November 29, 2003

Another update on my grandfather.

He is talking, quite a lot now, but it appears his mind isn't quite caught up yet. God, please bless him through these tough times, and help him to find peace in his heart.

Grandfather's mind is basically gone. At times, he is perfectly normal, but at other times, he is all over the board. My mom said that he woke up one point and tried to "escape". He came up this conspiracy theory of how the japanese had tricked us all and were poisoning the food, and that is why this was happening. He kept trying to get out of his bed and make a run for it, but of course they wouldn't let him since he's connected to all kinds of tubes. He started to yell out, try to warn my mom of the danger. Eventually the nurses had to strap him down.

Grampa served in the army as all kids had to go through it, but when the war came they fled to Taiwan. The stories I've heard from my parents, about what the Japanese people did to the Chinese, are far more horrific than anything I've seen or heard about in the holocaust. I guess during that time Grampa must have had many vivid memories, and lost many friends. I really never thought much about this until just now.

However, the mind is "out there" somewhere and I pray that it comes back to us. Grampa always had important advice to dish out, both to me, and my parents. He didn't say much but when he did, it was either very funny (like to tell us he had farted) or something very sensible or appropriate for that particular time.

I guess in one sense it's encouraging, that the strength in his arms and legs have returned.

November 28, 2003

I have some good news on my grandfather.

Praise God! He was able to communicate yesterday, mumbling that he had to go to the bathroom to the nurse and then to my mother. My mom was overjoyed! His speech is slurred, but it's better than nothing! Thanks for your prayers!

They did the MRI already and are trying to determine what caused this, and whether or not it was even a stroke. He is staying in the hospital for the next few days while they perform tests and analysis'. Gramma is doing fine; at first she, being very strong-willed and stubborn thought Grampa was just being silly and was yelling at him, but when the paramedics arrived, she became very quiet and probably finally realized how serious this was. She was bedside with him from Wednesday night until yesterday evening, constanty speaking to him, trying to make him respond.

My mom told her that my brother and I were praying for him. I hope that some good will come of this tragic event.

Death must be so scary for people who think that once you die, there is nothing left.

November 27, 2003

I now have more information on my grandfather.

He is currently at the hospital and they are keeping him there for examinations and testing. He can move his hands, but he doesn't have the motor skills to be able to do anything with them. He can also move his legs, but doesn't have enough to be able to walk. He cannot speak. By brother said that when they try to speak to him, he just nods showing he can hear them, but when they wrote something to him in Chinese, it seemed like he didn't understand any of it.

They may put him through an MRI, because they are unsure if it is indeed a stroke. They performed 2 catscans, but were unable to find any symptoms of Stroke.

A few weeks ago he went in to check his prostate and they didn't find cancer. However, because of his prostate problems, they attempted to insert a tube in there to get the liquids out, but for some reason they couldn't insert it properly and he ended up just bleeding a lot.

My grandfather accepted Christ many years ago so on that note, praise God. My grandmother however never accepted. Thank you for your prayers, and please continue to pray, for my parents who stayed at the hospital with him overnight, my grandmother who must going through a nightmare right now, and of course for my grandfather.

November 26, 2003

Please pray for my grandfather.

I don't know how many people read this site, but those of you who do, please pray for my grandfather. He had a stroke tonight, and he is not doing well. He cannot walk, talk, possibly even hear. Thank God that it happened in the safe care of my parents. They took him to the hospital about 30 minutes ago.

Please pray for his health and that he doesn't suffer pain. Also pray for my grandmother. They are 85 and 84.

November 24, 2003

Today's devotion made the distinction between worshipping God for ourselves, and worshipping God for Him. I can't count the number of times I have come out of Sunday service, disappointed with the song selection or sheer "butchering" of certain songs. But after reading today's devotion, Day 8 of PDL, I realize how foolish my thoughts have been. We sing and we pray and we read, all for God. And to say that someone did it poorly is really not my call. God appreciates all forms of worship, regardless of its quality.

