Raining Day

Today, I had probably the heaviest rain which I've encountered since I came here. Rain is unexceptional, rain is vital and rain can be beautiful, but travelling uncovered in the rain can be distasteful at times, especially during midnight bike trip home.

The number of people coming to Sunday service has obviously dwindled, is it because of the rain or because of the season of summer vacation. Oh how easy it is for our emotions, thinkings or wills to be affected or changed now and then. How weak are we, to be left at the mercy of incidental happenings in life?

No I do not want to be like the Israelites in the book of Judges, being blinded by the temporal influences and trapped in the cycles of worldly affairs.

2 Corinthians 12:10 (NIV)
That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I am breaking away.. and I will come back stronger and focused, under the serene sky after the rain.

1/3 of course, done.
housing moving, done.
I miss rojak and special.

Graduation Day in RPI

Picture of the day: Photo taken in the house of a 80 yo single white man living with his cat

Happy graduating! But not for me though, I was only given the honor to take part in savoring the free food offered after the commencement :D This is a beautiful day with no cooking, free food, mister-recovered-from-surgery, joyful atmosphere and nice weather. It rained a little bit but everyone was overjoyed with the successful graduation of themselves or their loved ones, and some even didn't mind eating in the rain, like me.

I happened to share a table with a graduand and her two families. A person with two families? What does that mean.. That was the graduand with her family and her fiancé with his family. I am not a busy buddy but I would be too insensitive not to know that they were talking about wedding arrangement. A graduation plus a wedding makes a true 双喜临门 (double happiness), life can be beautiful isn't it, good for them. And now I am part of the wedding for listening to their conversation and taking photo for them :D

I can't help but to think about how my graduation would be like two years later, in this land that doesn't know me. Two years isn't too short, but isn't too long as well, to think that I have already completed 3 years in college. So, happy graduating to my sister and those who just graduated, good luck to those who are starting up and blessed be those who are struggling with me right now :D

Up next, continuing with class, moving house, settling down and kicking off summer, and not to forget participating as test subject in researches 

Same house, different decoration, red indian's deco

US Student Life

This week is another week with beautiful weather up until today, when the temperature suddenly dropped back to 10+ celcius. Now I have gotten a little bit more hang of the seasonal change here that goes up and down, and taking along your mood with it. I have to quote my house mate's words for the feeling induced by these fluctuations - one has to get used to constantly being mocked/teased by the weather to live here.

Student life ain't easy here!

Moving onto the life this week, there isn't anything too interesting except the armed robbery happened on Tuesday, which led to a 4 hours campus wide lock down. Sounds aaaaaaamusing?

1. It all started at 8.15am when some robbers robbed a check cashing and financial services firm about 5 blocks away from the campus.

2. A helicopter arrived here 15 minutes later and started circling and hovering over the area, searching for the suspect and making the students here wake up early for the first time in the few years they lived here.

3. Then 好衰不衰, someone reported that one suspect was seen heading towards the RPI campus. Being caring and cautious, the campus officials started sending out emergency messages and imposed a whole campus lock down while the TPD (Troy Police Department) searched the campus around 9.30am. Gunfire was reported at 9.50 but this allegation was later dismissed, the consequence of waking students up too early! Me on the other hand, being hard working and daring, had still decided to go to class at 10am .v..

4. Being very caring and overly-cautious too, my professor invited everyone to take shelter in his office because the doors of the classroom could not be locked. So there I was, sitting in the office while listening to the siren and alert messages being broadcast repeatedly over the campus's broadcasting system. 11.01am, the mayor twittered: "There will be some discussion with RPI about frequency, volume and content of their alert system message." I guess the campus officials got too excited because it was actually the first time that the broadcasting system was used since its installation after the Virginia Tech's incident!

5. To make things worse, a small electrical fire occurred in one of the laboratory on campus. Now you know how persistent are the students here, who continued to work in lab despite the excitement going around. The emergency broadcast had now turned into medley of itself and the fire alarm. 11+am.

6. 12pm disaster: my laptop was running out battery while the lock down seemed like it was going to lasting forever!

7. Alert ended at 12.43pm, yay!

banana robber attacked RPI!

