Spacewalk, Night race, Newman, Monsoor, no bailout!!!

The Chinese successfully completed their first ever space walk! Sometimes, you gotta wonder is the picture realy 'LIVE'? Is that footage even real? May the Chinese government also be more worried about what's going on on the inside more than just beautifying it's outside image. Human rights issues, pollution or poison issues, etc. Anyway, every developing nation will naturally face these issues, I pray that China can really make more progress internally or spiritually.


















Another first that happened over the weekend would be F-1's first ever night race in Singapore! The race was kinda boring at first, but then it produced some surprising finish! It was a very cool race... and I'm sure the fans stayed cool too! ;)















And on a sad note, actor Paul Newman died of cancer at the age of 83. Paul Newman's father's a Jew and mother is a practicing Christian science... I really have no clue what is his personal religious affiliation, but I just thought he's a cool guy and his involvement in auto racing. He did say had he found car racing earlier, he would've been involved in racing rather than acting! He owns a few racing teams in US. One of his drivers Sabastien Bourdais is now involved in F-1, but too bad Sabastien Bordais is getting his butt kicked by Sabastian Vettel and super good German kid! Anyway, back to Newman, the guy also has his own brand of salad dressing or juices and his company donates all of the profits to charity. How great is that?

Another guy worthy of rememberance is Navy Seal- Michael A. Monsoor. The guy was killed 2 years ago today. This is a guy who I've heard from lots of different sermons. I couldn't tell if some of those pastors made up the stories or what... it was until I read about him in a Corvette magazine that I realized that yeah, the story must be true! The guy owns a Corvette!

Anyway, this California native... from Garden Grove... was on a pretty confined roof top with 3 other Navy Seals. A granade was thrown onto that rooftop and he is the one closest to the exit. He could've very easily saved himself by running outta there, but instead, he laid down his body on top of that granade so that his combat brothers lives may be saved. This is a guy who actually practices what Christ preached about lying down our lives. Catholics have a Feast Day on Sept 29 celebrating the angel Michael. 'Michael' means "who is like unot God"? Monsoor is not only a true American hero, but also an angel!

Oh, btw, the oafs in Washington DC decided to NOT pass the $700billion bailout. Because of the election is near, they all want to pass it, but they'd rather other congressmen to pass it instead of themselves because the people they represent, the folks on Main street don't really want them to bail out people on Wall Street. So the stock market slid further today... Hmm... hope things gonna be alright... read about a bunch of lousy kings of Israel today... will we suffer the same fate? May God help us!!!

(2 king 10~15, 173.4 lbs, $3.739)

Reaching for the skys...

Wow, China is really getting ambitious with her space program... Plan to build it's own spacestation and go to the moon at around the same time Americans planned at 2020. America probably will be too poor to carry out such plan because we're spending our money on bailing out trouble financial institutions and on wars!

Anyway, scientific progress is always cool... better than spending the money on bail outs for sure! I wonder when will US finally be spending money to invest in its future rather than to spend money simple to contain problems often times caused by ourselves... deregulating big companies in the name of free market. Adopting the policy of befriending the enemies of our enemies... We befriended Bin Laden to mess with Soviet Union... and we befriended Hussein to mess with Iran... the end result of course is that we ended up creating 2 monsters. Most Americans probably would find this to be a tetchy subject... we all just want God to bless America and nobody wants to hear about God damning America because of the evils our government has done. Hope the nation will repent soon that that we may once again reap all the blessings God really want to give us...

Today, I read more about that Shunammite woman..., Elish warned her to move away for 7 years wherever she can go because God has decreed a famine in the land. So she abandoned her home to live in Philistine for a while... and eventually, she was able to retun and get her land back after the famine's over! Not only that, she also got additional income too!

May the Lord grant me favors such as that too! To be able to avoid disasters and to be able to reap all the nice rewards! ;) But of course, as pastor Jim taught us... she literally made a room for Elisha, the man of God. Are we willing to make room for God in our daily lives too? How big of a room are we willing to make? How big of a room am I willing to make?

