Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Where Is Your Treasure?

I've been slacking off lately, in terms of spending alone time with God, in prayer and in reading the Word. Granted, I've been extremely busy with work these past couple of weeks, so much so that I find myself taking a bite of my lunch at 3 in the afternoon and chewing it as I'm walking to the copy room just so I'm not 'wasting time' sitting and eating. Still, busy-ness is never an excuse to not spend time with God, so I hope writing this will help keep me more accountable.

In the midst of all the craziness in the market, I feel like God is teaching me and showing me a lot of things through my job. He has definitely given me the grace to deal with the stress, the fatigue, and unpredictable mood swings at the office. A few of our clients are extremely nervous about having enough money to last them during retirement now that the financial system has collapsed and no one knows what's going to happen. For decades, these people are focused on their careers, pouring their entire lives into their work to save up enough money so they can retire comfortably. Now they're in their 60s and retiring, they're losing sleep at night because they're worried that all the money they've worked so hard for will disappear in this market. So for the first half of life you're worried about not having enough money, and the second half of life you're worried about losing the money that you have. It really is a sad way to spend your life on earth. It's almost better to have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck, since you don't have any wealth TO lose. Not that I'm not sympathetic to people's situations or nervousness, of course it's understandable. But when your treasure is in your bank accounts, that's where your heart is also. I am seeing firsthand how money can affect one's perspective on life and peace of mind.

Along a similar train of thought, God is showing us more and more that when we forsake Him and fall into the traps of pride and greed, that we will have to face the consequences of our decisions. Who would have thought that century old prestigious investment banks would fail and disappear into a thing of the past?! Job titles that seemed so glamorous even as recent as two years ago are now looked at with skepticism or sympathy or perhaps even pity. But why should we be surprised? God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. History is full of examples of people trusting in their own abilities rather than depending on God. And each time they fail, they are reminded that they have strayed away from God and go back to Him. That's the problem with us. We forget. So easily and so quickly. It's like what my friend Boey said when he visited NYC, 'What happened to the slogan - We will never forget'? He asked a bunch of people where ground zero was and no one could point him in the right direction. I heard on the radio the other day that after 9/11 churches were filled with people seeking answers and thinking that perhaps the end has come. After a few short months, when things settled down, we went back to our old routines and the sense of urgency faded. We don't even have excuses that the Israelites had - oh the Book of the Law got lost over the years and it's been generations so who knew?! We forget in the same generation, and we have all the information we want at our fingertips. Not even ten years ago, so many people lost their fortunes when the internet bubble burst. Then we were scared and cautious for a couple of years, but when we saw the next 'thing' on the horizon, we put all our money in real estate. We can blame the big bad wolves running the financial giants or point fingers at the government for not regulating the financial system, but really, we all played a part in this crisis. Isn't it convenient that when everyone was making money and taking out second mortgages and remodeling their homes and buying investment properties and homes they could barely afford, no one was giving credit to these financial companies or the government for their great fortunes. Now that we're in trouble, we expect someone else to take the blame for our mistakes and bail us out.

I'm glad we have more to look forward to and more to place our faith in than what this world has to offer, and I'm thankful that we have a loving God who gives us the strength to enjoy this life with peace and joy despite the crazy circumstances.

1 Timothy 6:6-10
Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

My View

So I spend 40+ hours a week in this office that I share with two of my co-workers. I actually have a very nice view from my office on the 24th floor. Sometimes when I'm not too busy, I like glancing out at the beautiful blue sky with a few fluffy clouds. These past couple of weeks though, it seems that I've been spending a bit too much time in this office, with everything that's going on in the market and nervous clients on top of regular work. I'm glad that I at least have a window - since I haven't been able to enjoy the nice weather outside.

