Ryu2.mind

The long awaited pronouncement from the only person in recent MV history at least to have experienced both in their full rigor and glory.
First of all, I would like to say that this comparison, ultimately, is about as meaningful and worthwhile as comparing the proverbial apples to oranges. The two publications serve two purposes, and while overlapping in many areas, are still distinct, and have different goals, objectives, and methods. As a reult, the group of people that comprise the staff of each one are more than slightly different in an overall sense.

Of course, speaking of people, my comments are meant to be constructive comparisons of the two organizations. I am in NO way directing this towards the people themselves. My experience in both publications helped me to form many new and very rewarding friendships, as well as strengthen many existing ones. Some of my closest friends served on the \"worse\" publication, including certain people that have a very special place in my heart.

So, without further ado.. Journalism was the more productive, enriching, and fulfulling experience, between the two, on an overall basis.

Now I did not say JOURNALISM RULES AND YEARBOOK SUCKS!!! So all you fervent journalists, don\'t misinterpret that or draw unfounded inferences. Similary, all you faithful yearbook people, refrain from mailbombing (electronically or otherwise) or otherwise getting me, and keep both the above statements in mind.

Yearbook does not SUCK, as some overzealous journalists would have you believe. Rather, it was hobbled several ways, one of the main ones being highly incompetent and/or self-centered editorial management (not in all instances of course! - there were many bright stars and I\'d especially like ot tip my hat tot the two hard working editors-in-chief for El Valedor \'95, they were two of the best people I\'ve ever worked with and handling their responsiblity while keeping their sanity is best described as a Herculean task...), and similar traits among a few of the staff writers even.

A separated class structure between the editors and the staffers developed, with many instances of miscommunication and lack of morale which ultimately served to drag down quality. Many embarassing and glaring errors (the fault of both the school and the plant) shot what could have been a world class publication full of holes. In other words, while there were some daring and innovative bright spots, such as the unprecendented degree of digital imagery, overall, it did not break much new ground in MV yearbook tradition, and definitely won\'t snag prestegious national awards, as has been done in the past.

Mind you, the El Estoque was not without its faults either. There were the glaring errors too. However, they were noticably fewer in error, even despite the obviously greater scrutiny of yearbook material by editors versus their journalistic counterparts (owing to the fact that the latter comes out 8-10 times more frequently).

I attribute that to a greater spirit of being as a whole TEAM, not just an individual working for a corporate-type organization, and not even as a section, but as a whole, coherent staff, driving forward to produce a finished product. The editors were all highly motivated to produce a publication, rather than just to meet annoying deadlines and just get it over with, and the absence of a \"every section to itself\" mentality, plus almost no elitism on the part of editors, created a much more productive environment, where almost everyone contributed something of merit.

Quote whatever you\'d like. (not the JOURNALISM RULES AND YEARBOOK SUCKS! part)

Deep Thoughts by Mark - Smileys Deep Thoughts on Smileys Ahhhhh... smilies. Invaluable for conveying emotions, real or perceived over the emotionless medium of plain text.

I think that the basic happy face smiley can be classified into three categories (we'll ignore the more esoteric ones for now...):

• :) 

• =) 

• :-)

Cool. =) I think that people that use =) are *generally* more outgoing than those that use :) This is generalizing of course, and in fact, some people I know that are on the upper extreme of the extroversion scale use :), and this is nothing negative towards them.

My opinion though is since email smileys are typical reflection of one's written smileys, and the strokes used to write =) are much more flourishing and involve more movement of the pen than the strokes used to write :) (you have to make the dots carefully, etc)

=) downstroke, downstroke, curve
:) dot, dot, curve

just visualize it - the movements of the =) are much more lively and dynamic than the :)

On that note, people who include noses in their smilies, like :-) I think are more meticulous and organized. These smilies are three characters in length.

Imagine it. It's three charcters, located (on a stadard QWERTY keyboard) so taht you have to do a finger-twisting sequence to type it out, and you have to press/release the shift key twice. For me, that would really slow down my typing, which usually moves along at a respectable clip. So people who would actually take the time to ensure those three characters are typed correctly probably show that characteristic in the other areas of their lives. Hmm....

Deep thought of 23:15, September 23, 1996

So, like, I was browsing Jelin Yen's home page today. Of particular interest, I saw she was living in Adams, the Hum Bio theme dorm. And that got me wondering what other majors had their own theme dorm. And then, I thought to myself, "Why doesn't Computer Science have their own theme dorm?!"

Suddenly I receive an epiphany.

"But there is! Sweet Hall is the CS theme dorm. Any serious CS major spends the majority of his or her time living there."

