*wipes figurative dust off blog* Why, hello, it's been quite awhile since I've made use of you.

However, I'm currently feeling lazy (I blame post-vacation summer); thus, this entry will sound like a hodgepodge of random brief thoughts. Perhaps I'll expound later – I kind of just want to squeeze this in before it is no longer August (eeks).

It was rather hot today: the thermometer on my clock read 92F for my room this afternoon. Thankfully, there was a breeze that ruffled its way through our apartment every so often; never mind that it was a warm breeze, or that it was occasionally strong enough to knock things off my desk... at least the air can still circulate through our apartment.

It's rather cool now! The thermometer reads 87F, and the night breeze is much cooler (though some would probably still consider it warm). I do like morning and night breezes: they're super refreshing. Mmm.

I've finally finished the Bible in one go for the first time ever!! I actually started this last (and, finally, successful!) attempt in fall quarter of sophomore year and only finished just today – which means it took almost 3 years. It's kind of crazy to think that I've never done it before and/or that I've finally done it; it's also super cool because now I can understand the context of some things more completely since I've managed to read multiple (or countless, in the case of the prophecies..) perspectives of some event.

I've also finally uploaded my pictures from our family vacation. They are now on Facebook in two separate albums. I'm quite happy that I managed to cut down the number of photos from ~2.6k to 276.

This past weekend has been quite jampacked of activities. I'm extremely disappointed that I didn't snap a photo of the most exciting part: toting a pretty cream-white 3-seater Ikea sofa through Streeterville. It'd be fun to relate it – perhaps in a future entry. :)

Zelda (& the Minish Cap)'s been quite distraction (– I've also managed to distract Glyu and TLin a bit; the latter is playing the same game as I... and he's farther along even though he started later). I brought my brother's Gameboy Micro back from Seattle since he never plays it anymore. I'm quite fond of it because it reminds me of Taiwan (that was the only other time when we played it like no other, haha); the characters in Zelda are also quite cute. I want a Picori friend. :D

The quality of this entry is extremely bleh-y to me. I'll probably fix it later.

Updated 8/12/10, 19:19 (MT). I'm also tempted to unofficially name this entry "A look into Daniel & Hsin-I's life (because we don't get enough of it otherwise)." XP

I feel rather vain as I'm currently sitting in front of a mirror, occasionally running my fingers through and pulling at my rather damp hair while typing this entry out. In my defense – well, no defense is needed: It's pretty typical for one to comb through one's hair after a shower, and I happen to be sitting in front of a mirror because most hotels tend to stick a rather (unnecessarily) big mirror in front of their "desk" area, which is where I've set up my mini computer station. But as we've already talked about it already, I'd like to say, in my vain state, that I like my hair best when it's still slightly damp because that's usually when it's the most obedient and, thus, falls in a nice manner (a.k.a. is straight and isn't falling into my eyes).

That being said, I am currently sitting in a certain hotel in the little town of Canmore, situated a little east of Banff National Park, which we plan to explore tomorrow. It hasn't even been a week into the family vacation, yet my brain already feels like it's turning into mash from lack of critical use. Granted, I have been reading over (multiple versions of) a friend's sister's personal statement, trying to catch up on blogs and emails, and/or reading a bit every night... but my brain is disturbingly slow when it comes to processing things in general. It makes me sad.

(I'm suddenly at a loss as to how I should recount the trip so far... haha, this would be an example of slow brain functioning.)

[Aug 5th: Seattle, WA] After the otherwise rather uneventful flight, my brother & Hsin-I whisked by the airport to pick me up. I was to stay with them for one night before I join my parents the next day. On the way to their place, I got quite the dose of typical Daniel-ness (after accidentally driving onto the rumble strip: "I was just testing to see if it was still there.") as well as Daniel/Hsin-I interaction ("Let's see if your car can do the curve by itself" [With that, brother lets go of wheel. As expected, the car curves into the next lane over.] Hsin-I moan-yelps, "Stooop!" "I was just testing you..." he says as he does a "heehee" grin.). I also got to finally see their place for the first time! It seems like a pretty cozy place owing to Hsin-I's various decorations around the house, including lots of Snoopy things (she likes Snoopy too! :D), stuffed animals here and there, and other little artsy things; my brother's contributions: the laptops (including my T60) and keyboards (at least 4) randomly lying about the condo, haha. I particularly like their sofa(s), completed with the spherical ball pillows. XD

 

We then occupied ourselves with assembling a 540-piece 3D metallic puzzle ball replica of the globe. Much to our dismay (though slight expectation), the pieces were not an exact fit, and the final product was not a solid, smooth ball as they insisted it would be. Honestly, how are you expected to stick in the last piece without the danger of everything caving in? As such, we could only precariously tap the last few pieces into place and hope for it to stay in one piece after 4.5 hours of rather devoted puzzle piece finding and matching.

 

Anyway, we called it a day at 2am after finishing the puzzle (though, by the time, my brother had found more amusement in playing Halo instead), and I ended up going to bed around 3:15am. I also realised later that night that all I'd had for the entire day was 3 bite-sized red bean pancakes, a banana, a handful of cherries (I've discovered that my brother and I rival each other in our love for cherries), and a handful of pistachios. Amazingly, I wasn't too hungry and fell asleep quite happily on the futon in their spare/guest bedroom.

(Oops, that was way too detailed for one night's worth of not-that-many-events.)

[Aug 6th: Vancouver, CAN] We were ideally supposed to wake up by 9am and leave Seattle by 10 to make it to Vancouver in time for lunch @ 12pm. We ended up making it out of the door by 11:30 after a quick breakfast. Needless to say, we got there 1.5 hours late...

Once we got into Vancouver, the parents crammed into the Honda Civic, and we all headed off to Aberdeen Centre (a.k.a. a huge Asian/Chinese mall swarming with Chinese people and the occasional brave Caucasians) to eat at a Taiwanese restaurant that my parents had discovered earlier (rather impressive – well, I guess not really – since most of the Asian population in Vancouver seems to be Canto). Needless to say, the food was very, very yummy.

Hungry yet? ;)

We then wandered around Vancouver by car a bit more, making a stop by Stanley Park where we took pictures with totem poles, of a cruise ship going under Lions Gate Bridge, planes taking off/landing on water, among other things. I also took not too few pictures of my brother & Hsin-I since their camera has otherwise been feeling rather neglected. (I'm actually borrowing it for the trip. :P)

 
Haha, my photos of them aren't entirely reflective of their relationship... I think. :P (They're quite funny together. XD)

We ended the day by eating at a Japanese restaurant where the waitresses and chefs alike jollily yell at just about anything: hello & welcome's to those entering their tiny, crowded place; thank you & come again's to those leaving. Orders were also passed along via voice – both the initial order as well as when the food was done. It made for a very lively atmosphere for the insanely popular Guu restaurant.

Ahh, I'm a bit too lazy to detail the rest of the trip (especially since the rest of the days aren't as interesting to retell, and it's still happening as I type), so... the rest will be retold through Facebook photo captions. :P

Oh dear, my entries do come in spurts, but, in my defense, the past week has been quite activity-filled. And since I am currently honored enough to be chasing the sunset in a Seattle-bound airplane for the next 2.5 hours... now's the prime time to write a ginormously long recap. =P (I can already sense people dreading the length of this entry and deciding they'll probably never read/finish it.)

[Yay flying! :D It's been over 2 years since I've been on a plane, and I've definitely missed the experience of being up in the air looking down at the fluffy clouds below. Too bad the air seems slightly hazy, so I can't get any clear pictures of the land below – not that it's very exciting at the moment... (we're probably somewhere in the Central Plains.)]

Anyway, the activities began last Thursday with MMT congregating for the first time since the beginning of summer. Helen prepared a dinner of cabbage+"meat sauce" (for lack of better characterization: it had ground beef with tomatoes and onion. Apparently, we were supposed to eat the cabbage as if it were the "rice" for our meal. Needless to say, the "rice" was rather vegetable-soggy (since it had been steamed), yet crunchy at the same time; it made for an interesting (but not bad) experience – and we all got a rather healthy dosage of veggies that day. :P Afterwards, we decided to video chat the members who weren't here (and Twang since he wasn't present for the vchatting part). Suffice it to say, they all ended up looking like awkward (animated!) family photos. :P But that's okay, because we sent them much love among the silliness. ;)

I believe the order goes Teddy, Joy, Grace, and Twang in Singapore, Texas, HK, and ... Pick Staiger, respectively.

Friday: Steven arrives in Evanston for the weekend! As his form of greeting, he decided to trick me by calling to say he and Byron were "delayed" by the El. In actuality, they were walking right up to our door. Sneaky. It caused me to get flour all over my phone as we were making dumplings at the time, so I did not greet him very friendlily. Ahem. That being said, our little gathering of recent grads made dumplings from scratch (filling, skin, and all) for dinner. Some of the dumplings ended up being normal-looking (made by JohnYu & yours truly), while others looked, well, quite interestingly-shaped (Chiarng chose to make wonton-shaped ones – they reminded me of the bag that Totoro carries around; Steven made... unidentifiable/"uniquely"-shaped hot-pocket-like dumplings).

