Balance

How do I balance 14 units of engineering classes on things I've never and takes a copious amount of time to learn, a job that will give me 250 dollars a month, a manageable social life, 7 hours of sleep each night, and a strong involvement in my regular fellowships?

God, what do I do? I don't want to diminish the last bit at all, but I don't want to diminish any of the other bits too. I guess social life can go away, but I can't avoid to be unreachable. Here, the thing with lease priority is social life. So I guess I'll try to make that go away, and get a job that can get me 250 a month for gas. And then mom will talk endlessly about how I shouldn't do this because I don't need to, and move on to talk about other things regarding my dad.
There are people in worse situations than I am. I still have a roof food clean water.

Hello SJSU

Transfer had been on my mind for the last three years. Now that I have transferred to my safe school (since to my grave disappointment none of the UC's I applied to accepted me), San Jose State University, I feel as though I have failed some hidden expectations. I still remember, however, that one Sunday lunch at the local pho restaurant with my mom. While eating, she commented that she was okay with SJSU, since its rather renowned for its engineering programs at the national city university level, and that as long as I was healthy and am able to support myself. The comment came as a surprise since we were simply eating silently as we usually would.

I've had a full two days of school now. The classes began lecturing to cover the first and/or second chapters of the textbook. I am still recovering from the summer mindset since I had only arrived home about a week ago from Hong Kong. I've misplaced many things and I think my mind is one of them. I am always tired, my nose had been stuffed since the day I arrived, I feel incredibly rushed with buying textbooks, and the overbearing feeling of having to play catch up if I don't keep up in my classes is stressful. I cannot sleep tonight, and I come here to write for venting.

Last night, or I suppose the same night (though the sun is beginning to come up now), I attended a SJSU Christian club party, where most of the Christian club members gather to have a sort of a party with root beer rather than real beer as the main beverage. There was free hot dogs, root beer, music, and information. I visited the information tables of every club and received flyers from each club. The representatives told me of coming events and there were so many I don't even remember any of them. There were many flyers. There was also a lot of information. I met a few people, mainly by visiting the tables since I didn't socialize with the crowd itself. There was Sarah, Julia, Melony/Melonie whatever, Erica, Marisa, and two Nicks. I've never seen them before and I doubt I'll see them again since my day mainly involves being stuck in the Engineering building, and none of them are engineers. I talked to Melonie for perhaps half an hour, probably more. She was very nice. She seemed beautiful inside. I want to see her again.

Anyway, I wanted to see my friends some more before school started. Now that it has started, I am preoccupied with keeping up with classes, joining a fellowship, meeting people, finding friends, and my own church. I will be coordinating the upcoming all church wide fall picnic. That task will be interesting. I've never coordinated an event for the whole church before. I've never even coordinated anything for a full large group before. Now I have chosen to coordinate an event for a few hundred people. There's also the upcoming BBQ on 9/1 for the college group. I have barely done any planning and its already a week away.

God I know you are there. Praise be to You. I know You have me in Your hands, even as I miss what is eternal right now.

I Want to Complain

Because I have never felt this tired thanks to school and other things in my life since I had been jobless.

I suppose I could be stacking on too many things in my life at once at an inconvenient time (last few weeks of the quarter). I feel incredibly stressed but at the same time annoyed because I know I can use my time more efficiently if I didn't let people dear to me take my time away from schoolwork.

I find turning down time with others very hard. I also find not having enough time to do projects and papers back to back in the same week very hard.

God, I know you hear me. I am tired, but I want to do Your work still. Give me strength, because we need it, especially now. Strength and confidence in remembering You, and that You have a will which we will understand in due time. We will understand in due time why such a division in our church is happening. We will understand in due time why I ended up being here for three years instead of two (because what progress You have made in the college group is staggering).

Yet I cannot simply move away from wanting to whine. From groaning. Maybe I'm groaning like in Romans, that's a good thought. However, this groaning is probably not the case.

Where I've Come

Before I knew it, the days have moved into the latter part of 2011.

Maybe because time is so abundant right now that I'm able to take it for granted and think about things. For sure, once school starts, my mind will revolve around the stressors associated with the transfer student at a community college.