My office mates and I were so happy about the naturally bright office that we agreed to not turn on the lights. Our colleagues walking by would make fun of us and give us bewildered looks but they soon accepted the fact that we were not going to give in. Then one day, it was pouring and dark outside in the middle of the day, and we were really pushing the whole 'not turning on the light' agreement. One of our coworkers decided to turn on the light for us because he really thought it was too dark. All three of us shielded our eyes from the weirdly bright fluorescent light that stung and told him to turn it off. LOL, it was really funny. But unfortunately, it's getting darker and darker earlier and earlier. Soon we won't be able to see the paper on our desks. Sigh. We're considering bringing in desk lamps with soothing light to keep us calm instead of the bright overhead light that make us squint and jittery.

The first desk in the picture is mine


















View out my window. My coworker asked me if I made any window friends yet. I never thought to look for people from my window, it might be interesting. I just always looked up at the sky.























My desk (the cleaner side)


















My desk (the side I actually work on), whoever said I was organized was clearly delusional

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Jersey City Housewarming

Yes I'm behind on my blog updates. I apologize. Work and life has been a bit hectic these days. A couple of weekends ago, I went to a friend's housewarming party in Jersey City. I'm not exactly sure why, but a few people thought it'd be funny to buy a couple of lobsters to cook. None of us have ever cooked lobster before. They were still kind of moving when we took them out of the bag. All we knew was that you're supposed to drain the pee (we think) from the lobsters by sticking something up its 'whatever it is'. I'd seen my mom do it before. I was NOT going to volunteer to do it. May was brave enough to do it while Joe held them down. Then she had to chop them up, I think a few of us jumped and squealed when the knife hit the chopping board. The poor lobsters.



































Byebye :(


















Wuh?!


















So mature

















Yay, people who smile normally


















The boys engrossed with Smash

















Sherry may look innocent and cute, but she's vicious at cards!



































The boys still oblivious to everything except the television

Monday, September 8, 2008

Labor Day Weekend at Adult Camp

Prior to this past Labor Day, the last time I went to camp was when I was 16. I remember it being a lot of fun, but with way too much teenage drama. So when a couple of my friends from church invited us to go to 'adult camp' for the weekend, I decided to give it a try. When else do 27 year olds get to go to camp and feel like kids again?! It's a Young Life camp but every Labor Day weekend they invite adults to share in what these high school kids experience as campers. What really prompted me to seriously consider going to camp was the evening sky. Almost every day I would glance up at the sky as I get out of my car in the driveway, and look at the few and far between dim stars. I thought about how much clearer they were in Phoenix. And then one night, I really just wanted to lie down on a meadow in the middle of nowhere and stare up at the sky. Driving five hours north into upstate NY seemed like a good alternative. I felt like 'getting away' for a weekend anyway.

So Friday evening, four of us drove up to Saranac together. The car ride was fun, we chatted for most of the trip. But by the time we arrived at the camp, it was almost midnight and I was exhausted. Even through my grogginess (I fell asleep in the car towards the end) and the dim lighting, I could tell the camp was beautiful. It looked like a resort. We had bunk beds in our rooms which we shared with a few other girls.

Saturday morning I walked out saw the lake for the first time. It was so calm and beautiful. The smell of damp forest in the chilly morning air was soothing and refreshing. I was told that the food was great, and they were right. It's not at all like what I remembered about camp food. Every meal was very tasty, I didn't even crave the bags of junk food that they put in our rooms. The high school kids were volunteers for the weekend and served us during all the meals. They're really cute.

Our table at lunch
































The main lodge where me and the other girl in our group stayed. I loved how you can just roam around the camp and find little areas to sit and chat, pray, think by yourself....
















After lunch on Saturday, we basically had free time to explore and do activities until dinner. We went out onto the lake in a canoe and kayaks. I've never been in a kayak before. I pretty much did a horrible job of maneuvering and went in circles a lot. And it's tiring! I was so slow getting back to shore that towards the end, Gerald just came into the water and pulled my kayak ashore. I am so pathetic when it comes to outdoor activities. Next, we were scheduled for the rope course. So there were these rope obstacles from tree to tree, and you're maybe 4 stories above ground (I'm not good with judging distances)? A few parts were pretty scary. At one point, we ziplined across, from tree to tree. It was fun, but the scariest part is letting go and falling into the air. It's kind of a freeing and exhilarating feeling though, letting go. After the ropes course, we played frisbee golf. I stunk at frisbee but it was fun anyway.

































