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)