Foothill is a fun place. Every day I get to practice my driving up and down the small twistie loop, looking for the best line, for the braking points, for the apexes, for the pure enjoyment of driving. When I get out of my car, I walk into classrooms knowing I will have other transfer student next to me. We know what this life is like, we know how stressed about grades we can get, we know where we want to go next. I always found the lack of a community in a community college interesting. While the name implies that there is some form of a community within the college, there really isn't a big community joined together in the college. At Foothill in particular, there doesn't seem to be much interaction between students. Activities go unnoticed, sports doesn't ring a bell, clubs seem to have died out, and tabling events are dreary. Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the students are linked to a common goal, whether it be transferring, getting an associates, or simply self-enrichment. Because of these goals, we are united in the campus. The only thing left for us to do, as individuals who wish to link together, is to begin caring for each other.

Despite constantly stating that I have not made friends with my time at community colleges up until the end of the first year, I have made some friends. Though at the seemingly meager number of 3, I have made friends. And I can still talk to them, as if it were the first day I met them. Actually I have made many more acquaintances, but even them I can talk to them as if it were the first day I met them, give or take a few instances of misunderstanding because of language. I am joyful about this.

I had also started and ended my first real job at a grocery store, though I suppose Target is more well rounded than how I have just described it. Shifts starting at 5:30 am, combined with constant hard labor, and constant moving between the back room and the grocery shelves, had made me realize how much I do not want to be in this field of work for the rest of my life. I enjoyed my time there, though, because of the opportunities I had learned from through working there. I enjoyed that job, it wasn't too bad. Also, if I held any other attitude towards the job, I probably wouldn't be motivated to go to work at 5:30am every morning.

Those shifts took a toll on my study habits in the first half of my first year. My grades were not great, though I suppose that aren't THAT MUCH better now. C's in math and physics, A's in computer and English languages does not bode well for the aspiring mechanical engineer, wishing day to day he could transfer to Berkeley after his time at community college. The grades got better come second year, but out of the three physics classes, they were all C's. I am genuinely worried. I better write a darn good essay.

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This summer has been good so far. I have been in a car accident, I have earned the family a thousand dollars from the car accident, I have started two more aquariums, I have met up with dear friends who happen to also be brothers and sisters in Christ, I have made new friends, I have been introduced to The Album Leaf and The American Dollar, and most joy-filling of all, I have been further sanctified.

I am quite happy about how the aquariums turned out. I have more guppies now that any single fish store around town, and are expecting more to come. While my tank isn't as densely planted nor beautifully planted as the display tanks of fish stores, I enjoy gazing at my tank. The lush green colors merged with the red of my cherry shrimp, accompanied by the constant movement of numerous active guppies, with a stream of bubbles in the background, is immensely pleasing to the eye. They say fishkeeping calms the fishkeeper. While I am not seeking my ultimate peace through fishkeeping, peace is certainly a byproduct of this hobby.

And this peace ripples through all other aspects of my life. As time grew, I noticed I have grown calmer. During the former part of this year, when I had no fish, I drove faster and more aggressively, and was more easily upset. I was also not on too good of terms with God. This summer changed this.

Maybe it is because I don't have school to worry about that I'm able to better enjoy my work with the college ministry at my church. Reading, writing, and thinking about how I will lead with my co-leaders becomes less of a chore and more of a way to worship Him. I suppose doing this work, school or not, is supposed to be a form of worship, but I guess it took me a year to realize how I had been seeing my work with the ministry. I pray that God will help me to continue worship him through this ministry.

With more encouragement from many brothers and sisters, I have also begun getting into the habit of reading daily once again. Reading the Word daily, as minimal as this activity may seem, changed my life. I read with the context of Jesus at the cross, dying and then resurrecting then rising to Heaven. Reading the Word isn't a chore, but ANOTHER way to worship Him, to respond to His grace, and is another medium to which He can sanctify you for His purpose.

In particular, through the commitment of another sister, I started a reading on Luke. Right now I am near the center, while she is almost done with the book. I guess I am not doing well in my commitment. Right now, I am taking a couple, or three, chapters a day, to allow myself time to digest and contemplate on what I have read. Highlighting and making note of the words, phrases, verses I find interesting is helpful in better understanding of the chapter. I am enjoying my reading with Luke, and with her. I hope she doesn't get mad at me for being so slow.

This same sister was also the one to introduce me to some genre called post-rock. At the mention of the name, I thought it was going to be another postmodernism lecture. While postmodernism is interesting, I didn't particularly enjoy writing about it back in high school. Anyway, most of it seems to be ambient rock music, and that's great for me. Music has always been another way to calm myself. I know my emotions can go all over the place if I don't keep it in check, and I'd be fearful of myself if I didn't check myself.