"They kind of look like an army."

The dumplings were followed by cupcakes that Byron had bought from a bakery by the name of Sprinkles (Cupcakes). Apparently they were very delicious and expensive. As TimLin calculated (with Steven's help), each cupcake came out to be $3.25. Tim was also very intrigued by the wooden forks.

Everyone busily devouring the cupcakes. [Photo: Chiarng's camera (Canon S90)]

Mahjong followed. (We've been playing it a lot this summer, heh.) What I learned: the pace of the game really depends on the slowest person (a.k.a. one who contemplates too much and/or ends up making decisions by juggling two tiles in his hand and turning to someone, insisting "Pick one."). Nevertheless, it was a pretty chill and laidback evening.

They look so contemplative (somewhat). [Photo: Chiarng's camera]

We also learned that Chiarng has the strangest way of cutting watermelons... [Photo: Chiarng's camera]

Saturday was debatably the only quiet day, which consisted of finishing up the odds and ends of my factorization module. Later that night, I tagged along with some people who had a craving for Red Mango (we stopped by at CVS where TimLin bought gummy LifeSavers, of which I ate not too few, heh. :P). Since it was a nice night, the Tim's, Char, and I decided to wander the campus, slowly meandering our way up to Tech in an attempt to visit our various favorite spots. We ended up being deterred by locked doors but managed to discover some legit sunflowers in the Tech courtyard (they were probably about 5-6 feet already!). Our ultimate destination was, unfortunately, canceled due to the presence of spider webs. Mind you, normal spider webs are okay, but what made the webs disgusting wasn't the mere fact that there were so many, but that they were completely covered with flies; there were also some big spiders guarding their impressive webs. Eventually, we somehow made it to the Lakefill, where we literally sat in the middle of the path, enjoying the rising of the peachy-orange moon. We also had an extremely nerdy discussion instigated by the fact that TimLin desired to know why we saw a beam and not a point of light for the reflection of the moon in the water. Ohhh Tim. :P

Sunday was jam-packed full of fun! The sermon, titled "Pain Precedes Change," was quite interesting as P. Seth preached about how pain/change helps us to see our need for something (his first example of an oven was quite hilarious). I especially like the quote that he brought up from C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." He also mentioned one of the common apologetic questions: "If God is so great and loving, so powerful and good, why does he allow pain and hurt in this world?" Response: when we sin, we sin against people and God. But for God to be good and all-powerful at the same time, he cannot eliminate a key factor in life which describes his love: free will. If God did take away all the harmful situations and evil intent of people, there would be no human responsibility or free will, and thus, God would not be loving. God placed us in this world, and there is sin because of man, not God. However, instead of leaving us in our sin, he sent his Son to die for all those sins so we can have our relationship w/ God restored. In midst of the pain, however, God is still greater & good, he can take something that is bad and completely incomprehensible (to us), he can still use it for something that is redemptive and good. God works out of all things for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose. The root problem of pain is really the abuse of human free will. [I totally just transcribed a part of the sermon...] He also elicited quite a bit of laughter as he talked about how he taught his kids about responsibility. "Be a real man. R-E-A-L. Reject passivity, Exemplify integrity, Accept responsibility, and Lead courageously." Only P. Seth would take such a word and break it into an acronym. XD

We then had quite the interesting lunch which consisted of people broken roughly into 3 groups: people actually cooking and preparing the lunch (which turned out to be pancakes [Chang's had vinegar XD] and quesadillas); people attempting to play Killer Bunnies (I would say that's the first time it's been played since last summer :P); and people planning for the dinner later that day (though they occasionally got distracted by, surprise, Orisinal.com). In all, it was a rather jolly meal with 10 people crowding around our Ikea desk-turned-table. Oh right, and we were serenaded by Orisinal's "Sunny Days" as we ate...

After we had finally finished our lunch feast, it was time to prepare for the BBQ dinner @ Byron's place downtown! (Talk about a full day of food/eating... oO) Charlotte and I made snacks in the form of snickerdoodles & red bean pancakes. The dinner turned out to be sweet since his apartment complex has a sundeck on the 16th floor facing the city. We enjoyed an amazing view while grilling and eating. =)

Yeah, yours truly was not helping much then...[Chiarng's camera]

[More pictures to come hopefully when/if Steven & Charlotte upload their photos. (I took a few on Steven's camera. Once again, thanks to all – mostly Chiarng and Steven – for letting me use their camera(s)!!)]

Later that night, we decided to go walk along Navy Pier as it had been quite some time since some people had gone. I was kind of bummed that we didn't go into the city, but it turned out to be a nice relaxing stroll after quite a full day's worth of activity.

[Yay, we're over the Rockies now – but the cloud cover is pretty much 100%. Sad.]

Monday began with Steven preparing TimLin's lunch of rice and broccoli as "payment" for staying at EP. Actually, it would have been amusing if it consisted only of the rice and broccoli (we actually packed it to look like so), but Steven also made a ginormous egg-and-meat patty from the leftover dumpling filling. We ended up delivering it to him just before his group meeting (which he whined about since he "never gets what they're talking about". Oh TimLin...), which made us miss the early bird showing of...

Toy Story 3!!! Which we watched with Char and Twang. !!! I'm so glad I ended up seeing it despite my deep prejudices against the Toy Story series (I really did not enjoy either of the first two at all). The animation was great as usual, the story was surprisingly deep and touching, and ... Totoro made an appearance! Actually, I was slightly disappointed that he did no more than bounce around with that perpetual huge-grin of his. But, I'm being picky. :P

Afterwards, Char, Chiarng, Steven, and I made a visit to our senior rock to lacquer it. Unfortunately, the weather seemed slightly drizzly, so we ended up leaving after doing just two coats. We then contemplated dinner as we munched on snickerdoodles. Dinner turned out to be curry, followed by red bean soup (TimLin discovered my massive store of 紅豆 =P). Afterwards, we played telephone pictionary, which induced a ton of laughter, exclamations of disbelieving "Whaaaaat?? How did you get that from this!?", people curled up on the floor (from laughter), and a few tears (of laughter,). I don't think I've laughed that hard in awhile. Chang's version of a "mother drone" was enough to make us laugh for a minute straight. (We love you, Chang! [And I still don't really know what it is...])

Tuesday: Steven leaves, which was saddening. I don't think much happened that day as I was extremely sleepy and thus napped for a bit in the afternoon, haha. Oh right, I did not too few chores, which involved handwashing clothes and putting away the mound of dishes that we'd used over the weekend. XD

Wednesday: finally met up with the professor, who greatly enjoyed the Factorization module! To celebrate the completion of the Index Notation modules, however, he then assigned me more work. Yay. Now I have to learn deformation. Might I add... biomechanics is not my specialty... for a reason. Oh boy. I also got by on the Intercampus; I guess I was rather worried that they might discovered my expired student ID, but nope; both drivers waved me by without so much as a glance (probably to see if it was purple enough to pass as a Wildcard).

Thursday (today!): currently flying to Seattle to meet up with my family! My parents and I are going on a vacation, and I do believe my brother & Hsin-I are joining for a day or so! I'm mega excited as it's the second time our entire family is together – within the same summer, too! =)

(Haha, you can probably sense the extent of excitement from the amount of !!'s that happened in the last paragraph. But seriously, quite excited! Especially since I get to see my brother's place for the first time since he moved out west. =D)

On the way, I also received quite the amusing but pleasant surprise when a friend's mom managed to pick me out from the bustling crowd of people at MSP. I had been forewarned that she had the ability to find just about anybody, but as the friend called off the need/possibility in consideration of her busy schedule, I settled into a chair at the departure gate with the intent of melting into the crowd as "just another person amusing themselves with technology." [Side note: Goodness, I saw so many Lenovo laptops in the various airports..!] Imagine my surprise, then, when – just as I was getting up to board the plane – I see an airport worker excitedly throwing up her hands and beckoning me towards her. (Since I'd only seen her once before and never actually met her, I was in a slight state of, "Uh, wait, what? Who – Me?") After a hearty hug, she then took my ticket into her hand as she talked excitedly and peppered me with questions: how had summer been, work/school? was [said person] 乖 while they were in Evanston?, did I want to switch my seat? ("Window seat? Do you want to switch?" "Oh no, I'm fine." "Window, huh." "Mmm, I like taking pictures. Promise!" She gave me a joking strange look for a split second and then winked. (Haha, seriously that was so adorable; I cannot see my own mum ever doing such a thing)). Leading me over to the boarding area, she continued to rattle off about our mutual acquaintance, telling stories about how he was such a dear even as a kid inspite of the 調皮表面. She sent me off with a final talkative streak, to the point where the agent scanning the ticket asked, "Is she your daughter?" Hahaha. (Uh no). Basically, her motherly 阿姨-ness was incredibly cute, and it was sweet of her to spontaneously stalk me down and visit despite the busyness.

Okaaay, entry done for now, since brother, Hsin-I and I are late to visit our parents in Vancouver. Until then!

