Dan, Acts, Lewis, and Isaiah

DAN
I finally got the chance to watch Dan in Real Life and, more importantly, listen to the soundtrack of the movie! It was an awesome awesome movie, and I was surprised as to how much I liked both the plot and the songs. Sondre Lerche is pretty beastly; he wrote the entire movie soundtrack, and on the DVD, there was an extras interview with him where he talked about how he came up with the soundtrack. But yeah, the story is suuuper amazing; Steve Carell does an amazing job at portraying his character in such a real hahaha sense. I always think of him in his roles as Evan Baxter, Michael Scott, and the 40-year-old virgin, but he portrayed such a deep character and portrayed it well, and he's officially my new favorite actor heh. Anyways, watch it; you'll be surprised as to how much you'll empathize with Dan.

ACTS
On an unrelated but equally important note, last Monday, I had my chance to lead a bible study! The passage I led was on Acts 8:1-25 : Philip, one of the early Christians during the persecution of the Church by Saul, escapes Jerusalem and travels to Samaria. Samaria is known to not be friends with Jerusalem (The Good Samaritan, the Samaritan Woman at the Well), but Philip goes there anyways after Jesus commands the early church to go to Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1). Anyways, he is able to preach the good news about Jesus and everyone in Samaria accepts Jesus as their Savior and they all get baptized!

Now, there was a sorcerer in Samaria named Simon who had been performing magical tricks and amazing everyone, making them believe that he has the power of God. But when Philip shows up, even Simon gets baptized and believes in God! Peter and John come from Jerusalem to bear witness to all that was happening in Samaria, and they lay their hands on the people there and everyone receives the Holy Spirit. Then! Simon tries to pay Peter and John so that they could give him the power to lay hands on people and give them they Holy Spirit...DUN DUN DUN

Although it's obvious that what Simon was doing was completely wrong, if we really think about it, I think we're a lot like him. Although he was part of this early Christian community after his baptism, it's clear that he still was thinking about himself, not about God. Which leads to the application question, what is your treasure? Is it truly desiring to serve God and his kingdom, no matter how difficult or how against your plans it may be? Or is your treasure to just be in community? Is serving God something you feel like you need to do because you're "Christian," or is it something that you earnestly desire from the depths of your heart?

I gave a short testimony during the study about how I was a lot like Simon with my passion for music, about how originally I wanted to serve God with the music that I wrote, but it ended up being me just wanted to try to achieve rockstardom, to try and become famous with my music. It was a harsh reality for me to accept and it was even harder to try and kill my dreams of rockstardom, but I realized that it was not pleasing to God at all. Are there any ways in which you have made a treasure out of something else besides serving God?

LEWIS

CS, that is, and I don't mean Computer Science neither.  This past weekend, I went to my bible study leader Tiffany Lin's senior flute recital, which was awesome.  Who'd have thunk that a flute could sound so cool :)  Anyways, in her program, she listed a quote by C.S. Lewis which I thought was an absolute beast and I really wanted to share it with you guys:

"The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited..." -C.S. Lewis

ISAIAH
*/Ok, side note, the only reason why this post is so long is because I have nothing to do at the music library. I have a 12:00 - 3:00 shift every Tues and I have nothing to do now heh. I honestly don't like writing at all, but when you're bored, you'll do anything! /*

Anyways, last thing! Last week, all the Christian communities got together to have a week of 24/7 prayer. During one of my late night prayer shifts, God really put the passage of Isaiah 55 on my heart. The phrase that really stood out to me was for my soul to delight in the richest of fare. Just hearing that makes my heart flutter haaha. It's my prayer that as I rely more on God now instead of my own strength, that God will teach me about the richest of fare :). One other thing I learned during my shift is that God speaks in the silence and solitude of our soul. It's super hard to be still and silent for myself, but I always find that God speaks the loudest when I'm lost in the quiet times. Having trouble hearing the voice of God? Spend 10-15 minutes just being still, not praying, not singing, not reading (although you should do these things sometime ofsho!), and he'll definitely speak to you!!!

Phew, two posts in one day, I'm all pooped out. There's still a lot more stuff that I want to share, but it'll have to wait for another time :).

I Will Go

Starfield's at it again with their latest album I Will Go.  Props to my mei mei for hooking it up along with Lifehouse and the new Passion CD.  If you guys want it, I could post it too...  Anyways, this album is pretty typical of Starfield; Neufeld's voice is still pretty dreamy heh.  The music is still not quite as punchy as I would like the band's sound to be.  All in all, it's still a good album following the tried and true formula that has made Starfield what it is today.  They cover Brooke Fraser's Hosanna on this track, but they don't seem to add anything super new to it besides having a male's voice.  Reign in Us is my current favorite track of the album; what's yours?

download it!

love it?

