Various pople have written how they get annoyed at people who vote for Bush just because he's "Christian". Which is perfectly valid. Especially since both candidates profess to be believers. What worries me is the thinking behind that sentiment. No one's voting for Bush because he's Christian, to think that is missing the point. Fundamentalists are voting for him because he seems to display more Christian values in his policy in regards to particular social issues. You can quibble with whether this is accurate or not. What worries me is that people - Christians - don't even seem to think this matters.

What I mean is the attitude that Kerry might not display the moral values in regards to policy that certain Christians would like to see, but that doesn't even matter. All that matters is politics. And that bothers me. Partly because it's a reflection of this pervasive idea in modern society that compartmentalization of roles is OK, that character has no bearing on anything as long as someone is effective. So like we should not even care about Clinton's private life because that's completely distinct from his public effectiveness. I think Clinton was a fantastic politician. I also think he had rotten character. And sometimes I feel like the last person on earth not cynical enough to believe that character actually matters in leadership, not just effectiveness.

Actually, I used to be on the other side about this, I've written a lot on this page about how I think policy wise Christians should only have in mind what might facilitate the spreading of the Gospel. So basically, don't worry so much about making laws reflect Christian values and worry more about saving souls. My thinking's kind of changed a bit based on reading some Christianity Today articles and talking to Henry. I now kind of think that morality does matter, that God gave man moral standards not just because it involved eternal life but because it makes life better, and that the more we deviate from that standard, the worse society gets. So Christians should very much care about moral issues.

Basically, all I'm saying is, and it's just my current thinking on the topic, it might change, but yeah, I think Christians should care about moral issues when it comes to politics, and the attitude that it's irrelevant with this election troubles me. You can't just dismiss people who vote for Bush because he's Christian. That's not what they're doing. You have to examine the candidates' moral values. I think they matter.

That said, it's an open question which most displays Christian values. Andy Crouch wrote this column in the most recent Christianity Today that I resonated with. He basically says that Biblically, justice and righteousness always go together, very frequently in a political context, and neither is complete without the other. Totally oversimplifying things, today, Democrats better demonstrate justice, and Republicans better demonstrate righteousness. So which to choose? I have no clue.

I have this fundamental tension in regards to the voice I use on this page.

One thing I really hate is fake Christianese. When people always use the "correct" Christian language, say the right Christian thing, don't show any evidence of weakness or sinfulness. So you know, always saying stuff like "God is so good!!!" blah blah blah blah. I have no idea why it bothers me so much. Maybe the cynical part of me thinks it's fake. The even more cynical part of me thinks it's meant to make people feel good by making themselves better than everyone else. Basically bragging about their Christianity.

So for me, it's really important to keep things real when I write, that is, reveal my warts, weaknesses and all. I just feel that raw honesty is more encouraging than fake Christianese.

The thing is, I think I overdo it. Like, any time I talk about anything God is doing in my life at all, I want to temper it with weakness. Like, I mentioned how I'm going through My Utmost For His Highest a while back. I really wanted to mention also how I'm 3 months behind. Why? To keep it "real".

And therein lies the tension. I have an insane need to keep things "real". But I focus on weakness and imperfection so much that I'm sapping the power out of Christianity, I make life with Christ seem no different than any other meaningless powerless non Christian life. That's it's filled with exactly the same struggles, issues and uncertainties.

And that's far from the case. For all my weaknesses and foibles, my life is different because I have Christ. There's an underlying hope, joy, and peace behind everything I do. It is markedly different from a life without Christ. And I dunno if that feeling gets out when I write. I fear all that comes across is I don't know this, I can't do that.

So how do I keep it real and honest while at the same time honoring the life in Christ within me? Not sure. But I think I've been doing too much honesting and not enough honoring.

I'm about the worst phone person in the world. I've been trying to call Vanderpool for literally months now. Why is it so hard for me to find time to make a simple phone call? No clue.

How much of food is really about taste and how much of it is about other things? I guess I'm talking mostly about cost. A lot of times, price is only loosely related to taste. I was reading this article about lobster and New England, and there was a time when lobster was so plentiful it was a working man's food, cheap sustenance. Now, in relation, it's way more expensive, and definitely not workingman's cuisine. It didn't change the way it tasted, didn't suddenly taste better over the years, it just got more rare and based solely on that, its status changed.

Same thing in Japan with whale. Was a time, whale was a cheapo snack. Now, it's an expensive delicacy. For reasons that have nothing to do with taste.

When I was in Korea, I was reading about rice and there was something similar with that. White rice used to be upperclass food. The peasants ate barley or something like that. Now, it's not exactly the opposite, but yeah, if you're poor you just eat white rice, and the more well to do eat the more expensive healthy stuff like barley bap, something like that.

Anyway, yeah, cuisine is weird like that. Its value is based on rarity, not taste, and that kind of makes sense, but kind of not. Personally I like to spend money on food strictly in accordance with taste. But maybe that's impossible to do.

More pimping.

You know in the Olympic medal count, when a country medals in a team event, do they count each person on the team getting a medal or just one medal for the whole team? I've never figured it out, and both ways seem unfair.

When I first started reading the newspaper as a kid, the first (only) section I read was the comics. Later, the first section I read was sports. Now, the first things I read are the Fry's ads. Thus marks my personal development.

I found out the hills next to our work campus are actually piles of garbage, on which grass has grown. This explains why on hot days (most of the past month) there's a strange odor in the air. I had thought it was from being near the water (there's water visible from campus also, no clue what body it is) but it's really garbage. Disturbing.

Speaking of the grass, they've been doing something interesting recently in the Bay Area. They like to keep the grass on the hills short to minimize the fire hazard, and instead of cutting it, they use goats. It's better for the environment, goats eat anything, and they eat plants to ground level but leave the roots and can "mow" areas with lots of pipes and wells and stuff which are difficult for mowers. So yeah, for a few weeks there were goats on the hills by work. Interesting? I dunno.

I know it's hard to be objective about things like this, but objectively speaking, my niece is the cutest baby in the entire world. Someone has to be the cutest baby. She's the one.

