One final addendum to my account of my week off - the final night (Sunday), went to the San Jose Arena with a few other people to volunteer selling merchandise at the Third Day/Michael W. Smith concert. Although we saw less of the concert that was advertised (supposed to miss only 1/4, ended up seeing maybe 1/3), it was fun selling merchandise and trying to serve people. I got to make some recommendations on CDs too. We did end up staying a bit late in order to count remaining merchandise.

Memorial Day Weekend recap

Still have a post with musings on work and purpose to write. But just so I don't forget, I had a fairly packed weekend over Memorial Day, working off stress from my 60-hr week.

Friday
Left work at 10:20 pm. Youth group was already over, so I headed over to Andrea's place where a several friends were hanging out playing video games, eating and chatting. Covered conversation topics from how to read the lines on your palm (according to my hand, I apparently have a ways to go before meeting the love of my life... [shrug]), to funny college stories, to debating what qualities a guy would need in order to date someone older than he was. I was only half awake for that last one though.

Saturday
Got a call from Derek K (a fellow AACF/Immunology alumnus and Spurs fan) to play some ball. When I got there I found out that my high school friend Tunhow was a part of this weekly game. I can't make most Saturdays at noon due to praise band practice, but when I can I'll probably try since I can't make Mondays (now at SGI!) anymore. It was fun to play with Tunhow again... dude's about my height but I think he used to be able to dunk, if not a volleyball, a tennis ball... I couldn't hit a jump shot to save my life while running 5-on-5 but eventually found my stroke when people left and we played 3-on-3. On a separate note, someone started a couple of fires at the school we were playing at while we were there, so a neighbor asked us to call the fire department. Guess someone didn't want to come back after Memorial Day.

After hoops, swung by Byron's place and hung out with him, Maria, Andrea, and Maria's sister and friend who were up for the weekend. Went for a walk on the Stevens Creek trail where we talked about grown-up stuff like buying houses and discerning God's will for a career. Walked into one open house in Mtn View... was pretty sweet.

That evening, went to Hot Pot City in Milpitas where Byron et al met up with a few more of their old LA friends, including Mike, Andy, Enoch+wife+baby Evan (sp?), as well as Mike's roommate Andus. This would be the beginning of a lot of protein intake for me over this weekend. At Hot Pot, I'm partial to the marinated beef and lamb, supplemented by veggies and the occasional California roll.

After dinner, headed up to East Bay, where I spent the night at Danny/Cal/JLau's cutting a huge tub of Costco mushrooms into slices for grilling the next day at their house bbq.

Sunday
Woke up bright and early to watch my bro David walk at his Legal Studies graduation at UC Berkeley. Stepping onto campus made me realize that it was my first time back to campus essentially since I graduated, in winter of 2000. My sense of geography has faded tremendously - I can't remember street names or building names anymore. Walking back into campus brought back a few memories of successes and failures during my tenure there... but I digress. As it was early, I napped while the LS speakers talked for a bit, then snapped a few shots of my bro as he walked across the Zellerbach stage. Afterward we went for a celebratory lunch at Macaroni Grill in El Cerrito, where apparently they built a brand-new shopping center that certainly wasn't there when I was there. On another note, apparently the new DC between and serving Units 1 and 2 has good food. Sigh...

My parents dropped me back off at DCJ's place in Richmond for their bbq. Danny wrote some about it in his blog. They do a great job. Over the course of the afternoon, I got caught up with Andy Y, Pam, Jon F, Phuoc, and somewhat with Howie, as well as the hosts. It was also hilarious watching Jon F try to play the Lord of the Rings PS2 video game and continually get his butt kicked by a single non-boss orc.

That evening, watched some of the Spurs-Mavs game, then headed to SF where I met up with some friends from Canaan at the Boom Boom Room, a jazz/funk club off of Geary, near Japantown. Decent live music, but certainly too loud to hold a decent conversation with anyone inside. 'Twas fun though. I tend to prefer swing/ballroom outings, however, even though I'm not very good at either.