[This was actually supposed to be posted yesterday before the Harry/Eric birthday bash during which they mock-married each other. :P]

Charlotte just passed by my room, "Whoa, why are you working in the dark?"
"I kind of... like the darkness?"

It actually wasn't that dark; but since it is around dusk, and the only source of quickly dying light is coming from the windows... okay, I guess it would be considered dark, especially since she came from the warmly-lit living room.

07/26/2010, 8:28pm.

I don't actually like the darkness itself, but I love being able to see the world in shadows. It gives for a different perspective: even though one can still make out the patterns of the outside world: the rooftop, the individual bunches of leaves on the tree branch whose tips are sagging onto the rooftop, the orange brick building further down being mostly blocked by the trees, and even farther away, the glaring red "Hilton Garden Inn" neon lights; inside, the world is thrown into a dull contrast between shades of grey (or very desaturated colors) and the ultimate desaturated and devoid of color, black. A loss of colors teachs one to appreciate the vibrancy of colors, especially on a wonderful, sunny summer day. Or sunrises. =)

07/21/2010, 10:52am. (The foreground is actually in sun while the background is in shadow.)

07/22/2010, 5:21am. (This is the nth time at least for waking up to the sunrise. XD)

So many times these days, I find myself pausing amidst life's busyness – not so much out of boredom/sheer unmotivation (though those moments come occasionally), but more so – out of the wonderment at how awesome, complex and intricate everything is. The simple breeze that even now brushes past my face, the light from the full moon that filled my room last night (absolutely gorgeous, let me tell you, at all hours of the night [yes, I woke up multiple times again last night after a wonderful streak of two days of sleeping through the night]), the sound of those irritating noisy bugs pervading the evening air, the occasional firefly as it meanders and blinks its way past my window... it's crazy to think how even the "simplest" of these things involves such a complexity of mechanisms, forces, interactions (biological, chemical, physical, etc.). It's really as JBK said in his testimony: seeing the intricacies of life (though, yes, he was referring more to the body since he studied bio) confirmed to him (and to me) the existence of something greater – someone greater than ourselves, a master Maker, who is infinitely more creative and intelligent than any living creature on this wonderful planet of ours. It's a wonderful discovery/reminder as day-in and day-out, I see all the sweet things in nature and then read about how humans try to recreate (but have yet to match) nature's wittiness in design. [Yes, that last statement was catering more to my nerdiness.]

In spite of the extreme nerdiness, I'm slowly (re)learning how to be in awe of creation, to regain that child-like wonder, how to enjoy things simply as they are and (try) not to delve deeper (i.e. into how or why a certain thing came to be). Being away from scholarly learning has really helped me to view the world more for its beauty rather than for its proof of scientific knowledge. (Unfortunately, some things just stick too well; one example is contact angles, the thought of which always pops into my mind now whenever I see water droplets clinging to anything ><).

Anna's here for the weekend! We celebrated it yesterday (being Friday, because ... by the time I post this, it will no longer by Saturday) by ordering Joy Yee's; playing Dutch Blitz, Mahjong, and/or Poker; and watching a ton of random YouTube videos (courtesy of TimLin, Chang, and Anna mostly), the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, and a bit of "Fellowship of the Ring" (which Chang was watching for the very first time). It was fun. =)

Playing Dutch Blitz, which TimLin was extremely excited about. [Photo: Anna's camera]

Playing (with) Mahjong (tiles). We played for real later. :P [Photo: Dkim's camera]

We also got to witness some pretty crazy thunderstorms, completed with dreadful downpours, fantastic (and painful to the eye) lightning shows, and ear-splittingly loud cracks and rumbles of thunder. There was a small break in the storms to reveal a slightly watery-looking but wonderful and fairly gorgeous-looking sunset. I tried to capture it on Anna's camera, but I'm woefully inexperienced with non-Canon cameras (hers was a Sony). I remember yelping, "Ah! How do I use this, where are all the functions?" to which Anna responded, "Oh, it's okay. You're a smart one with cameras. I'm sure you can figure it out!" (or something to that effect). Sigh, I tried. I hope it turned out somewhat okay. =X

Speaking of storms, I remember my parents telling me as a kid that thunderstorms exist and are (or "can be") nice because they help clean the atmosphere. I also remember being a bit confused by that thought. "Clean the air? Does God send the lightning to zap all the dust in the air so that it's spotlessly clean afterwards?" And then I learned in school that lightning was visualized forms of static discharges. Boooring. I think I prefer my initial idea of thunderstorms; it's a much more creative and exciting image. Boo schooling; it's kind of sad how education sometimes takes away from one's imagination.

I've been talking to Maggie about journaling/blogging a lot lately. It's been interesting as we debated/contemplated journals vs. blogs (i.e. writing vs. typing), privatizing vs. publicizing entries, etc. Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit sleepy, so I don't feel like expounding on our conversation (which is still going on now even as I type) at the moment. Let's hope that I'll remember my intention to expand upon this topic later. :P

I am very thankful for the cool night breeze that is finding its way through my wide-open window. It's amazingly refreshingly especially after a week of hot, humid and very sticky weather.

I wonder if this entry made any sense. I am so ready for bed. :D! (If you can't tell, I'm actually excited about going to bed: I don't have to dread (as much) the prospect of waking up to the fact that I've been 熱醒-ed. Ah, who knew that a simple cool breeze could be such an occasion of joy/excitement... =)! Haha, I'm so silly.)

I like summer LG. =) There's something about all-girls gatherings that can't be beaten. Singing praises with purely girl voices is really nice and soothing, hehe (sidenote: ironically, I generally like guy voices more; my (tiny/rather selective) playlist is predominantly guy artists); learning about the various women in the Bible... surprisingly nice and refreshing: We've gone through Eve, Sarah (I wasn't here for it), Rahab, and today, Anna! Sometimes I get so caught up with thinking that the Bible is simply one massive history textbook filled with lots of names, dates, and events that I forget about the intricacy of individual personal stories. Take, for example, Anna who was mentioned literally only a few verses of the Bible [Luke 2:35-38]. Normally I would blow it off as "oh, another name, and a girl one at that..." but a closer character study reveals so much more to the story. Takeaway from today's LG was not only the fact that Anna was devoted, steadfast, and single-minded in her faith and spiritual life, but also that she was thankful, joyful, and hopeful even in her situation (goodness, being married only 7 years and widowed for 84 years). And not only those, but also that her hopes and dreams were rooted in Scripture and in God, looking forward to the fulfillment of the prophecy of a Savior (– nevermind that the prophecies were made 400 some years before and that many doubted). What was even cooler was, as Grace Roh pointed out, how God had orchestrated everything so that she just happened to be one of the few people who saw and realised that this child (Jesus) was an answer to the prophecy. I can't imagine the joy that one would experience after having waited/prayed/lived for something that's been prophecied for ages and then discovering that it was being answered RIGHT before your eyes. No wonder she bursted into praise and thanksgiving!

Of course, with all the "wow, that's some massive sweetness going on there!" also came the convicting points: What was I living for? On what are my hopes and dreams rooted? Am I listening for God's voice in my life or am I too busy wracking my brain for things like the most succinct way to write my program or journal articles with "nanodiamonds," "blood proteins," and "interaction" in the same paper? To truthfully answer those questions, I would say... haha, my brain's been pretty occupied with the programming and the various things I should be doing (but probably am not). In a rather twisted ironic manner, I can be single-minded ... but just not with the most ideal focus. :P

Actually, since returning to Evanston after my visit home, I've been trying to establish a more set schedule for myself in which I tumble out of bed – quite literally sometimes into my chair – by 8am, have an hour of quiet time to read and pray; followed by however much time needed to feed myself, water the plants (all flowers have flowered!!), and various other little things about the apartment; and finally start work (programming/lab? haha er.) by 10am latest. It's my attempt to be more disciplined in my life style as well as in my spiritual life; otherwise, it's so dangerously easy to slip into laziness and apathy during the summer months. It's actually quite a scary thought to me when I realise that I've slipped and seem to be aimlessly spending my summer days drowning myself in my "work." – not to say that being workaholic is bad (actually it may be if it's extreme, ahem, reminder to self) since Col 3:23 does say "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart..." , but there's also the second part of the verse "... as working for the Lord, not for men." What are the motivations of my heart as I'm trudging through all this? Is it for personal gain – pride in knowing that I've managed to (hopefully/eventually) conquer some ridiculous homework problem that I myself created? Or is it because I truly/ideally want to bless others through my actions/work? Obviously it's not a stark one-or-the-other, but sadly so many times I'm still motivated to do things because I know others are watching me. ... But, oh wait, what ultimately matters isn't so much what people think of me, but how Christ is reflected in me. Am I working for the Lord?