So I've been using Yahoo Messenger a bit more than AIM these days, mostly because it has Launchcast radio built in, and I've been listening to a lot of worship music. I think I've heard all of John Tesh's worship album, and all I can say is, the man must be stopped. Yike.

Also, when did the pronunciation of Hallelujah switch from halleluyah to halleluyuh? I know no Hebrew so maybe the second is more correct, but it sounds bizarre to me.

So one thing that bothers me is when the style of worship songs is in total contrast to what the lyrics are saying. With things like the Counting Crows cover of Big Yellow Taxi where they completely misunderstand the song, whatever, who cares. But a lot of why we study theology is supposedly for right worship, so you'd think with worship songs stuff like that matters more.

So like, I hate the Philips, Craig and Dean version of Let My Words Be Few (produced by Nathan Nockels, I think). The whole point of the song is that God is so awesome and beyond our understanding that all we can do is stand in awe and speak simply that we love Him. So in keeping with the title and message, the original recording is super sparse, just acoustic guitar and vocals, maybe a little percussion, can't remember. But simple and sparse.

The PCD version then goes out, takes this song and slickly produces it with layers of vocals and instrumentation. Hello? Are you paying attention to the lyrics you're singing at all? How on earth does your music and the lyrics go together? Cuckoo.

I dislike the SonicFlood version of In The Secret also. The lyrics talk about being in the secret, quiet place, of stillness. The song is hardly any of those things, it's kind of loud and obnoxious. But the original version is kinda odd also, so whatever.

Of course, I regularly sing lyrics like "as I stand" while sitting down, "on bended knee" while standing, "I lift my hands" with my arms firmly at my side, and "like we're dancing now" while standing stiff as a board so what do I know.

I drove past a runover skunk this morning and since then I've been smelling faintly of skunk, but I can't figure out where the smell is coming from nor can I get rid of it. It's driving me crazy. ARGH!

Just got back from the O.C. last night, going to Telluride this afternoon. I'm totally exhausted. I have no idea how consultants / people like Henry do it. Travel is hard.

My dad wrote something interesting recently. He was commenting on people who complain about Christians who seem to pray only for their needs and aren't concerned about society or the world. His claim is that people who make these comments are often at heart unloving people. They talk about loving society because it's easier to do that than love your neighbor - society is abstract, your neighbor is real. They sound noble, but in reality, they're far from it.

As I grow in self-realization I'm finding that's true in my own life. Lots of times, when I judge other people for not doing something or doing something the wrong way, it's really just a cover-up for an area in which I'm lacking.

I liked 13 Going On 30 way more than I should have. Objectively, it's pretty bad. But I still liked it. I dunno, I'm a Jennifer Garner fan. I just can't help it.

Couple quick food notes.

We discovered this New York style pizza place called Giovanni's on Lawrence near 101. It's pretty good. Not as good as Amici's but not bad. I like Chicago style, but I think New York style goes better with the lighter ingredients Jieun and I sometimes like. Pizza Chicago has the Air Jordan but it doesn't quite work, it's still a pretty heavy pizza. A New York style Margherita is very light and nice. It being close, we'll probably go again.

Thanks be to God, a Marble Slab Creamery opened in Sunnyvale next to the Borders. Another one of those frozen slab, ice cream with mix-ins place like Cold Stone, the main difference being, Marble Slab is actually good. I have no idea which chain came first, but I first had Marble Slab in Houston summer of 93. I'm gonna say Paul Jung took me there. Loved it. There's another chain Amy's that came to Houston a few years later that does the same thing that a lot of Texas people like and it's also pretty good.

So anyway, when I heard Cold Stone, with a similar concept, was opening in the Bay Area, I was excited. But I'm sorry, it's disgusting. Bad goopy ice cream. I've gone 3 times and been angry every time. We went to new Marble Slab with Henry to celebrate his birthday and yeah, much much better. The quality of the ice cream is much better, the marble slab is colder so it stays frozen, I even think they mix in the mix-ins better. I hate Cold Stone. I love Marble Slab. I feel very strongly about this.

So one thing about me is that I generally prefer eating at the restaurant as opposed to taking out. Jieun likes takeout because it's more comfortable and less tiring to eat at home. Arthur likes takeout at least partly I think because then you don't have to pay tip, a mentality I appreciate a lot. But still, I prefer eating there, even with the tip, because the food tastes a lot better to me. I've had the garlic chicken from Versailles at the restaurant and takeout, and it's just way better there. You need the chicken to soak in the sauce on the plate, the styrofoam just doesn't do it. Eating at Pizza Chicago is great. Taking it home is just disappointing.

I enjoyed the sermon at Roger and Sherrene's wedding. SN. It's interesting to me that almost all Indians in America give their kids Indian names, that most Koreans in America give their kids boring English names, and that many Chinese in America use interesting names. Sherrene, Rilene, Spencer, Eli, Elbert, Irving, Irwin, Swan. I dunno, Koreans generally don't give names like that. Dunno why.

Anyway, the sermon was short and simple but good, I think. He talked about the characteristics of love in 1 Cor. 13, which is frequently used in wedding sermons as being keys to good marriages. He then talked about the fruit of the Spirit (SN. Arthur mentioned it to me years ago, and I've never forgotten, but yeah, it's fruit of the Spirit, not fruits.) and how it's very similar to those characteristics of love. So he makes the point that a key to a good Christian marriage is being filled with the Holy Spirit. Simple, but deep.

Meetings are the bane of my existence.

I've been reading a lot recently, relatively speaking. Unfortunately, aside from Leslie's theological notes, it's all fluff.

Angels Flight (Detective Harry Bosch Mysteries) By Michael Connelly

I have this awful problem of being unable to not read something. Like every issue of Newsweek, I have to at least skim through every article. Sometimes I have to sit down and commit a few hours to catching up on missed articles. I have no idea why I'm like this, but it's absolutely exhausting. Anyway, PJung gave me this book to read a long time ago and I've had it since and I never got rid of it just because I can't stand the idea of giving away a book I haven't read. It's absurd. I had no interest in the book at all, but I had to keep it to read. So I finally said I'm tired of having this book around, I'm just gonna read it. It was all right, not great, the ending was kinda weak, but whatever, I'm done with this book.