For sure I haven't made one big enough yet, but I'm making it bigger O God! :)

(2 King 7-9, 173.4 lbs, $3.799)

Murphy's law...

"If anything can go wrong, it will."

I've experienced quite a bit of that lately at work. LHC is also down because of a broken transformer. So we'll just have to wait til next spring to solve the mysteries of the universe! And of course, need I say more regarding the financial crisis we're currently in?

McCain has also surprisingly decided to stop campaigning and decided to go back to Washington to broker a deal in the bail out plan. Pretty clever of him of painting him to be above politics... as putting his country first... as a problem solver. It's probably to his advantage to delay the debate too... and no matter what Obama does now, it'll make him look bad. If he continues to campaign, it'll make him look like his too selfish... and if he follows McCain's footsteps back to DC to do his job as a Senator..., then it makes him look like a 'follower' rather than a leader.

Anyway, I don't really care which one of them becomes the next president, but may God help the best man win... America really can't afford to have any more things to go wrong nowadays...

Today's reading happened to be about Elisha and that Shunammite woman. I think the stories of both Elijah and Elisha reviving those boys was probably a demonstration of Elisha's double annointing? Elijah too 3 tries to revive the widow's son. Elisha theoretically could do the same in 1.5 times..., but if you round it up... it'd be 2 times. ;) In both stories, I'm sure both moms didn't like to see things go horribly wrong with their sons. We still have no clue exactly why those boys end up dead in the first place. Did God do it or something else? Who ever did it, for sure nobody likes that..., but at least we can take comfort that God can fix it in the end... we just need to have faith and trust in Him.

Last nite, we were discussing with Howard regarding how we can give the TG brand some flacking! It really seems like a monumental task, but if God is with us and if we continue to trust in Him, surely TG's music can be used to bring more folks to Christ somehow... that's God's law, step aside Murphy! :p

(2 Kings 1-6, 174.6 lbs, $3.789)

Just do it!

Had a pretty relaxing weekend. Had myself a headache again, probably due to lack of sleep... so I didn't bother working much over the weekend. Just wanted to get well rested. Our little trip to Santa Barbara also help sooth both wife and I a bit too. The traffic wasn't all that pleseant, but gotta learn to go with the flow I guess! So I'm feeling all better now! Ready for another week of work! ;)

Chih-lin had to go to Buffalo for some training... so this weekend we only checked out a couple of opened houses ourselves. Considering all the financial turmoils going around, it's making it more difficult for us to figure out whether to buy now or not. US government selectively bailing companies out clearly wasn't working... the domino effect continues to cause bank failures... so now there is a more general plan to pretty much bail out everyone! But will this really work? Well, it better. Anyway, this grand plan has now weakened dollar to the point of increasing oil prices by $25/barrel. We can only hope everything works out in the end..., when we're ready to buy, we'll just have to buy!!!

Pastor Jim actually continued his sermon of 'hope', but he encouraged us to not just hope passively, but aggressively! Don't just allow our circumstances to dash our hopes. Use whatever God has given us, regardless of how little or insignificant. If we're faithful with little, surely God can still use whatever little that we have... and God might even give us more to be in charge of! Gideon had very little. He even had little faith, but at least he's aggressive! Wife tends to think he's kinda shameless! ;) But I think Pastor Jim made a great point, Gideon didn't really have our version of the Bible. How was he suppose to know if he's REALLY hearing God or perhaps he's just crazy...? ;) Surely that was the reason why God allow Gideon to test Him so many times. If our hearts are genuinely faithful, surely God understands if we want to be absolutley sure. As long as we are not dragging our feet because we don't really want to do it, surely being cautious is a good quality to have. We ought to follow God..., and not get over zealous to the point of getting ahead of Him!