Monday
Had another bbq (I think I got 5000 percent of my recommended protein intake over this past weekend) with a few Canaan folks in Mtn View, where we grilled up some burgers, sausages, and Korean kal-bi and bul-go-gi. I bought a watermelon for the bbq, and at the supermarket tried knocking on them to hear a sound difference. Apparently you're supposed to listen for a crisper noise, which is supposed to indicate a higher water content inside. Well, I thought it tasted okay.

Afterwards, got to see the near-final version of Alice and Tomio's slideshow... it was awesome... Andrew N is a very talented man.

That evening, watched Antwone Fisher with a few folks. Decent flick, although rather slow-paced. It was Denzel Washington's directorial debut about a young man in the Navy who's sent to see Washington's character because of an anger management problem, and through their sessions we see that he's had a pretty traumatic childhood. 'Twas a decent drama, but the 2+ hrs felt like much more than that.

Random
Current CDs: The Joshua Tree by U2, Divine Discontent by Sixpence None the Richer, Back Home by Caedmon's Call, Offerings 2 by Third Day, WOW Worship Yellow. Memorable lyrics:
"Tension is like a passing note to a beautiful chord." - Sixpence
"My God, my God, why hast Thou accepted me / When all my love was vinegar to a thirsty King / My God, my God why hast thou accepted me / It’s a mystery of mercy and the song, the song I sing" - Caedmon's Call

Also been listening to a modern-day hymn on the WOW CD called "In Christ Alone", by Stuart Townend. Great song. If you're reading this and you go to Canaan, expect to hear it in the coming months.

Found this interesting link from Seri's blog, about the notion of chivalry: how it almost died, and how it could make a comeback if only men would take the initiative to do things like open car doors for women, and a host of other things. I know I'm not very good at this concept, but there's nothing wrong with trying to improve. Here's a specific question though - opening building doors isn't that hard, you just have to quicken your pace a bit in order to get to the door handle first. I can even see how opening the car door for a single female passenger wouldn't take that much effort as well. However, what do you do when you have multiple people entering your car? Is it proper to go flying around the perimeter of the car opening and closing doors?

Food for thought on an early Thursday morning when I've already spent too many of my waking hours in front of a computer screen...

Oh man, completely forgot one other part of my week off. Tomio's bachelor party. Bwahahaha... I've been sworn to secrecy about the details of the day, but suffice to say that he's a good sport.

Quick recap

What did I do with the week I had off?

In no particular order:
Clean room - something I'd been planning to do for a while; basically making sure that I had all my appropriate files stored away into the appropriate drawers, threw away old receipts and other notes that were now obsolete, and the like.

Organize computer - spent some time more clearly defining where my important files were.

Re-organize worship songbook - consolidating to free up some sheet protectors.

Canaan worship schedule for next few months - uploaded to website.

Looking back at these first few items... I took a personality test a while back that indicated that I was very much a "J", or Judgement-oriented, meaning that I place a high emphasis on process, order, and the like. I can kinda see that coming out this week at work, and I guess it's exemplified by the fact that I intentionally took the time to do the two things above during my week off.

Mini-retreat - on Wed, I spent some time alone with God in Mountain View, praying, worshipping, journaling, taking a spiritual gifts survey, and basically enjoying Creation in the outdoors. I'll write more about this later, in connection with work observations.

Cleaned up email inbox and caught up with friends online and offline - thanks to all who I got to hang out with, who emailed or IMed, or who left comments here!

Played and watched basketball - my Spurs finally got over the hump with the Lakers. Gotta give credit where its due - the Lakers have been worthy champions the past three years. But this year, they didn't deserve it. They didn't take the regular season seriously. Nowhere is this more exemplified than the example Shaq set - purposely putting off surgery so he wouldn't have to go to training camp, not working out to stay in shape, making comments like "I got hurt on company time, so I'll recuperate on company time," repeated trash-talking about the rest of the league ("I'm still the Most Dominating Player. Write that down."), and basically thinking that he could flip on a switch at playoff time and dominate. I think it's better for the league that they didn't advance this year - you don't want to send the message that the regular season is pointless. If the team works hard and comes back to win next season, more power to them.

For now, I just want the Spurs to hit some free throws.

On another quick note, LeBron's going to Cleveland. Yawn.