Rurouni Kenshin By Nobuhiro Watsuki

As you may or may not know, they've been releasing the Rurouni Kenshin manga in English. Interestingly, they read from right to left as in Asia, probably because flipping it would mess up a lot of the graphics, like the kanji on Sano's back. Anyway, I bought the first 5 and have been reading them and I was reminded what a great story it is. Differences between the cartoon are interesting also. Hmm, probably most people dunno what Kenshin is, but yeah, it's this anime about this swordsman. I've only loved 2 anime series in my life, one of them not even real anime, those being Robotech and Rurouni Kenshin; both of them have deeply affected my life. I'm not even joking, Rurouni Kenshin is beneficial for your Christian walk. Everyone should see it, it's really good. Like one vacation I brought the DVDs home to Houston to watch and my dad got so hooked he watched all the season 1 episodes twice, once with dubbing, once with subtitles. Don't watch with the English dubbing, by the way. It sucks. Anyway, lemme know if you wanna watch, I'd like to watch them all again. Stop watching those bad Korean dramas with incestuous themes and watch the good stuffs.

Spider-Man By Stan Lee / Steve Ditko

I got my hands on ecopies of all the Spider-Man comics and they're fascinating reads. I always thought of Spider-Man as a modern superhero, what with his compartmentalized identities, guilt and angst, and everyday concerns. But the comic came out in the 60s, so reading it's weird, it's a time warp, what I consider a modern character in a faraway time. There are regular references to the draft, Kruschev and Mao Tse-Tung. And weirdo 60s talk, like they call everyone "Dad". Anyway, it's a good comic, although I forgot how absurd comics are, like, aliens figure in regularly in the plot and no one ever thinks anything of it. "Oh, these are aliens who came to takeover Earth. I should have known." Not like the grown-up mentality of comics today, which are absurd in a different way. But yeah, with this and like X-Men, it was interesting to me how all the main themes were established really early on in the series, decades ago. I guess certain ideas are relatively timeless.

BORING

I've been watching a little too much Olympics, I think. The other night I was watching Men's Walking on Telemundo, in Spanish. There's something very wrong with that.

The other thing I don't like about gymnastics is, aside from super obvious errors, it's nearly impossible for laymen to tell how well someone did. Not just laymen. The NBC commentator frequently defers to the experts after a routine and asks "How did (s)he do?" That's absurd. Only experts can even have a clue how well they did. That's just not interesting to me, watching a "sport" where the result is a complete mystery.

From Sam's page: New Zealand player gets in Yao Ming's face and gets pushed down. Don't mess with the 7 foot Asian. Good times.

I've said before my extended family is interesting, right? On Saturday I was in a room with 10 Chais. 6 were born Chais, 4 married into Chais. 2 are a generation above my father (1 Korean, 1 Caucasian), 6 my father's generation (3 Korean, 1 Caucasian, 2 half), 2 my generation (me and Jieun). OK, maybe that's not interesting. I dunno.

For the life of me, I cannot get into women's gymnastics. I really tried. But that and figure skating, I end up just wanting to see people mess up - not get hurt, but mess up - and then I feel evil. I think with sports I value athleticism, and any "sport" that involves makeup or costumes bothers me. Plus there's something creepy about women gymnasts, with their buff miniature bodies and voices. I dunno.

I feel like I am only now, at the age of 28, learning some very basic truths about life, stuff I should have known for decades. I was telling this to my mom when she came out this weekend. But like, one truth is, if you want something in life, you have to do something to make it happen, maybe even fight for it. It's not just gonna come to you.

I honestly didn't know that. Reason being, I dunno, for a long time when I was growing up, my mom made everything happen. I only had to do well with what was given to me. But in terms of pursuing things, I never had to do that because my mom did it for me. I placed in the talent show in 4th grade because my mom made me enter and told me exactly what to play. I went to Bell because my mom made me. Got an apparently hard to get lab job summer after high school thanks to her. She basically took care of everything.

So my thinking for a long time has been, do what you do well, and things will just fall into place, things will happen for you, things you want will come to you. It's hopelessly naive. At least with work. Things will not happen unless you do something to make them happen, and that's something I'm just now, in the past couple years, learning.

It's easy to blame my mom for making me this way, but that's lame. Literally everything in life you can ultimately blame on something else, what someone did to you or how you are, your genetics. (SN. This gets into something I've been wanting to write about for a while. But it's weird to me how modern science basically denies free will. Whether you believe in nature or nurture, genetics or environment, either way, science tells you the way you are is beyond your control. In the courtroom and in their hearts, people use this to deny personal responsibility, blaming how they were raised, some childhood experience, or their DNA for who they are. Nothing is ever anyone's "fault." But that's a topic for another time.)

So yeah, I can blame everything about how I am on something or other, but at some point, as My Utmost constantly says, I have to draw a line and take responsibility for who I am. My mom raised me the best she could. I am who I am, and where I go from here is entirely up to me. And it's time for me to start doing things to make stuff happen in my life. It's just a little sad that it took 28 years for me to realize this. Isn't this something people should know in like 3rd grade? I dunno, better late than never I guess.

I made a startling discovery last night talking to people at LTG. Most people wear their shirts more than once before washing them. I never knew that, don't do it myself. After I've worn a shirt once, it goes straight to the laundry. I had no clue that people did differently.

Reason I do that though is I wear my shirts for a full 24 hour period, I wear the same shirt I've worn during the day to bed, and after that long, it just doesn't seem right to wear it again, it's due for a cleaning. I'm gonna try wearing pajama tops or something to bed, and wearing shirts multiple times between washings. This could seriously change my life.

Dunno why I never thought about that. I don't do that with pants, I guess since I don't wear them to bed, but I wear the same pants over again between washings. But not underwear. Or socks. Although there was a person there last night who didn't wash her socks. Different strokes.

One Friday night a few months ago around 1:30 AM, I start reading the DaVinci Code. I don't stop. I read it straight through until Saturday 7:30 AM. Totally exhausting, but yeah, it's a pretty good page-turner. Vaguely Michael Crichton-esque, in terms of the research and how the smart people in the book snootily share their knowledge. It's pretty good.

