Today I ate with Edmund Moon at Blimpie's for lunch. He's been studying daily for the med school board exams at my school's library... so much he has to do, so little time.

For the rest of the afternoon, I tried to get in touch with Rutgers BME to get more info about the summer, since they haven't sent anything. I'm a little miffed. The thing is... NO ONE was answering their phones. I called at 3 PM... wouldn't anyone be in? The secretary? The professors? The chair? Maybe it's due to Memorial Day weekend. At any rate, I also applied to a temp agency.

In the meantime, I was talking to Amanda Severin from ATD, she's back home in PA. As well, I was working on creating a composite self portrait using different snapshots I took of my face. It took a while because my computer didn't have enough RAM to handle the huge amount of data, but it turned out pretty well. Maybe I'll post different iterations of it, maybe I won't, we'll see.

Angela Chung asked me to move and store all of her things into my apartment, so I spent most of the evening doing that. Afterwards, I cooked up some salmon for G. She came and visited later that evening, which was cool. G and I went down with her to walk her to her car, as well as wish her parents a safe flight. The funniest thing happened... at the end of the conversation, Ange's dad turned to me and said, "You are a Good Looking Guy!" I was stunned. No, I thought, this fine gentlematn besides me is the GLG... If all of you don't know the significance of G, G is short for GLG, short for... Good Looking Guy, which is Derrick's nickname. At any rate, I pointed to G and made the correction, to which Ange's dad declared, "Well, you are Good Looking Korean, and He is Good Looking Chinese!"

I had no idea what to say.

Afterwards, I gave Derrick a guitar lesson, then went to the Carlyle to spend some time with some Hope Chapel people. I also hung out with some of my non-Christian friends, which was good... but man, by that time, I was so tired... it was like 12 and I was just worn out from the day, so I went back to Paul's place to get a ride home.

Suffice to say, I'm still here, we just ended up talking. Man, I'm tired, but it's cool. Good stuff shared and laughed about.

This day went by really fast.

Parents came, we all got ready, went to the graduation tent, took pix along the way. I lined up and then we walked to the tent with the processional march from the band playing. After many formalities and speeches (Tom Brokaw's was quite excellent, I must say... such an eloquent guy. Spoke about us being the generation to rise from the ashes of 9/11, just as all the war geeratoins did, etc...), Brokaw and Ripken got there honorary degrees. After more formalities, we went up to get called.

After everything was over, we got our diplomas, then the madness of finding relatives and taking pictures began. After all that, my family went to this new steakhouse called Chester's in Fell's Point... 20 ounce steaks for 15 bux, can't go wrong. Mom and Dad went home.

During the day, Mom was constantly nagging about something... the topic changed, but it was always something coming out of her mouth. She meant well, but man, it was really stressful.

I just got back from the midnight graduation party held at the Mattin Center, a set of school buildings near my place. It was good to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen for a while... for example, one of my roommates for the first 2 months of freshman year, my freshman chem lab partner, and some other people I've randomly met in classes or through people over the years.

A lot went through my mind.

1: Almost all of my asian christian friends were not there. This observation made me wonder. Did they ignore that this was going on? was it deemed an "unholy" event? Or, which I most likely guess, it wasn't within their social interest since all of their friends are in their respective ministries?

That last thought made me slightly sad. College fellowship was great the past four years, but I wonder if any of the asian christians I know made a real effort to build up relatoinships with non-asians, christians or not. I wonder if it was even within their scope. Then again, my observation is from my narrow scope as well, i recognize, but the fact still stands that I was the only asian christian not part of InterVarsity. (To explain, IinterVarsity is usally associated with non-asian Christians, vice versa.. )

I wouldn't have thought much of that until I saw that non of the "cool" asians were there either. Maybe it's a Korean thing, not necessarily associated with Korean christians

Well, you can draw your own conclusions. I will try not to draw any of my own, lest I just end up being more judgemental than I already am... God, please, forgive me.

2. I've built up relationships with such a wide variety of people... but really, I'm still not close with many. I think I'm too self-absorbed of a person or something... at least, lately. God, you've been brining that to my attention a lot more, Strengthen my reslove to be more in tune with Your Heart for your people, instead of my heart for myself.

Anyhow, yeah. I found myself drifting from different people group to different people group, and they all had their own little worlds... albeit, they were co-mingling, but yeah, still congregated in their own worlds.

Well, I'm not sure what I'm trying to communicate. I guess one thing I'm trying to say is that it's good that fellowships within churches are good and strong, but it'd dangerous if their members aren't willing to go out "two by two" if you know what I mean. Then again, it is a time consuming thing to do both, so I guess it's understandable.
The other thing I'm trying to communicate is more of a confession towards my ineptitude in developing strong relationships with people... My self-absorbed mindset can really take its toll, eh?

Ok. Well. That's not the end of all of what I'm thinking, but I'm tired and I must wake up early. God bless. Thanks, God, for letting me make it through.

Graduation pix are up.

Today, after some quick shopping at SuperFresh, I spent the whole entire day cleaning and packing up my room.

So tired.

My older brother camed down after work, arriving at 10 PM. My mom called and talked until 10:40... oh, it was a little tiring. I was in a cranky mood from being so tired, and I didn't want to hear her talk about what she should bring, what we should eat, etc.

Afterwards, we went to eat at Rocky Run... man, I'm stuffed.

Ok, time to sleep. Big day tomorrow.

New Pictures are up.

After this past post, I went out to eat with my small group. It was a good time of laughter and sharing, and I'm glad that we had that time. Scott drove me home, and in that drive we had another good conversation. Scott is the small group leader, and we've been friends since freshman year. He's been one of the people here that has most challenged my faith and pushed me to be more authentic, more sincere in the faith. Afterwards, I drove with Jimmy Su to pick up Jimmy Choi, who was down in Baltimore again to drop off his car. A drunk driver rear-ended his car and totalled the back end of it. Jimmy and Shirley, who was in the car with him at the moment, were alright though... thanks God.

We went straight to Geno's in South Philly and got cheesesteaks. I dabbed on a little bit of hot sauce onto mine, and what a mistake that was. The sauce wasn't even good, it just caused massive amounts of pain. I teared up like crazy and it hurt just to eat the cheesesteak. Let this experience warn the reader to never try the hot sauce at Geno's.

Jean Park, Jimmy's friend, was staying over that night because Jimmy had to drop her off at the airline shuttle. She had to take the shuttle to the airline because its only terminal is in NYC. It was a fun evening of watching "The Fast and the Furious," busting out guitars and singing, and just reminiscing about good times over the years. After sleeping @ 7 AM, waking at 11 and washing up, we went to see Episode II. It was my second time seeing it, so it was a little boring. The fact that it didn't have much of a replay factor speaks for itself... sad. Anyhow, we then dropped Jean off at the shuttle stop. Jean was very cool, she had a good sense of humor, especially since it was mostly guy sorta humor.

I have to be up in 5 hours for church.

Leading praise has come to be one of my biggest challenges. I'm glad that leading worship has not... since it's not something I do, but something the Holy Spirit does. I guess it's difficult to see, at least for me, how I can make it so that the praise team sorta becomes background and it's just a good time of concentrated worship.

God, have mercy on me, on us... Help me forget the distraction of my music and have it so ingrained that it's just an expression what I'm thinkingand feeling. Personal preparation for praise time is something I always try to do ahead of time but always end up doing before I have to do it. Story of my life.