Deep thought of 21:35, October 6, 1996

Don't Keith Lee and Jimmy Ahn look so much alike? Funny, I just noticed that when I saw them side by side at FiCS today...

Deep Thoughts - Email addresses Well, there are email addresses (well, for you computer geeks out there, the proper term is SUNet ID, of course Read my deep thought on that...). And there are email addresses. Sure, something like

mwang

But a perusal of the list of addresses of people I know gives some much more interesting names...

kooj
wuwu

slim01
ylee1773

sandyche

bbertha

hisnow

mlosayhi

rinc

I saw Tilden in Sweet Hall today. In fact, I\'ve been seeing him a lot there lately.

Now Tilden, since I\'ve known him, has been very sweet.

I guess this makes him a sweet Sweet guy.

Deep Thoughts - the Military, Dreams, and my Senior Prom Deep Thoughts on the Military, Dreams, and my Senior Prom

by Mark Wang

The night started uneventfully. I walked into Paul's room for 2:42. My group was getting together with Eddie's group.

Anyways, Keith, being the assiduous follower of current events he is, was surfing the CNN web site when I walked in, and he came across a story about hazing in the Marines, complete with Quicktime movie.

It's messed up stuff, dude. Basically, the veteran Marines take the paratrooper pins of the newly graduated troops, and sticking them into flesh and scraping, stirring, twisting, (or whatever twisted verb you want to use to describe it) them around. OUCH. We could hear the shouts of agony in full vibrant stereo being carried forth through Keith's $200 Altec-Lansing multimedia speakers.

It was quite disturbing, and that's not a bold claim. Then as more people of the two 2:42 groups came filtering in, we replayed that video multiple times more. Everyone was sobered. The military is kinda messed these days, Paul pondered, and I agree, I must say. But that got me thinking about what it would be like if people like me were in the military.

Anyways, after 2:42, I dashed off to Schiff for Becca Chang's surprise birthday party. I thought it would just be a small thing - boy was I wrong.

I think about half of IV was there, and a smattering of miscellaneous FiCSters, Crusaders, AACFers, and a bunch of other random people. Anyways, it was really cool, and I'm sure Becca will remember it for quite a while. But this isn't the point of this Deep Thought.

Afterwards, I stopped by the Schiff computer cluster to catch up on my email. I hadn't read it for over *three whole hours* and I was kinda getting antsy. I bumped into Edster and Jelinyen there, and I remarked that I needed some fresh stuff to write about them for my homepage. We then all proceeded to surf random homepages, reaching that of a certain Andrew Wong.

I also read Andrew Wong's page. I met Andrew through Henry at the recent interfellowship retreat held in Camp Hammer. He's a junior in Crusade, and he's Dave Hong's ex-roommate. Apparently, he was also Eric Yang's big sib last year too. So I guess those are the ways how we're connected.

I thought Danny Chai, Clara Kim, Val Hsieh, Henry Hsu and Dave Hong wrote cool stuff. (They are some of the people whom I admire the most when it comes to web page content. See, just because you're a CS/Math major doesn't mean you automatically have cool stuff to read on your web page. But these people do. They rock.) Well, then I read Andrew's stuff and I was just totally dumbfounded.

The feeling was exactly like the first time I played Nintendo 64, after having being used to PC, SNES, and Playstation games. I was just blown away. I never knew quality like that was even possible. Anyways, that was how Andrew's writings struck me. Anyways, check out his writings, especially his dreams. Maybe he can make a movie about them, just like the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa did, about his dreams, and just title it "Dreams." It would rack up the Academy Awards, baby. I mean, have you ever seen prime-rib flavored ice cream in any flick you remember?

I shall never emulate Andrew. Depressing but I guess I'll just have to live with it... Anyways, what struck me was that I've had some weird dreams in the past as well, and some of them might be even worth sharing.

I know I've had my share of them in the past. Here's one from around the end of the senior year in high school:

First let me tell you about one of my friends from high school: Joan Cheng Hwang, Monta Vista Class of 1995, Princeton Class of 1999. She's Chem E and premed, just like Andy Hsiao. She also sings alto in Kindred Spirit, their Christian a capella group, the equivalent of our Testimony. (Side note: She isn't really web-surfing type, and I'll bet she never ever reads this page. If she ever does: Hi Joan! Long time no hear... hint hint! Princeton sucks! Email me! =) )

Now, our high school senior prom is held on a boat that actually cruises around the San Francisco Bay. The boat is almost like a mini-cruise ship, it's got three decks, a restautrant, a deck for dancing, etc. Anyways, my prom (my real-life prom) was quite enjoyable, and I think the idea of it on a boat is da bomb.