And fairly heretical. But whatever, it doesn't take a lot of research to find out the book's inaccuracies.

It did remind me of something that bothers me about this relativist post-modern age we live in. And that's the thought that every idea has equal merit. Doesn't matter what belief system you have, they're all equally valid. It's an absurd idea. If a belief system goes around insisting that 2=5, it's obviously, practically, empirically false, so it can't be equally valid with a system that matches reality. Different systems may each have a bit of truth in them, but that doesn't make them equally valid.

Anyway, when you read modern scholars getting all excited about the discovery of ancient Gnostic texts, they tend to have that common presupposition, that all alternative beliefs are equally valid. The Davinci Code goes ridiculously further, saying that *only* the Gnostic beliefs are true, and historical Christianity is all built on falsehood.

I dunno, that makes me angry. There have always been competing ideas within (and without) Christianity. Always will be. Some would have you believe that the ideas that won out succeeded just as a mistake of history, they were no more (or definitely less, according to Davinci Code) true than the ideas that lost.

I dunno, I happen to believe that there's power in truth. Truth lends endurance to ideas. Ideas that last for a long time may or may not be true. But known ideas that don't last, I think that says something about how true they are. There's a certain power in truth.

Anyway, yeah, I worry about people who take the DaVinci Code too seriously. Like I heard Ricky Williams wanted to talk about its claims with his agent? Cuckoo. I dunno, it's a Michael Crichton novel. Entertaining. But about as "true" as Jurassic Park.

In some ways I regret going to Stanford. No, regret is the wrong word. It's more, I struggle with certain things because I went there. Like, I've been struggling a bit with a sense of entitlement in a worldly sense. I see people all around me achieving worldly success and wealth, and I think, hey, I deserve that. Why do I deserve that? I don't deserve anything. But when that's what everyone around you cares about, it's hard not to be affected. I dunno, it's destroying my soul.

I imagine it must be even harder for doctors or lawyers or people who actually work hard. You can go into something with the purest of intentions, but when it involves a lot of hard work and sacrifice, somewhere along the line, it must be hard not to start feeling that you're entitled to things for yourself, that you deserve a little something for what you've done. Or maybe it's not hard, I dunno, maybe it would just be me.

At any rate, like I mentioned before, that Matt Redman song Breathing The Breath has been really speaking to me, and this is a big reason why. Just a reminder that everything we have is God's. We don't give anything to Him, we give back to Him. I've been getting caught up in getting what I "deserve" and I needed that reminder. Anyway, lyrics:

Breathing The Breath

Matt Redman

We have nothing to give
That didn't first come from Your hands
We have nothing to offer You
Which You did not provide
Every good, perfect gift comes from
Your kind and gracious heart
And all we do is give back to You
What always has been Yours

Lord, we're breathing the breath
That You gave us to breathe
To worship You, to worship You
And we're singing these songs
With the very same breath
To worship You, to worship You

Who has given to You
That it should be paid back to him?
Who has given to You
As if You needed anything?
From You, and to You, and through You
Come all things, O Lord
And all we do is give back to You
What always has been Yours

We are breathing the breath
That You gave us to breathe

Good stuffs.

Bob Hope Airport in Burbank is perhaps the most ghetto airport I've been to in the U.S. The baggage claim is outdoors. What on earth.

There are two things I actually like a lot about L.A. One is the food. It's the best place I think for the Chili's type price range. Oddly, most people say the Bay Area is way better for high end restaurants; friends that have moved down are shocked at how few good ones there are there. But like, that cheap to medium range, it's great. Minho took me to Thai BBQ and Versailles and I loved it. Nothing like that for that price up here. Jieun's made me a fan of Corner Place. In general, I love the Korean food down there. So yeah, good food.

Also the people. Dave said this before, but it's true, whatever we may say about "L.A. people", when it comes down to it, the people I actually know well I really like a lot, pretty much without exception. So yeah, spending time with people there is always a blessing.

But I still can't get over how insular L.A. seems. Like, a lot of weddings we've been to there, they don't have like out of town guest information or special hotel rates or anything. It's pointless, because virtually everyone coming is from SoCal. We went to one this weekend and people made a big deal about how we came such a far far way. Uh, it's a 1 hour flight. I dunno, it's just odd.

I've been getting odd "compliments" recently. We saw Karen's mom in Korea and she says that I "look OK... now." We ran into Gloria and Ed and she says that nowadays I don't look as nerdy as I used to. Uh, thanks?

A conversation I had with Jieun recently:

Jieun: I just talked with Karen.

Me: Oh?

Jieun: Yeah. We talked about deep stuff, instead of the superficial things we sometimes talk about.

Me: What did you talk about?

Jieun: Shopping.

And she meant it. That's my wife.

I've said before how I'm always behind the times, right? Anyway, I recently read the first three Harry Potter books. I'm sticking with my plan of not reading the books until watching the corresponding movies. I do believe I get more enjoyment that way. I enjoy the movie way more than people who read the books first, and I still enjoy the book. So that's my plan.

The movies I would rank (from best to worst) 2-1-3. The books I would rank 3-2-1. I pretty much completely agree with Ebert's reviews of the 3 movies. I totally loved the first two movies. Having had no exposure to the stories I found them endlessly imaginative and entertaining. The third one was well crafted, but it just didn't have that sense of wonder to me that the first two had. The way he used landscapes and the way they dressed, I almost got the feeling like the director wanted a more realistic Harry Potter, if such a thing is possible. And it felt more plot driven without the tons of little side touches that made the first two movies wonder filled. But the plot isn't the point.

I heard this commentary on Out of Sight once, dunno if you saw it, it's this Steven Soderbergh adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel. Tons of Leonard novels have been made into films, and they almost all suck, two big exceptions being Out of Sight and Get Shorty, both of which I like a lot. The screenwriter I think of both, Scott Frank, had this interesting insight. The problem with the other adaptations is that they focused on the plots, changed the dialogue and stuff. But that misses the point of Leonard. What makes his writing great is his ear for dialogue and mood. So Frank's tack was to keep those things, which distinguish Leonard's writing, and be a little more flexible with the story. And I think it worked on both movies, they both "got" Leonard.

