Ryu2.mind

Back in the USA -- thankfully unscathed by disease, war, or airline bankruptcies, all of which, at certain times, threatened to rear their ugly heads to derail our trip.

It certainly feels strange and almost surreal in a way. I felt this exact way over three years ago after my summer missions trip -- except now, things in cozy, comfy Silicon Valley seem -- well, different. Most visibly, Keith is gone, Chi-Hua is getting married in five months, Justin is now a dad, there's a war going on, and a whole slew of little changes that make this homecoming a somewhat confused one. (And I'm still trying to determine which of my friends got hooked up this time around...)

I've been told -- for most long-term missionaries, re-entry is emotionally the most difficult time in their experiences, if you can believe it: not actually serving on the field, but coming home from it, as they try to explain all the things they've learned and "God has taught them" to an audience that fronts an unavoidable emotional and mental disconnect, and dealing with those dramatic changes amongst their homes, their families, and their friends.

I certainly felt some of that in 1999, but they were tempered by the feelings of euphoria for my first overseas missions experience, but now, in a way, there's not that feeling of euphoria anymore -- at least not externally, although this time, internally, I think the lessons learned for me, and the paths laid out are more clearer than last time around, despite this not even being an "official" m-trip.

Yet, even without this euphoria, I'm not too depressed, but just pensive, contemplative, about the world, myself, and where I fit into this crazy mosaic. Maybe I'm older, wiser, more mature (? ), not so being a missions "Pollyanna" prone to irrational exuberence now, but nevertheless still thankful for the positive things, and able to expect realistically that there'll be struggles in readjusting, and getting back into the swing of things.

Also, I've realized this: I'm just a lazy slacker when it comes to writing travelogues, so I think for this trip, for the most part, I'm just going to write reflections about lessons that have been taught to me during my 18 days in East Asia, rather than a chronological play-by-play. Which reminds me: I still need to finish the travelogues from my last Asia trip, as well as every other trip since 1999. Oh well.

One thing's for sure though: change is coming for me... Soon.

I had dinner with Eric Yang last night. We were discussing who would be next to get engaged. I said Paul, he said George. Then, today, I check my email and Davis sends a msg that he's "off the market."

OK, just to keep the scandal level of this page to at least a token minimum, ensuring this page isn't totally "holy", and also for Desiree and other self-proclaimed romance analysts, here's your chance... see that little poll I set up off to the side? You can vote and you can even leave comments and have discussions.

No offense intended for any omissions -- write ins are welcome, even anonymously. =)

I have the feeling this might come back to haunt me, but we'll see...

And FYI -- I am totally abstaining from any vote, hee hee...

First in a series of reflections from East Asia Trip 2003...

It really bothers me to see people wasting food in restaurants -- leaving food uneaten, etc. In China, but much more so in Mongolia, you see scenes of abject poverty and starvation so acute it's genuinely depressing, a mere stone's throw from the establishments where we ugly Americans* are leaving whole platefuls of food uneaten. Therefore, I have a habit of often making it a point to consume everything that's fiven to me, and even consume what others offer me, until I'm truly full.

My teammate apparently was impressed by my sense of "moral righteousness", commenting that she thought I had a "missionary mentality". Interesting... I was flattered. =)

Then again, as a bunch of us were having a late dinner in Beijing, someone mentioned that just eating everything and finishing it could be gluttony as well. There's a balance between not wasting food, and gluttony. It's true -- but where does one end and the other begin? I never try to eat so much that I feel sick and want to vomit, so I sort of consider that as the threshold. But is gluttony a sin that is borne of intent, not just the actual committing of it?

I always have seen my diligence in trying to finish my food as being "good stewards" of this part of what is ultimately God's creation, and culturally, not to be a wasteful, rich, Westerner as well. But do I overdo it sometimes? Something with no clear answers, and something to ponder about.

* In all fairness, the Chinese themselves traditionally leave plates uneaten in situations where meals are being used for hospitality -- the implication being that if you manage to finish everything, your host was too stingy. That's totally true, but in many cases, we were just filling up at restaurants, paying our own way...

To start off, I've just started using Yahoo Messenger -- and I can definitely say two things about it: it's a discovery I had wish I made earlier, and I wish more people used it.

For me, I really don't like having too many applications running in the background of my computer, and that includes IM clients. (I had long ago given up on Trillian, the "all-in-one" client, because it's a buggy, crash-prone piece of crap that always breaks whenever AOL changes their protocol to ensure only authorized clients connect...) The majority of my friends happen to use AOL IM, so that's what I've been using as well. Recently though, I really wanted to IM HelenH, and so I bit the bullet and installed Yahoo IM.