Bah, why/how do I always dig myself into these "profound" thought-holes... I've probably left not too few thoughts hanging, but it's superbly hard for me to go back and try to find them since I'm typing this out in Notepad and the font is Lucida Console, which means everything looks like one big jumbly pattern. And so... I continue – onto more random, not-so-profound things. Hopefully. :P

I've noticed, I tend to use more :P smilies these days. (I was going to say the ratio of :P to =P has been increasing lately... but then realised that would probably sound too nerdy; I was called out by at least two friends in the past day about my nerdy comments. Groans.) I guess I do tend to pick up trends(?)/habits(?)(what do you even call these?) rather easily from whoever I talk to online. I think it also helps that Calibri makes both smilies look decently/equally cute.

In other news, other than working on programming up to 9hrs/day – if you haven't been able to tell from the past few paragraphs – I've also managed to occasionally meet up with people. Saturday was our epic dinner for the Missions guys - both the tiny (but nevertheless wonderful) Chicago team as well as the visiting Ann Arbor troopers. Under the direction of head chef Chang and somewhat TimLin, we made 3 big pots of Japanese curry, a huge (and I mean huge) bowl of Soba noodles; meanwhile, Twang made his characteristic beyond-delicious baked goods – I believe blueberry pie, some crumble cake, and peanut butter crunch cookies. We ended up feeding 30 people and having half a pot of curry leftover as well as a huge amount of cooked rice. To think we were so worried about not having enough food... What can I say? God provides. =P (Haha, or we just underestimate the power of rice in filling people up. Score.)

Going back to nerdiness 'cause it's cool. XP Joy - one of the missions girls from Ann Arbor - was completely intrigued by the Ohm T-shirt because of its nerdiness, to the point where she exclaimed to every Ann Arbor girl who happened to walk into the kitchen, "Look at this! Look at their shirt! Do you know what Ohm is?" She also tried to decipher the Tetris shirt; apparently she thought the words Tetris or ADD themselves were supposed to be some witty acronym. Hahaha.

And to end on an amusing note, quote from TimLin, who works in a lab for the summer: "i got back to the office / sat in front of my laptop / and put on my goggles / and then i realized what i did and i took them off / i think i intended to put in earphones."

gTalk status: Dear weather, my droopy plant is in need of a bit of cooling to become happy again. Please be a bit cooler and have some mercy on it (and us). [Disclaimer: no pun references allowed.]

A.k.a. It's rather hot and humid here.

A rumble of thunder accompanies this entry writing. Along with the occasional jumble-rumble of the El as it makes its nearby stop. Fun. The pre-storm weather actually decreased my room temperature by a good 6F (the highest it reached was 90F), but it's now back to 85F. Oh wait, there's lightning now, and it's literally flashing in my eyes since I face the window. The rain's also coming down as well, and with it a faint refreshing breeze. Yay weather! [slightly sarcastic tone]

I think that's enough about the current conditions. =P

Oh wait, one more. I'm back in Evanston.

I've traveled about 700 miles (by car) this weekend in a car, first to Columbus, OH yesterday and then back to Evanston, IL today. Columbus was an interesting experience as everything was vaguely familiar in a removed, distant manner. I guess it tends to happen when you used to live there 10+ years ago. More than that, though, my parents and I had the wonderful privilege of attending the wedding celebration of Jason & Melissa Chang! I have to say, I really have no idea who Jason is (but I've heard he's a very good, top-notch, "can't get any better!" guy =P), but Melissa was my childhood friend.

[Start nostalgia] I remember when we used to play at her house, jumping on her bed and possibly off it as well; pretending we had a fake ocean in her plastic sled since it was filled with dirt (the ocean floor), grass (seaweed), and [really dirty] water (the ocean, of course); being irritated at our brothers when they would try to block the TV while we were watching a Disney film (actually, maybe I did see "Little Mermaid" before... at their place?); etc. Actually, it's because of a mistake I made in calling her brother, James, 哥 that I actually have been calling mine 哥 since at least junior high. She also had a blankie that she loved and a pet hamster at one point that she affectionately called, "Hammy." At church, Jen Duann, Melissa, and I would run around wild after church was over; I remember we found ourselves in the coat room not too few times, where we picked up the spare hangers and pretended they were either bow+arrows or violins that we sawed away on. (Thank goodness they weren't real violins!) Once I moved to Cincinnati, we used snail mail and continued to write colorful letters to each other (I still have those pens somewhere, I believe) during which she would inform me that the guys' bathroom in the new church building was bigger than the girls – among other things. (Obviously, that stuck out the most. XD) That then moved to email, where she would send little doodles of bunnies made out of a mixture of: () " Y o ; ' '. (A cookie or two to anyone who came replicate the bunny as we used to draw it.) As we grew older, it came to IMing each other occasionally or seeing each other during the MCCA summer retreats... and finally, the last time we saw each other before yesterday was two years ago. We still look so... non-young_adult-like back then. XD

[/end nostalgia]

Back to the present! Anyway, we left Cinci at 1:38pm for a 3pm ceremony, which means we got there just as the bride was about to make her grand entrance. Major fail. All the latecomers including us had to stand in the back of the sanctuary because there were simply too many people there to attend the special occasion. =P (Seriously, more on the number later). The ceremony itself was pleasant and definitely invoked some thoughts. The overall feel was extremely different from the past two HMCC weddings that I attended last summer. For one, it was in OH, and I was basically a foreigner surrounded by a bunch of OSU kids (ranging from Chinese to Indian to Caucasian, diverse!) or a bunch of Asian families, both those with elderly ones as well as little, shy ones. In addition, the couple was considerably younger with Melissa to turn 22 on 9/13; I think Jason is older only by a year or two. What struck me the most wasn't the fact that they were so young (though that's still a bit "whoa!"), but that their relationship was such a testimony to their faith to their community, especially since (I think) both had served as IV leaders before.

The pastor, Pastor Todd, (who I recognized as the Akron pastor from MCCA :P) spoke a little sermon about love. Not just the romantic love, but the source of love: God, and how He should always be at the center of a relationship. It began with the Scripture reading, which I super liked (if there were such a thing as a "click 'Like'" on Facebook in real life, I would've clicked it a million times) since it came from [1 John 4:7-12]. It's one of my, if not most, favorite sections in the Bible about love because it speaks not only of the ultimate source (v.7-8) and example (v. 9-10) of love, but what we are to do with that love (v .11) and how it is played out in our lives (v. 12).

Of course, the traditional passage/characteristics of love were also brought up: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.. [etc] Love never fails." [1 Cor 13:4-8a]. What I really enjoyed about the end of his sermon, however, was his encouragement to reflect and remember upon what do we build our lives and our relationships. As for Jason & Melissa's live, theirs (both as individuals and as a couple) was centered around their faith, and it came as a blessing to others to see how much devotion and honor they showed to both God, each other, and the community. It was really sweet hearing that and makes me wish/hope that, at my wedding day (haha, whenever that is ... ), I'll be able to stand in front of God, my future husband, the pastor, and the congregation knowing that I've lived, served, and honored them all faithfully in my relationships. Whoops, it sounds like I'm anticipating a funeral instead. Well, marriage is the start of really learning to die to oneself, no? ;P (Kidding on the funeral note. Please don't call me morbid.)

Anyway, massive festivities as we celebrated their first kiss. It was also really adorable because Jason had to help move Melissa's dress during the ceremony, at which Pastor Todd joked, "Ah, already learning how to serve your future wife, eh?" =P Afterwards, being Asian, there was a whole series of photo shoots with groups rotating in and out as Melissa & Jason stood at the center. It was pretty hectic as they went through nearly 20 different groups. As Jen Duann describes it quite accurately in her comment on the photo: "This pretty much captures the essence of the wedding...Melissa and Jason standing calmly together as chaos swirls around them. :P"

[Photo: dad]

Reception ended up being in the Grand Ballroom at OSU's recently-finished student union. It was amazingly huge, somewhat dark, but... really cool! and – I know I've already said it – huge! Fitting for the fact that they probably had at least 400-500 guests there.

Picture looking towards the head table (they look so small and far away!). We were about 3/5s of the way down the room. [Photo: VigorLam]

There was also an adorable kid there by the name of Leon, who happened to be the ringbearer as well as Alvin and Vigor's good friend. He kept coming over to our table during dinner to talk to Alvin. Vigor also tried to teach him how to make a glass cup ring. Basically, both college kids vied for the attention of the little one. =P

Managed to get a photo with the dear childhood friend/bride. =) Congrats to Jason & Melissa!! =D

"Documenting your code is a very important practice to learn." Our professors always made it very clear, "It makes the next coder's life much less painful."

I'm learning it the hard way, except that I'm the one looking at the code that I myself wrote 6 months earlier. Yay! My program is so creative and brilliant that even I, the original coder, cannot understand it! .... Ha. =___= It's more like a poor choice of variable names (I have variables such as "ch1", "ch2", or "la"; I think ch1/2 were supposed to mean something... I'm just not sure what. [Thankfully, I've moved on from my original stash of default variable names: "meh", "blah", "bloo", "sigh", or "rawr" – you should see some of my earlier Matlab codes]) as well as a desire to be (too) neat&clean in my coding. Whoops, guess I tried too hard to be too clean in my programs. XD

A.k.a. I've finally formally restarted working on my wonderful CAPE project. Woo, I'm excited for all the brainaches it has in store for me! Seriously!