Well, in my dream, the prom was also being held on a boat. But this "boat" was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. It was a Nimitz class boat. They're nuclear powered, displacing about 80,000 tons each. The hangar deck made an awesome dance floor, by the way. I forgot the exact ship that our prom was held on, but it was most likely based at Alameda Naval Station. Or maybe not... Anyways... My prom date in the dream was Joan Hwang.

Anyways, we end up in a trouble spot in the world somewhere. Persian Gulf seems reasonable enough. The place was pretty screwed up back then, and it still is. (I'm not trying to be discrimintory, or racist, or whatever, just naming a military trouble place.) I have no recollection of how we actually SAILED from the Bay Area to the Persian Gulf in the time my senior prom lasted. Maybe the carrier was beamed over. Or, more likely, our prom was actually a graduation "trip" for the entire class that lasted several weeks. Anyways, I never dreamt any of that coherently, so I can't explain that. But, we find outselves in the Gulf.

OK, so we're dancing away in the middle of the Gulf, to Boyz II Men and various other secular artists in vogue during mid-1995. Suddenly, over the intercom we hear the ominious General Quarters alarm, followed by a piercing cry of battle stations, battle stations, battle stations...

Terror. Pandemonium. Apparently, the carrier is without escort, and all the highly-trained Navy pilots of the carrier are nowhere to be seen for some inexplicable reason!

Anyways, Joan and I just stand there, dumbfounded. Then Joan turned to me, and I turned to her, and I knew that look she gave me and what she was thinking even without speaking, and I just thought....

well, now all these computer games will pay off!

We dash into the pilot's briefing room. An officer is there and he briefs us that several unknown bogies (unidentified aircraft) have just taken off from bases in Iraq and are moving at high speed towards our carrier. They appear to be on an attack profile. We obviously didn't want to wait till we found out the hard way. Anyways, our orders were clear: eliminate them.

Joan and I dash to a F-14 Tomcat sitting on the flight deck. Now for those of you who aren't into military hardware, the Tomcat is a two-seat fighter plane. The pilot sits in the front, and the radar person (who actually fires the missiles) sits in the back. I forgot who was in the front or not.

Anyways, we don helmets (but I don't believe flight suits - ie, the Tomcat was being flown by a couple in a tux and prom dress - no, I have no idea how we handled the G-forces), check flap settings, get the 100% oxygen going, start up the engines and light up the burners. The catapult launches us off with teh adrenaline feel that invariably comes from being accelerated from 0 to over 160 mph in under 2 seconds.

Our F-14 carried a full intercept armament package of 6 AIM-54 Phoenixes, and two AIM-9 Sidewinders. The 'Winders are heat seeking missiles used for close-in combat. The Phoenixes are long range intercept missiles, with a range of over 150 miles. Basically, if you see a plane on radar miles and miles away, you can blow it away with a Phoenix, and never visually see any of it with your eyes, just the fact that the plane has disappeared from your radar screen tells you that you've killed it. Spicy.

The Sidewinders are short range, close-in missiles that home in on the heat of aircraft exhaust. Nice for those tight situations.

The enemy appeared. MiG-29s I believe. Nasty stuff. Or Backfire bombers. Those babies can carry anti-ship missiles, each armed with about a ton of high explosive... or a nuclear warhead. Very non-phat.

We close in on them, the dots flashing ominously on the AWG-9 radar unit.

Suddenly the seductive sound of the targeting unit, indicating radar lock comes on.

"Phoenix one away!...

...Splash one MiG."

The rest of the aircraft keep coming. We fight it out with them, racing along at Mach 2, and our Phoenixes wiping them off as they enter our zone of death.

Uh oh. One last plane. We close at an ominous speed. Zoom - we pass each other just like that. We're still not out of the water yet. That plane is converging towards the carrier still, and potentially able to turn a $2 billion piece of military hardware, plus over 400 members of Monta Vista's Class of 1995 into radioactive fallout. We pull an 8-G turn. My vision begins to falter as the blood is pulled right from my brain by the G force, and my appendages are like as if they were made of lead. After what seems to be an unbearable eternity, we're heading in pursuit of that plane. Joan or I, whoever was flying, kicks in max afterburners, pushing us against our seats with the acceleration.

It was harrowing. At maximum speed, we were closing, but too slow. If we saw the flash of a missile being launched from the Iraqi aircraft, it could very well be the end. An eternity passes. Then the targeting display starts flashing, slowly at first, and then faster, faster, until it's rapidly blinking, and we get the "grrrrrr..." tone of Sidewinder lock.

