I am not awesome. Really.

I recently went for a series of talks organised by Ridley College on answering some of our generation's toughest questions and I have to say I was glad that I went for all of them. It was pretty much post-ski trip outings except instead of slaloming down snow capped mountains, it's slaloming through a mine field of tough questions. The one thing that I found to be quite unique with this series of talks is that it's not trying to make Christianity the superior option by beating everything else down. It uses, I think, a more effective way, level the playing field and post the invitation. As I sat through the rest of the talks, all I could think of is this is what the phrase "defending the faith" is really like. This is probably one place where the age-old term "the best defence is a good offence" doesn't quite apply.

Hopefully in the coming days, the recordings of those talks will be up because there are too many things to get a hold on in just about half an hour each session. Not only was it the first real attempt to answering some of my questions satisfactorily but it also answered some of my other questions which I did not expect to be addressed. For some, it helped lighten my burden I've been carrying this year. For most, it was a great refreshment. And what happens after that was good fellowship, something that hardly came by in the past couple of years.

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I came back yesterday to find that my past two posts went up by 50% in readership in one day. On the slowest day of the week. I nearly fell off my chair because of that. Then I realised that my headlines may have something to do with it. Ish.

This week was probably one of the hardest weeks for me emotionally in recent times. Just when I thought getting out of the massive project last week was going to give me rest.

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I count myself as extremely fortunate to have met people who I would classify as seriously awesome people and call them as friends. I wonder from time to time what did I do to deserve this of which I can clearly answer with a big fat Nothing. And sometimes that worries me.

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It seems that no matter where I go and who I am with, there is always something to remind of my struggles. I'm not sure if that is a kind of taunting/accusation where I screwed everything up and this is what I could be having if I didn't or an imperative like that of a far superior boxer knocked you out and asks you to give up and don't come back and you are going to accept it as he walks away in dramatic style. This reminder is a slow and painful one to ride out and usually by the time it actually lingers out, another one comes in. It's enough for me to hit my head on the wall several times a day.

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Making new friends is a phenomenal task for me to do. Because often I have to break into already established groups and the amount of energy I need to expend is tremendous. Some groups are easier to break in than others of which I can say it has been easier with the current group. But there is another problem that I have to deal with which actually involves everyone and obviously more so for new people, letting them in my space. Because I am always afraid of what they might find. Heck, I don't even let some friends in.

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You know what is the worst thing about personal change? That by the time you act on the change, it's past the window of opportunity and whatever benefits that comes as a result of the said change becomes futile. 

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Film. I need to watch more films. I also need to watch more films alone.

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I once mentioned to someone that there is a John Mayer song for every occasion. So far that hasn't been wrong yet. Born and Raised has encompassed even more and has certainly encompassed some of my things recently.

Another round of conversations led to another common theme albeit a little on the depressing side. This one is hardly talked about because there are so few of us who actually experience it on a non-trivial scale, unlike how the interwebs portray it. Also I don't think people think that such things will ever happen to them, but if it does, it often becomes catastrophic. 

Had dinner with some friends and like all conversations, one thing led to another until we arrive at the question, would you rather live a long life but mostly faced with solitude especially towards the end of your life or live a short life but have your better half/family/friends by your side all the way to the end? Like any kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks question, we have our initial beliefs and then list the pros and cons and see if our initial beliefs is the best compromise. Initially, I would have voted for long lonely life any time. In fact I even stated that if I had a say in how I would die, I would go alone. But now I am not so sure of that any more.

Exhibit A: the peer. Being the only child, this friend of mine accurately stated that once you get past a certain age, the time that you can spend with other friends become less and less. For one, you do not make friends as fast as you used to. Two, friends move around, change relationship statuses, increase family size and so on; priorities have been shifted on a tectonic scale. Three, work? And four, in the case of my friend, family will wither away just as time with your established friends wither away. And so effectively, living a short life is essentially "cutting your losses" or taking the deal from the bank in Deal Or No Deal. I've always been a fan of the cutting-your-losses technique and so it doesn't surprise me that this had me gravitating towards a shorter life.

Exhibit B: the never married aged man. After hearing stories of a man who has found himself down the lonely narrow path, showing all the signs of mild depression, I can't help but wonder that that is what I might look like when I am that age. With no family left (that I know of), close friends gone distant (both physically and relationally), there's very little that's left on offer. He was thinking about uprooting to a quieter place and my guess is to escape the environment where there's so many people but no one there. There was a brilliant film I watched, though the name escapes me now, that throughout the course of the film you can see how he slowly but methodically loses it, like a train wreck in slow motion. Very scary thought. I'm not saying that the man in question really is losing his mind, it just makes it more susceptible. Even that's scary.