I guess in a sense when a song is butchered, I'm more disappointed because it isn't pleasing to my ears, and thus feel almost angered that a good sounding song was ruined. But in God's eyes, it's the effort and hard work that goes behind preparing, and playing/singing that song. All notes and tones uttered by His creations towards Him are awesome to Him.

Still.. sometimes it's like they didn't even practice the song..

November 21, 2003

I am making good progress with my devotions now, at the expense of not knowing what's going on in the world. I have been skipping out on reading the free Metro in the mornings to read my devotions on the subway before I go to work. This gives me a good 10 minutes to read it, spend another 10 minutes in prayer, and then depending on the speed of the train, another 20 minutes of napping. It's nice to be able to reflect. Sometimes it works out right so that I finish my prayer at around Rosedale, and sun shines on me as I open my eyes.

Today I spent the day at City Hall. I'm not sure why but my boss asked me to come to City Hall to work. They had a workstation set up for me to work there. I will be going there once or twice a week from now on. Anyway the reason they had this idea for me to go there is because I managed to crash the server while testing, and since I couldn't recreate that instance again, they want to keep a closer eye to my testing. The server is at City Hall, or, the guy doing deploying to the server works there.

Today's devotion talked about how this life is temporary. I knew all this but it really got me thinking about prioritizing things in my life. How I'm always laid back, and maybe this isn't the most ideal image I should be showing others, especially to my non-christian friends. On the one hand, I always felt that by not being worried or stressed, it shows the trust I have in God and the faith that I'll always be alright, no matter how bad things look. But on the other hand, it shows laziness and sort of a non-chalent 'who cares' attitude. Sure, the things that I come across in life are temporary and meaningless, but my actions will carry on to eternity. I should try to make the most of what I do, rather than just laying back and letting God do what He does.

~~

I've been giving some thought about this blog thing, what I can do with it, and whether or not it's worthwhile doing it. Maybe it's a complete waste of time. I was reading a friends' blog, and she was talking about "clicking". Of course as it turns out she was talking about relationships, and how a guy and a girl need to "click" for them to be right for eachother, and what her definition of "clicking" was. But before I read all that I thought the topic was about "clicking" in the sense that people are just a "click" away from eachother. Sometimes I feel like, I don't need to spend any time talking with a person, because I already know what's going on with them from reading their blog.

In that sense, this lifestyle of "clicking" is bad because it spreads us further apart. It's like the anti-fellowship.

Even when you think about it this way. When you see a long, long blog entry, do you just ignore it, or just scan through it because you don't want to waste your time? If that's the case, then it's almost as if, if I had approached you to talk to you about this, you would have shut me down, as if you didn't have time to hear what I had to say. I know for me, when I see a long blog entry, I skip over it too. I'll read the comments other people left them, to see if the entry was important or not.

This entry is fairly long. Let's see how many people actually read it and leave a comment.

November 19, 2003

A CORK radio station was running a competition - words that weren't in the dictionary yet could still be used in a sentence that would make logical sense. The prize was a trip to Bali.

DJ: "96FM here, what's your name?"
Caller: "Hi, my name's Dave."
DJ: "Dave, what's your word?"
Caller: "Goan... spelt G-O-A-N, pronounced 'go-an'."
DJ: "Hmm... You are correct, Dave, 'goan' is not in the dictionary. Now, for a trip to Bali: What sentence can you use that word in that would make sense?"
Caller: "Goan f**k yourself!"

The DJ cut the caller short and took other calls, all unsuccessful until:

DJ: "96FM, what's your name?"
Caller: "Hi, my name's Jeff."
DJ: "Jeff, what's your word?"
Caller: "Smee... spelt S-M-E-E, pronounced 'smee'."
DJ: "... You are correct Jeff, 'smee' is not in the dictionary. Now, for a trip to Bali: What sentence can you use that word in that would make sense?"

