Weekend recap for 12/21-12/22

- Friday night had a game night with the youth group. Alice T did a great job organizing games, which included tournament-style paper-rock-scissors, a poetry-writing contest, a wordsearch on books of the Bible, a skit contest, and a huge game of what was essentially "Go Fish." The poetry contest was very creative, as each team had to write poems on topics like, "The hairdresser's journal", "The ice cream man's nightmare" and so on so forth... quite amusing. We've saved the winning poems and posted them up on a corkboard for future generations.

- Saturday, had praise band practice in the morning, dim sum with family for lunch, then in the afternoon/evening headed up to Oakland with a few friends to the Gaskell Ball. Basically, this is a 4-times-a-year event which is a reenactment of a dance from Victorian times. Dances include the waltz, the polka, the mazurka, the schottich, and the Congress of Vienna, as well as a few other set pieces. We went up in the late afternoon for the lesson, had dinner in Chinatown, then went back for the ball itself. It was actually a lot of fun - I don't think I've seen so many tuxedos since Senior Prom. Also, a lot of people were decked out in full Victorian wear with floofy (I almost never get to say "floofy" in a blog!) hoop skirts, fans, masks, a couple of old-school military uniforms...

I think practicing the footwork and getting the rhythm of a dance down will help me play basketball. Yeah, that's it.

Gonna jot down some notes about the dances to remind myself how to do things in the future:
guide hand over spinal cord/small of back
waltz - 3/4 time, ONE-two-three two-TWO-three THREE-two-three four-TWO-three, zigzag across imaginary straight line
mazurka - stamp-hop-hop waltz
polka - 4/4 time, almost like the triple step from West (or East?) Coast swing, switch directions
galop - heel-toe-heel-toe slide slide slide slide, reverse
Congress of Vienna - open-close steps, 4-10-4-10-8-8/right window/left window/behind the back left/behind the back right/left window

- Sunday, church, then played basketball for the first time in several weeks in the afternoon. I was disappointed to find out that my time off from hoops (due to rain) didn't appear to help my knee ligament heal much - after a few games, I was limping and running rather stiffly, and I could feel the soreness and burning quite acutely. I'm debating whether to see a doctor. Despite that though, I played better than I expected after a few weeks off. Hit a couple of jumpers and had a couple of nice passes of pick-and-rolls.

At night, went to JT and Walter's place to celebrate JT's 29th birthday, where we had an intensely competitive game of team-charades. Hardest ones I had to act out: "innocent/guilty" and "Al Capone".

Watched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last night at midnight (thanks to JT for getting tickets AND a very good place in line!). As it's a 3 hour movie, I got home close to 4-ish, then woke up at 9:30 because I had to come in to interview a candidate for a position at work today. Then at our company "holiday luncheon" we had turkey. I am SO gonna fall asleep...

Be warned... the rest of this post presumes that you've either seen Fellowship of the Ring or have read the book... proceed at your own risk!

Some thoughts on the movie (spoilers in invisible type! Drag your mouse over the "blank" lines to magically cause the text to appear... 'course, if you've read the book, the only spoilers are how "cool" things were):

- very grand. Lots of sweeping camera shots of our heroes on horses running across the plains, of Saruman's 10,000 super-orcs striding across valleys like a huge army of ants, all accentuated by a majestic orchestral score.

- I need to re-read the book to see how much the movie deviated.

- seems to be a fair amount more humor than in Fellowship of the Ring. In FOTR, the comedic relief was provided primarily by the hobbits Merry and Pippin, but on the whole the movie was very solemn and grim (not surprising considering the fellowship loses a few members over the course of the movie and then breaks up at the end). In TTT, the bulk of the humor is provided by Gimli the dwarf... mainly because he's not tall, buff and lean like Aragorn and Legolas. Also, the amount of banter between Gimli and Legolas goes up a fair amount, and the progression of their relationship in the books (moving towards being like brothers) sorta comes out through this.

- if you're a fan of Merry, Pippin, Saruman, or Gandalf, they unfortunately don't get a whole lot of screen time or memorable lines.

- new important characters: King Theoden of Rohan, Grima Wormtongue (looks like a band member from KISS), Eomer and Eowyn (nephew and niece of Theoden), Faramir (brother of the deceased Boromir from FOTR), and the 2 cgi characters, Treebeard and Gollum.