The trigger is squeezed. Oh what a feeling it was. I shouted something unbecoming of a Christian. The plane turns into an incandescent ball of gas before our very eyes.

"YYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Now we had to get back. "We're bingo fuel, Joan. Time to land this puppy." That meant that we just had enough fuel to land. If we ran out, we would have to eject. I mean, getting blown away by a missile is one thing, but I don't think we wanted to ruin our expensive tux and dress by the seawater - yikes, that would be unthinkable!

The familiar structure of the carrier appears in the distance, and grows larger. Reduce power. Gear down. Arrestor hook down. We're coming in, guys!

How relieved I felt when the wheels slammed down on the carrier, the hook caught the number three wire, and we were jerked to a stop.

After, I think we made headlines, and met President Clinton. Wait - meeting President Clinton? I thought we were supposed to be rewarded for heavens sake...!

OK, so there's this class offered by the Hum Bio department here called Sleep and Dreams. It's pretty popular, and NBC even sent a film crew to take some shots of it.

So I wonder... is falling asleep in that class a bad thing? Hmmmmm.....

(thanks Danny!)

Well, Becca Chang\'s brother, Steve, was visiting from Georgia today, and just meeting up with some of the Georgia people.

So Steve, plus Lorraine and Jen Chou from Georgia were looking at various web pages in Lorraine\'s room. They saw interesting pages, like Lorraine\'s and Henry\'s. Then they got to my page, and apparently her computer crashed because it ran out of memory while loading it. (I wasn\'t a witness to it, unfortunately...)

Learning about that was the highlight of my day.

Video games - perhaps this is what Karl Marx envisioned when he described religion as the "opiate of the masses." Mario is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse in many places of the world, and that's not a bold claim (Do a Lexis-Nexis search.) Indeed, video games are seemingly a religion for millions and millions of youngsters around the world. Key word here: religion.

And that sort of depresses me, even such a video game junkie (at least before Stanford came...) because if only Christ and His Word could spread into the hearts of youngsters worldwide like that! How the world might be different, even if such a thought could only be a fleeting ideal dream, what potential could such awareness hold...!

Then of course ... the put-those-two-things-together feeling that always strikes me at late hours of the night hits me.

So we have Christian books, cartoons, clothing, CDs, radio stations, web sites... But Christian video games?

Actually, it's been tried before. I remember a few of them, back when I was in elementary school. Not licensed by Nintendo, for the old 8-bit NES. They had names like "Joshua's Adventure" and where you had to move around Jericho, avoiding traps and bad guys, like some mindless Bomberman clone. Oooooooooohhhhh... exciting. Not. Now, I don't mean to criticize their intentions. I mean, at least those games weren't heretical or anything. And anything done with Him and His glory in mind is always looked upon by the Lord.

But it's just that whoever designed and programmed them lacked, well - how shall I put this, the proper amagalametion of various talents collectively referred to as game making saavy.

So... how would a group of people, attending one of the world's elite universities, and with FIREY PASSION FOR HIM do?

Here's my bold claim:

The entire Christian community at Stanford should unite, REALLY unite, and form a body to design games, no -- not just mere games, but grand masterpieces fusing art and science -- on the cutting edge of technology - which, like the magnificent cathedrals of days gone by, are permanent testaments to His infinite grandeur and glory. Except, these are cathedrals not of stone and stained glass, but of silicon chips and polycarbonate plastic.

Together, we should start a Christian video game company.

Take a look at where we are. The Leland Stanford Junior University. We aren't cooped up in some old, stuffy ivory-tower institution back East, freezing our behinds off. No, Stanford is a place where we take our education and can and DO make an IMPACT on the world, something everyone can feel. A place whose graduates basically MADE the whole Silicon Valley and the computer industry. I mean, just look at the list. HP. Sun Microsystems. Silicon Graphics. Netscape. Yahoo. Cisco. Trilogy. It reads like a list of Who's who in high tech. To this list, it is time to add a spiritual element.

Is Christianity and the entertainment business compatible?

More than once in my life, I have heard various religious leaders that I have come into contact with say no.

It's time to prove them wrong, folks.

Take a look at Quake. Or Warcraft 2. That's it. A Biblical-themed Warcraft-type like game. Perhaps a spicy scenario would be Joshua's army of 300 takining on the army of 120,000. How much infinitely noble is that that a bunch of orcs and humans relentlessly and repetitvely hacking away at each other without end? Or perhaps a Quake game, where your weapons are not Super Nailguns or Lightning Guns, but the power of the Word, not blowing away the forces of darkness, but converting them and saving them from their sin.