20/80

^ my score for one of my four midterms.  for my other three midterms, i got at the median or below.  basically, i'm a failure at school, if not at the greater struggle called life.  i feel you ajuh (insert weeping sounds here)

school has been a constant struggle for me, which has been extremely frustrating.  coming from whitney, i felt pretty "smart."  grades were never a problem, hw was easy, and learning was actually pretty fun.  now, i'm at the opposite end of the spectrum; i get murdered in my grades, hw takes at least 50 hours of work a week, and i don't learn anything anymore.  it's just really frustrating because i love what i'm trying to learn now, but i feel like such a failure because of my grades.  circuits are pretty fun to tinker with, using fourier and z transforms to convert signals into a summation of sinusoids is suuper elegant it tickles me, and coding in C allows me to mesh creativity with my academics.  semiconductor physics is blah haha.  but despite my joy in going to class and figuring out how these things work, the grades always come back to punch me in the face.

i feel like this is God's way of teaching me humility, of teaching me to trust in Him more.  in high school, i lived the way i wanted to live.  i did everything in my own power, from grades to friends to my girlfriend.  and now everything has been turned topsy turvy for a long time now.  it's just hard because even though i acknowledge that i need God's help to get through every season in my life now, i still have yet to really seem him move in my academics.  he's taught me so much about caring for the poor, about reconciliation within the community, about being still and pursuing him through individual prayer and worship, but i've been begging him to just be with me in my academics, and i can't seem to find him!  it's like where's waldo without a waldo on the page :/

getting back my grades was super hard for me; i know that we're supposed to be satisfied in God alone, but at the moment when i got all my grades back, i felt like crying and screaming; i felt the weakest i've ever felt.  and this is just one of the nine quarters i've been here; just multiply the agony by nine and there you go.

OK WOW.  God is too amazing.  JUST right now, my great aunt called me and told me that she thinks about me everyday and she prays for me and she told me not to be burdened by my academics but to trust and depend on God.  random?  about as random as the great sea parting.  woow, i can't even describe how i'm feeling right now.  hahaha what a miracle on the fly.  now i feel like laughing and crying and singing and dancing all at the same time.  i know that this doesn't mean i'm going to get a 4.0 now, but i don't care one bit.  God DOES exist in academics hahaha, he's bigger than Stanford ofsho.  i can't wait to see what he has in store for my silly excuse of "life."

i had a lot more i was going to talk about, but i'm going to spend some time with my lover now.  maybe tomorrow?

Meowmeowmeowmeow

Meow -> the sound i make when i copycat all my favorite blogs.

Think of this post as flattery haha.

Actually, a lot of random things happened to somehow managed to tie this post to sanscue and jonbaik :)

Midterms of Death

So, I'm procrastinating studying now by typing this post.  I have four midterms in the next three days, all of which will teach me to never procrastinate again.  First up, Semiconductor Physics, which I have learned absolutely nothing for because class meets at 9:00 am, what the fat!  Next, CS 107 which = super hard coding class.  Three hour time slot designated for this midterm, woo hoo!  Then tomorrow, my favorite Signal Processes and Linear Systems II class EE 102B, which is super math intensive.  I always thought I loved math, but if this class has taught me anything, it's either 1) I suck at math or 2) I need to try harder.  Finally, on Friday, it's Circuits II with good ole Differential MOSFETs, Current Mirrors, and the like.  Mm yummy.

Attack of the ISACSAC

hahahaha, I love my weirdness.  Basically, my super buddies Steve Ko and Natasha Kim bought me a SacSac because I mentioned that I love it randomly.  And so, because Andrew didn't put up a picture of SacSac, I decided to put one up with a little more flair than your typical cop this picture off of Google Images.  Try not to get too excited.

new music - Coldplay - A Spell A Rebel Yells

Ah yes, good old Coldplay.  A new album, a new host of things to rant about.  In my opinion, Coldplay's been having a harder time establishing their presence as a band pushing the envelope of good music, especially with their latest releases of albums (X&Y and now Viva la Vida or Death And All His Friends).  Violet Hills was supposed to have a new feel for Coldplay's music style, but I felt like it wasn't that big of a departure of what Coldplay has made it's millions off of; the chord progressions felt the same, the same melody rifts, the same beated piano chords, a little falsetto, cut out at the end, solo piano, etc.  And I think the same can be said for A Spell A Rebel Yells, with it's U2 like feel.  Maybe I haven't really appreciated it, but it just sounds super repetitive to me, lacking any big variety.  I mean, it is a B-side, so I guess you can just say it's meant to be like it is, but I don't buy it.  Also, in regards to the name of the album, Chris Martin says it's influenced by Frida Kahlo's life of misery and her great work of art, but that's a bit random for me; I hope the album will paint a better picture of how this is a reality for Coldplay as a band instead of the title just being a cool, indie title that will hopefully make people buy it because it's supposed to be deep and mysterious and unknown, etc.  Anyways, share your thoughts on the song!  I hope you guys might disagree with me, because I'm hoping to be proven wrong about this song / album :)

listen to it

Anyways, back to studying!