I personally think the same is true for Harry Potter, at least for me with the first 3 movies, 2 books. The plot is important and all, but it's not the main point. What sets HP apart is the imagination and sense of wonder. First two movies have that for me, third doesn't. Watching the third movie, I felt like they ditched some of the imagination for the sake of the "story".

So when I read the third book, I was really surprised, because it turns out the movie actually did change around the story quite a bit. So they weren't being slaves to plot. And when I think back, they didn't ditch a lot of the side stuff that makes the stories wonderfilled. So I have no idea why I didn't connect with the movie. It just felt like it was trying to be gritty, not wonderish. Anyway.

From someone who watched the movies first, I thought the first two movies were fantastic and I think they did a really good job with the story. Things are deeper in the books, but the movies were clear enough as to what was going on, which is fairly amazing. I dunno, I'm a big fan. Third movie also, storywise at least, I always knew what was going on, that part wasn't confusing.

My worry is that the books are all essentially the same. Harry hates his Muggle guardians, goes to Hogwarts, someone people think is bad ends up being good, Harry learns a little more about himself. Which further leads me to believe the plot is, while important, not the main point. I dunno, I'll find out in the next few years I guess.

Dave's right about Henry. We had this one convo at night and Henry's solution to everything is, the world needs Jesus. It's like he wants to be John or something. What happened to this guy? Too bad he's a flaming racist. I'm pretty sure "Negro" isn't an acceptable term anymore, Henry. Not to mention your other terms.

It's hard sometimes to combat lies in your head, even when you know they're lies.

I've heard it said that the mark of a good leader isn't how well a group does when he/she is around, but how well it does when the leader leaves. If it continues to do well, the leader's properly done his/her job of training and preparing. And that's an (the?) important role of a leader.

Jieun once overslept and the principal had to cover for her. She wrote about this on her thoughts page, but she never shared the good part. What happened was, the class came together and realized Jieun's not there, so they went about their normal morning class routine and sent one student to the principal's office. The person covering was impressed at how well trained all the kids were. The fact that Jieun overslept was obviously bad, but how well the class functioned in her absence reflected very well on her.

So I guess I should feel good that people/groups thrive when they're out of my influence. What I'm struggling with is the feeling that they do *so* much better when they're freed from me. That everyone does better without me. It's not true, but yeah, I've just been feeling a bit down.

What's helping me get out of it is a new song I'm ecstatic about, Breathing The Breath, off of Matt Redman's newest CD. (SN. Have you noticed how we don't call them albums anymore, but CDs? When did that become commonplace?) One of those songs I can (and did) listen to on repeat for hours at a time. It's got tons of elements I love - incredible lyrics I myself could not write with a thousand years of practice, beautiful piano, and an awesome extended part in 7/8, very Sting-esque. Famous One has one measure with 5 beats, but this is the first worship song I'm aware of that has an extended section with an irregular meter. It's awesome, something I would write if I had an ounce of writing ability.

The last few worship songs I've had the ecstatic listen on repeat forever feeling about: Breathing The Breath, Matt Redman; We Are Hungry, Steve Fee; Not To Us, Chris Tomlin; Blessed Be The Name, Matt Redman; Surrender, Vineyard UK; Jesus' Generation, United Live. Not that anyone cares.

So people are saying this is legit, not positive, but it's zero risk so why not.

Saw urologist today, getting better, still not perfect. I've had to make an involuntary switch to boxers. But getting there.

Is guilt or regret inherently bad? I'm gonna say no. People act like it is. They say stuff like, I refuse to be guilty about who I am or I refuse to live with regret for anything I've done, there's a reason for it and whatever. Idea being, it's wrong to feel guilt or regret.

I dunno, I feel like guilt is like pain, they both serve a purpose, they show that something is wrong. And that's a good thing, a useful signal. If you don't have it at all, it's like having leprosy, you don't feel pain so you go around maiming yourself and not even knowing it. Like, isn't guilt somewhat a prerequisite for being Christian? You can't repent if you don't feel like there's something to repent for. You need some semblance of guilt or regret about who you are.

So yeah, like pain, guilt and regret are useful but bad if they don't go away is what I think. The Christian solution to guilt is Jesus. The world's solution is to reject the concept of guilt. Drugs, promiscuity, whatever. It's not the behavior that's wrong. It's the guilt.

I'm against that. Lingering guilt, guilt you can't control is bad, it's what Jesus came for. But guilt itself is good, shows you something's wrong, hopefully makes you do something about it, at the very least turn to Jesus. But you can't just ignore guilt and say nothing's wrong. Either deal with it or bring it to Jesus. Either way you have to figure out what it's signaling. That's my claim.

I don't get "authentic" foods. Or, I get it, but I don't care at all. Just give me what tastes good. What I really don't get is, when people dislike a place simply because it's not authentic, nothing to do with taste. Explain that to me. There's these arguments around here all the time about whether so and so Mexican restaurant is "authentic" Mexican. Who cares. Taste (and price) is all that matters to me.

Chicago was pretty good, except my flight there was delayed 2 hours and my flight back was delayed 2.5 hours. I arrived in Chicago at 3 AM, in SFO at 1:45 AM. Not good times. Bad times.

We spent a lot of time listening to Christian radio, which I haven't done in a long time, and it was weird. I'd say 50% of the songs on the Fish (some Chicago Xian station) were covers. Of those, about 2/3 were worship song covers. The weird thing is, we heard a bunch of covers of songs by secular artists done by Christians. Is this some new trend I don't know about? Some truly unexpected songs also. Like, I'd understand a cover of Kyrie Eleison. Or James Taylor's Shed A Little Light, even if it is kinda universalist. But Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time done by Nicole Nordeman? Random. I think I heard Every Breath You Take, can't remember.

The worst was a cover of Sting's If I Ever Lose My Faith. Not just musically, but come on, the song is heretical, unless you interpret the line lost my faith in the holy church as meaning organized religion and not God but even then, that's kinda contrary to Scripture. I dunno, whatever, I think it's a love song, not religious. Definitely not CCM material. I dunno, the CCM secular cover thing is a weird trend.