Watched The Matrix Reloaded - not a bad movie overall. Some pros and cons:
Pros:
- Keanu looks more authentic when fighting now. First movie, he was laughably stiff.
- More nifty effects and action scenes. The Neo-vs-Agent Smiths scene and the chase down the freeway were both pretty cool. Particularly with Morpheus busting out the katana against the albino twins and going all samurai on their SUV.
- Intriguing plotline. I have some of my own thoughts and have discussed the substance of the movie with others, I'm too lazy to type them out in invisible font right now but if you wanna banter about it leave a comment or email me.

Cons
- Wasn't paced very well - speech-fight-speech-fight...
- The "rave" scene seemed pointless.
- No real tension in the combat, primarily because you know Neo is super-dude and can't lose... right?
- The plot exposition gets a bit long-winded. As my friend Shiun put it, Matrix 1 was about the nature of reality, Matrix 2 was about the importance of choice. The concepts in Matrix 1 (this world isn't real, wool pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth, etc.) were kinda neat and exciting. Matrix 2 gets rather metaphysical, and while it was pretty interesting for anyone willing to listen very very carefully, I can see how it would probably lose much of the audience just because it was so long-winded.
- Ended very abruptly.

I'll probably need to see it again to grasp more nuances.

Things I wanted to do during my week off that I didn't get to do:

Compile a master songlist - for a while now, I've been planning on creating a searchable database of worship songs to be used as a resource for myself and other worship leaders to select songs, based on song title, tempo, key, and topic. Haven't gotten around to it yet.

Watch Better Luck Tomorrow - maybe someday.

Do research on grad schools - Wanted to check more into the fields of bio/health informatics.

Laptop research - Probably going to get a laptop soon. Any suggestions?

Write a letter to my grandparents - I've never been very close with my grandparents, and the thought came to mind (the day I was laid off, incidentally) to write them a letter and ask my parents to translate it for them - if nothing else, to let them know that even though I don't know them very well, I'd like to say this is who I am, and I'd like to hear some stories of who they are and how they got to this point.

Various blogs - There are a variety of topics I've been planning on writing on for a while. Maybe someday I'll jot them all down here and let whatever few readers I have vote on which ones I should write about first.

Not a very organized post. Sorry, I'm a tad fried.

Oh yeah, a quote that Pastor Tim mentioned on Sunday that I enjoyed:
"As guys, sometimes we get into this macho mentality. We want to go where the danger is."

Strangely enough, as practical as I usually am, I can identify with this. Maybe I'll muse about it more later. For now, sleep.

First day on the job

Into office: 9:05 am
Out of office: 10:20 pm

Will eventually write something about my time off and impressions of work. For now, I'll go do something not in front of a computer.

For such a time as this...

In the Book of Esther in the Bible, we see the story of a young Jewish woman who is chosen to be Queen. When a treacherous member of the King's court manipulates the King into issuing a royal decree against the Jewish people, her father challenges her to go to the King and plead on her people's behalf. When she hesitates with a certain sense of fear and trepidation, he says this:

"Do not think that because you are in the king's house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" - Esther 4:13-14

I read the story of Esther this past Tuesday morning, and headed off to work with the last few words - "for such a time as this" - ringing in my head. In the context of Esther, this challenge was a reminder of God's sovereignty - at times throughout history and in people's lives, He will strategically orchestrate events in order to demonstrate His will. Little did I know that this lesson would take on more significance later in the day.

The Layoff
As I got into the office and checked my email, I noticed a meeting request calling me into a session with the CEO. About half an hour later, I got together in the large conference room with 13 other people in the company and learned that we had been laid off. My career at Caw Networks/Spirent Communications, where I had started fresh out of college, had come to an end after two years and two months.

I was admittedly a bit shaken during the entire time between the initial notice and finally heading out the door. It came completely out of nowhere, as my department (quality assurance) had been understaffed for nearly half a year and we were actually looking to hire people. On top of that, I was stunned when I saw my fellow test engineer come into the room where the rest of the casualties were - essentially, we were the bulk of testing on our products. I don't know how the company is planning to put out a quality product now that they got rid of the guys who were primarily responsible for the quality.