Yahoo Messenger is just worlds better than AOL's product in so many ways -- much more responsive, a nicer interface that integrates with Yahoo itself, Outlook, and/or other PIMs, built-in videoconferencing, a status bar that tells you if a user is in the midst of typing a message, so you don't have to wait, wondering if they got your message, and of course, the IMVironments (personally not really my taste or style, but undoubtedly still very cool). Now if I could only convince the dozens of my AIM friends to switch, I could dump AIM for good... =)

Anyhow, on to the main point: I visited GrX small group tonight, and one of the guys there happened to be a main developer for the Yahoo IM client. So, we got into an interesting talk about IM in general, Yahoo in particular, and future directions that the product and industry was going to take.

It's fascinating stuff. One of the biggest issues is obviously interoperability between the various IM networks, AOL, Yahoo, MS, etc, which should obviously result in much value addition through the network effect. Basically, the players in the industry view AOL as the 800-pound gorilla of the IM world, the sole obstacle to a unified messaging standard -- a very us vs. them mentality... or at least that's the way it works in theory.

The reality is a bit different. Unlike other Internet services such as email and the web, Internet-wide IM (as opposed to system-specific means like zwrite) has largely been a commercial creation, rather than an academic one... it was mass-marketed first on AOL, and all the others later jumped on the bandwagon. So, most of the controlling interests -- and thus those responsible for setting the "standards" -- are commercial entities, rather than academic/nonprofit groups like the W3C for the web. And everyone's talking about "monetizing" IM -- making it a vehicle for ads, marketing, and whatnot. Which of course means it's in everyone's best interest to ensure as big of a user base as possible for their own client, so one gets more ad impressions and revenue.

So, even a baseline standard that just covers basic text messaging has been stalled. Basically, everyone thinks that interoperability is a good idea and they theorize about the "advantages" of a single account being able to talk to others, a la email, but no one wants to go out and do it, because everyone wants to come up with value-added features like the IMVironments first to draw users to their client and their network -- a potentially never-ending cycle of one-upsmanship. From a competition point of view, everyone else would like to see AOL open up, but really only so they could possibly convert the teeming AOL masses to use Yahoo/MSN/whatever based on the value-add stuff. And AOL is perfectly cognizant of that (underneath a superficial veneer of "privacy" and "security" issues), which explains its reluctance to join the interop bandwagon.

So in the meantime -- and probably for the foreseeable future -- people are stuck with running multiple clients, multiple accounts, or resorting to hacks like Trillian or Jabber. A depressing shame really, but getting a insider view for me shed some interesting light on how the Internet companies really operate/cooperate/compete these days.

Two very interesting and somewhat critical articles about Christian workers and organizations going into Iraq in the wake of the war for evangelistic purposes:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2081432/

http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp? pageLoc=/story/124/story_12448_1.html&storyID=12448&boardID=56195

I hate to say it, but even as a missions-minded Christian, I agree for the most part with the sentiments implicitly expressed in both. To me, it looks like some of these groups are setting themselves up for the religious equivalent of the Marine who draped the US flag over Saddam's statue in Baghdad: bolstering the stereotypical view of Arabs who see Americans and more generally, Christians, as simply out to destroy Islam and convert everyone.

It greatly troubles me to see some churches and missions organizations, while having the best of intentions, having a modus operandi little different from the "convert the heathen" mentality of white colonialists of centuries past. Islam/communism/etc. == evil, Christianity == good, the "door has opened" so let's go in ASAP. Who cares about current emotional sensitivities and preliminary cultural survey/research (eg, Caleb Project) anyhow?

With Arab sensitivity towards the US and questioning of their true motives as it stands right now, I can't imagine that this would be the optimal time. While I do share the exuberance that many other people worldwide feel at these Iraqis being liberated from apparent tyranny, I fear that these groups may fast wear out their welcome, and simply make it harder for other people to go in later. Yes, the Iraqis might be free, but I can't imagine that they would die if someone doesn't share the Good News with them as their first priority right now. I'm not saying that giving aid and using that as a inroads for evangelism is fundamentally and uncategorically wrong -- but Iraq now is probably not the right time and place to do so. Is it any wonder why many secular Americans, to say nothing about Arabs, have a negative view of missionaries?