- you have to think a bit more in order to keep up with the 3 different plot lines (Frodo/Sam, Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli/Rohan, Merry/Pippin/Treebeard), so on first viewing it might be a bit more difficult to just sit back and enjoy the movie or really be able to examine the acting jobs

- in general, one of the cool parts of the LOTR series so far has been the excellent acting from top to bottom... you can't really pinpoint any thespian who has a poor performance.

- Gollum's schizophrenic personality (the ring-corrupted evil self, and the somewhat nicer "Smeagol" personality) is portrayed in the movie, with appropriate facial and vocal changes. Sometimes it can be the cause of unintentional laughter though, you don't have the same sense of menace as you did with, say, the Green Goblin in Spiderman when Willem Dafoe was talking to himself in the mirror.

- you can see Frodo's deterioration as his soul is corrupted by the presence of the ring, primarily by how at various points in the movie, he takes on the physical and vocal characteristics of Gollum.

- the audience was basically very respectful, not a whole lot of catcalling. People clapped when: 1) Legolas pulled off the nifty move where he grabbed onto the bridle of a running horse and swung himself across the horse's body into an arc, landing on its back, and 2) at the Battle of Helm's Deep when Legolas tosses a spiked shield down a staircase, then jumps on it and "surfs" down the stairs, flinging arrows the whole way down, finally hopping off the shield while it embedded itself in another orc.

- I think I personally preferred the fight scenes in FOTR over TTT (Helm's Deep) because while big huge battle scenes are grand, they can also be an overwhelming blur of images that are hard to individually resolve. At Helm's Deep it was difficult to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, because of fast camera cuts blurring the shots, and armor covering everyone. In FOTR it was easier to be impressed with Aragorn's sword technique and Legolas' arrow-shooting speed.

- combat-wise, I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of portraying medieval combat on horses, and in storming a fortified installation. Particularly in the latter, you could see the combatants using rocks, catapults, creating "shield blankets" against arrows, battering rams, and so on.

- I felt that the whole romance between Aragorn and Arwen felt a bit forced in this movie. Didn't seem to fit.

Cool scenes:
- Gandalf fighting the Balrog while plunging through the air
- Aragorn re-creating Merry and Pippin's escape from the slaughter of the Uruk-Hai company by the Riders of Rohan, simply by following their tracks
- Treebeard's appearance
- Gandalf the White's return
- Gandalf's battle of wills against the Saruman-possessed Theoden
- Frodo struggling to control himself while Faramir contemplates taking the ring from him
- Aragorn putting his armor on before the Battle of Helm's Deep, Rambo-style
- Last March of the Ents
- Gandalf the White riding to the rescue with Eomer and the Riders of Rohan

Oh, btw, I'm updating the "my profile" section over to the right... just for fun... ======>

Something that pains me on a fairly regular basis, now that I've been working for over a year and a half, is that Silicon Valley is getting more and more smoggy. It's rather depressing to look up at the horizon and to not be able to see the mountains that ring this valley, but instead just seeing a layer of disgusting gray haze. What makes it worse is that I know that when I'm stuck in traffic on 85, crawling along at a snail's pace, I'm contributing to that. And to top it off, the final frustration is that I can't think of a good way to deal with it.

This morning however, while I was on 237 heading East, I was able to see the green hills off in the distance quite clearly. The storm over the weekend probably cleared out a lot of the crud in the air, and it was actually quite the pleasant surprise. It's what I call a "Wow" moment... but that's a blog topic for another time.

In a presentation I attended today about insurance, I was browsing the list of "items covered" when I came across:

"Seeing-eye dog or hearing assisting cat"

I know what a seeing-eye dog is.

What the heck is a hearing assisting cat? How does it work? Are these some breed of super-cats that know sign language, given only to the hearing-impaired?

I'm curious. If you know, IM me or leave a message on my message board.

Weekend recap 12/14-12/15

- Fighting off the tail end of a cold. How annoying... I don't get sick for 2 years after graduation, then in the last half year I get sick twice.

- Saturday... fought off gale-force winds and cold-induced tight vocal cords to practice with the praise band. We then had lunch at Hunan Chili, a new place at the corner of Central Expressway and Castro (right next to the railroad tracks)... quite tasty, with the Mongolian beef being a particular hit with everyone at the table. As it turned out, the owner of the restaurant knew Torence and Nicole from their wedding banquet or something, and brought us a plate of green onion pancakes on the house. Good stuff... I'll be going back there again.