Video games - missionaries for a technological generation.

Our entrepenural savvy, combined with our conviction, rooted in our faith to the Lord.

Let's face it. We, together as a body in Christ, are pretty darn talented. And we are all part of the same body, with our talents given by God to be USED, to give glory unto Him.

So in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to the others. WE have different gifts, according the the grace given us..." - Romans 8:5-6 (NIV)

So, how might we divvy up our gifts and put them to fruitful use?

• OK, let's start from the top. I mean, DChai asserts that Symbolic Systems people are just MADE to design video games. (Whether that claim is bold or not is a subject best left for another Deep Thought. But let's for our present purposes assume that it's true.) So, let them handle all that game design stuff, since they can just do it perfectly. And Danny can fulfill his lifelong passion. Right, Danny?
• Fortunately, we have a faithful group of CS majors standing by to take those ideas and pump out some lean n' mean code.
• Any hardware issues will be taken care of by our contingent of ace EEs.
• The fuzzy English/humanities majors can prove that they indeed can be useful in the corporate world by injecting our products with vitality in plot, storyline, and writing.
• And I'm sure that among the talented musicians who lead us in worship amongst our various fellowships and churches, there are some who will let their musical talent be applied to produce melodies that will make the players SING PRAISE TO THE LORD.
• The IEs can provide the crack, nimble, dynamic management.
• Since video games know no borders, our aspiring group of IR majors will handle the "go and make diciples of all the nations" bit of things.
• And finally, the bio/chem/pre-med people... errr, ummmm... Well, don't worry - we'll find some way to fit you bio people in somehow... =) Maybe we could do a version of SimLife. (Watch out, Maxis...)

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

- Matthew 28:19 (NIV)

Anyways, I hope this idea strikes you, the reader as bold, spicy, saucy, "oh my!", stinkin', interesting, intense, hecka dope, phat, da bomb, Wookie, teehee :9, or whatever adjective may be present in your personal vernacular.

Please feel free to email me your thoughts.

Later.

I know that the Deep Thoughts section has been growing a bit stagnant, and for this, I apologize. So I present to you this somewhat random one, which is a composite of some of the more interesting thoughts that have come across my mind… so, I hope it makes up for the wait.

I was just reading Newsweek and in a recent issue, it talks about America's rich. And the usual folks are lavishly residing on the cover, starting from Mr. William Henry Gates the Third and proceeding downward. I mean, do we need to be glorifying them more than we need to?

And that got me thinking. Is wealth and Christianity mutually exclusive? Does wealth ultimately corrupt? Look at Disney, who most people equate with wholesome family fun - one example of how that's changed is how Disney threatened to sue a day care center that had painted Disney characters. Basically, money becomes a driving force. So, another scneario is that a rich person receives Christ in their lives, and then. So far, I've not heard of such an incident. What I do remember, even back in when I was the kiddie Sunday school stage, was Jim Baker - not George Bush's Secretary of State, but the television evalgelist who was caught using the proceedings from his ministry to build up a life of glutonnous excess and luxury for himself and his wife. Among the more shocking bits of opulence was an air conditioned doghouse!!

I remember back in my freshman year when I was still in IV, how during their frosh conference, the speaker, Steve Panetta (?), was talking about how one cannot serve two masters. The master that we should all be serving is God Himself - but he touch upon how other masters could take forms, even those as seemingly innocuous as friends, academics, and even… that's right - money! And money, it seems pretty apparent, has been the master of a lot of people and organizations, for the worse.

Well, this doesn't mean that I'm going to sell all my posessions and be some monk in some far off land. In my work, and those of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, it's all for His glory after all. For instance, we certainly could start a Christian video game company, and make money that way. But we should be as concious of giving money as we are spending it, and how we have been accordingly blessed.

(Anyway, an very random addendum, this week, they have a cover article on Mary. No, not the alto in Testimony who smiles so much that you wonder if you have a booger or something (cf. Scott Dollar's homepage), but her namesake, Jesus Christ's mother. Perhaps this was to atone for that un-Biblical story on wealth. Hmmm...)

And lest you think that wealth is something that neither I nor my friends have come in contact with, well... you would have actually been right until very recently. Let me relate to you.

Well, I was at Atlanta, GA to visit my Stanford friends, Leo and Joyce (who number among the approximately 5 Stanford people I know without home pages) and also stopping at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, checking out all the latest that the gaming industry had to offer, and letting my primest childhood interests once again take over and invigorate myself.