After the conversation, I've been somewhat challenged by my choice. But of course the question that I brought up in the first place is a silly one to begin with. It's not like after I made a choice that my wish will be instantly granted. It's just a hypothetical question. But what should come out of this is how do we deal with loneliness especially to those who are suffering from the harsh reality of loneliness more than others. For some, it is a cross that they will have to bear for the rest of their lives and for others, will be a temporary thing to be exchanged for something else. Some will require more external sanity checks and it is important to figure out who actually needs them.

On a related note: Besides the benefit of current experiences and questions, I wish knew how to speak Hokkien then so that I can talk to the elderly in my family, particularly my dad's side. There were so many women who had lived well past 80 years, some outliving their husbands by more than 2 decades and most of their children have moved interstate or overseas etc. and I would like to ask them how did they do it. One of the many things I regret to this day.

A string of conversations with people (some with copious amounts of cocktails) has given me more insight about the struggles of living a Christian life. Many are in a position that I have been in for years and still looking for answers. Many of my concerns also brought out in the open, showing me that I'm not the crazy one. But more importantly, I've learned to ask the right questions to others, which in turn are questions directed at myself as well. I think it is about time that we actually learn to set aside time to talk about how's the spiritual life going. I think that many of my concerns, whether it is my own or towards others, come from the fact that we/I don't exercise the "support" in being a supportive Christian group. I also think that sometimes we like to think of the illusion that we are supporting but really it's just to cover what is above the surface. I know this is a problem of mine (among many), which I can say I've been quite convicted of, and based on my conversations with others, it is also a problem of theirs. I also know that the solution cannot come 100% from my own will to make things better because history has a track record of this not happening. It's fine balance to find but even just the act of trying to find that balance without swinging to resort to our/my own willpower is half the battle won.

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Portal 2 co-op mode is like a huge trust exercise with some bits of confusion and hilarity thrown in for good measure. Highly recommend playing it (with a friend of course).

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It's very much worth watching the actual video. It is awesome.

My favourite song in the album.

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You know what? It's still hard. Very hard to do.

I had lunch with a good friend of mine and it was a seriously overdued catch up session. We meant to do the usual catch-up-y things, like asking how are things, how's work etc etc. Which we did but it quickly moved into conversations with another common ground. Over the next 1.5 hours we went on essentially asking the same question, "What happened?". Various areas were covered under that question like ministry, our personal lives and so on. Even though it has been a long time since the last time I saw my friend but I feel that we've pretty much gone through the same experiences, with a slight difference in flavour between us.

I can't really say much but the things that I got out of our conversation was that it was ok to show anger as long as it was for legitimate reasons and that there is a time to know when to cut our losses. Oh and I should really meet up with my friend more often. We say the darnest things sometimes.

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...maybe a Martian.

2012 is turning out to be a great year for science. Earlier this year we found the Higgs boson, further sealing our understanding of the standard model of particle physics (plus more in the future perhaps) and now an incredible Mars rover landing on a planet that takes twice as long for a signal to come back to Earth than it is to enter Mars atmosphere and land. Many people back in the 60s remember the space program and anyone who has a decent working memory back then and is still alive today can tell you exactly where they were when we landed on the moon. Some will even tell you that it was those events that led them into science. Today is one such day for the younger generation. Never before since the late 60s has there been a truly remarkable feat of space exploration until today. I hope that people will look back to this moment to finally realize that this was the sole event that stirred up the young people to go back to science and why the hell it took us so long to get there.

If you didn't know what was the big deal about this Mars landing, we basically sent a mini laboratory complete with a mass spectrometer, a drill, a frigging laser that vapourises rocks, a nuclearized version of a car battery, enough sensors to make your futuristic car look like a cheap oven thermometer and all this within the size of a Mini Cooper. Into space and on Mars. And we landed that lab using a parachute, retrorockets and a skycrane. With everything fully automated because by the time we get a signal that it has entered the atmosphere, the rover would have been on the ground (either in one piece or several thousand) for 7 minutes already. And it only cost less than a movie ticket per American resident. If your 5 year old kids don't think this is super cool, God knows what is. I don't need to emphasize this any more but we badly need something like this. I hate to see science and math being dumbed down further knowing that it is because of those two things that got a laboratory to travel more than 350 million kilometres for eight months and land it within a 12 by 3 kilometre area virtually without human guidance.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constraint to be
Let thy goodness, like a fetter
Bind my wandering to thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for thy courts above