Have You Met Steven?

This week, precisely Tuesday & Wednesday, I finally had a chance to stay off campus the first time this summer (Yup, sad for me). My friend had a business trip to Memphis and it’s quite a drive (5 hours); he invited me a long so that he wouldn’t have to be in the car by himself for 5 hours. During those 5 hours, I also had a chance to finish a book, a very small book that I’ve had since last semester — The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha by Ravi Zacharias. I’ve had some thoughts and questions since I started the book, and I certainly had more after finishing it. Before I talk about them, I’d like to share a story I saw on facebook, the story that made me decide to write this entry.

Tiger and Buddhist

An old story tells of a woodsman who lived in the mountains of North Korea. While working in the forest one day, he was attacked by a huge tiger. The woodsman seized the tiger by the tail, and the tiger began turning around in circles, trying to get his teeth into the woodsman.
A Buddhist monk, out for a walk, was attracted by the noise and sauntered over. The woodsman, upon seeing the monk, cried out, “Please take my ax there and kill this tiger before I am eaten alive.” Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading a book Zach gave me, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, and I came across the section he talks about his childhood dreams. I thought to myself “What are my childhood dreams?” My thoughts stumble as I couldn’t think of a single thing I dreamed of as a child. Finally, I remember that I used to dream of being a police officer. Then I wonder why I wanted to be a policeman; after all, I grew up with LEGO (still loving those), power rangers and their action figures. Why didn’t I dream of being a superman, or being one of the power rangers? Does it some how reflect who I am and what I decide to study, and to do?

I was brought up in a realistic home (which I don’t mind, but it think it kills some of my creativity). I wasn’t into music, drawing or any kind of art. I remember drawing the same thing on every single free-drawing assignments, a house — a simple combination of squares, rectangles, and triangles. As I grew up, I found computers exciting. Yup, I got introduce to computers through a computer game. After a couple times hearing my dad yell at me for breaking the computer^[a], my mom decided to send me to computer classes during the summer and I got introduced to word and spreadsheet.  If I’m not mistaken, I was in 4th grade. That was when I told myself “One day, I’ll be like Bill Gates!” (Not having to go to school and is still that rich and famous, of course! )

Back then, I was a total slacker, and probably still is . I would lie about finishing my homework so that I could play my action figures or watch TV. My parents hired a college student to come and make sure I finished my homework, help me with the assignments if necessary, and eventually teach me new concepts. That went on for a couple years until I had to take the computer classes at school. The college student, my home teacher, realized the computer ability I had, and I was doing pretty well at school, so he asked a friend of his, a computer guy, to teach me. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Just to clarify, it wasn’t my fault. Dumb Windows 98 first edition and Windows ME failed themselves. [↩]