*slightly falters* – well, at least most of the time. I do like using my brain; I just hope it doesn't fail me. =P

Other than that, I wandered into the living room to play some more piano today – mostly Yiruma music. I really like a lot of his pieces: they're not too hard to sightread since they flow very well; they also sound very sweet and relaxing.

Oh, I also found a spider living in my mini McDonald's watering can today. =( I left it there but remembered to mention it at dinner to my parents. "Then, did you kill it?" my mother asks. (I had directed my statement more to her; I'm not sure why – perhaps because she would be more bothered by it.). Me: "Oh, uhh... no?" Mum has a slight look of "-__-" on her face; daddy continues eating. Therefore, the black spider is still living in my childhood watering can.

It's really weird not having my Bible with me [I left it in Evanston since I knew we had a stock of Bibles at home XD]. I've been using my nice study Bible since coming home, but it's just... not the same. =P I've come to know where certain verses are relative to the pages (1 Thess 5:17 is on the NE corner of the right page, NE corner; Col 4 is on the left; Eph starts on the right; Phil 2:1-6 starts almost at the top and extends about halfway down the left column of the left page; etc. )), and as uneven as my underlining may be (which would otherwise bother me in my perfectionistic setting), or crinkled/folded/creased the pages are (which would also bother me in my perfectionistic setting)... it's still the Bible that I've been faithfully using for the past (at least) 6 or so years. I love my Bible, and I miss it.

!! My dad has Swiffer Sweeper dry pads under his flipflops (that he wears around the house). A.k.a. clean while you walk! How creative. And efficient. I like. :D

I'm extremely talented: I just deleted this entire page full of entries by accident while cleaning out the inner workings of my website. Siiigh. When I realised the gravity of my mistake in nonchalantly hitting the "Enter" key to the warning prompt "Are you sure you want to delete...?", the only word that filled my head was a string of "笨笨笨!"s (it's so much easier to say than its English counterpart). Very thankfully, I had just saved the most recent copy of my entries a few days before, so I essentially only lost the most recent entry.

With that being said, here's to a faint reflection of what was written at 23:54 on 07/06/2010 mixed in with some thoughts from today as well:

I've finally decided to switch the language of my Gmail account back to English after a month (minus 3 days) of blundering around in (traditional) Chinese. I've managed to survive largely based on an uneven mix of my familiarity with Gmail (and, therefore, ability to memorise the relative positions of certain options and selections) and my familiarity with the Chinese language; there's also some pure guessing involved, which was always fun ... except when I didn't get immediate feedback on what I'd done. Overall, it's definitely been a fun experience, and I now know a few more random Chinese phrases. And I have at least 400 or so "與此人即時通訊" to mark the period of my "Chinese-ified Gmail." =P

I've also been using the in-browser gTalk to the point where IMing in Pidgin has now become such a foreign concept to me – which is saying a lot since I've always been a fervent user of the multi-client IM program for at least 2 or 3 years. I keep finding myself wandering back to Chrome/Gmail even after I've installed Pidgin. I think the biggest pulls are the animated emoticons (even though I don't use the actual faces; I still like the text types the best =P) as well as the little things like water droplets on the chat title bar when the weather's rainy (I use the "Tree" theme, which is *supposed to* represent the weather of the current location [which, of course, is set by the user]). Oh, Google, why do you have to be so creative and talented at winning people over?

In other news, home has been enjoyable and stressfully relaxing. Stressful because a very common background activity of my brain these days is wondering if I might be leaving a "mess" wherever I go in the form of dropped hairs, crumbs, or other 屑 屑s. I'm actually surprisingly 邋遢 ("sloppy"?) compared to my parents, so I always have this constant fear that I might have forgotten to pick up after myself or left a drawer or cabinet door open. It's definitely taught me that I've grown sloppier in my habits during the college years while my parents have simultaneously, exponentially become cleaner. If MO (from Wall-E) were a real-life robot, I think I'd buy it for my parents. They (or at least my mum) would probably find it adorable beyond belief. They'd also probably still be able to tell MO that he'd missed a spot here or a corner there. And, of course, he needs to be self-cleaning as well (like gecko toes!). XD

Wall-E: 1; MO: 0.

As with all parents, they've also been picking at various other habits in my lifestyle: the latest one being my handwriting, which they insist is much too small and must be fixed. Must, they insist very, very firmly. Unfortunately, I. just. don't. know. how. I've tried to write bigger, but it results in extremely ugly and awkward-looking lopsided letters that look like they don't know how to put themselves together to form legible words. It doesn't help that several of my friends (i.e. Grace, Chiarng, Frank) also write just as small – if not smaller – than me. And besides, doesn't it make more sense to write smaller because you use less ink/lead, use less paper and less energy to move your fingers/hands to form the letters? Cost-effectiveness! Unfortunately, both arguments are to no avail. (Not that I've tried the latter; it would probably only instigate more raised voices).

There was one point that my parents said [yesterday] that served as a good reminder: What we do doesn't affect only ourselves; it also affects others. I've definitely known, reflected and sat upon this point many times, and even discussed it with friends before – though most likely it was implicated as responsibility to others (in our actions) – and yet, unfortunately at that time, I could not take the statement graciously due to my general irritation in feeling I'd been wrongly accused of purposely trying to strain the postmaster's eyes. "In my world," I reasoned, "the postmaster would have perfectly fine vision (including if it's corrected) and be used to variations in the 'To' addresses; and, besides, I'm sure there were envelopes with worse handwriting than mine."

Ironically, just an hour earlier that day, I'd written an email about the take-away's that I had from the book "Hope has its Reasons" (it's a mini summer reading project that a few of us girls are doing). Since I'm too lazy to reword, I'll be cheap and just copy & paste the content here:

I guess the one thought that really tapped me on the shoulder and then gave me a mini punch in the face was the fact how we/I might know some truth (i.e. that we are all flawed/that we cause our own problems [reminds me of the Chinese phrase 自找麻煩 (figuratively/roughly "creating/finding problems for oneself") =P...]) but that we might not apply it to ourselves ["Making Ourselves the Exception", p. 17]. I feel like a lot of times I "see" things, but then it doesn't go beyond that -- a.k.a. I don't make use of / learn from my observations and, perhaps more importantly, apply the lessons into my life. It's like a lab report, where I do the Intro, Materials&Methods, and maybe the Results... but then I just leave it incomplete without the Discussion & Conclusion, which is dumb since those constitute as the bulk of the report. And then, that leads to me feeling sad that I might be wasting experiences in my life / not living life to its full potential ... if you get what I mean. =P

[Day-after thoughts: God does really have a sense of humor. I had been the very example of what I said struck me the most in the book! I'm definitely sorry for my attitude towards my parents (I later apologized especially to my mum since it was her birthday yesterday - 7/6), but looking back now, I'm almost glad that such a series of events happened. Even as I wrote this entry yesterday, going back to reread my email really convicted me of my attitude and alerted me once again to one of the/my easiest human failings: unconsciously excluding ourselves/myself from what we know and expect of others. (I think C.S. Lewis actually talks about this too in "Mere Christianity" [that's another book I'd like to finish reading this summer as well].)

I just realised that I hadn't actually talked about the enjoyable parts of being home. The past few days have been filled with a lot of reading, adventures with the mum in the afternoon, and good food. Amidst check-up appointments (dentist: no new cavities!; orthodontist: all good), we've done a fair amount of returning (clothes and shoes) and buying things (mostly food). I did end up getting a few summer tops (4 articles of clothing that totaled to less than $24 after taxes & coupons); add that on top of the skirts that my mum bought me before I came home ... and it literally almost feels like I'm slowly being transformed into a girly girl. But I digress. The coolest part of the shopping was... tada, fruit! We bought red plumes, white nectarines, white peaches, red grapes, blueberries, blackberries, cantaloupes, and a watermelon. As a result, our refrigerator is literally half stuffed with fruit, and there's constantly a plate (or 2) of white peaches, nectarines, and plums on the table waiting to be eaten. Yum. We really do like our fruit. =) [Trivia: another 1/6 of our fridge is taken up by massive Costco muffins and bagels. Yum x 2!]

[Bonus trivia: the sentence referring to the fruits actually very similarly mirrors an entry of mine from exactly a year ago (cf. 07/06/09). XD]

Ah dear, the same phenomenon as yesterday is happening again: as it gets later at night and especially as I'm tapping away at a on-its-way-to-being-really-long email or blog entry, I start to notice that I am legitimately getting hungrier and hungrier by the minute. It doesn't help that I've already brushed my teeth, and that I always seem to be reading or talking about food. Hahah.

And, with that, I'm off to bed before my stomach starts growling at me. No more mentions of food even though I did state that I had good food. Suffice it to say, they're all foods that I don't normally eat and that my mum tends to cook when I come home. It's very sweet of her. =) ... Actually, I'll just mention it anyway since I'm already hungry. -__- We went out to eat at a Szechuan restaurant the other day, during which I rediscovered that I do enjoy that type of spiciness (to a degree). 炸醬麵 was also one of the dishes that we ordered; I do love that stuff. :D Then, today, we had fried dumplings, (homemade!) 蔥油餅, and 蛋餅 among other delicious yumminess like very fresh veggies and 豆干. (Er, I think I just succeeded in making myself hungrier. Fail.)