Caller: "Smee again! Goan f**k yourself!"
i find it odd reading my brother's blog. i never really noticed before but he's grown up a lot. i don't know if he's been that way all along, or that he's just started trusting in God a lot more since my family moved down to the States. Regardless, i'm thankful for that.

yesterday i joined the choir. as previously mentioned, i've not been part of a choir in about 7-8 years, and it's kind of daunting, my inability to read music. also of note, i've moved from singing bass to tenor. how could my voice be getting higher?

i'm going to my final wedding of the year this weekend. Stephen Tu and Laura Fung. I've known Stephen since around grade 10, but really got to know him through church as he came to accept Christ. he was the one who got me interested in the world of fantasy sports. since then he has grown so much in Christ, realizing his true calling in becoming as pastor. It's a great feeling i get whenever i look at the way God has molded many of my friends to turn towards Him and serve Him full time.

After about 2nd year when Steve stopped playing fantasy football, I lost touch with him. Probably my longest conversation with him since then was at Hypefest, a camping trip that my old church had amongst their college group, 3 years ago.

Laura, I have spoken to even less. I've known her since around grade 5ish, also through church. I remember she was the lone girl in sunday school for about 2-3 years. She attended the older groups' sunday school, which resulted her in getting teased a lot, because they were all boys. Despite us being the same age I attended the younger groups. My dad was teaching sunday school then; i didn't want to be taught by him so i purpose held myself back.. hehe

I had a crush on Laura in grade 10, she was just so very smart in our Electronics class. Of course, as a highschooler i had a new crush every other week. The last time I spoke to Laura was a few months ago when i happened to see her on the way from st. andrew station to Metro Hall. She was headed to school.

We used to tease Laura's little brother Howard. I'm not sure why though.. kids can be so cruel. I think it was the older kids, who used to tease Laura, they started picking on Howard, and I just followed along because I thought it was cool. Heck, I went along with anything as long as they weren't teasing me!

Oh yeah, both Laura and Stephen and I attended the same highschool. Earl Haig Secondary School.. arguably the best highschool in Toronto, if not Canada during those days.

the reason i mention all this is because my brother has grown up a lot as I was saying, and he reminds me a lot of Stephen back in those days. both were/are extremely intelligent, both have an excellent command of the english language both in speaking and writing, both began to truly grasp how much God loves them at around the same age. both are into sports, and both have had a number of girlfriends "so far".

It's interesting, thats all.

November 18, 2003

subways are down.. i can't get to the downtown area.. i can't get to work.. meeting this morning.. doh!

must .. find .. a way...

oh yeah, i'm going to join the english congregation choir. man i haven't been in a choir since highschool days, or even read music since then. i think it'll be fun!
yikes! i just realized that pocky thing was the first pink i've ever had on the site! ewww!!

The Purpose Driven Life has started up again, after some encouragement from my new small group, and the realization of how little discipline exists in my life. I am so reckless.. so disorganized.. well it's time to change that!

Day 3 talked about what drives my life, whether it is shame, or guilt, parents, gadgets, or God. God does drive most of my life, but there are still some loose ends here and there that I need to work on. I am lazy. I think it dates back to highschool when laziness was cool, so in turn I was lazy, and now I'm still lazy because I have enjoyed that lifestyle.

After 4th year one of my friends (drunk) made a speech at his birthday, and he went around the table thanking each person individually for how they impacted his life. When he came to me he mentioned something about movies (I downloaded a lot of movies in school) and he said that I taught him the true definition of being laidback and carefree.. Haha..

Everyone sees me as a laid back and happy type of person, a person without a care in the world. But deep inside, there's a lot of turmoil going on in Big B's little head (and heart).

Day 3 also talked about how we need to not worry about things that aren't important, and by reading this book we'll learn how to select what's important and what isn't, which will help to focus my life towards God's Purpose.

Wellz.. I gotta pay some bills before I go to work. ttyl!

November 17, 2003

November 13, 2003

interesting facts

In Toronto, the Number of Children at Home by Age 25 years and more, is 16.2%. This means 16.2% of the people still living with their parents, 16.2% are 25+. For my ward (23), the number rises to 17.7%, and in Scarborough, it's around 22%!

This means that one in 5 or 6 households they have full grown adult children still living with their parents!

Well, the fact is just about everyone I know at my age still lives with their parents and it shouldn't be that big of a surprise. Technically -- even I live "at home". The difference being that it was my parents who moved out, not me.