Now if these people want to go to Iraq, fine... but if I were going at this point in time, I'd go under a totally secular group, such as the Peace Corps, Red Cross or such. If they share their faith and they don't get well received, the liability and negative reprecussions will be limited to themselves and they won't taint the image of their groups or Christians in general along with it. Maybe I'm being too paranoid, but any group that's publically associated with the least bit with Christians could potentially cause trouble at this time -- just my gut feeling.

And a lot of this stuff I've thought and written about this before, from the perspective of not an Arab but a Chinese, a perspective different but not all that much so... Having been to China and other East/Southeast Asian countries multiple times, I've been very fortune to talk at length with both those doing ministry there, and those who are on the receiving end of it.

Groups like OMF and Partners that have been on the Asian scene for a while and are respected (even by the very governments of the target countries!) invariably work like this: they send people in to do a service -- teaching English, rural development, medical work, whatever -- competently and unconditionally, and through it, they naturally build deep, significant relationships first with the locals where then ministry can be done in a non-conditional, non-aggressive, and non-deceptive manner. For example, making the subject of the majority of discussions in an English class religion or faith is not natural, and the students see right through it. Take it from first-hand experience...

These groups do send many short term teams abroad, but those short term teams exist more for the purpose of giving team members a taste of what it's like long term, rather than just trying to unnaturally and hurriedly evangelize and pretend they can pull off something useful in a summer which (rightfully) takes a year or more.

Of course, we should be proactive in reaching these closed countries through whatever methods we can, and I remain convinced that tentmaking and other forms of service will be the way to reach the 10/40 window countries. But treating the "secular" aspect of what we do as simply a means to "get in", and then blowing it off, or hurrying too fast to evangelize is to me, wrong, deceptive, and counterproductive.

It's not a racial slur, and it's not the only part of the solution, but I do think we need more Asians/Asian-Americans (or Arabs or whoever) in leadership roles in missions... or at least people who know something about or at least can view things from the "other side"...

I have the feeling this is going to be one of the more controversial entries I've posted in a while... we'll see.

Anyhow, while in Asia this time around, naturally, I and my fellow travellers frequently encountered vendors of pirated movies, music, and software, and we frequently bought some of their stuff. The interesting thing is, the co-workers that we met with also partook in this practice unabashedly. Now, if one wanted to take a moral absolute, all of us should really be branded as hypocrites... But is piracy totally evil, without justification? Just like Communism, for example, a lot of people in the West seem to have a one-sided, black and white viewpoint of something which is a complicated issue.

As an example, look at many countries in East Asia -- piracy, for all its evils, helps build a base of demand for your products and fuels the sales of hardware, without which your stuff is useless anyhow.

What do I mean? There needs to be a established base of music listeners/movie viewers/software users and owners of hardware, like CD players, etc first. Without evil piracy, sales of PCs/CD/DVD players in Asia would have been much less than what it is now, and most people would not have heard of most Western software movies or music, if they had not been ubiquitously available.

So, in developing countries like China, piracy, by fueling a demand that would not have otherwise been there, and ensuring a base of owners with appropriate hardware, lays the foundation for a consumer base. Then, as economic conditions improve, companies move in there, leverage those customers and sell legit products at locally-affordable prices (this is a key point -- no one in any part of the world will pay the equivalent of a week's salary for a CD, for example). Look at places like Japan and Korea that are considered "developed" now. Of course, there's still some piracy in those places -- you can't eradicate it completely, but because you have these people now clamoring for music/movies/software, you now have a thriving music industry and market, both for local artists and for foreign corporations. As a country moves from developing to developed, so will piracy gradually decrease, if companies first build off the existing base of consumers which have been created by pirated material, and market to them (through the selling points of higher quality, etc.) rather than alienating or antagonizing them.

And of course, many times, piracy is the only option, if a company doesn't release their product there. One corollary and positive effect of it has been movie studios, for instance, releasing movies nearly simultaneously worldwide, whereas in the past, in Asia, one would often have to wait for months for a release, if it was to be released at all. In being a stimulus to create buzz and hype -- and ultimately, demand for more -- in countries where the American media juggernaut hasn't reached yet, piracy has been wonderfully successful in this regard.

Essentially, the blunt, hard, truth in much of the developing world is this: without piracy, you would not have had that base of potential consumers to begin with. It's a win/win situation, for the people, for the hardware makers, and ultimately (while it may take time) for the software and content makers as well. Sadly, the myopic vision of most of the corporations fail to grasp this fact.