After a yummy dinner, we had what's called Club, where we sing a bunch of songs with a really good live band, be entertained for a bit and do silly things, and then we hear a message. This speaker was amazing, he preaches very simple things but does it in a way that captures your attention and makes you think. After Club, we headed over to the gym and guess what, we got to SQUARE DANCE! LOL, I haven't square danced since middle school gym class! I love square dancing, it was so much fun, even though we were all like running into each other and probably not doing any of it right. Afterwards we had some more free time and one of the guys we were with took us to 'the secret spots' to star gaze. Oh my gosh, seriously, I've never seen so many stars in the sky before. It was perfect, because there was no moon. We were able to lie on these large rocks that rose above the lake (so we had to be careful cuz it was nearly pitch black and if you fell off the rocks, down into the lake you go!) Looking up at the sky, I almost felt like I was floating in space, it was so beautiful and peaceful, especially with the occasional cool evening breeze. Sigh. Oh, and Mike pointed out that the cloud-like misty thing in the sky was the Milky Way! I SAW the Milky Way, how cool is that?! I think that was my favorite moment of the trip.

Sunday we went parasailing over the lake and tubing. Parasailing was fun, although it got a little scary when we were up in the air and it started to get a bit windy. Tubing was great. But we told the guy to go slow cuz a couple of us girls couldn't swim. The most terrifying part was getting in the water with a life vest, knowing that that's the only thing that's keeping me from drowning. Yea, so the boat was going so slow and straight that we were able to pose for pictures and have a conversation with each other while tubing, LOL. I think next time, we can go 'medium' level. The guys on the other hand, were getting flipped and falling all over the place, it looked painful.

































Dinner on Sunday was 50s theme, so we got dressed up in our 50s clothing, or whatever we could pull together at the last minute that might pass as 50s clothing. They had a swing dancing contest, it looks fun. I told my group that we should learn swing dancing if we were to come back, because out of our group of 30 some people, we didn't have any representatives on the dance floor, sadness.
































After dinner and Club we had some free time to play!





































All the other girls were asleep by the time me and Daryl (the girl from my church) got back to our room. We were not tired yet so we grabbed our bags of chips and went downstairs to the lounge. There was a huge fireplace and some people sitting around it chatting. So we took a table on the other side of the room and ended up having a great couple of hours sharing and munching (I was doing most of the munching, surprise surprise). That was a real blessing.

The next morning we cleaned up our rooms, went to breakfast and then prepared to go back home. Here's a picture with a few of the girls in our room
















Three of the girls' husbands
















After we got back to Jersey, we stopped at Fuddruckers for dinner where I ordered a 1/3 pound mushroom swiss burger with fries. Wow, it was good. I was pooped by the time I got home. What an amazing weekend! There are more pictures in the link below. I didn't take that many pictures cuz my camera isn't waterproof.

http://web.mac.com/asianyounglife/Adult_Camp/College_%26_Adult_Camp_2008.html

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Fantasy versus Reality

I used to read a lot prior to college, mostly romance novels and suspense stories. I think one of the reasons I loved romance novels was because I was too young to fully realize that it doesn't happen in real life. I had nothing in my life to compare it to, so perhaps it gave me a false sense of hope that these romances actually happen in real life. I remember getting so engrossed in the stories that I dwell on and think about these characters as if they were real. And I think subconsciously these stories put unfair expectations in my mind about relationships. At the time, I didn't see any harm in living in these fantasies.

After high school, I pretty much stopped reading for fun. It's been a long time since I'd read any romance novels. It's probably just as well because I think I am much more realistic and less naive than I used to be. Recently I was out with a few girlfriends at dinner, and two of my friends had read Twilight. When they mentioned that it was a vampire story, I exclaimed, 'I used to LOVE vampire novels!' My friend laughed and handed me the book and said I'd be finished with it in just a few days. I was a bit nervous about reading it, because I didn't want to become obsessed with the book (or the male character, more importantly). So I started cautiously, not sure how I would react to reading a book about a vampire now that I am much older.