Well,besides being a digital bazaar for the world's artisans of the video game craft to hawk their latest marvels of software and hardware, E3 was also the venue of the final round in the Intergraph Red Annilhilation Quake Tournament. And guess who I saw: one of my friends from high school. (I am keeping him nameless, but if you really want to find out, give your mouse-clicking finger a bit of a workout and do some research on the net, and you should be able to find out his identity pretty quickly.)

Well, I sort of imagined that he might be there, him having won the world DOOM championship a year ago, and also very highly placed in a Warcraft II compeition, but still, it gave me a big surprise, to say the least.

So everyone is cheering him on, including me, lucky enough to get front row seats. And LGD Thresh (his character name) wins it with a final score of 14 frags to -1 (the -1 was due to his opponent fragging himself, ie, committing suicide. I wonder if it was accidental or intentional?)

So, Thresh, is now the world's number one Quake player, and most likely, the most famous person to graduate from Monta Vista High School thus far. Pretty sad, eh? And he's dropped out of school too. Of course, it's only Cal, but still! (Hey, stop the mailbombing already, Cal folks, I was only kidding…) In other words, he's kind of like Tiger Woods in this regard, except the sport is Quake. Supposedly he's slated to make an appearance at SIGGRAPH. The world's most respected academic computer graphics conference isn't immune to this encroaching commercialism. And with him having dropped out of school, the intellectual honor, and the subsequent future rewards of staying in academia for a few more years is once again crushed by the tidal wave of instant and ephermal financial gratification. In this case, said gratification comes in the form of a 1987 Ferarri, $10,000, and endorsing joysticks and other video gaming products (this is especially ironic as Quake is a game played better using a mouse, by far). In all, about what someone holding a BS in computer science could make on the average nowdays at a good paying job.

If anyone wants to see a modern Tower of Babel, then only have to turn to their video game system. Videogames are clearly a worldwide phonomenon with great potential (as you probably know if you've been reading my Thoughts lately.) Unfortuantely, the worldwide part is a bit of a misnomer because the video game companies have artificially made it so that games from one part of the world, say Japan, are incompatible with games from another part (like the US) The end result is gamers who like a bit of foreign flair ahave to go to great lengths, such as getting converters, adapters, or mod chips. What a shame. Bue the video game industry is hardly alone in this regard.

Well, I decided that I would take a step forward in the home video area, and I bought a Sony DVD-S7000 player which had been "modified". The spicy thing is that it can play movies from all over the world. In case you aren't into these things that much, each DVD is encoded for a particular region of the world - a US DVD player can't play Japanese DVDs, or vice versa. Anyways, DVD is to videotapes what CDs are to audio tapes - all the information is digital. They even have DVD-ROMs for your computer that can play movies right on your screen. This means that your options for procrastination are drastically augmented: not only can you peruse such trivia on the web like Mark Wang's Deep Thoughts, you can now watch the latest Hollywood pictures, right on your monitor!

But what is the point of all these region locks anyways? This means that someone into foreign cinema is probably out of luck, and would be stuck with the usual Hollywood trash. America caters to the lower denominator, which happens to be the highest denominator with money. I mean, we are in a global economy here. Can't we all get along?

And I realize how much this parallels history. The motivating factor is greed, after all. Yep, that recurring theme again. It's like an electronic version of the Middle East, or Bosnia-Herzegovina. Maybe we should have the US step in, like we do for all these regional disputes and conflicts.

Speaking of movies, I've been watching them a lot lately this summer, with the rest of the Stanford crew. Along with movies, one usually gets treated to a stream of movie preview trailers, shown before the "real" start of the movie, and also in the lobby of the theater.

Have you ever noticed that in all the movie previews, the guy (I do not ever recall a female in this role) doing the narration always sounds the same? For the action/sci-fi/suspense flicks, the voice is low, deep, imposing. For the romance movies, the voice is baritone, charged with emotion from the heart. And for the comedies, it's upbeat. In any case, the voice is always a male.

Could it be that the movie studios are colluding with each other? Is there a monopoly on movie-trailer narration? Perhaps these voices have unique psychoacoustic characteristics - maybe even having special harmonics which correspond to molecular resonance frequencies for the neurochemicals in your brain, causing you to eventually degenerate into a mindless money-spendin', moviegoin' zombie!

My advice to the Justice Department: Forget Microsoft… investigate this!

Miscellaneous Complaint Corner: To Century Theatres: Bring back the clapping theme!