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First job interview in a year and five months. A bank job interview seems much more professional than the grocery job interview. They first have a group interview to check out the potential candidates, then after a weeding session between the HR guys, they call the better men and women out for a one-on-one interview with managers. The managers get to choose who they want, which is the final weeding process. I hope I got pass the group interview. I want this teller job.

I guess because of my planned routine today, Satan decided to attack me in my attempts to sleep. I was essentially conscious all night, opening my eyes around 4 times throughout the night before giving up and woke up to the day at 7:30. The whole night, I was fighting off temptation, and cried out to God each time I knew I needed to do so. With grace, I have won the battle.

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After that night, walking down Berkeley with her in my arms, I didn't think about her very much. The idea was that if I had kept myself occupied with other unrelated things, I would not hearth back to that night and to those feelings I momentarily held. Since then, my mind had been wrapped in serving, in family, and in school. A year passes without catching a glimpse of her (Facebook does not count). August comes, and I got a chance to visit my other friends there. We planned to also invite her to join us to chill but she was preoccupied the whole night. I left Berkeley that night thinking about her.

I was able to meet up with her on a Friday night. Recalling the whole experience is possible, but I'll dedicate that as another piece of writing. I got to really know her as a sister in Christ that night. I also got to know her, her background, her past, her present, and even her future prospects. I left Berkeley that night thinking about her.

We somehow ended up having a text conversation that lasted until the next Friday, when her texts simply stopped coming. I was a bit bothered at first, but the choice to reply is at her discretion. It seems after the text stopped being so frequent, our conversations also stopped being frequent. Perhaps it is me not taking the opportunity to engage her, because me not engaging has always been the problem hindering me from keeping in touch with my other friends, and I don't see how this can't be applied here.

I got to see her again the next Sunday. Picked her up from her home church, got to see her dad while picking up her luggage, and we drove to her home in Berkeley. Upon arriving, we realized there was no point in going to the event both her and I intended to attend because of time limitations. The others whom had went ahead in hopes of catching us at the event came over to her house and had conversation with us for a while. We then met up with some others and went to dinner. After dinner, she returned home to do some cleaning while I went over to my friend's place to chill for a bit. A while passed, and I decided to walk back to her place. I then helped her with picking up some of her food from her friend's fridge and moving it back to her fridge. We then spent some time talking some more. I left Berkeley that night thinking about her.

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Upon discussing honesty, I realized that for me to be completely honest with her, I need to tell her how I feel about her. Then maybe, just maybe...

Probably not.

Or I could keep quiet and let time and school occupy our minds again. The immediate "problems" will distract me from her, as they did last year when I didn't know her at all, right?

I remember saying that if I got to know her more as a sister in Christ, I wouldn't see her as anything more (or less, depending on how you want to see it). After getting to know her more, I feel the bond in Christ has gotten stronger. I also don't feel that my assumption that knowing her more in Christ would lower my affection for her. In fact, it did quite the opposite.

I'm going to be honest with her. I just want an opportunity.

I have a hard time loving my family. Is there something wrong with me?

Update on Life?

It is 2:30 am, 6/30/2011. It's been a long time since I've made a post.

I turned 20 eight days ago. Double decades, a bit surreal. Children only dream of hitting this number, but before they know it, they've reached their 20th birthday. What have I done in these twenty years?

Born in Hong Kong. Lived there for 9 years. Moved to Hawaii. Lived there for 8 years. Moved to California. Lived for 3 years and counting. In these places I passed the k-12 grade education ladder and on my way to a third year at a community college, while everyone else in my age is well on their way to their degrees.

While everyone is on their way, I'm left behind because of poor planning and irresponsibility on my part. Makes me wonder about all this that I've been doing thus far, and what I'll be doing later on. I suppose there's no reason wondering because reality will probably as far off from what I can produce with my head as possible. In a few months, I will be driving to Davis to drop my younger brother off for his first year at a 4 year accredited university, while I sit at home going to a community college for a third year that wasn't necessary.

I've met so many people, many nice, smart people. Perhaps the only thing I've never done that a typical "American" teen would have done is gone to an actual party and drink (and probably for good reason). I've learned so much, but I can't wait to go into the real world and apply what I have learned.

I feel like my life is being wasted. There's got to be more in this than I know.

Have I put myself behind the Berlin Wall once again?

I don't get it. I sleep as much as a fourth grader, but I am perpetually tired and out of energy. I am really confused.

Anthropology doesn't make the situation better.

I feel like I am lying each time I answer "how are you?" with "great"

However, this war will end. The question is when.