Surprisingly, it was a different and interesting experience. I enjoyed it very much, and had it open every free minute I had. While I was reading, I was completely 'in' the story and I could 'feel' what the female character felt. But as soon as I closed it, I am back in the real world. As I was reading the book, I realized why a vampire story makes for such a great romance novel. It's the whole forbidden love concept. A vampire's instinct and physical need is to kill humans. In Twilight, a male vampire and a female human fall in love. His instinct to hurt her struggles against his heart and mind to love and protect her. She knows that he can kill her unintentionally at any moment, and yet will do anything to be with him. At one point, she asked him how he's able to resist the temptation to hurt her, and he said, 'mind over matter'. I thought this was interesting because it's really true. The mind is powerful. We are not slaves to our physical needs and desires, we CAN control them if our minds are in the right place.

The best part (and worst) of the book is reading just how absolutely in love the characters are. The way she sees him, as the most beautiful and perfect being in the whole world (not to mention the fact that he's a vampire so he's strong, fast, can read minds, etc) and the way she melts and hyperventilates when he looks into her eyes. It's the best because I can 'escape' into this fantasy world and 'pretend' that I'm her for the time being. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to see and feel for someone the way she does him, almost as if nothing he does or says or is could ever be wrong. He's just that perfect (at least to me). It's the worst because I know it's not real and can never be real. No one feels that way about another person. My friend and I were joking around about how we've spent years adjusting our expectations with reality that we have to be careful to now allow these stories to affect our perspectives (least of all vampire stories).

Another of our friends who hasn't read this book yet mentioned she read an article that said how the men and women of our generation are growing farther and farther apart in how we view love and relationships. The women tend to gravitate toward romance novels, stories of forbidden love and sacrifices and significant romantic gestures. The men on the other hand .... well, you get the picture. It's no wonder that there are so many problems in relationships and marriages. So I do see how reading romance novels can be harmful. Even in reading Twilight, I had to be conscious of and careful to separate fantasy from reality. I just found out though, that Twilight is part of a 4 book series. But I think I have decided that once this series is over, I am going to stay away from these types of novels, especially if I were ever to get into a relationship. It's just not fair, to him or me, to be subjecting my thoughts to these fantasies and having expectations that will never be met. Unless I somehow come across a beautiful vampire who decides to fall in love with me ....

Friday, September 5, 2008

Traditional Indian Wedding

So a couple of weekends ago, I went to my high school friend's wedding in NJ. It was definitely interesting. The day before the wedding, I joked with my friend who was coming with me that he should pick me up in a horse and carriage. And when we arrived at the hotel parking lot, guess what, there was a horse and carriage there! LOL. Apparently, in traditional Indian weddings, the groom is supposed to arrive on a horse (I thought it was an elephant but that might have been more difficult to pull off). My friend and I, a high school friend and his wife, and another good high school friend were basically the only people I knew there, and we definitely stood out as the few non-Indian guests. The wedding ceremony was a new experience for me, full of symbolic rituals and most of it was done in Sanskrit I believe. We each had a small pamphlet describing each of the rituals so we could kind of follow along. It was a long wedding, by the time we sat down at the reception I think it was almost 9pm (the ceremony started at 4). All throughout the day we were wondering if they were going to serve Indian food, and then I started to crave Indian food. I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. It was buffet style. Seeing that we didn't really know that many people there, we left soon after dinner and congratulating the couple. I loved the speeches that were made, the bride's younger sister's speech made me laugh and cry at the same time. It reminded me of the speech I made at my sister's wedding just a little over a year ago. All in all, it was an interesting experience. I had fun and enjoyed seeing some people I hadn't seen in a long time, and getting to know the friend I went with a bit better. But it was definitely not worth the headache I'd caused myself. But hey, that's how you learn right?

Somewhere in the procession is the groom on a horse
















Bride and family member





















One of the wedding rituals
















I loved the centerpiece. I wanted to take it home.





















Me with the newlyweds!