And finally, the Random Dream Department:

I dreamt this while sleeping in CooLeo's room in Mirrielees one time. Among the more coherent points to this dream:

Every week at 8:30 AM during the summer, FiCS would have a praise session in MemChu to start off the day. I specifically remember Dchai and Kris on the team, although there were more than that. The songs I specifically remember hearing in this dream was "There is Joy in the Lord", "Meet Us Here", and "Hail to the King". Of course, there was more.

David Say Kong Tay had an extended family, and I met them in Mirrielees. And they (the male members) all looked EXACTLY like him, with that distinctive haircut. And the Singaporean-British accent. So David Tay and three or four of his brothers/cousins/whatever start this new band, and basically become the next Beatles, with millions of adoring fans all over the world and appearances on all the major world news media, like Newsweek, Time, CNN, the London Post, the Economist, the Straits Times, Pravda, Transactions of the ACM, Nintendo Power, etc...

I was in my computer graphics class, and I asked a question about spectrally-varying BRDFs (bidirectional reflectance distribution functions). Anyways, I noticed Lorraine Shih was in that class, and I think I totally lost her. Hey, I'm just kidding about the whole EE/CS deal Lorraine, I'm not implying anything here…! =) I just dreamt it!

Anyways, so what the heck does this mean? At first glance, it seems like a sequence of disjoint events, unlike a continuous flow, driven by a single plot line like the one about my prom on the aircraft carrier. Unfortunately for me, on second, third, fourth, and Nth (where N tends towards positive infinity) glances, it still seems like a sequence of disjoint events!

Fortunately for you, I've been realizing that this section of my web page is been too much of a one-way medium. In one of the more well-known Macintosh magazines, in the back, they print a totally inscrutably random picture (the only constant being that it involves a Macintosh in some way or another) and ask the readers to write a caption for it, the winning reader getting his or her bit of prose printed in next month's issue.

So, I call upon thee, web surfer, to send in your thoughts as to what in the world this dream could possibly mean. The best interpretations will receive special mention on this site. Go for it! No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

First, a word of advice:

I think that music can always enhance most any narrative experience. Even though I'm not a music major like Ohms, I do try to listen to an eclectic sampling of music whenever I have time. What you hear is just as important as what you see, if not more so. In fact, a while back, I had background music in many parts of my home page. Unfortunately, this feature was short lived after people tried to browse my page in libraries and were rudely surprised. Still, I think that even if it is only in one's mind, having a stream of music flowing concurrently really adds a whole new dimension to this whole web surfing business.

And now I segue to my second preliminary point: Anyone who knows Keith Lee in any capacity has been treated to at least one showing of Macross Plus in his room. I was of course no exception, and his insistence that I sit through a whole showing lead to my discovery of a true masterwork of anime. Driven by my newly instilled Macross fandom (maybe not quite Keith Lee otaku level, but a deep admiration for M+ nevertheless), over the summer, I acquired not only the two compact discs of the Original Soundtrack, but also Sharon Apple: The Cream PUF, a singles collection put out by the virtual fictional pop star. (Unfortunately, the most coveted Macross disc, For Fans Only, was out of print when I ordered it, and it looks like if it will stay that way for the indefinite future.) So before I delve onward, I'd like to publically thank Keith for introducing me to a film with such a diverse and illustrious musical score to accompany it and bolster the drama of the ballad of Isamu Dyson, Guld, Myung, and Sharon Apple.

Now, I would suggest that if you have a copy of it, put "Voices" in the background. Just pop it into your stereo or CD-ROM and play away. Preferablly the original version with Yoko Kanno's vocals and instruments (Macross Plus Soundtrack Vol. 1, Track 8) although one of the alternate arrangements will probably work too. But I must emphasize, if some form of Voices is not playing in the background, you are proabably missing out on this Thought! You'll see why Voices provides an especially appropiate backdrop soon...

And now, our feature presentation...

I was working at Microsoft, hacking through the object-oriented intricacies of the Office code, stepping through using the good ol debugger to figure out just how the heck it all worked, wondering how in the world Windows NT and Visual C++ could turn a 200 MHz Pentium Pro with 64 MB of RAM into a disk-thrashing sloth, and suddenly the phone rang. Lo and behold, the voice on the other end of the line was NOT my parents asking me how late I would be working tonight. No, it turned out to be none other than Kevin Frank Chen, aka KFC, my friend ever since elementary school and now at UCLA. I had stopped by Kevin's place once this summer but he wasn't there. My heart skipped a beat, and I was soon talking excitedly with Kevin, and arranged for him to come by my office at MS, along with a group of other long-unseen friends.

Cut to a scene of Macross Plus:

Isamu and Myung chat as to how they've been doing after all these years, how they've pursued separate interests in combat aviation and show-biz management.