I won't miss the specific work I was doing so much as I'll miss the people I was working with - I really enjoyed the rapport that I had developed over time with much of the engineering team. Periodically, we'd get together in the back of the building to grill hot dogs and sausages for lunch; I worked out regularly with a couple of friends, and there were numerous enjoyable and stimulating conversations to be had while eating or lifting. Plus, everyone was extremely helpful and patient with me as I came in as a new grad out of college, helping me learn the ropes and teaching me how to be a professional. I'll do my best to stay in touch with friends there.

Thanks to everyone who emailed or called with kind thoughts, advice, and prayers.

Next steps
So what now? The last few days have been quite eventful. I started feeling overwhelmed on Tuesday with the layoff, and that feeling hasn't abated much over the past few days.

At Men's Group this week, we went out to get some dessert at Denny's, where each guy offered their thoughts on what I should do with my newfound freedom. The suggestions ranged from the normal to the off-the-wall - buy a new guitar, go on a road trip, visit the East Coast, go to basketball playoff games, fly the Concorde before it gets retired, tour Europe... I also had initial ideas of things such as taking community college classes for golf, learning Chinese and/or Spanish, taking voice/guitar lessons, getting started on the list of books that I've been meaning to read (Tolstoy, a few other ones recommended by friends)...

As it turns out, the route I take may be right back into the working world. On Tuesday, the day I got laid off, my dad talked to his boss, who talked to a small company that he's investing in, and through the magic of connections, I went into a small garage in Milpitas Tuesday night to interview with Protego Networks, a small (13-person) startup in the network security space. Likely based primarily on the referral, they brought me back in on Wednesday afternoon for a second, more rigorous 3 hour interview, and then expressed interest in having me join the team as a test engineer. I'll likely be saying yes.

Since the company is still in startup mode, this means just about no PTO and 12-hr workdays, along with some Saturdays, for at least the next half year or so. Taking on this endeavor will also require a certain re-ordering of my personal life - I'll likely not be able to make men's group on any kind of a consistent basis (I'm hoping for once a month) and I probably won't be able to make it to youth group on Fridays anymore, so in the latter case I'm praying about the possibility of maybe being involved with youth Sunday School. Since I'll still have some of my Saturdays and most of my Sundays, I intend to continue leading worship and handling my responsibilities as a deacon. Won't be able to make it out to weekday hoops for the forseeable future either - but that tradition was going to go through some transition anyway.

If you've read this far, you're probably either a pretty good friend of mine, or you have a high tolerance for boredom.

How did I get to this decision? To be honest, it hasn't been very easy. The last few days, with multiple interviews, talks with my parents and other people that I trust, time spent wrestling in prayer... it hasn't been particularly restful, even if I wasn't "working". I could feel multiple struggles taking place within me - the desire to have some time off (which I had been planning on since a hectic first third of this year), the desire to possibly explore new things like biotechnology/grad school and some of the aforementioned ideas from men's group, the reluctance to so radically change my weekly routine and sacrifice the opportunity to see friends and family on the weekdays... it'd help explain why I've been up till 3 am the past few nights.

There have been plenty of reasons that I've discussed and heard from parents and others, on both sides of the coin - this looks like a pretty good company, I got a good vibe from the time I spent there interviewing... another reason was coming back to an axiom that I heard from Byron a long while ago - something to consider, when making a fairly significant decision, is to ask, "What can I do now that I won't be able to do later?" My entire life up to this point has been very "safe" - I've never known true hardship, and never really had to push myself and work hard and be disciplined for an extended period of time. My dad tends to speak favorably of his experiences in both the military and a startup company, as environments that helped to shape his character. In addition, logistically speaking, as a young, single guy, there isn't a much better time in my life to have this kind of experience - I have no family that I'll be sacrificing, time-wise, no "significant other"-type relationship I need to maintain, and I'm young and (presumably) strong enough to recover if things don't go exactly as planned.

