried to make it on my own and steal the limelight. But in the end, I only get some cheap knockoff that misses the target entirely and do not end up glorifying God in any way.

Then there are also the God-imitators. And there are some definitive examples (not to mention a commandment) about other things in our lives taking the glory and respect away from God and putting it on things that are worldly and…well, wrong.

Investing our time and energy in those things will not only drain us in the long run, but something like this will happen.

Ladies and Gentlemen: should you choose to spend your life working and following that petty idol, the aesthetically pleasing veneer uncovers a disappointing mess of abject depravity. Know where your resources are going and align them with the One who deserves all of it.

(Two Apple references in one day…eeps).

Hiyo~

When I joined my church’s small group, I was blessed with a band of brothers who have amazingly similar trains of thoughts as each other and are God-loving people. They would never leave me out to hang…although there was (sarcastic) talk of trading me with one of the other guys from a different small group. Come on, I think I’m worth at least two guys from the other small group :D (sarcasm).

Anyways, we have been studying the Bible and discussing during our meetings. This week, it will be my turn to be the mediator and the conversation cowboy. As the discussions in the past couple of meetings have been very interesting and application driven, I hope God gives me the wisdom and ability to continue this trend.

So if you have a minute or two, even if for an abated second as you finish up reading this post, a quick prayer for God to use me as his vessel for this upcoming week would be terrific.

Thank ya~!

On another note, the end of the book of Hebrews for our Bible Study group (separate from Small group) is approaching. Last chapter will be covered today. Next week is our end-of-the-book party for which I have been delegated to dance. This could be veeeeeery interesting…

God is one awesome being.

It’s almost seven and here I am sitting in an airport waiting for my plane which is due in an hour. I’ve been here for nearly two hours now, believe it or not, to avoid the San Diego traffic jam. 

Joanna Lee pointed me to an interesting article the other day regarding a website called Fitocracy. This website serves to use a gaming driven mind to produce real and meaningful results in terms of fitness. For instance, if you ran 10 miles over the course of 10 days (so a mile a day) you get a level up! or something of that nature.

I have heard of Fitocracy before…and actually, I have made programs that do something of a similar nature. It is interesting to note the periodicity of ideas among people, but how the person who puts it to use gets to declare it as his or her own. As the aphorism goes: The early bird gets the worm.

However, the early birds occasionally fall prey to hawks! Microsoft and Apple have always been credited with being the first PC or the first MP3 player. But they aren’t. There were functional PCs before Mr. Gates dropped out of Harvard to start his venture. And Mr. Jobs did not coin the neologism “MP3 Player”. However, these people are often credited with such accolades.

Moral of the story: If you are an early bird, look out for admonitory signs of hawks. If you are a hawk, gobble up that opportunity; imbibe the knowledge of the predecessors. If you are a worm…you can come away knowing that you fueled the birds and the hawks. 

ADVENTURE TIME!

Funniest episode I have seen…evar.

I also have a new group game to play in case Matthew decides to ever do AR4

I knew it was going to come to this someday. Math is solid, reading comp is solid. Vocabulary: POW, right in the kisser, or maybe jewels. Either way, it’s painful.

Time to saturate my mind with all the colorful words of the English language that are actually closely related to other words.

Which brings me to the point of my monologue: How many different ways are there to mean “good”? benign, benevolent, delicious, blah blah blah. Why is the English language so inefficient that there are 15 different words that point to the same definition? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate people with a multifarious lexicon at their disposal and I appreciate the language. I do not appreciate the fact that memorizing 70 new words does not elicit new learning, but just connectivity to the old learning already in place. I know that English students (only english student I know is awoo) will start handing me papers, essays, and missives on the finer points of the language and using “good” 55 times in the same paragraph will become utterly trite and mundane (see?!). And some will go even further than that saying that there are varying degrees and magnitudes of a certain word [ i.e. happy, joyful, ecstatic. To which I say, just have happy1, happy2, happy3 :p ]. Then there’s the whole nuance thing where each word has an EXACT science of where to place and where not to place. See the thing is, if any of these were completely true, then the need for thesauruses would be obviated.

Perhaps the concept as a whole is just esoteric. Forgive my naivete. I just hate studying vocabulary words if all I’m going to remember is 15 different ways to express the word “bad”. 

And don’t even get me started on neologisms:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq2aEeaT9ZY

In the case that the link is broken because youtube removed it, it was MADTv’s skit about the newest additions to Webster’s dictionary. We have such words as badonkadonk, LOL(verb), and updates to previous words such as “served” (to be busted on by a wicked dancer), and “literally” (to mean anything BUT literally). Hilarity ensues.

Lastly, fun fact: do you know why you cannot remember anything from your childhood? Most likely, it will be because you did not have the vocabulary or concepts to define the experiences. Once a child has established vocabulary to express thoughts and feelings, only then will memory begin to store these things. 

-Pick-up-

Me: Hello?

X: Hello is this Thor?

Me: Huh? I think you have the wrong number.

X: Oh.

________________________________

What I got out of this: 

There’s a guy named Thor out there. And he used to have my phone number.