Anyway, does recasting a love song as a song to God/Jesus redeem the song? Or does it just show how vapid and empty most CCM is? These songs fit in because tons of CCM songs are just love songs with the occasional God and Jesus stuck in there. Actually, worship is like that sometimes too. I used to be against Draw Me Close because not only could it be a love song, it doesn't even have the perfunctory words "God" or "Jesus". But whatever.

*** Spider-Man 2 spoilers ***

I cried after he saves the train, when he's about to fall over and then a bunch of hands reach out and hold him, then pass him back and they enter into a circle of trust. I was dying.

I think it was the recognition that everything he did actually mattered to people, it made a difference, even if he didn't see it. None of us are superheroes, but I think we can all relate to that, trying to do our best, but not sure if what we're doing is really making a difference in the world, impacting people. Or at least I feel that way sometimes, a lot of times. The way that scene was constructed, the acknowledgement of what he's done, it killed me. It's pretty much the same reason I die at the end of It's A Wonderful Life. Finding out that he made a difference in all those lives, when he thought it was all in vain, something about that really moves me.

Pretty random I guess. I dunno.

A nifty little shortcut. In the Yahoo search bar, if you enter anything followed by an exclamation point, it takes you straight to that part of Yahoo. Meaning, "maps!" takes you to maps.yahoo.com, "mail!" takes you to mail.yahoo.com, same for yp, fantasysports, finance, whatever. I'm adding the search to jack.html. Not that anyone cares.

Hmm, I'm overhearing coworkers talk about a new "Chicago-style" pizza place (amidst comments that Pizzeria Uno in Chicago is not good) that's supposedly as good as Zachary's, I think they're talking about that new place next to the new Pasta Pomodoro (used to be Left on Albequerque) on Emerson in Palo Alto. I'm gonna have to have a looksee.

Since I have neither shame nor a proper sense of decorum, I guess I'll write about my injury. Uh, females and those of weak heart should probably not read this entry.

So Friday after a day of meetings our group goes Go-Kart racing at this place in Santa Clara. It's actually a lot of fun. You wear flame resistant body suits, helmets, the whole deal, and you go decently fast.

Anyway, on like the 4th race, I'm going, and I feel like someone's bumping me, not sure, so I turn my head around to check. I have no idea what I'm thinking. While my head is turned, I run full speed into the wall, which is a bunch of tires, so it's not like crashing into a real wall but still. What happens is, my body slams forward, since there's no seat belt, and I smash my private parts against the steering wheel. I immediately feel *insane* pain so I jump up howling. A guy runs over and he's about to push my car out so I can continue but I try to tell him I'm out, I'm done, but he's having trouble understanding me and I'm having trouble communicating because of my helmet so finally I just yell, frustrated, "I SMASHED MY BALLS" and he lets me go.

Uh, I think I'll spare the gory details but it involved a little bit of blood, bandages, and ice. I manage to get home, I was gonna go straight to the hospital but I wanted to shower first since I was drenched in sweat. Anyway, when the water hit the affected area, it hurt something fierce and I could not help but primally yell. Eeyouch. Jieun was talking to someone on the phone and I think I freaked them out but what could I do. I have no idea how to explain the pain to a non-male, I was trying to with Jieun, but how do you do it? It's like the part on your body that hurts most times two. Yeah, I'm sure childbirth is worse -- maybe -- but believe you me, it's not something you want to go through. Ever.

It's fairly embarrassing describing this injury to the checkin people, but they were all professional about it. The doctor who saw me was a woman. At first I asked how much longer the wait would be for a male, but it could have been considerable and I didn't want to wait that long. She also mentioned, many Ob-Gyns are males, which I suppose is true. Anyway, the exam was OK, I went in the next day to get an ultrasound (also adminstered by a woman, who is making small talk while running that thing around my privates, maybe it's just me but that's awkward) and the doctor who checks it tells me there's bruising but no permanent damage. He also tells me, unprompted, "This should not affect your ability to have children." Exactly what I wanted to know. Whew.

So I've been walking around like a bow-legged cowboy the past couple days. It hurts way less, but there's still pain, especially when I laugh or sneeze. Hopefully everything will turn out all right in the end. How was your weekend?

Another thing that's markedly different from last time is that they seem to be way more accepting of non-Korean speakers, even ethnic Korean ones. Before, taxi drivers yelled at me for not speaking Korean. Now, a lot of the taxis offer free English translation via phone. Friend says it's more common all over Seoul to see kyopos speaking in English so maybe they're more used to it now? I dunno.

So anyway, you know the Korean system, just like the Chinese system, all the paternal cousins have one of their two syllables in their name the same. You'd think that makes it easier to remember Jieun's cousins, but honestly, it's a nightmare. Keeping straight won vs. hwan vs. hwa, stuff like that. To these Western ears, insane. The other thing about my ears is, I can't pickup language cues in Korean, so I'm constantly laughing at stuff that's not supposed to be funny and people give me a strange look. The literal translation is funny in English, but it's quite the opposite in Korean. Not easy.

I'm really glad I switched jobs before going. Explaining what I did at my old place was fairly difficult even in English, forget Korean. Now, I just say the name and everyone recognizes it, no one asks more questions. A godsend.

Did I ever explain why I switched? Ted doesn't understand it, thinks it's just more of the same. What it is is this. My natural state is inertia. Sometimes inertia's good, if it's like sticktoitness, but when it means staying in the same bad situation, it's awful, because I just end up doing nothing about it. And I'm tired of that. So I decided, given my nature, if I know what I'm doing is not good, it's more important that I just do something, anything, different, instead of waiting to figure out the perfect thing to do. Because, again, given my nature, I'll end up waiting forever. Better to do something proactive about it then sit around forever and whine.

My dad has long said the reason for my inertia/laziness is because I'm a perfectionist. I won't do something unless I can do it perfectly and completely, and since that's rarely possible, I usually end up doing nothing. There's truth to that I think, and it's something I'm trying to actively combat in my life. So given the choice between doing nothing while figuring out what I'm supposed to do and doing something while figuring out what I'm supposed to do, I'll do the latter. And that's why I switched.