- Saturday night, had a joint Christmas celebration between the Taiwanese and English congregations at my church. Many of the different fellowships prepared dances, skits, songs... it was neat to see some of the folks from the Taiwanese congregation, many of whom are parents to either my friends or to some of the youth, really get into the different acts... among them included a flag display, a traditional dance, a couple of songs/song medleys. The children sang a song, and the younger kids (like 5 years and younger) got dressed up in sheep outfits and the like. The youth also wrote and performed a skit about "The True Meaning of Christmas," in which a boy learns that the spirit behind Christmas isn't about giving and receiving things, but instead showing love and care to others because Jesus first gave us his love.

Afterwards, a few of us watched Men in Black 2. In a word... eh. They were trying too hard.

- Sunday after church, we had a Christmas party at William and Shirley's house in Fremont. Food, singing, games, and then the legendary white elephant gift exchange. Unfortunately, the 3+ years old sausage was deemed unworthy of being a gift, and simply sat on display. However, Han and Joyce picked out the Vivian Chow poster, which has replaced the sausage as the yearly gag gift. Memories: Nelson getting his gift stolen somewhere around 6 times... those gifts included: a nice JCrew shirt and a woman's purse. Jason Priestly poster... rotating disco light... Shrek... Starcraft... perhaps not as memorable as in past years, but overall pretty good gift quality. I picked up a golf ball monogrammer for my dad and my bro.

Earlier this year I read "The Screwtape Letters", the classic literary work from CS Lewis. In it, he writes from the perspective of a "veteran devil" named Screwtape who is writing a series of advisory letters to his nephew, Wormwood, who has been assigned to watchdog a young English man in the World War II time period. In these letters, Screwtape goes through a series of suggestions about ways for his eager young nephew devil to cause this man to stumble and fall away from God (referred to as "the Enemy").

I've typed out an excerpt from one of the letters that I found particularly interesting: some of the ways that humor can be beneficial and harmful. Keep in mind that this is from the perspective of a devil, so you'd need to "reverse" most of your concepts of what is "good" and what is "bad." Read on...

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, The Joke Proper, and Flippancy... (Joy) is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven - a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us... Fun is closely related to Joy... it promotes charity, courage, contentment and many other evils...

I can definitely identify with what is written about joy here - that it is something that is seems to spring from Heaven, and that it can often be found expressed in music. Another quote I've heard: "Aside from silence, music is the best way to express the inexpressible." I can't say that I'm by nature a particularly joyful person - I tend to be more on the dour side - but I think that after giving my life over into Jesus' hands, I've been made more sensitive to people, things and events that inspire joy, to be more easily moved by beauty. I'm slowly learning. But that's a blog topic for another time.

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction... it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow... Cruelty is shameful - unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke... But flippancy is the best of all.... Among flippant people, the Joke is always assumed to have been made... the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.

Here, we see a couple of interesting statements about the potentially good and bad parts of humor, and laughter in general. I'll write about the bad first:

Bad:
- destroys shame
- deadens the intellect
- excites no affection between those who practice it, conversely may produce enmity

In particular, Screwtape references a particular sort of humor called "flippancy". "Among flippant people, the Joke is always assumed to have been made... the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know."

I think that this hits home for me because this is an area where I struggled and still struggle. I tend to be fairly sarcastic and can have something of a sharp tongue. Sometimes I'm reminded of Chandler from "Friends", where he says that humor is a defense mechanism that built up in his younger years to distance himself from people. I see this as the "armor plating" that Screwtape refers to - not taking anything or anyone seriously, using sharp remarks to cut down those people who try to draw close - including God. It wasn't until college when a friend called me on this - that sometimes my words could bludgeon or wound, when I thought I was making a joke. I was the man referred to in Proverbs 26:18-19 - "Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, 'I was only joking!'" It was an eye-opener to consider the effect I was having, and I've consciously been trying to curb my tongue and strip away this shell of flippancy - and in so doing, I think that I've been able to build deeper friendships and have also been able to know God on a more personal level. While flippancy can prevent intimacy with people and with God, I think that recognizing the true and good nature of humor can have positive benefits:

Good:
- inspires joy
- sharpens the intellect
- excites affection between those who practice it
- promotes charity, courage, contentment

Have you ever noticed that a good laugh can really solidify a moment and a memory in a friendship? I think there's a good reason - I believe one of the primary intended purposes of humor is to promote affection between people, to strengthen relationships.

