on vacation

school's out, exams are done, i'm now officially finished my third year at UBC and year 3 of 4 of my bachelors. i'm nervous, scared, anxious, curious, excited, shaking in fear, and jumping with joy. i want to ask God to hand over the map of my life, i want to read it, i'll return it i promise, i just want to take a peak....

i need "alone time"... i want to press the stop button on time, step back from reality, board a plane, fly to a foreign place with stone buildings made by men with sunkissed backs, eat fruits named after the emotions they invoke, and sleep on sand stirred up from the ocean floor, swim in a lake where the water's cold as ice and clear as the sky above it lost in the scent of illusive flowers that grow on more illusive trees....

is there such a place that hasn't been touched by the modern day machines of "development" and "progression"? a place where people are driven by feeling and the nature around them? i'm being sappy, forgive me, but i need rest, i need to be alone, away from this, away from life, and live for a little while in existence.

in the meantime, i'll sit in my room with four walls and one solitary window, listening to the choas outside.

An air of frustration and a tinge of dissatisfaction

the end of an all together uneventful day led by the emotional remnents of a "fair" exam, fried chicken and cheese stuffed portabello mushrooms, with tidbits of a Returing King, all subjected to and muddled in sleep.
dreams are a curious thing- a thing i'd like to discover the answer and meaning to them without the psyched-out analysis and chemical compositions.
people: the definition of "science project gone bad"- insert "the joy of the city" people everywhere, all of them nothing to you- wanting to live in a pseudo reality where the laws of msn rule.
do i dare continue? is there meanining at the end of this jargon? is the sky really blue? if i drop a feather and a bowling ball from the top of the tower of pisa which will land first?
taking nothing personal and expressing my personality.

Tell Me

you ask me why i believe Jesus.
tell me another Man who taught us to love our enemies
and He Himself loves the greatest enemy of all.
tell me another holy scripture written by 44 different men
in 66 books over thousands of years,
who all spoke of one Man in the same way.
tell me of another saviour who asked
not for you to suffer and die for your sins,
but took that suffering and death upon Himself.
tell me of another man who God raised from the dead
and took to Heaven.
Tell Me.

in medias res

not because i love latin... but because i love Milton

i finished two exams today, one right after the other, both in the same room, the first one for my america in southeast asia- i came out of that class hating america for being a superpower, and loving communist china and confused north korea for standing up to them, but wagging my finger at them because they now threaten the world with nuclear war- anyways i didn't write on any of that stuff, i wrote on the asian economic crisis, i felt like george soros writing about what happened, i know nothing about economy, never taken an econ class in my life, but i will tell you what happened to asian economies in the 90s and why it all happened.

i'm going to go watch gladiator

100th post

according to blogger, who is so diligently keeping track of all my previous posts, this is my 100th post. so i feel a speech is in order:

first and foremost i would like to thank God who gives me the words to write instead of actions to regret (point to heaven), "thank you".

i want to thank beni, who introduced me to blogging and the whole blog world in which i can take a break from reality.

umm... navi, thanks for making the very first comment on my blog, you were an encouragement then and you still are today,... it's been over 5 years and we're still strong...

to the FOU, you've always been there for me, thanks for believing in me even when i doubted myself... "study group" for life!....

uummm... sim.. thanks for all the comments, i can always trust you to have something to say

uummm.... there are so many people.... ummm... my mom and dad, thanks for being somewhat computer illiterate so you can't always read what i write up here, knowing that you don't know makes me feel secure

oh my.... who else... oh! my producers.. Google, thank you,... and to Blogger for giving me the chance to express myself to all those willing to listen. my publicity team at Dippu, SAC, i wouldn't have the number of hits i have today if it weren't for you....

and my readers, how can i forget.... thank you, this blog would not be a success without you!!!

The Summer Look

It's still raining outside and the sun peaks out every so often to remind us of the coming summer. I'm beginning to hear some of those widely used pre-summer phrases "i'm going to start running.... so i'm ready for summer", "i'm going to join a gym... so i'm ready for summer", "can i borrow your pilates video.... i wanna be ready for summer", "i need to start working out... for summer". Being around so many girls all the time i'm hearing it a lot, and a thing that disturbs me is that 14 and 15 year olds are saying it too. It's not just at school or in the mall that i hear it either, i hear it at church... youth events. At a recent youth event a drama team "talked" about image issues, it took this event to make me realize how much of an issue body image is for girls in this generation.

As for me... i was a fat kid, i'm not going to deny it. My pudge was cute, till i was about 9, then i went to public school and i realized, "i'm fat". I was teased.... made fun of, the girls called out "1-800-97-JENNY" (Jenny Craig ad) and the boys would just laugh behind my back. There were times i went home crying, i'd skip breakfast and lunch most days of the week- but i was still "fat". Body image continued to be a struggle through all of highschool and i never thought of it as something that i could hand over to God.

When i started university, and my relationship with God deepened, i realized over time that "skinny" is not beautiful, "beauty" is beautiful. Media's portrayal of the beautiful woman is a tall, tanned, straight haired, 95Lb beanstalk. God's image of a beautiful woman is one that has beauty from within, a gentle and quiet spirit, deep faith, and a fear of God, one that knows compassion and love more than diet secrets and makeup techniques. Personally, i like God's version of beauty much more than the media's. God invented the idea of beauty, humanity has disfigured it, and God's definition of beauty should not be laid aside to make room for what the world thinks.

It took a moment alone with God to help me realize, God doesn't dispense His love by my weight, height, or size....there is not limit or prerequisite for God's love, He loves. that's it. nothing more. God Loves Me. I could be twice the size i am today or half the size i want to be, it doesn't matter to Him, He still loves me. When i couldn't count on my class-mates to see my beauty, and my family told me i had to loose a little weight, God looked down from Heaven every moment, and said, "there goes another beautiful creation, My daughter, the one I love, the one I created the way I wanted her to be". As i continue to mature in God my "weight issues" become less significant, and at this point my objective is to be healthy and take care of the body God gave me, which is a responsibility i failed to fulfill over the years. With my heart set on being skinny i forgot to eat right, exercise, and respect my body. It was when i started to eat right and exercise (a bit) that i really started to notice a change and maybe it was God's way of rewarding me for being respectful to my body.

I still struggle with exercise, ask my friends, if you call it exercise i won't do it, i'll play nearly any competitive sport, go for a walk, climb any mountain, but if you call it exercise, i'm going to sit and read a book. And i've promised myself i won't become one of those health-nut granola crunchers, so i still indulge myself in cheesecake every now and again to remind myself i'm human. But being fat, is not my issue anymore, and when someone tells me i need to loose a bit more weight, i tell them to take it to God- tell Him He needs to fix His mistake. I'm not saying i'm perfect by the world's image standards, it just doesn't matter to me anymore. God loves me, He's preparing a guy for me that'll love me the way i am, and God's given me enough health to do what He wants me to do.

I continue to pray for those girls and women struggling with weight and body image, it's needs to be handed over to God if something real is going to happen. And if you know someone who has weight issues, talk to them, show them you love them, and tell them that God loves them.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Genesis 1:26-27

tyna,

(President: ChubClub International)

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