One thing that annoyed me when we went to East Asia was when people talked condescendingly about the people there being brainwashed. They probably are, it's just the condescension that bothered me. Please. We in the West are just as "brainwashed" by a different set of lies as they are. There's might be be a little more systematic and explicit, but to pretend we're not enslaved to cultural lies ourselves is both naive and arrogant.

Like, we're all brainwashed into thinking that independence is a good thing. It's OK, even good, to do your own thing, be your own person. I think Dave wrote about this before, but it's evident in our TV shows. In a lot of them, like Friends, Seinfeld, Cheers, the families are nowhere to be seen, and where they are, they're made fun of. As opposed to I think Asian shows where the family is always prominent. The implicit message is that family isn't that important, independence is good. Lots of things in our culture brainwash us into believing independence is a good thing.

And that's strictly anti-Bibical, I think. As our pastor has said, Scripture is all about willfull interdependence, both with God and others. That last part is significant. Our spirituality is not just about how we're doing with God; from the 10 Commandments to Jesus' most important commandment to everywhere else, fully half of what Scripture talks about as spiritual involves our relationship with other people. Independence isn't a value, it's a lie.

Why am I thinking about this? Oh yeah. So a friend of ours in Korea just had a baby we got to see and you know, it's hard raising a kid. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think a woman raising kids on her own (or just with her husband) is the natural state of things, the way it's supposed to be. I think it was meant to be a team effort, involving community, especially family. It's just absurdly difficult for someone to do it on their own, I have nothing but respect for that, because it's hard. And, I have no evidence to back this up, but my guess is for most of history, that's how things worked, child-raising was a team effort. I remember one philosopher we read in college (Locke?) suggesting that child rearing should be *solely* communal. Meaning, parents don't keep their own kids, all kids are raised by all the people, there's no exclusivity at all. Radical, a bit ridiculous, but with a kernel of insight, I think, as to what it takes to raise children.

Anyway, I think about that a lot with me and Jieun and what we'll do when we have kids. We have no immediate family around here, we'll essentially be alone in raising little Stone, and that strikes me as being a very bad thing. But I don't know what to do. I've actually looked a bit and there's nothing I could do in Houston, little in SoCal, and even if we went there, her dad doesn't live there and her mom is gone half the year. I personally would want Jieun's mom to live with us for a year but she's busy with her ministry so that's not gonna happen. I think we're just screwed.

Jieun's mom likes me but I can't get over the nagging suspicion that she's ever so slightly disappointed that I'm not as good looking as her own sons. One of the first times we went down to LA after we started dating, she meets us and says, "Let's go to the eyeglass store and afterwards we can go buy a back brace." Reference to my dorky glasses and bad posture. I love Korean moms' subtlety. They're all like that. The very first time I met Dave Park's mom like the second thing she says is, (in Korean) "Look David, he has bad posture too." Good times.

It does sound just like Batman. I thought that during the first movie also, so I guess it's just more of the same. Actually, I think you said the exact same thing when the first one came out. Also, random fact, John Williams includes a little tribute to Indiana Jones in one of the Harry Potter movies' music. And the guy that did the artwork in the credits, Alex Ross I think, is huge in the comics world. When he appeared at Lee's Comics, then on El Camino near 420 James, there was a line all the way down the block.

Some more on food.

Another cool Korean cafe thing is ones with couches. Like a table with two couches facing each other. Very comfy. Got pearl milk tea at one such place, the only bubble tea I've been able to find in the country. Weird thing is, they didn't offer just plain pearl milk tea, you have to get a flavor. I got taro and it was disgusting. Bland taro flavor with tiny hard tapioca pellets. Almost as bad as the soapy tasting bubble tea we had in Canada.

Last night we had a traditional royal Korean dinner. It was unlike any Korean food I've ever had. That's not particularly a positive thing, it wasn't really good, just different. Much better was tonight, we had Pizza Hut. The toppings were normal with the addition of a ring of chestnut paste near the crust. Shockingly delicious. The chestnut pie at Starbucks is also very good, as is the green tea Frappucino.

I dunno, I still don't think there's such thing as gourmet Korean food. Or whatever's supposed to be gourmet and special isn't particularly good. The stuff I've liked here most is the cheap stuff, the kimbap, the rabokki, the Lotteria Rye Shrimp burger. Maybe it's a reflection of Korea's history that its fine cuisine isn't that developed? I dunno. But yeah, eating supposedly fine Korean food actually makes me like Korean food less.

One other thing.

I read this English language newspaper and it had a column called something like Views From Harvard with a Harvard Law graduate. Anyway, this guy was saying how Korea has a drinking problem and needs to stop, it has the highest rate of liver cancer in the world, much of which can be attributed to overdrinking. When presented with a scenario in which a coworker is unable to go to work because of drinking the night before, 55% of Americans judged said worker to have a drinking problem. Every Korean surveyed said it was understandable. Friend who works here says there's like 3 rounds of drinking with coworkers, ends so late some go directly to work afterwards.

Anyway, at our hotel in Cheju they offered a Western breakfast, traditional Japanese breakfast, or traditional Korean breakfast. One of the choices for the traditional Korean breakfast was "broth to help cure a hangover". I found that depressing, that drinking is so ingrained in Korean culture that dealing with it is a part of a traditional breakfast.

Jieun met someone today and as they were exchanging info, the girl asked for Jieun's e-mail and xanga. I dunno, that's like a marker of a new era, I don't think I'll ever forget it. It's like the first time I heard "Dude, man" (Jay at a KFBC retreat. Prior to that, I had heard "dude" or "man", never together. Since then I've heard it a lot.), the first time I saw the <blink> HTML tag (Netscape 1.1 had just come out, I was in Meyer, it was on this guy John, Korean guy in IV's page) the first MP3 I heard (summer of '97, Napster I don't think existed yet, Eddie and I would search random Stanford network drives to find stuff). All of them signs of a new age.