I have this completely random song stuck in my head. I don't even know the title or the artist; I only remember the melody for one small section and the word "lollipop" being in there somewhere. I first heard it during our berry-picking adventure drive; and then I somehow heard it again a few days ago... and now it's mysteriously stuck in my head. How annoying!

Wait, I said I would be done and off... whoops, way to get sidetracked. I have to say, even though I was really frustrated at myself earlier for sillily (so many line-y letters!) deleting something without reading closely [A note of thanks and apologies to Chiarng for bearing with me after my initial horror at the discovery], I've enjoyed wracking my brain for a human cache version of yesterday's entry. I think I hit most of the main points, and I was able to process the thoughts a second time. Score! I didn't waste my experiences from yesterday. =)

[Fya (for your amusement), it is now 02:32 ... how did this take me 2 hours to write??]

I wonder, should I post another warning about the length of this entry? The last entry had a gap of 2 weeks and consisted of 2095 words. This entry has a gap of 1.5 weeks and runs at 2804 words. Process those numbers. =P

And this is day three back in Cincinnati, where the floor is so spotlessly clean (except wherever I trod) that one can unwittingly, accidentally slip while walking (barefoot! – albeit a bit quickly in a careless manner) across the kitchen, the dining or the living floor; where one is greeted by no less than 3 air cleaners in various rooms of the house; where one is greeted by one's room with no more than 2 dresser drawers, a bed with a pillow, a sheet, and a blanket, and many plastic bins with various things stuck inside; where my presence can be found wherever it looks like a tornado's struck. Welcome to my home!

(Yes, we're really clean here. So clean that one could probably perform a surgical operation here and not worry about sanitizing or sterilizing the area beforehand because it's already so devoid of any of the usual dust particles, microbes, etc. Well, I exaggerate, of course – but probably not by much. =P)

In other words, I arrived home on Thursday night. The adventure began at the corner of Sherman & Foster, where I stuffed my duffle, a Beck's bag, and a bookbag into the back of Lydia's car. I also carted a second sunflower home. =P The ride was rather (un)eventful except for the fact that Lydia was going to be late for a meeting that she had called. Thus, we found ourselves speeding down the Skyway at 80mph (the limit is 45, by the way) and through the cornfields and wind turbine farms of Indiana at speeds sometimes nearing 100mph (but that was only for short periods of time). We made it safely in the end, though we didn't arrive at our destination (her final, my first destination) until 7pm, and we were reprimanded by a cop (but no warning or ticket) about zooming through a 55mph zone [He was very gracious and stated very truthfully, "It's 55mph here, but no one drives that speed. As long as you drive 65-70 you'll be okay. But, you do need to slow down."].

There's actually a church retreat happening this weekend at Cedarville University, known as MCCA (Midwest Chinese Christian Association) summer retreat, where various Chinese churches from the states of OH, IN, MI, and KY come together for a weekend of worship, sermons, workshops, and fun! I attended the first night's (Thursday's) events with my parents and decided to sit through the adult's service instead of the usual English-speaking one. The experience turned out to be really cool because the speaker was a Caucasian who had grown up in Taiwan [and, therefore, spoke Chinese much better than I can even dare to try], and I could understand about 90-95% of the message even with my rather limited Chinese vocabulary [I didn't really know the more special terms]. I'm glad I went: it tested my ability to listen in Chinese and take notes in English; and it was a nice eye-opening reminder that Christianity is not limited by age, ethnical, regional, social, economical, etc. backgrounds. Too often, I fall into the lazy biased view that the cool Christians tend to be Asian American college kids with a slightly nerdy sense of humor, so I think it was quite powerful that the message was very similar to one I'd heard in HMCC earlier in the year albeit in English).

The speaker focused on Peter, introducing him as one of his (the speaker's) favorite character since Peter tends to speak before he thinks – which makes him a very real person: even though he walked and talked with Jesus, he was still nowhere near perfect and very much like any of us. The speaker also mentioned that there were many 3's in Peter's life, including Jesus asking Peter if he loves him 3x, Peter denying Christy 3x, and Peter falling asleep 3x. What is always rather mind-boggling is that one of the times that Peter falls asleep is the night right before he goes on public trial (Acts 12) – which, well, most people wouldn't be able to do if they knew their life might end the next day. The fact that he can sleep so soundly (with two soldiers, chains, and sentries guarding him) illustrates the fact – not that he's given up on life and is resigned to whatever life might present him, but – that his trust in God and his plans is so deep that he can feel at peace. What we also learn from Peter here is being joyful in all circumstances – both the good and the bad – and realising that we are not the ones in control of our lives, God is. As the theme of this year's summer retreat succinctly puts it: 人生的藍圖 – 神的道路 (Life's blueprint - God's way).

It comes as such a precious reminder at this time, especially since I'm at this rather awkward life stage, where I've just graduated from undergraduate and will be going on to grad school. Unlike many others, though, I'll be done with my Master's in one quarter whereas others generally have anywhere from one to five (or six – who knows how long those PhDs'll take. =P) years of school. And then there are other friends who are about to or have already entered into the next stage of life as a working young adult. As I may have mentioned (in a very alluded manner) previously [actually, looking back at my entries, I guess I may have made it too vague], it's been hard for me to imagine all of us splitting off into our own ways, and one of the things I've definitely been (and still) struggling with is the fact that, well, none of us are really in control of our lives, – much less me in secretly wishing that all my friends were staying in Chicago. (;P) But it's like what the speaker ended with yesterday: we may be limited in our ability to understand the full extent of God's plan in our lives, but will we follow Him in faith with no reserve, no retreat, and no regret?

It's incredibly quiet and still in the house right now with the loudest thing being my fingers tapping on the keyboard and the quiet whirring of my computer fan; there's also the faint, relentless ticking of an alarm clock in the room next door but it's only noticeable if one cares to focus. Combine these sounds with a window view of nothing but (a completely cloudless, blue) sky and trees illuminated a vibrant spring green by the early evening sunlight [the trees block the view of other houses from my angle] – it's like the perfect idyllic summer day: peaceful, relaxing, and restful.

I'm finally getting some extended time to myself, during which I am finally free from the "you should be hanging out with so-and-so/me/us!" tug and from the responsibility of ... being a social creature. (Please let me explain before you raise your eyebrows.) Confession #1: I am not a "sociable" person by nature, so it takes a decent amount of energy and some effort for me to hype myself up to interact with people. In other words, socializing is tiring to me. (Am I lazy for saying so? =( It kind of sounds like it.) #2: I've definitely grown in my willingness to hang out, but (I feel that) I am, unfortunately, still unable to fully appreciate and benefit from group hangouts, especially if they're big and/or demand much interaction and/or activity because of #1. (Yeah, my energy store is probably half of a normal human being's. =P) #3: I like my alone time because it (hopefully) guarantees that I won't be disturbed or distracted by outside sources. Therefore, (hopefully) my train of thoughts can continue for more than a few seconds. This is important because #4: I dislike proceeding through life without being able to fully process what's happening. Quite contrary to what I used to state very-matter-of-factly of myself ("I'm an observer. And I don't like thinking profoundly."), I am an observer, but I am also an analyzer and a muser: I like to mull over what I see in life, and I feel a deeper sense of fulfillment when I can pick apart the goings-on's in my life because it allows me to reflect and appreciate every little detail.

[edit] For reference, it was 6pm when I wrote the previous section of the entry. [/edit]

Actually, I've always found it slightly disappointing that the human brain – or at least mine – is so very limited in its capacity to store memories, especially all those little details in life that make it so interesting. There are some talented people like Helen who can remember random little details from her childhood years (it makes for very amusing stories; you should ask her for a few sometime =P); and then there are other untalented, forgetful people like yours truly who occasionally need outside sources such as photos or written down records to joggle their memory.

That being said, I soon realized after posting the last entry that it was 'current' only up to last Sunday since it took me 4 days to write the previous entry (granted, a lot happened in the span of 1.5 weeks). A week, I'm attempting to remember and recap what I did last week. Oh, life. Why does it have to proceed at such a fast pace?

So, here's to yet another delayed recap of the past 2 weeks. =P

After graduation and all the initial set of goodbyes, I spent literally the entire rest of the week [Monday through Saturday afternoon] with my younger (but taller) twin doing various things: making treats (no-bake cookies in celebration of Helen finishing her DATs on Monday, Rice Krispies using the gigantic marshmallows left over from the Tetris bonfire, and – of course – lots of garlic bread using Jimmy John's really yummy [and cheap] day-old bread); eating a ton of fruit (cherries and grapes mostly); watching tons Pixar films (within the span of 2 weeks, I watched Ratatouille (twice), Monsters Inc., TS2, Up, and Wall-E); visiting Byron downtown on Friday (with John & Vania joining later), etc. There's something about spending alone time with a friend or two that no amount of large group hangouts can beat. I really love the feeling of being able to just sit around, possibly doing nothing "interactive" at all (a.k.a. each person does their own thing,) and yet feel completely content, simply enjoying the company of the other. Needless to say, I didn't do much work at all; but it's definitely been fun and worth it. =)

Yay, yet another collage of a week's work of activities: Note that for the top right two pictures, we were watching Up and Wall-E.