However, what it's all kind of boiled down to is this - as a believer in a God who knows what He's doing, I believe there's a reason why I got laid off, and that perhaps this time in my life is an opportunity to take a step in faith to allow God to work in me something that I wouldn't have gotten had I stayed at my previous position. I don't believe it's a coincidence that I was reading the story of Esther, an ordinary woman strategically placed in order to be used in an extraordinary way, this past Tuesday morning when I lost my job. Whether this path that I'm taking is the correct one to take, remains to be seen. If I've learned any lesson from the past seven years of being a follower of Jesus Christ, I've learned that often, it takes some time and the benefit of wisdom looking back to truly see the path God carves out for His followers. Hopefully by now, I'm hearing His guiding voice a bit more clearly... but either way, I can only do what I can. Proverbs 3:5-6 writes,"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."

I trust that God knows what He's doing, and I'm going to continue to strive to get closer to Him on a daily basis. Further down the line, that might confirm this path, or move me to a new one. Either way, I'm going to enjoy God and His presence in my life, and strive to make that known to others.

If you've read all of this... thank you. If you're a fellow believer in Christ... if you have the time, please pray for me... I'm still rather emotionally wrung out. Exciting times are ahead. There'll undoubtedly be rough patches, but would life be worth living without them?

Perhaps I've come to this position for such a time as this...

We shall see.

Weekend recap 2003/05/02 - 2003/05/05: Iron Chef, X2, Alias Finale

Iron Chef
Friday evening, for our youth group activity night, we had the opportunity to pit the guys against the girls in a friendly-yet-fierce competition of (cue dramatic Japanese-y music) Iron Chef!!! The event began as George (figuratively) whipped the cover off of the ingredient for the competition - the tomato (fruit or vegetable? Who knows?). The girls were well-prepared, as they had been communicating since earlier in the week as to possible recipes, needed cooking implements, and had already purchased up all the ingredients and divvied up the duties for each recipe. The guys, on the other hand, did not have any ingredients nor cooking implements until Mark showed up with the food he was asked to bring, and George made an emergency trip back to his pad to pick up pans and such.

Going back and forth between the two kitchens where each team was busily cleaning, chopping, dicing, boiling, baking, and stir-frying away, it was both neat and amusing to see the different dynamics at play. More than once, a counselor would have to step in to prevent one of the younger kids from slicing off his fingers while he was trying to cut a tomato. Funny moment - the pie crust used by the guys was a bit too large for the filling, so they ended up bunching it up in the pan, taking up the excess slack and in the process making the entire pie look like a gigantic Chinese bao-zhi.

As the designated cooking hour came to a close, the girls cleaned up and presented their four dishes to the judges (myself, George, and Luwen - Mark helped the boys out some so while he joined the rest of the counselors as initial tasters, he didn't get to give scores). As a disclaimer, I don't know the real name for any of these dishes, so I'll just describe what they were:

Girl's Iron Chef Dishes - Four items
1) whole tomatos stuffed with some kind of herbed pasta. Each tomato was hollowed out and stuffed with pasta, then baked. The tops of each tomato (cut off to provide the hole for stuffing) were then placed back on to give each a nifty little "hat".
2) breaded-tomato casserole.
3) angelhair pasta with sauce made with tomato and some ther veggies that are slipping my mind.
4) egg-and-tomato - a college staple. Oh, it's quite popular with those members of the working crowd who can't cook, too.

By the deadline, the boys only had two dishes ready while two more were still in the oven. Eventually the latter two were brought out:

Boys' Iron Chef Dishes - Four items
1) pasta primavera - tomato, corn, celery, carrot, cauliflower, and sausage. Amazingly, they made enough for like 15 servings or more. We needed one of the big aluminum serving trays to contain all of it.
2) tomato soup with celery, olives, and some small bits of pasta
3) tomato-and-cheese pie
4) tomato tart with egg custard

Tasting. I was pleasantly surprised by the dishes provided by both teams. To be frank, before heading to YG on Friday night, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea that I had skipped dinner, but as it turned out, the food was very good. My favorites - from the girls' dishes, the breaded-tomato casserole was excellent - had a good blend of acidity from the tomato that was tempered by some brown sugar in the breading, and from the boys, the soup, which tasted very fresh and had an extra kick from some pepper. By the end of the tasting period, I was quite satisfied.