I also think that it can sharpen the intellect. Irony, cleverness, amusement, whimsy, wit; these all require a person to recognize that sometimes life is funny. Maybe that's why I enjoy the occasional pun - the good ones, you wouldn't normally think of; it requires a stretching of your mind's boundaries.

So what's the lesson in all this? Laugh! Build one another up! There are so many benefits to "being of good cheer."

With that, I'm off to hopefully make my parents laugh tonight :-).

P.S. Got any puns or jokes to offer? Post them on my message board.

Weekend recap

- Saturday, we celebrated the wedding of Jamie and Mimi. For those of you who know them, you can check out some of the pics that George took at http://www.pbase.com/geohsia/jamie_and_mimi. Good stuff.

Random funny memories from the wedding:
- Faith (Hubert and Debbie's 1.5-year old girl) running around in her red-and-white dress
- Zach (Faith's older brother) as the ringbearer, coming down the aisle with a huge smirk on his face and cracking everyone in the sanctuary up
- when I heard "ringbearer" I immediately thought, "Frodo". Am I a geek?
- as part of Pastor Dan's encouragement to the couple, he asked all the married couples in the sanctuary to stand, face each other, and basically go through a whole new set of vows
- at the reception... we got a platter of quail, which looked like miniature Cornish game hens, in other words, really small. Each one was maybe the size of my fist. There are a couple of pictures at the link above. One has Andrew Ng sticking an entire quail into his mouth... that was indescribably funny. Towards the end of the wedding, we inevitably played with our leftover food, using an uneaten quail, a fish eye, and some red sauce to create this mutant hand.
- the skit depicting the couple's courtship was also indescribably funny. I think you had to be there to experience the facial expressions, the tones of voice, and even some goofy dancing.
- Jamie's an excellent singer, and serenaded Mimi at the reception. I don't know if I'd have the guts to do that...
- towards the end of the night, people went out onto the dance floor. The DJ played songs from the early 90s, circa jr high and high school... such classics as "Everybody Dance Now", "Good Vibrations", "Jump Around"... haha... was neat to see some people you wouldn't expect out on the dance floor tearing it up.

Good times...

- Sunday after church, I had a jam-packed afternoon of meetings... at 1:30 pm I had my first consistory meeting, consisting of the Taiwanese and English elders and deacons, plus our two pastors. I must say, it's interesting to see the behind-the-scenes workings of how the local church works... kinda reminded me of the old leadership meetings in AACF, multiplied by 2 or 3 times of people, and liberally throwing in the Taiwanese language everywhere.

I think it's pretty eye-opening to consider all of the things that go with coordinating the activities of a church. Till now I've mainly been involved with "principles" - teaching and learning eternal truths that are taught in Scripture. There'll be a lot to learn this year from folks who have been involved with the church for a while, people who can give counsel on ways that we can be more effective and relevant as a force for change in our communities - how we can be impacting the world with Jesus' life-changing message. I'll try to chronicle as many lessons as I can here.

- Sunday evening, had youth counselors' meeting and then the youth parents took us out to an appreciation dinner at Tomokazu, a pretty classy Japanese restaurant. Had everything from sashimi to hand rolls to tempura to what appeared to be asparagus wrapped in bacon (!). Good stuff... thanks to the parents... we felt very appreciated :).

The holidays are here!

Some cool pics of the recent solar eclipse over in Australia:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/021204/168/2t09t.html&e=10&ncid=996

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/021204/161/2sy3t.html&e=9&ncid=996

Thanksgiving Weekend Recap

Thanksgiving Day
- Turkey Bowl (recap below), afterwards a bunch of us grabbed some drinks at Tapioca Express and discussed how Eric owes a few people dinner. Tentative plans were made to visit House of Prime Rib sometime in January.
- Washed cars in the afternoon, then had a turkey-less dinner with my mom and my bro. We had sashimi. We finished like 3 packs of salmon, one of hamachi, and a 9 oz. unagi... quite a bit of fish. Those are my 3 favorites, incidentally.

- on Friday, went shopping with my bro in the afternoon, then at church that night the young adults group was hosting a post-Thanksgiving potluck - several folks invited coworkers and friends in the area who were away from family, which was cool. I also stopped by the praise night organized by some of the returned college freshmen - 'twas very cool, I think the youth enjoyed the worship time. Richard and the other frosh did a good job of organizing. I tried a bit of percussion on the conga drum/shaker/tambourine... not easy to do more than one of those at a time, I've found.