My mom is in town until Friday night, whereupon she'll fly back to Nevada, taking my grandparents with her.

I'll have the place all to myself, finally. Mixed emotions for this "momentus" occasion. The average non-christian would only dream of such an occasion, of having a massive condominium all to themselves, throwing wild parties and what not. But for me, this is place is far too large. Half of it I will never use.

Our Genesis fellowship at church booted us out because were too old, and we've started new small groups to get things going again. This time last week I had no idea which one to join, but upon reflecting and praying and talking to others, I am leaning towards taking the Worship one, which covers a book that studies how to worship God in our every day lives. The other choice would have been to join the small group that is covering the book I'm already reading, Purpose Driven Life.

Wow.. what a change in topic..

November 11, 2003

big surprise

My Rogers Cable tv -- is down again! Gosh, what a surprise! It doesn't get any better than this!

November 06, 2003

short!

Max Payne 2 seems awfully short. I played another 2 hours today and found myself in Part 3. I'm operating at about 85% now though, so that might have something to do with the speed at which I am playing it.

Yesterday morning, my grandmother barged into my bedroom to wake me up to go and pick up my mom from the airport, who was arriving last night. Boy was she embarrassed when I told her the ETA. Later on we talked and agreed they didn't have to come along to pick her up, since it was after dinner and they sleep pretty early.

When I got home from work, gramma didn't cook, saying we should go out to eat and then go pick my mom up. The flight arrives at 7:15pm, so I told her since they eat at 6pm, they should just eat now, and then we can go together, if they want to. Funny lady, Gramma stalled 30 minutes, and then came up to me told me it was too late to cook so we had to go out to eat!

I was cleaning the house of course, this whole time. The kitchen was a mess. It looks like someone spilled pudding, and instead of wiping it up, they just walked on it and smeared it all over the kitchen floor. Yeah I know, I should have noticed this earlier, but I've been avoiding the kitchen the last week or so because their rice and food stinks so bad.

Anyway, I told her to better start cooking or grampa will start complaining that he's hungry. So reluctantly she went to cook, fuming.

Grampa didn't want to go to the airport, he told me that. But 5 minutes later he came back all dressed up to go. He told me gramma wants to go and wants him to go too.

Gosh sometimes I think she is the meanest person in the world to grampa. Here he is, with a two bum knees, a person who takes 10 steps and has to sit down because of the pain, and his wife is dragging him out to a place he doesn't want to go. And this happens all the time! Everyday in fact, he gets dragged outside because she wants to have lunch outside, and to have her lobster.

Insanity I tell you. Insanity. Maybe it's to do with the women inequality. All those years of him leading the family and making all the decisions, and how that he's become more helpless, she takes over, making him pay for all those years.

Anyway, we went, and then afterwards we went back home, dropped them off, and mom and I went to have some dinner.

November 05, 2003

upgrade!

This week I upgraded my computer up to a 2.6 GHz P4. It's nice.. but there's still a ton of problems with it. I think there's an issue with my video card which I can't figure out, but I'm sure it'll get done eventually.

I got my own copy of XP off of eBay. The disc looks fantastic, with cool holographic images all over it!

Also yesterday I finally bought the Coldplay CD. This is a long time coming as I'd been listening to a few of the tracks on mp3. The price was only $9.99! So you see, there is SOME good in pirating music -- it forced them to bring the prices down. It was insane at one point, spending more than $20 for CDs. What they really should do is make it so that they are $10 after tax. I would buy so many more cd's at that price.

I also got Max Payne 2. So far, I've played that game about 3 hours. Starting at 11pm last night til 2am I played, and I'm on Part 2 already. I haven't played games like this in a while and I really sucked in the beginning. I'm probably playing at about 60% efficiency of how good I was a couple years ago at these First Person Shooters. It's either that my mind is slower now and I have slow reflexes, or the computer AI is way better. I'm thinking it's a little bit of both. Seriously, sometimes when i turn a corner the enemy will get a shot off at me before i shoot. It's kind of embarrassing..