Saturday evening, I went with some church people to Breakthrough Urban Ministries, where we made and served dinner to men living in a homeless shelter. Overall, the experience was nice and vaguely reminded me of the Spring Break Missions trip, but with the slight twist that this time we were preparing all the food to serve to others. (During the trip, we were the ones who usually brought out the already-prepared food to others). Nevertheless, it was still a fun experience. The sandwiches that we made looked (and were apparently) really yummy, but unfortunately, we didn't have enough to feed everyone on our team. I probably shouldn't mention what my dinner was that night, but it was debatably one of the unhealthiest/uninteresting meals I've had in awhile (no, it wasn't Cheerios or cereal in general).

Anna and her brother made a surprise visit on Sunday! They had to reschedule their flight to China due to bad weather and, thus, decided to drop by Evanston for the afternoon/night. It was an extremely excited and happy surprise as a very hyper Anna bounded into Louisa's apartment squealing and hugging everyone; meanwhile her brother calmly stood behind her as she excitedly introduced him after the hugs, "And this is my brother, Daniel!" (imagine the happy Anna-introduces-someone voice).There were many fits of giggles and laughter that night as the sophomores poked fun at each other (or occasionally, the others) over take-out Lou Malnati's pizza [Trivia: We got an extra discount of 6 cents on the pizzas. The cashier took pity on the fact that I was 6 cents short in change; actually, I'm pretty sure he was inwardly laughing at me as Tim laughed at my ridiculousness. (And then Tim later shook his head at the fact that I got away with the 6 cents. =__=)]; actually, a lot of it was also just simply due to the fact that someone else was laughing. (Even as I'm typing this, I'm reminded of my many dinners with Chang and Steven in which I (& others sometimes) would literally sit there for 5 minutes calmly tucking away the food while the Lu's cracked up at each other). We later moved to my apartment where we proceeded to prepare food for the next day and play a terribly long game of Uno. (We had one particularly fierce round of consecutive "Draw Two"s – Anna had to draw 14 in the end). Daniel was actually the first one to win; Tim second; and... the rest of us decided to end the game due to impatience. =P

Monday, Twang drove Anna and her brother to O'hare; I tagged along and served as his obnoxious not-quite-GPS-but-commentator-of-things-around, exclaiming random things such as, "Hey look! Airplane! I think it's... United Airs." or "Pothole coming up!" At night, a group of us went to Ravinia to hear the CSO play Chopin. Actually, that's rather incorrect since they only played for 2 of the 4 pieces. Needless to say, it was quite enjoyable, and we had quite the epic conglomeration of food for dinner including: sandwiches, corn, grapes (yes, yours truly brought the veggies & fruit); banana bread (w/ chocolate chunks, sigh), toffee, lots of chips (at least 5 different types), and various other snacks (cookies, wafers – in general, more baked goods, albeit store-bought). Well, at least it was epic in the eyes of us poor college students; the more sophisticated people around us had entire table set-ups, completed with candles or flowers in vases. XD After our dinner, a group of us proceeded to play a series of card games, including Dutch Blitz (but the cards were so sticky from the humidity that it was not very pleasant to play), Euchre (finally!), and Egyptian Ratscrew (yours truly won both times, heh).

Tuesday night was the first summer Life Group. The girls are called WonderWomen (unfortunately, I don't know the context for the name; nor what it might allude to). We're going through a series about various women within the Bible. It looks to be interesting. =)

Wednesday, I did a ton of car riding/driving. Chrissy and I wandered our way to Costco (I forgot to memorise the location/directions more closely) to buy food for a Friday night hangout. (Apparently, our 6lb of ground beef proved to be too much for the number of people who went... whoops). Later at night, I drove Nancy & Lionel to H-mart, where we meandered through aisles, gaping at the food selection. It's always fun to go to Asian supermarkets. =P

Annnnd, we finally reach Thursday! which has already been recounted at the beginning of this extremely long entry (I'm actually typing this in Word first and have just reached the 5th page and surpassed 2500 words (including HTML formatting tags)).

For the past two days, I've been enjoying the many joys including a spotless floor that will never dirty the feet of those who tread upon it, the much cooler room temperature (it actually seems a bit... cold to me since I'm so used to the 84F of my room), the large selection of fruit (I've eaten cherries, honeydew, watermelon, nectarines, and white nectarines; there are also blueberries and grapes that I haven't touched yet), homecooked food (ahh, yum, I love my mummy's udon noodles), and, of course, an actual piano (yay, I've missed the touch of an actual piano keyboard ... and the fact that my fingers will not fall off the edge while I'm playing – yay for 88 keys!). In terms of activity, I've been sorting through photos-to-be-printed (my mum still likes the old-fashion photo albums; actually, so do I because then I don't have to listen to my external HD grumble as I sift through 36k photos), reading (I brought home two books: Becky Pippert's "Hope has its Reasons" and Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"); playing piano; and, in general, learning to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.

Oh! And I tokboxed with various people yesterday. =)

 
The mouth in the first one would be Mr. Martin Kim. JBK inspired both Brenda and Chang to brush their teeth in front of the computer for the second... XD

Forward: The unfortunate fact about not updating for quite awhile is that one ends up with a few massive entries consisting of a whole bunch of recounts. This translates to the fact that Stacy has to remember more things for a stretch of time, which unfortunately corresponds to less detail since she doesn't have the greatest memory. Therefore, she dearly hopes this entry will not be extremely boring due to the lack of the usual (actually, are they that usual?) anecdotes. And now, she will stop the third-person and move on to the actual entry..!

Happy 2nd 4th day of summer!

My bed is currently overrun with rather large plushies, to the point where I literally only have half of my bed to sleep on; the other half is devoted to a line of stuffed animals consisting of no less than Grace's dolphin (Ollie) and star pillow (that lights up!), Vanadium, my turtle (alas, I've currently forgotten its name, though Grace would like to rename it as "Copper"), and Nemo. Observe:

Meet the fellow sharers of my bed: they're all incredibly soft and incredibly adorable.

In other news, the previous past two weeks (a.k.a. reading and finals week) have been crazy busy what with a slew of exams, group presentations or projects ... and, of course, the death of my T60. But never fear! The exams were conquered (though one poorly), the presentations bumbled through (rather humorously for both; I observed a spider crawling up a wall during one), and the project beyond asked for (our teacher's manual ended up being a monstrous 45 pages long, over 11k words). I ended my undergraduate years being 0.005 away from dept Honors. (Sigh, orgo, you are the bane of my undergrad GPA. Oh well, at least it's taught me to be humble about my limits.)

I also received a new Thinkpad 410s from my dear brother who insisted on the 410s instead of the 410 simply because it was thinner (well, actually not really, but he was very excited over the thinness factor). The only gripe is that I have yet to establish a good relationship with the touchpad (though I'm slowly learning, and it's sometimes more responsive!), and most of the USB connections are in the back; other than that, I'm very happy about having Bluetooth, the Fingerprint Reader, the keyboard light, the four mouse buttons & UltraNav again with the bonus of an integrated webcam (that I didn't discover until three days later), and bigger Del and Esc buttons (which are amazing! because I used to always hit Ins instead of Del). There are probably still a plethora of other things yet undiscovered, but... I'll find them as I go along. =P

T410s!

(Actually, my brother just informed me yesterday night that my T60 is once again alive. Quote: "I'll tell you what I did. Be prepared to be amazed. [...] I took out the battery, plugged it in, and turned it on!" Ironically, Josh and I tried that many times, but it never worked. Guess my brother really just have the magical touch, what with him – apparently – having multiple broken laptops at his place for him to play with. =P)

There's also been a massive amount of packing, moving, storing and goodbyes in Evanston. It started with sending Brenda off to O'hare on exam week Friday, followed by helping Byron move into his snazzy new apartment downtown on senior week Monday, then watching guys (Roland, Frank, Ian, Peter) struggle to move a massive sofa bed from downtown Chicago to Lou's apartment (on the same day), then being chauffeur to younger kids as they cart their things to various places (Luke, Nancy, Grace) as well as older kids who needed to leave in a hurry and literally dumped things on the side of the street (Steven), and finally helping the future roommate (Michelle) move in and the former roommates (Carolyn) move out. Even though I'm staying put for the summer/next year, I feel like I've moved enough boxes around to have simulated me moving out of my own apartment. (Actually, I dread the day that'll happen because I probably have enough furniture to furnish a small apartment.) Nevertheless, I've definitely enjoyed the various move-ins & -outs: it's always enjoyable to help others, and it gives me an excuse to say I did my fair of exercise for the time being. ;)

In other-other news, I've been able to spend quite an amount of time with my senior and leftover non-senior friends during the past week. =) Here's to a "brief" recap, mostly caught in photos:

(Trivia: I have more than 1000 photos [including some from Grace's camera as well as Roland's (he let me borrow his Nikon D80 w/a prime lens for the week, hence the many portrait pictures. Many thanks!) from 6/11 until 6/19.)