- Saturday, a bunch of us went over to Joy's for a "discount turkey dinner." Apparently she got (uncooked) a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and a pumpkin pie for a total of $15, and there were several folks who hadn't had turkey for Thanksgiving, so she and George prepped dinner. Good stuff... afterward we played "Apples to Apples", where you basically attempt to match a "noun/object" card with the leader's adjective card - for example, if the leader draws a card that says, "memorable", then you have to frantically search through your cards for something that's memorable, like "The Challenger explosion." The leader then chooses which card best exemplifies that adjective. It's fun because you can get into other people's heads, and figure out what they'd be more likely to pick. We also cracked up when George drew "exciting" as an adjective and Byron threw out a card with "My Body" as the noun. Muahahaha.

- Sunday after church, I went to my first deacons meeting, to meet with the folks I'll be serving with this year, and to begin to discuss which areas we feel God is leading us to step up in. Exciting times...

- Sunday night, went over to Byron's place to watch "Lord of the Rings: Special Edition" on DVD. I'm pretty sure that anyone reading this blog has seen the movie, but for those of you that haven't seen the special edition, I felt that they should have left in the scenes that they cut out. I think it'd have made for a more faithful translation from the book.

My two favorite scenes (both from near the end of the movie):
1) After Aragorn tells Frodo to go off on his own to Mordor, he draws his sword and comes around a rock outcropping to see 40+ super-orcs. Everything's in slow motion, the music is amping up for the big final battle scene, and he raises his sword in front of his eyes, almost like a salute. Very samurai-like. Great scene.

2) The second memorable one is basically just for the coolness factor... in Aragorn's final duel with the head super-orc, the latter throws a dagger at him that he knocks out of the air with a sword like he's fouling off a foul ball. He does this from his knees. Sweet...

Something that made me laugh out loud this morning:

From an interview of U2's Bono on Larry King Live (Bono is actively involved in a movement to help combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa, url at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0212/01/lklw.00.html):

KING: How old are your kids now?

BONO: I've got a 13-year-old, an 11-year-old, which are girls, Jordan and Eve. And I have two boys, Eli, who is 3-and-a-half, and John that's 1-and-a-half.

KING: I have a 3-and-a-half and a 2-and-a-half. There's nothing like little boys and little girls -- nothing like children.

BONO: Are yours boys?

KING: Yes, two boys. I've got two grown boys and a grown daughter, and two little baby boys.

BONO: I bet you my boys are tougher than yours.

KING: I'm Jewish -- bet my boys are smarter.

Another portion of the interview that I thought was poignant:

KING: What makes a kid get evil? What makes a man...

BONO: What makes man evil?

KING: Yes.

BONO: I think -- I mean, if you ask a big question like that, and you have to look into -- you have to be responsible and to follow those questions through to the people and study the people who have asked them over eons, over centuries. And you get to the great books of wisdom, and you get to the scriptures, in my case. And you know, I've -- listen, I am the worst -- I am at the very bottom of the list of the food chain of -- you know, I sort of need to practice a whole lot more Christian. But...

KING: ... Christian.

BONO: That's what I hold onto.

KING: You mentioned being Christian, and...

BONO: Trying to be.

KING: ... trying to be. Are you -- do you like organized religion? Are you a Catholic? Do you go to mass?

BONO: Who in Ireland could have too much respect for organized religion? We've seen it tear our country in two. My mother was a Protestant. My father was a Catholic. And I learned that religion is often the enemy of God, actually.

And religion is this sort of -- religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.

KING: So, especially in Ireland, you've seen it fail.

BONO: Yes, yes. And now, we're watching it around the world. We're watching what religion can do. And you know, I think it's anathema, and see -- religion takes ideas. Religion often reduces the size of God. God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

KING: And so, we raise money in his name and go to war in his name.

BONO: Yes.

KING: If there is a God, he must be angry at a lot of this.

BONO: I think God is very angry at the moment, and I think there is -- I think it's shocking what is going on in the world. And I think it is an extraordinary moment.

Right now, I can tell you this. Our age will be remembered. This moment in time will be remembered for three things: the war against terror, sure; the Internet, probably; and how we let an entire continent, Africa, burst into flames and stood around with water in cans. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to let people die because they can't get the drugs that you and I take for granted. That means -- you have to ask very hard questions of ourselves if we're doing that.


I'll be back with a Thanksgiving weekend recap in a while...