99999. The next day:

So what is the story behind the whole commotion? Some random poor fella had decided to rob an office under the broad day light instead of late evening or night as usual. The allegation that the suspect was approaching the RPI campus then triggered the whole state of emergency. . . ... In the end, nobody was caught as of that afternoon, the suspect was not seen on campus and probably never came near!

Worst, the whole thing had not ended until today, for me. My 2 classes on Tuesday happened to lie perfectly within the time frame when the emergency was declared, giving me a holiday dropped from the sky. Consequently, I had to attend 6 continuous hours of Economics classes today to catch up with the syllabus, cheeeeeeeeers! =D Well, things could have gotten worse had the robber appreciated the fine weather and decided to took a stroll in the campus.

Lessons learned:

Students study harder to avoid unemployment.

Politicians work harder to provide education and employment.

Robbers check your watch please, you don't belong to the broad day light.

Happy Easter Day!

The cross placed at the center of the main stage in church

This short entry is specially dedicated for this special day and the special protagonist. For those who do not know what I'm talking about, today is the Easter Day in Christianity, a day to commemorate Jesus Christ's resurrection after His death by cruel crucification.

To better explain this important day in Christianity, let us go back 3 days before the Easter Day - the Good Friday, during the first century AD. On this day, Jesus Christ died on the cross for humankind after he was betrayed by Judas into the hands of the corrupted Jewish religious leaders. He was tried, humiliated, tortured and sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate under the pressure of the influential Jews for no reason, or just one reason - evil just simply can't tolerate with goodness.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

is an essential belief or doctrine in Christianity such

that it is an actual and non-fiction event in history. Jesus Christ is believed to be the Son of God who was born of a virgin lady called Mary, to save us, the fallen humans. All Jesus had done in his life was to honor the God his father by teaching and saving the lives of people whom he ever met.

He lived a completely blameless, innocent and humble life and yet in the end, he was accused and murdered with one of the cruelest punishment ever existed.

Why? It is through what Jesus has done that our sin can be washed away, so that we can then face God who is the God of absolute justice. When He could have chose not to do so, Jesus Christ chose to undergo the suffering to bear all the evils we have done and become the atonement of our sins, to provide the humans with salvation and reconciliation with God.

In fact, has anyone ever been able to stop him/herself from having sinful thought even for one short day in our lives? Have you ever walked past a needy person when you could have stopped a little while for the poor fella, complain heedlessly and endlessly without realizing that at least we have the privilege complain, be envious of other people's successes whether in studies, work or life, be tempted by lustful imageries that you bear sinful thoughts, or break out on people whom you actually love just because you do not have enough patience at one instance? Is our world getting better in time, when the number of guns, bombs, crimes, briberies, pollution and immorality just grow greater and greater? When or where is the breaking point?

I wish that I can write more but my shallow brain is running out of words and my weak body is yelling me to go to bed. Have a good Easter and grateful life my friends. Thank you for reading, sorry if I have ever hurt anyone in anyway. Here are some encouraging and meaningful scriptures which I hope are helpful.

2 Corinthians 13:9
We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection.

2 Corinthians 12:10

That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Beautiful side wall window at the church

Spring!

4/1/10 - Today is a beautiful day indeed, we had the perfect weather here to celebrate my first date in the United States...... with my D90.

A stroll with my new toy: library up ahead, a revamped church building functioning as the computing center on the right

Everyone just couldn't wait to get outside to enjoy the heart warming sunshine, after having a cold, rainy, long and gloomy week! Finally, me too have realized why is warm weather so significant here and appreciated this lovely sunny day!

Study break: nerdy photographer stalking people from level 4 in the library

It would also be a perfect day to go swimming at a lake or the sea but too bad, I have access only to the swimming pool here. One odd thing about the pool is that it opens only at 12-2, during lunch hours and 8.30-10 at night. So it is either that you get a stomach illness for eating lunch late or have a freezing swim at night, which I always had, but not tonight, yay spring!

Short swimming class/tips:

1) Hypothesis: You don't avoid the swimming pool because you can't swim! If you don't know how to swim, you have more reasons to go to the pool!

Proof: One year ago when I just started swimming, I couldn't finish one whole lap without embarrassing myself for stopping here and there, gasping for air along the way. But tonight, it was the stranger in the adjacent lane who did that. 