Judging. I went into the competition fully expecting a rout - heck, I knew that when I was in high school, I couldn't cook a lick. However, while I was anticipating a certain level of proficiency coming from the female team, the creativity and overall resourcefulness of the guys was quite impressive. We judged on the three areas that the real show judges on - presentation, taste, and creativity. Overall, the girls did a better job with presentation (the pasta-stuffed tomatoes were very neat), while the guys scored higher on creativity - no one would expect to get a pie stuffed with tomato, cheese, and mayonnaise mixed with garlic salt (which turned out surprisingly well). Taste was almost a wash. However, the fact that the boys took an extra 40 minutes to finish baking their pie and tart cost them a few points, which ultimately gave the competition to the girls.

Kudos all around to both teams for a fun evening.

X2
Watched X2: X-Men United on Saturday evening with a few folks. I found it quite entertaining, as I was something of a fan of both the comic book (it was best when Jim Lee was doing the pencils) and also of the cartoon series (was that back in high school?). Some thoughts on the movie, click and drag on the following text as there might be a few spoilers:


- Nightcrawler's sequence at the beginning, where he assaults the President in the Oval Office, was way cool. Loved the special effects of him jump-kicking someone, then teleporting while the first victim was flying through the air and then slamming into the next guard. He's one of my favorite characters in the X-Men. I thought they did a pretty good job of bringing out his religious side, which could have come across as corny, but instead it seemed to be mostly in step with the rest of the movie.

- didn't know Professor Xavier's psychic powers were formidable enough to effectively stop time, by taking control of everyone in a general vicinity.

- cameos identified - Colossus, Jubilee, Gambit (Remy LeBeau), Beast (Dr. Henry McCoy), Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde), Siryn. Haven't yet figured out who the little Harry Potter-lookalike is.

- there was a heckuva lot of violence in this movie that wasn't necessarily bloody, but was rather graphic - there are several scenes of Wolverine slicing and piercing people with his claws, Magneto "forcibly" removes the implement for his escape from an unfortunate guard, a bunch of soldiers explode when the safety pins on the grenades they're wearing suddenly fly off, Wolverine and Deathstrike really cut each other up.

- speaking of which (part 1) - the scene where Magneto removes the iron from the guard's blood, then uses it to escape, is probably the second-coolest scene in the movie after the Nightcrawler one. You really start to see just how powerful control over metal can be - you can fire your own bullets, create levitating platforms, and so on.

- speaking of which (part 2) - Lady Deathstrike/Yuriko, played by Kelly Hu, is a wasted character in this movie - totally inaccurate to the comic book (where she's a cyborg with no healing power, and a history with Wolverine). However, her duel with Wolverine at the end of the movie was basically what I was expecting between veteran blade-fighters - for example, it made plenty of sense for her to trap Wolverine on top of a grate so that she could pierce him through it.

- other cool scenes: Nightcrawler teleporting out of the X-jet to grab Rogue, who had been blown out of a hole, and teleporting back into the cabin; Colossus ching-ching-ching transforming to metallic mode in the mansion

Overall, excellent movie entertainment- or should I say, X-cellent? Haha, I'm such a dork. Much better than the first.

Alias Finale
Not sure if I liked the ending. It's a tad weird for the show. The ending to season 1 was somewhat sensical - you could almost sorta see Sydney's mom coming back into the picture. However, ending season 2 with two years vanishing into thin air - it'll be interesting to see what the bigger picture is. Seri has an excellent commentary on her blog page.

Hoops - 7-game series
Thursday night, played some hoops at National Semiconductor with Jason, George, and Peter - the rest of the weekly regulars didn't make it because several forgot to bring their gear, due to the weather. Fortunately, the clouds held their rain, and we got to play a 7-game 2-on-2 series - Jason and George vs. Peter and myself. 'Twas hecka fun... George was hitting almost every shot, and I just tried to use my left hand for everything. We lost the first 2 games on "their court" (their half of the court), then moved "back home" (other side of the court) and won 2, upset them on their court, got upset on our court, and then pulled out the final game on their court by hitting 5 threes. We were yakking it up the whole time too.