Anyway, today's reading was more about Elijah and the beginning of Elisha. In a way I do kinda envy Elisha had a mentor to follow around. Even since of my conversion to Christianity, I don't think I really had a good mentor. I think for most of my life, I don't really have a whole lot of mentoring coaching... on relationships or career or whatever! Of course my parents did their best, but their experiences are limited too! But luckily God has put various individuals along different stages of my life to help guide toward the right dirction I suppose. Perhaps I'm more on the path of Elijah, rather than Elisha! ;) By faith, I know that God is my Mentor. I think what I'm missing is the voracity for God which Elisha has. What am I willing to DO for God? Am I willing to go to great lengths for God in order to get double, triple, quadruple the blessings? Well, I think so..., but thinking is different from doing! Well, here's praying that God is going to make me to just DO IT!

(1 Kings 19-22, 175.2 lbs, $3.819)

Seeing the future...

So many things happened lately... natural disasters like hurricane Ike. Man-made disasters like train wreck and financial wreck on Wall Street. Personal disasters such as forgot to renew our car's registration and end up getting fined by DMV, issues going on at work that seem to pile up to no end... and also had a fight with wife, which hasn't happened for a while... all because of that stupid 'same song'!

But thank God His grace is sufficient that we can get thru it all. Pastor Jim's sermon also stressed how God sees us not was who we were... or perhaps even who we are today..., but God can see who are we going to be in the future! Are we going to get bogged down by our past? Are we going to let our present get us down? Or on the flip side... if we had a wonderful past... if our current situation is just fine and dandy... are we going to allow that get into our heads and think we're the king of the world?

May God help us all regardless of our current or past circumstances... to be able to overcome whatever obastacles so that we can experience a future God intended for us to have and not miss out! Judas missed out because he allowed his depression get in the way. Surely Jesus would've forgiven Judas just as he did for Peter if he didn't impulsively kill himself. Solomon also missed out when he allowed his own glory to blind him to no longer be able to see God's glory...

Anyway, all those things aside, I really need to learn to not be a lout in various social situations. Oh Lord, can you help me on that?

Oh, and thank You Lord for allowing us to have a wonderful prime rib and lobster dinner last nite! But may we grow now only 'physically', but also spiritually as well! ;)

(1 Samuel 7-18, 175.4 lbs, $3.839)

7 years...

Yeah, it's been 7 years since that dreadful 9-11... and on 9-12 this year, another tragedy strucked... there had been a huge metro train accident! It appears the train engineer failed to see the red light. It's hard to believe these kind of tragedies can happen sometimes, but they nevertheless happened. Humans.

And so I've been observing moments of silence for the past couple of days with my blog I guess! ;) Well, actually got kinda busy at work again. It's also weird that whenever things are slow, I wish I can get busier... and yet, whenever things get busy, I'd wish things can slow down more. What's wrong with us? Humans.

Of course there are things out of our control too. Hurricane Ike has also caused tremendous damage. Typhoon in Taiwan too. But brother GD in our Wed prayer meeting encouraged us to keep our faith regardless of the circumstances we're facing. King Solomon took 7 years to build the temple too. 7 years most definitely is a longtime relative to us, but relative to eternity... 7 divided by infinity is pretty much ZERO!!!

Anyway, may God help us see things less and less from our own perspectives, but more and more from His. May we Christians really be able to live up to the name of our eponymous Lord!

Oh, and brother GD was saying that he saw a vision of me suppose to call up somebody... hmm..., I wonder who that might be...

(1 King 1-6, 174.0 lbs, $3.899)

Judgement day has not yet come!

It appears the LHC has successfully completed its first test and everything seems to be cool so far... Google has created this cool and funny logo to celebrate our survival I guess! ;)

It's too bad the Americans are no longer the leader in particle physics anymore... we could've built a better collider earlier if it weren't for the cancelled budget by the Congress. Government really should've spend more on research such as these rather than on wars... if it's a just and necessary war such as WWII, sure, I'm all for war, but when other options are available, we really shouldn't have jumped into a war. We had bogus intelligence and we under-estimated the effort of this Iraq war... result of course ended up disasterous...

