Well, I'm going to go off to the first retreat in an hour.

I've never felt comfortable at home, or with my home church. Don't ask why, because I really don't know why either. I guess the fact that my older brother and I are the only ones in our age range has something to do with it. Or, maybe it's the fact that I was shoved into the charge of the kids ministry.

Please pray for me, I just don't have a good feeling about any of this. There's a lot of issues I still have to deal with, like how I'm really uncomfortable with my parents when it comes to discussing spiritual things (which they want to do all the time). Actually, I'm ok with talking about them with my dad, I think it's just my mother.

+++++++++++++++++++

What is my state of mind right now, but like a rowboat in a whirlpool? My thoughts are like the eddies traced out by the oars. Trying to escape, I feel like I'm going in circles through the relentless current. I want something, but it's not attainable in my eyes. Is it even what I think it is? Is the placid water over the whirlpool's rim... placid? Is it there? Maybe I should let the current take me down... to the center, the deep, the dark.

See you all on Sunday.

"damage takes longer to make right" - jyco

yeah, that's what seems to be what i'm constantly doing in life. trying to make right what stupid blunder i did.

Ben Stein's take on Hollywood. (Ben Stein = the boring science teacher in The Wonder Years and in Ferris Bueller)

This little optical illusion illustrates one of the foibles of human visual perception. I just generated that picture, so I can tell you with confidence that the picture is pure black and white; there are no grays existent in the picture. Yet, as you can see, in between the blocks (especially at the corners), it seems like there are gray spots in the white. Therefore, the human mind incorrectly assumes that there is gray, when in truth, the picture is black in white.

As I was walking, I don't know why this just came up to me, but it did. I was wondering this:

Just as this image points out one of the limitations of human visual perception, I am wondering. There are many topics in ethics, philosophy, etc. that people consider to be "gray areas." However, what if things are more black and white than they seem? Maybe in these issues, we distort the truth by our own imperfections. So, how do we find that objective, cold hard standard to measure what's black, and what's white?

I'm not really sure what gray areas I have in mind, but I'm more thinking about just the concept of having gray areas in general.

"There are two colours in my head
There are two colours in my head
What is that you tried to say?
What was that you tried to say?
Tried to say.. tried to say..
Tried to say.. tried to say..

Everything in its right place"
—Radiohead

I am thinking about revamping my site.

Why fix a site that isn't broken?

Well, it needs a facelift. I need something that's more original, not a modded version of a Blogger template. I need something that's tailored to my vision of self-expression. Ok, that sounded pretentious. Ok, that was pretentious.

My current thoughts for what the new site will have:

·Keep a simple interface. Remember, "Simple is best."
·Different sections: I'm thinking of, in addition to my journal section, having a tech section in which, from time to time, i will post a "how things work" sorta deal with one of my interests. For example, how to set the guitar delay to match the style of the Edge from U2 or all the copycat Vineyard/christian music peeps that use it now. Etc. etc.
·Possibly, a forum. I'll have to see if i'm allowed to run the cgi stuff on my school server.

Any more ideas?

Wow, I've wasted quite a bit of time here.

Over the past week, I have been reading "The Return of the King," the third part of the Lord of the Rings saga by Tolkien.

This guy's a genius, and I think the reason why his works are above the rest of the fantasy fare (besides the fact that he virtually started the whole genre with these works in the first place) is that, well, he created more than a series of tales, he created a whole world. He made up his own languages, complete with their own alphabets, word structures, etc. He created a vast historical background for all the events that take place. He wrote all the poems and whatnot. Oh, and he wrote the books themselves... The Lord of the Rings trilogy; it's prequel, the Hobbit; their prequel, the Silmarillon; Unfinished Tales, and so on. Volumes and volumes.

After reading the books and watching the movie again, I realize how much I really didn't understand a lot of the nuances here and there when I first saw the movie without reading anything. There are many nods to the Hobbit in the movie, and there are a whole lot of allusions to what will happen later in the series that I didn't quite pick up.

The books are sometimes hard reads, though, in that they all move very slowly when you first start. But they do get pretty good as you plod on.

Did anybody know that during the late 60s, the Lord of the Rings received this huge jumpstart of popularity? It became a big cultural phenomenon. People would write in subway walls, "Frodo Lives!", and it was sortuva hippie kinda thing (not really popular, but enough to be remembered) to say at the time. They also generated buttons and bumper stickers and other paraphernalia which proclaimed, "Frodo Lives", "Gandalf for President", and opened new "head shops" with such names as "Middle-Earth", "Hobbit" and "Mithril".

Just some nerdy trivia :-)

Well, couple strokes before midnight, and I post.

Today was a productive one; I set up my new email account, finished registration, had my parents' phone fixed, and started to check out prices for a new video card. I'm also in the planning stages for what I'll be teaching the kids this weekend at my church's family retreat. Then, as soon as I get back, I have worship team practice with Jimmy Choi and Jane Park for a retreat next week... what a busy time. Sorry daily readers, starting from Friday I must be off again for a bit of time. I may have time to post on Sunday, but I promise to write daily in my journal, and type out the more interesting details after this week.

As is, tomorrow will be spent taking care of more errands, and preparing for all the hard work this week.

Well, again I pose this question, and I hope I get some responses this time:

What does it mean to "receive Him?" What does it mean to "believe in His name?" How you do "receive Christ in your heart?" What is it that you receive, a concept? Do you just memorize it, and say that you know it?

New email address, new site address.

If you know me, you will be getting email with my updated info, as soon as I get a new phone (within a cuppa weex).

As for my new site address, it is:

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~timkang

"From Bal'mo' to Jersey, to Maine and back..."

The moment we got to Maine, it started to rain. Go figure, huh? :-)

Good thing, by the next morning it didn't rain again until our last evening there.

Maine was very excellent. We went to the spahklin' beaches of York County, since they were rated one of the 10 best spots to vacation by Money Magazine. On the first full day there, we first went to a nature reserve down the road from our campsite. The hiking trail at the reserve went through forest and had some spectacular views of the marshes and coast. Afterwards, we found this isolated beach down the road called Parson's beach that wasn't crowded at all and had especially clean water. White sand and very very flat, so the waves were gentle (and at some points, nonexistent... kinda like a swimming pool). My parents enjoyed picking mussels and snails for some grub. What a first day!

The next couple of days were spent exploring the whole coast in that county... the Yorks, Cape Neddick, Ogonquit, Wells (where we had camped), and the Kennebunks. We found this one tiny restaurant in Wells that was voted the best clam chowder, lobster roll, twin lobster dinner, and clam strips in the county. They were right... we had the best clam chowder and clam strips I've ever tasted... as well as some "wicked deals on lobsta'," as the locals say. $4.75 a pound! What a steal. We went there a couple of times throughout the weekend.

The next day, we went to another nature reserve nearby; the forests seemed to be right out of a fairy tale, like Lord of the Rings.

Bad point: Mosquitoes up the wazoo. I lost count of how many bites I got... same goes for the rest of the family. Most of them were acquired as soon as we got there and started to pitch tent, when were were not so
wise about the area. But oh! the food, the beaches, the locale sure made up for it. We spent a day touring towns listed in Money: the Yorks and Ogonquit. Incidentally, we also drove around the Kennebunks, where President Bush is still vacationing. We drove by his house, which was on this really tiny peninsula of rock. There were secret service checkpoints, between which we weren't allowed to make any stops. It was pretty cool.

Yum. Did I mention the lobster? The clam chowder, the clam strips? The best I've ever had.