Friday - Tuesday: Spontaneous gatherings involving baking, Bohnanza, Orisinal, Youtube, and people-stalking. Baking included Chang's experimental peach/OJ/banana bread, Bryon & John's amazing pecan pie (though, I'm not sure if I ever had any), and ?? croissants that my mum made when I was a kid; Bohnanza involved Grace teaching more seniors about the bean game (which I have yet to learn); Orisinal - playing a lot of random ones, but mostly Winterbells, Sunny Day Sky and Floats =P; Youtube - lots of monkey videos, courtesy of Byron mostly; and failed stalking attempts through Facebook – with good reason, of course, such as the wedding of a friend's sister! ;)

Monday night, a group of sophs & seniors went on a nice midnight excursion to our favorite places on campus to relive memories one more/last time (at least for the seniors) from a different vantage point. It was quite fun wandering around campus, to say the least, though everyone – minus TimLin perhaps – was quite exhausted from earlier in the day.

John Yu should also be in here, but he was probably hiding at the time.

Wednesday: An absolutely activity-packed day starting with a mini roadtrip adventure to Garden Patch Farms, where we – some more than others – picked lots of strawberries, raspberries, and a few cherries. Unfortunately, the cherries weren't very sweet, and raspberries were $8/lb (compared to $3/lb for the strawberries). We ended up eating a whole ton of Sandra's picked raspberries... or (accidentally and purposely) mashing them between our fingers – ahem, Steven – to avoid the expensiveness. The farm also had a bunch of roosters, so we also fed them dried corn on the cob... that was an interesting experience. =P (I also got to drive a car, heh. I think I drove over 150 miles during that week and probably also scared not too few people [apologies]. Thanks bunches to Josh for lending me his car so many times!)

[Photo credit: Slu, sc]

Iron Chef followed later that night with very strawberry-jamified foods and drinks (and Chiarng's very spiked dessert). We also did very ridiculous picture/sentence stories that would start with strange sentences (I only remember Chiarng's since his was the first I did: "Six squeaking flying caterpillars flew over Siberia on a serene moonlight night.") and end with even stranger sentences talking about orphaned children, math equations, and (of course) extreme nonsense. I usually don't interact with a lot of people from this group of friends much, so it was quite fun and relaxing. (– though, I have to admit, I slightly missed the presence of younger kids since I'm so used to them bouncing off the walls. XD) There were many tears that night – albeit, tears of laughter at the ridiculousness of friends. It's okay, we laughed together. =)

Those who went and a sample of the food that was made. Red and brown were the dominant food colors that night. =P

Thursday: A mere 2.5 hours after the end of Iron Chef, my dear Lu buddies grudgingly agreed to watch the sunrise. Steven also primed the rock while we took a plethora of pictures. In my humble opinion, I would say the experience of viewing the sunrise over Lake Michigan (as opposed to buildings and trees from my apartment window) was well worth it in the end. =)

[Photo: Slu, sc]

We then went to Kemper afterwards to watch the World Cup (Argentina vs. S. Korea). Unfortunately, no one was awake for awhile at 6:30am, so we ended up napping in the car for quite some time before getting into the lounge (which was freezing cold – what a waste of AC and energy!). That was then followed by a nap on the Lakefill later in the morning, which was very, very nice. (Well, minus the bugs and plus a pillow, and it would have been pretty much perfect. =P)

Contact angles! [Photo: Slu]

Later that night, we then attempted to paint a rock for ourselves in the dark. The Mondrian idea was thought of by Byron & Chang, while Steven actually hashed out the design for the rock. Approximately 4 hours later, we finished our masterpiece:

Isn't it pretty? =) [Added Jen's name today! Still need to do a last protective coating of some kind. Any ideas?]

Friday: Saw my brother and Hsin-I for the first time in more than 2 years!! For some reason, various members of both my roommates' families thought I was the oldest sibling and that I had two younger siblings. (Really now. =__=) I don't think it helped that I dared my brother (and he actually did it) to go to Commencement in his bright red Google shirt. =P

My brother was dying from the heat as I was taking the picture. =P

After eating at Le Peep and then dragging them to see our just-painted rock, we headed over to Tech to take the McCormick 2010 picture while wearing bright purple shirts (it's actually my first Northwestern purple shirt =P) in the blistering heat outside and then escaped to the BME reception. Needless to say, it was rather amusing to see that Chiarng and I basically contributed half of the BME PowerPoint pictures. As for the awards... let's just say, we have quite some overachievers, including John Sheppard who made it through college and engineering with a near 4.0 & research awards, and Steven who also got Dept Honors & a research award. Neeeeerds! (And, by that, I mean, Congratulations!). On a separate note, my BME design team also received some kind of award, which caught us by surprise. Actually, it was hilarious how very unexpected it was because, to be honest, I don't think any of us were that happy with our project. Oh well, it was a nice surprise. Unfortunately, once my family found out, my mum (jokingly) yelled at me, and my brother never missed the opportunity to make fun of my firm insistence that I wouldn't get anything.

Yay for awards..? (And they're actually signed, not the lame "printed signature" kind!) [Photo: Slu's camera]

Commencement! For the hour or so beforehand it poured like no other, completed with very painful pelting rain and thunderous (but fantastic) booms of lightning. Thankfully, it all cleared before the ceremony and held up until about an hour or two afterwards. As for Commencement itself, I was almost not allowed onto the fields since I (momentarily) lost the ticket that was given to us as we were preparing to walk. I am quite skilled at temporarily losing things even when I have a limited amount of space in which to stuff things.

I liked the speeches: they were short and sweet. President Shapiro is also quite the humorous guy. I remember he said a quote during his speech that I found remember-worthy; unfortunately, my memory currently fails me, so I can't really record it here to be remembered. (Epic fail. =P)

After the ceremony, we then went camera-happy and had massive group photoshoots of basically every possible combination ranging from 2 to 15+ people. It didn't help that my dear daddy happened to have 2 cameras on him, so he would sometimes take multiple pictures of the same pose/combination.

Saturday: McCormick Convocation bright and early (hopefully the last time I will be waking up at 7am for school), followed by – of course – more photoshoots. =P

McCormick graduates! (and you can tell that our robes are actually purple) [Photo: Slu]

Graduates + parents. (My dad never failed to mention how much more colorful the parents were compared to the graduates; boo those purple robes).

And finally...

Yay, family. =)

And then, everyone inevitably starts dispersing. It was sad saying farewell to many, especially my brother & Hsin-I as well as JBK and Slu since I'm not sure when I'll see them next. All the same, it's definitely been a very enjoyable time hanging out with all. I'll definitely cherish all the moments, talks, laughters, and other little sweet things. =)

Oh! I also dragged my family (minus mommy dearest who waited in the car for us) to the rocks one last time before they left. =P

I also had my parents bring my sunflower home. Yay, it'll finally have a proper home in the outdoors! Progression of growth (I think it was planted 05/10/2010):

05/31/2010

06/07/2010

06/11/2010

06/20/2010

Dare I say I'm done with undergrad?

[edit] Just found this unfinished entry – probably from the end of last week:

School life = bane of ____? Actually I'm not sure. It's basically been busy, what with two group presentations this past week as well as one more group project and four finals for the coming week. All the while, I'm still trying to enjoy life once in awhile! That reminds me: I had some silly milestones within the past month, which included walking home barefoot from Annenberg [at least it was sunny warm, so the pavement actually warmed my feet quite nicely], watching 3 movies back-to-back ["Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Lilo & Stitch" (or at least what I could see of it with people flooding Helen's place for Chang's birthday =P), and "Departures"], wearing shorts outside [albeit they were Grace's; and quite comfy], growing a generally-grown-outdoors sunflower to a height of 1.5ft (and still going strong and tall!), ... I think there were more, but I didn't write them down at the time ... [/edit]

It's a Pythagorean triple today!

In other news, my T60 has officially decided to retire itself. That being said, I'm not sure when I'll next be able to update... sad! (Said another way, I need to look for/buy another computer [no macs please]; there goes my was-already-out-of-reach dream of buying a DSLR. =P)

But to finish off this entry happily, some Grad Night pics from Joy's camera!

Senior girls who started NU in Shepard. [Photo: Joy Lee]

The NU Life Groups, 2009-2010:

Redeemed, S Campus. It's always a nightmare trying to tag all of them.[Photo: Joy Lee]

Ohm, N Campus. The most orderly of the life groups here: girls in front, boys in back. [Photo: Joy Lee]

Tetris, N Campus. Eh, yeah, we're a bit disorderly. =P (Why are we all shades of white->black or purple=blue+red?) [Photo: ?]

One more day, and I'm officially done with undergrad @ NU. Mental.

And then... dear senior friends (and non-senior friends), let's play and have some fun! =)