Today's reading was about David's other major sin... which was his senseless census of his worldly strength. Being so prosperous, instead of counting his blessings and leaning on God in heaven more, David went ahead to count his worldly strength on earth more. It's really too bad that ordinary citizens had to suffer because of David's mistakes... just as American soldiers had to die senselessly sometimes because of President Bush's mistake. Oh well. Hopefully we'll all learn our lessons. I think David wrote Psalm 30 during that period... at least we've learned that God's anger is only momentary, but His love is forever. Likewise although we may weep thru the nite, but kvel will come in the morning! ;)

Moral of the story, no matter what happens, God will make everything work out in the end. Of course during this learning process, we have the option to do it the easy way... or the hard way. May we all be able to learn things the easy way rather than the hard way. One certain way to achieve that is to never be forgetful about God! Yeah, our memory could fade on other things, just try never to forget about God, okay?

(2 Sam 22-24, 174.4 lbs, $3.899)

LHC

Large Hadron Collider located 300ft beneath France and Swiss border. Supposedly will try to recreate the Big Bang in a small scale to test the current theories of science... mini-ature blackholes will get created and some fear these blackholes might swallow up our planet, or perhaps destroy the universe or something. But hopefully they'll find a soupçon of the 'God particle' after the atom smashing! ;) Anyway, they will begin their tests tomorrow. Fingers crossed that they won't screw our planet up! Wife was a bit restless last night..., perhaps she could sense the impending doom that'll be caused by the LHC? ;)

Today's scripture reading was still about David..., he mourned for his son Absalom's death..., there was also more fighting and avenging going on and I actually got kinda lost with what's going on... for whatever reasons I got kinda annoyed reading all that bloodshedding...

I wonder how people like Pastor Jim can read these stories and see so much insight... hopefully one day God can open my eyes to see more clearly too...

(2Sam19-21, 173.6 lbs, $3.899)

Dreams or Fantasy

Pastor Jim had an interesting sermon based on the Shunammite's woman in 2 Kings chapter 4..., he's saying God has told him to tell us that by around this time next year, God is going to do something miraculous in some of our lives just like He did it for that woman! Wow!

What's interesting about this woman is that she didn't ask, seek, or knock on heaven's door with her requests... however, God nevertheless gave her something special, which is a son. Surely this must've been one of her dreams, but as years went by, it began to look more and more like a fantasy as her husband grow older and older...

Surely we all had to give up our dreams sometimes. I know I have to be realistic and know that I'm just not going to be a world champion F-1 racer! However, for sure I've had my share of fantasies too. I remember when I first heard of my elementry school mate planning to immigrate to the US, I wished I could go to the land of Mickey Mouse too! I don't think I was envious of my school mate or anything like that, it's just a fantasy feeling I had at the time, I thought it'd be really cool, but I know the chance of it happening is very slim because supposedly you have to wait in line for years..., but here I am in the land of Mickey Mouse! ;) Anyway, there were lots of occasions where I my fantasies actually became true, while my dreams were shattered...

So what are fantasies and what are dreams? I suppose it's really hard to distinguish between them. But I suppose if your fantasies are good and doesn't get in the way of God's plan, there's really no reason why God would deny you just to piss you off, right? ;) So we ought to just dream big! If one doesn't come true, dream up something else!

Also, this Shunammite woman still willingly made room for God(Literally made a room for Elisha, holy man of God), so naturally God want to do something for her in return. I think when we dream, it's important to not just dream about self... because life isn't just about self, but about God and others! (That's why God wants us to love Him and to love others!)

What's weird about that bible story was that why would God let the boy die later on...? Perhaps God just want her to practice asking? To have her ask Elisha to give her son back? Perhaps this is a test to see if the woman really wanted that son and now just go... oh well, he died... that's that. Back to my old life... I think the moral of the story is that sometimes it is okay to get bitter about something. Of course we shouldn't spew our bitterness against other people..., but we can certainly spew it onto God! Moses struck the rock because of him spewing his bitterness against the people... and he got punished for it. Moses had plenty of time spewed his bitterness toward God and God was okay with that...

Anyway, Pastor Jim's sermon was sort of incomplete, I think Bebe just sang for too long! ;) Really looking forward to how Pastor Jim will explain this further.