Random fact: blogspot pages are all inaccessible in Korea. Reason I've heard is, someone posted the Sunil (same name as mine, btw) Kim beheading video on blogspot and they didn't like it, something like that, so now you can't read anything on blogspot.com here. I thought that was interesting.

I love Korea. Really, I do. I'm not a Korea is the solution to all problems guy but I've had a fantastic time here.

I hate writing about Korea because, compared to other thoughts pages, I have nothing insightful nor novel to say about it. But whatever. Two things stick out as being different from the last time I was here 9 years ago. One is it's a lot cleaner than I remember. I don't know if it's my memory or if subsequent travels adjusted my threshold, but yeah, it just seems a lot cleaner everywhere, less trash, less smell, less all that stuff.

Second thing is, people are generally way more fashionable than before. It's amazing to me. Last time, the overall fashion sense was comical to me. This coming from a man whose wardrobe to this day still consists in large part of job fair T-shirts and who likes to wear all his socks midcalf. It was that bad. But last time I spent 2/3 of my time here at KAIST, which is like Korea's Cal Tech. Not exactly a hotbed of style. But still, I dunno, seems much better, like most of the younger people are clearly more hip than me from hairstyle down to shoes, which is reassuring.

I think I talked about this a long time ago, but the first time I came here I remember being startled and jealous at how my cousin spoke comfortably and deeply with his grandmother. I had just taken it for granted that people our age couldn't really communicate with generations prior, since that was the experience of me and most of my friends, so I was taken aback. And I'm still surprised and jealous when I see Jieun's cousins talking with their elders comfortably and fluently. It would be like a dream of mine to walk into a room with my parents and their friends and be able to joke with them instead of leaving the room with the other "kids" so they can talk in Korean. I dunno.

We went to this great place tonight, I dunno what to call it, but it's like a cafe that also has Internet access, comics and magazines to read, board games to play, and a movie playing (tonight, Return of the King, which I still have yet to see). It's like a cafe with tons of entertainment options. You sit down, buy something, and you can go surf the web or watch the movie or read or have them bring a game menu. Tons of games, including Bohnanza, Settlers, Acquire, Carcasonne. They bring whatever you want and the waiter explains how to play it. Is this not a great idea? Someone open up a place like this on Castro.

Based on something I think Dave wrote a long time ago, we had some kimbap and it was the best I've ever had, with random cool things in it like tuna, sesame leaves, and cheese. Good stuff. Wussed out on getting flavored milk, partly influenced by a rather unfortunate incident involving "cheesecake."

I dunno, this is all boring, right? I dunno how I can make interesting experiences sound tedious. But whatever, I'm gonna write about it anyway so sucks for you.

I just bought Michael W. Smith (Albert Pujols' favorite musician, according to his web site)'s Worship Again. It's incredibly cheesy. Despite that (or maybe because of it), I find myself being deeply moved by it in parts. I nearly cried during Lord Have Mercy. Issues.

I think maybe the reason I cry so much nowadays at stuff like this and Spider-Man 2 is to make up for the like 15 years where I didn't cry at all. I honestly thought I had defective tear glands. Actually, for that brief period when I wore contacts, when I was getting examined the doctor said my eyes are particularly dry so they recommended against hard lenses. To me, that verified what I already knew - I was physically unable to cry.

My youth group wasn't super charismatic but during retreats we'd always have sprinklings of tongues during intense prayer sessions. I remember one such session our youth pastor going around and telling us all to pray louder. That's kind of what it was like. Anyway, sometimes I would pray that I would cry. Odd right? But people were crying all around me, and I equated crying kind of like tongues; where tongues is a demonstration of being touched by the Spirit, crying was like a symbol of sincere emotion. Places in Scripture say to pray for tongues; I applied that to tears.

Never happened though, never cried. I used to say I was crying on the inside, but I'm not sure that's true. I just didn't cry, and felt kinda guilty about that, like I was less sincere than people around me, or like I didn't fully appreciate Jesus as much as everyone else did or something. I'm still not sure why I never cried, but I just didn't. I was just heartless I guess.

Anyway, another thing I like about the Spider-Man movies is that Peter Parker is motivated primarily by guilt. That's like the story of my life.

You like the horrid grammar in my last post? Last clause, not only do I have a dangling preposition (at), but it's redundant to begin with. I suck at writing.

Went to a wedding yesterday, first Catholic wedding I remember going to, definitely the first one I've gone to with significant amounts of Latin chants. By significant, I mean at least 30 minutes throughout the mass. They printed the music in the program and the notes were square, with no meter or key indicated, like medieval style or something. Different, kind of cool.

As you may or may not know, I went to a Catholic high school and I respect Catholics a lot. That said, for myself, I realize I feel about Catholicism the same way Bruce Lee did about the various martial arts forms of his time - they solidify what was once fluid. Taking things that held life in them, like singing, the Eucharist, prayer, and formalizing them until they become just ritual. As Bruce criticized, they've become systems of forms, losing the power behind it. There's still life in them but I feel like you have to search past the ritual to find it. I dunno. So like Martin Luther is the Bruce Lee and the Reformation the Jeet Kune Do of Christianity is how I see it. No one knows what I'm talking about.

What I love about non-Asian weddings is how people don't need prodding to dance, there's none of that lame Asian reservedness, grandparents and grandchildren alike all bust a move. They look goofy and lots of them clap on 1 and 3 but nobody cares. I like that. Too bad I can't be that way. I sat firmly in my seat most of the reception. Even if I wanted to, it's hard to get into their music. People were insanely into I Will Survive. What on earth?

Ups and downs are a good thing, lets you know you're alive. I was totally sick yesterday, the kind of sickness where you feel like you went through a war and came out on the losing side. Still coughing and congested today but it's MUCH better and I feel incredibly alive. Takes the sickness to fully appreciate the wellness.

Spider-Man 2: 4.5 stars. I'm telling you, fortune cookie wisdom means a lot to me in a movie. Spider Man 1: With great power comes great responsibility. True. Harry Potter 2: It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices. Interesting. SM2 has a great line about our dreams. Stuff like that sticks with me.

Anyway, I loved it. Predictably, I cried. I know, there's something wrong with me. I'll buy lunch to the first person who can guess at which scene I cried at.