the US so far..

Just wanna update you guys on what I've been up to lately...

July 15
touchdown. checked into the Millennium Hotel at the One UN Plaza. had dinner @ an Italian restaurant which had a waiter that thought that Tabasco meant toilet. went for a walk with Ishmam & Sheela.


July 16-19
Youth Leadership Summit. I shall talk of this more some other time.


July 20-22
chill-time with Penuel, my brother. He came up from St Louis to visit. We shopped, walked a lot, subwayed, got lost, got found, went sight-seeing, ate kebab and lots of Malaysian food.


July 23
arrived in Orlando at about 12 in the morning. got up and went to SeaWorld. Encountered a roller-coaster, Shamu the whale(s), sharks, sea lions, dolphins, manatees, dogs, cats, gulls, etic...and a pig.



Blessings,
jinho

Atlantic Reflections

i wrote this while i was on the plane just now.
Hey friends,

I’ve been wanting to write a meaningful, heartfelt post for many months now. Fortunately, the 7+ hours I’ve got left to sit in this plane can make that dream come true =)

I’m some 33000 feet above the Atlantic now and since this cool plane has a downward camera, I can actually see the ocean from the screen in front of me. Ops, well perhaps not anymore (cos it’s gotten all cloudy now). Anyway, just thought I’d share some of my thoughts...



OBS
the last 10 days at Outward Bound was really something. I had a really great watch (as in group, not chronograph) which taught me a lot. I never knew they were such great people.

I won’t share EVERYTHING that I learnt (too personal, too long), but lemme share what was perhaps the greatest lesson I got there:

Having heard horror stories about the physical, mental, emotional (and “appetital”) torture our seniors experienced, I went prepared for the worst. On the 1st day, one of the OBS directors said that we’d learn about our individual limits (physical, mental, emotional) and teamwork. I was excited, my heart (dramatically) expecting something like what you hear people say happened during the Vietnam War.


We had to climb 3 peaks to climb over 2 days for the jungle expedition. After the first peak, I felt that it wasn’t that bad after all. But from what the people from the other group (who did the expedition earlier) had told me, I knew the real challenge would be the second peak. I remembered the war-torn faces as they returned from the jungle in their bloody, mud stained shirts and wounded bodies. True enough, “hill number 1145” – that’s what it’s called – was quite a challenge. It was thorny, damp, leech-infested and really, really (i think 80 degrees) steep, not to mention that we had at least 10kg bags on our backs.

However, just as I began to feel that my limits were starting to be stretched, we had to turn back (and use the main road instead) to be able to reach the next campsite before dark. That meant that we would never experience the hardest part of the course, which was the swamp on the way down from the hill. The only other option was to camp at the peak of Hill 1145 that night, and go through the swamp and finish the 3rd peak the following day. My immediate gut feel was to step up to the challenge of the harder option (although some team members strongly disagreed). “After all,” I thought, “OBS is about pushing the limits of our body and will”.


Little did I know that in my obsession to push the limits of my individual capability, I had allowed myself to be limited by my own boundaries of self-centeredness: I had forgotten about being empathetic and considerate. As we made our way back down the slope, I realized that I had learnt to stretch a limit that I hadn’t really prepared myself for: it was the limit of selflessness. How far was I willing to put others first?

I hope that I’ll get better at this art of losing myself, to say no to the good so i can say yes to the best.
I hope the same for you, too =)

Jesus help us, amen.
jinho

Befuddled

hey I'm back!

evidently, the past few months have been incredibly busy, to the point that this poor page fell down the priority list.

Just wanted to share some random something i bumped into recently. It was Sunday night: I was researching about the independence of the Malaysian Judiciary, or its lack of it, when I found out that Perak's Sultan Azlan Shah -- the one who replaced Nizar with Zambry as Chief Minister -- used to be our country's Chief Judge!


Befuddled.
Not him. I mean me.

Haha.. i know, it not such amazing news, but at that point, it was like a moment of anagnorisis. When i tried sharing it with some friends, i was disappointed to learn that they already knew about it. This happened twice, after which i decided to stop trying.

that's all for now, hopefully I'll drop by to say more before I leave for OBS this saturday..i really do have a lot to say..

In His grip,
Jinho =)

On sending Astronauts to Space

"The Malaysian government will be sponsoring one teenager to go to outer space. Give a speech to convince people why you should be picked"

That was what we were given in GP class on Saturday, and we were to present our speeches (1 or 2 mins long) today.

Guess what happened?



Here's some of the reasons a few of us gave, after Miss Marcell finally convinced us to just try lie or cook up some reasons as to why we should go. I paraphrase:

I've got a pretty face. This means that they don't have to worry about editing all the pictures that are sent out for publicity, since I look so good already.

Um..I've always dreamed of going to space, and not just any space, but OUTER space. Also, I have something very special that will only show when I am in space. You should therefore pick me, so that you will all see that special something =)

...and the other reasons were similarly, err...entertaining..

***

These were smart students. BUT despite all our brain-craking efforts, we simply couldn't think of any rational reasons why we should spend so much money on space tourism -- especially when so many people in our country is suffering from poverty hunger and disease.

I tried my best to be creative, but what I came up with was mere rhethoric with no substance. If you paid close attention, there was still no rational reason to justify such a project:

You should pick me because I have a dream, and a dream not just for myself or my family, but a dream for this whole nation. For too long have we depended on other nations to taxi us beyond the atmosphere. We cannot always rely on them to send up our satellites or our astronauts. We must be able to be independent. And that is exactly what my dream is: that we may one day develop our own space technology.