Now, what would be my fantasy/dream that I'd like to have it realized around this time next year?

I just want to have a stronger/better relationship with wife and for my parents to be saved!

What is hope and what is false hope? Sometimes it's just not so easy to tell the difference, but we need to remain sanguine about our future nevertheless because as long as we act justly, love mercy and humbly follow the Lord our God, surely everything will be alright in the end.

(2 Sam 16-18, 174.2 lbs, $3.899)

Repent!

Spending less and less time blogging due to busier work schedule..., and of course another reason is simply because of not having a whole lot to say to I suppose! ;) Anyway, last nite we had another bible study with mom and dad. I think bible studies are now going pretty well now... discussing God's words... and discussing our lives... besidesing fellowshipping with each other, may we be able to truly fellowship with God soon. Pastor Zo has volunteered to help us do bible studies too... hopefully that'll happen someday! ;)

Mom and dad..., well, I guess most who pay attention to what's going on in Taiwan are probably concerned with what's going on with president Chen. It's really too bad that president Chen ended up this way. He was indeed a pretty good mayor..., but then what happened? Sigh, I guess humanity happened... just like King Saul and even King David. Both screwed up royally, but may president Chen be more like David... to be able to realize his mistakes and turn away from it instead or remaining an anathema to all people of taiwan. May God help him...

Today, I just feel like staying home to work. Need a little break from working..., but I'll probably still work at home! Just have too many sick hours unused, figure I use them! ;) Luckily, I am feeling much better physically lately. Not really sure why I felt half sick all the time along with headaches occassionally. I still think it's probably the west nile virus, but anyway. At least it's passed. My only concern now is my highly fluctuating weight. During last weekend, I could weight as much as 178lbs... and then after mowing the lawn and sweating a lot, I can weight 172 lbs!!! I don't know, really need to stablize my weight somehow... I guess I just shouldn't eat too much! ;)

(2 Sam 7-15, 173.2 lbs, $3.979)

Long, but busy weekend...

Long weekend passed by quickly, didn't seem to have too much fun because I still got lots of work to do..., but anyway, Saturday we did go to San Diego for some relaxing trip... I remember I had some headache earlier, but after our trip, I seemed to feel a whole lot better! :) I'm most proud of one of my snapshots at the pelican. I probably made couple hundred attempts in order to capture this one cool shot! Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to master the sports mode better so that one day I'll be able to capture F-1 cars! ;)

Pastor Jim is still not back yet, but will be back next week finally. He sure took a long break and pretty much all the pastors at faith got a chance to deliver a sermon! Last Sunday was Pastor Taylor from youth ministry. He talked about how we ought to stay in constant touch with God... stay up to date instead of relying on old info from before... Don't be like Moses and allow our fleshy frustrations to mess ourselves up. When God said to strike the rock the first time... that was only applicable to that first time only! When the 2nd time comes around and God said to speak to the rock, you better NOT strike the rock again!

Over the weekend we also had Howard over for dinner. He mentioned that somebody in his fellowship group was asking why his/her relationship didn't work out in the end when earlier on God gave all the positive signs? Why would God allow this kind of disappointments to happen?

Well, things change, due to our freewill, and sometimes, God's game plan changes too! Of course God's ultimate game plan of winning love won't change, but for sure the details of how He'll get to that ultimate win might change. Surely Joseph live thru a bunch of disappointments in life... perhaps Job lived thru the worst disappointments of all! We may not understand completely why God did things a certain way, but we gotta learn from Joseph and Job to continue to have faith, hope and love... instead of just giving up, curse God, and die...

Anyway, being so busy at work lately, I'm starting to feel that perhaps I've spent less time with God! It's good of pastor Taylor to remind me to be careful and watch out and to not divagate away from God too much because of work! King David also learned the lesson of making sure that the Ark better stay close to where he is in order to receive his blessings with full measure...

So yeah, may God help me stay real close to Him! :)

(2 Sam 1:6, 173.6 lbs, $3.989)