2)Hypothesis: Having cramp is survivable.

Proof: Had my first cramp here tonight, but here I am, still blogging!

3)Hypothesis: You won't get lost in the pool.

Proof: That is apparently true. You'll just end up on the opposite sides of the pool no matter where you swim and how you swim. You'll keep making the same circle, drinking the same water and watching the same scenery, because this is what a pool is, like the repetitive academic life. Nevertheless, swimming is both a good sports and a survival skill!

最后，

茫茫大海

遥遥人海

两只小船

随风流穿

因风而遇

因浪而聚

因缘而叙

因分而惜

时间流转

似远亦近

是风而聚

失风而散

是风，是浪，是时间，还是事实？

啊原来是大嘴鱼把船锚给吃掉了！

季节换了，浪潮变了，实时过了。

船心没了，号角响了，所以该起航啦！

原来啊，

一个人尽然可以在一夜之间就消失不见，

尽管他是多么特别，尽管她是多么独特，

这世界真是无奇不有，还有什么不能发生呢？

昂起头来，扬起帆来，向着目标继续划吧！

有缘的话，绕个半圈，在地球另一端再见！

因为地球是圆的，太阳会一直从东方升起的；永恒不变的救恩在千多年前的今天也已被成就了！

主耶稣说：我来了，是要叫羊（人）得生命，并且得的更丰盛。（约10：10）

Crash course on Cost-Benefit Analysis

My green book

If anyone has not heard that I'm minoring in Economics, well now you know~ So, CBA is one of the two higher level economics courses that I'm taking this semester to fulfill my minor requirement. As the name speaks for itself, it's a course about evaluating the costs and benefits of a decision or project and the corresponding decision-making based on the evaluation. It is essentially a tool for the policymakers or the government to assess new public policies or revise completed projects...

Alright, skipping the boring parts...

Do you ever know that there are price tags all over you? Physically and mentally. The government is different from the businesses that the policymakers are concerned not only about profits: revenue minus cost. They have to account for the happiness and approval of the people because that is their job and of course, they have the public votes hanging on the line. But waaait, this is economics, how do we measure happiness, satisfaction, conveniency... . .. .. ? "Money money money" ~Abba.

Yeah right, money is the standard metric for this, somewhat pathetic, but still useful. So what do I learn in class? How to stalk you up and put a money labels all over you, literally. Everyday, there are many analysts out there going around, collecting data, quantifying and monetizing everything to compose a standard measurement of anything needs to be measured. Before a public park is opened, your value of leisure is calculated; before a rail way is constructed, the value of your time is estimated; before a bridge is built, your value of convenience is computed; so are your value on education, environment, family, marriage etc. Amusing?

Ever wondered how much does your life worth in a community or society? Here's a tool :

Value of a Statistical Life, VSL = willingness to pay, WTP * people involved or at risk / reduction in risk or number of life saved

Enough of head fakes.. how much does your life worth? Being a nobody in a nobody land has made me become extra sensitive about my self worthiness, which's still as vulnerable as ever. If measured by the willingness to pay, how much would I be priced at? A boring kiddo with no serviceable skills, no special talents, no practical knowledge, don't sing, don't play and don't play dota no more. I'm sorry if I've been stingy in paying for your VSL, but I hope and I'm sure that it's not too late, so good luck to all my worthy friends and good people out there.

Writing is indeed an impulsive activity, I'm sorry to have deserted this blog but I only feel like writing at times. Most of the time, the feeling fades before I even started, when my logical mind took over. Worse, I feel even more sorry to write during troubled times. Someone said that emo-ing is also not a bad idea, but still, my productivity-inclined mind chose to write about Cost-Benefit Analysis - how much does your life worth, happy reading!

To all the troubled souls, here's something from my Sunday service last weekend :

John 14

1Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

2In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.

3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

4You know the way to the place where I am going.

When the world deserts you, when the world quiets down to the sound of your own breathing, you won't be alone, because that is probably when you'll find God's hideout, that He's walking with you, and that is why we humans have been able to move on, for that is the beauty of religion.

Keep in touch people, drop me a message sometimes so that I know I have at least a few pennies in my VSL. Have very nice days.