I then went on to say that I got a place in MIT to study physics and was set on gaining the necessary knowledge to come back and lead the development of our own space tech...bla bla...

The conclusion:
Having put a lot of thought into this, we simply couldn't figure out any sense in a space trip.
Maybe there are some reasons that we were not able to think of, but sadly enough, we were not able to think of them.

Wierd People

Most human beings are weird.
Isn’t that funny? If you’re weird, you’re supposed to be unusual – rare. But when almost everyone is weird, THAT’s weird. And worrying too.



Many of our adults work really, really hard -- they wake up early, sleep late, and barely take time to care for their health, families or even themselves.
This is the usual train of reasoning...

____________________________________________________________________________________

You see, possessions are very important. House, car, clothes, gadgets, holidays -- these things are necessary for a quality life. Besides that, they define our "social status".

The problem is that these things, being good, don't come easy. There are 2 good ways to solve this difficulty.

Solution no. 1 --> Work Harder
Time is incredibly important - time is GOLD. There are 2 places where we can best reallocate our time:
1. time with the KIDS
- We need to cut down the time spent with kids so that we can work more hours and make more money. That way, we can afford more shopping and holidays for ourselves and our kids.
- If the kids are not happy that we don't spend enough time with them, we'll just give them more stuff (TV, iPods, handphones, internet, Indonesian maid, boarding school, PSPs, etc) to babysit them - make them happy.

2. time eating @ home
- Cooking at home is a waste of precious time. It's much wiser to eat out at retaurants and fast food outlets. The time saved can be used to generate more income.
- Now there are some who say that this kind of food isn't nutritious enough. Ahh, they haven't realized the wide range multivitamins and wonderful supplements we can buy to complement our diet. And if those aren't good enough to keep us in shape, we can buy fitness machines like the uZap, iGallop, absonic, uRobic and the list goes on...


Solution no. 2 --> Buy now, Pay later
This is the beauty of credit cards, loans mortgages and the sort! We can enjoy today what would have taken us years to pay for. Be it a condo or a laptop, a car or a washing machine - these credit facilities help us live the ultimate life!

__________________________________________________________________________________


Weird people.

when we look at our busy schedules, our sickly bodies, our affection-wanting children, and the apathy in our hearts;
when we consider the increased occurences of floods, droughts and hurricanes, the fatigued polar bears struggling to death to find a block of ice in the melting North Pole;
when we think about how our greed for possessions are steadily depleting the earth's resouces (new products everyday means new rubbish everyday);
we will realise that the materialistic lifestyle really doesn't improve the quality of life.



Weird people. What's worse, it's not just a few of them running around. They make up most of our society -- messing up life, messing up the planet =(

Contemplating these thoughts, this 200-century old quote couldn't be more relevant:

"Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses." -- Jesus

Wanting good things isn't a problem -- it's just that some of us have gotten horribly off-balance.
=)

Merry Christmas & ....phew!

Hey there...



Merry Christmas people!
I intended to post more regularly during the holidays but..well, as you can see, it didn't really work out. Been really busy (this sound so cliche) with Youth Camp (which was, by the way, a most awesome experience), writing articles for Global Debates, going caroling in Sabah, getting involved in a Christmas drama (which was also spectacular) and trying to take some time to enjoy Christmas for goodness sake! Anyway, just wanna wish ya'll a happy, happy, BLESSED Christmas...
may the love, joy and peace - for which Jesus was born to bring - be with you all the days of 2009, and for the rest of your life.



....phew!
I almost got killed last Monday. I was driving (alone) to church from the house after a game of futsal...when I fell asleep on the wheel (for about 20 metres)... next thing I knew, I was awakened by a loud crash -- I had rammed into a parked car!

To make a long story short, I'm still alive. Ok, maybe I'm melodramatizing it, but HEY! I could've knocked into somebody's kid! I'm thankuful that...

1. Nobody got hurt
- (besides my emotions which were torn apart at the sight of parting with RM 260). Like my dad said, good thing I hit a car and not a child!

2. It was a parked car
- it wasn't a headlong accident, it wasn't a motorbike, it was a parked car.

3. It was a Proton
- of all the cars I could've hit (BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota...) it was a Proton. ANd of all the Protons, it was a Saga -- and an old one too! So, minimal cost.

4. Location
- it was near the church. I was looking for a parking spot, and there was a traffic jam, so i wasn;t going very fast. Also, my dad wa nearby and he came over to "settle matters" with the car's owner (who was, by the way, right there when it happened).


and therefore I'm grateful. I know that "the LORD is my shepherd".

=D

Jesus bless you today!

Before it's too Late

I've been really busy with the Global Debates competition recently. It's a competition under the People Speak campaign (an initiative of the UN Foundation).

Among the many things that we're doing is to
- come up with an action plan to significantly combat Climate Change
- debate about the action plan
- blog
- set up 2 websites (1 for each side of the debate)
- write a petition to the UN

The stuff I've been doing have been really interesting.
And mind opening.
I've realised - more than ever before - the importance and the urgency of doing something about Climate Change.




Take a deeper look at this topic.

Check out our blog.

And do a favour - not just to me, but yourselves and your children - by adding a number to our petition when you join our Group.

And think about the planet, about what you can change, before, as Doughtry calls, "before it's too late".