My encounter with Kevin was of course a chance to catch up on college life and reminesce about thoughts, ideas, and aspirations. But during the sharing, something becomes clear to me - as it became clear to Isamu during that scene by the sea in Macross Plus where he met up with Myung again:

We've changed quite a bit. It doesn't warrant use of the word "tense" but still, it allowed me to reflect. Not only in terms of academic interests and pursuits, but of other, more eternal things...

And my memories drifted back in time as I hung out with Kevin and a small group of friends over ice cream sundaes in the Peppermill Lounge in Cupertino...

The opening scene of Macross Plus:

The windmills are turning idyllically on a beautiful summer day, as three teenagers play around joyfully...

A haunting voice sings: Hitotsu meno kotoba wa... yume (The first word was... dream)...

My memories are blurry at first, but slowly, concrete images start to form...

Ahhhh - journalism. Those memories of high school. That's what she said. Baaarrrrr! While our paper was pretty decent and solid in many areas, we as a staff, were sinful to say the least. We were just cracking sexual jokes, references, and un-biblical discussions about the opposite sex as if it was second nature. I can't seem to recall any specific examples, without a copy of the newspaper issues to refer to. (We become pretty good at "accidentally" slipping in subtle references to inside journalism staff jokes or sayings. Sometimes they were caught by readers or our adviser -- more often or not, they were not, and we would just laugh - internally of course.) Anyways, the purpose of this Deep Thought isn't to rehash or list the sinful thinking that pervaded our journalism staff at late nights.

But, one interesting anecdote, not directly illustrative of our mindset, but nevertheless pretty fun, if "fun" can even be remotely applied here, was that I remember one night, we were doing a special feature on censorship, and we needed some high-impact, controversial illustrations. So me, being the graphics guru, was surfing the decadent and vile areas of cyberspace in my high school computer lab to find some nice visuals (which would be rendered suitable for high school use thorough judicious application of the Gaussian Blur tool in Photoshop.) Being one of the first two high schools connected to the Internet had its niceties. Anyways, I had some pretty... sciintilliating images onscreen when Mr. Todd, our computer lab admistrator walks by. Presumably he doesn't know what journalism is up to in terms of our story's "needs." My heart rate must have nearly doubled. Quit netscape .. click close box.. click click! Click! Mustquitnetscapequitnetscape! clickclickclick ... closeyou$%#@$%@#$@netscape! Ahh.. Tense! His head turned ominously towards the monitor. At the last moment, I managed to switch back to the Finder. Even though Mr. Todd might have caught something interesting in his perripheral vision, when he looked at my monitor, I was just clicking icons, and browsing the hard drive. Whew!

Another instance: take KFC. The restaurant that shared the name used to have this slogan: It's finger lickin good! Well, during late nights before deadlines, the 'finger' part of that phrase tended to get somewhat modified by Kevin's cohorts, myself included, and became the nucleus of more than one crude sexual innuendo. Utterly reprehensible. Wrong. Possible heretical.

Our newspaper had a "Senior Edition" put out at the end of the year to honor our graduating class. Among one of the sections was a feature where people were asked why they chose the school that they did. My response: "Stanford University: Tons of hot Asian babes and a super-fast Internet conneciton as well!" Luckily, cleaner minds prevailed at the last moment, and my witty quote mercifully never made it to print. I'm not ashamed to admit it, because looking back, it's amazing how much has changed with me.

And I wonder about my high school friends who were also on that newspaper staff: whatever became of them? There are a few others that I have kept in touch with and who are leading healthy spiritual lives - for instance, Beverly Tseng is in Campus Crusade up at Berkeley, Dean Kao, leading worship for the 5th Home of Christ, and Andy Hwang, the honorary MV journalist from Bellarmine. What of the others, though? What ever happened to Dan "Waterboy-in-Chief" Goudey, Christina "Eyebrows" Han, Golbanou Rahimi, Eric Lin, Laurence Harris, John Kaz... If I bumped into one of them, I'd be probably be at least as surprised as Isamu bumping into Myung after all those years apart.

Tense.

It wasn't just journalism either. The truth of the matter is that there aren't that many people that I know to be strong Christians in high school. In fact only a handful, such as Shirley Liu, Joan "I saved the free world at my senior prom" Hwang, Angel Cheng, An-Li Liu who goes to my church back home, Vlad Beffa... those are probably the entirety of people that come immediately to my mind when I think about the people that I associated with strength in Christ and leading a healthy and visible walk during those high school years. (OK, Pastor Paul "Fu-Fu" Kim went there too, but as I was a wee frosh when he was a senior, he was basically out of my high school picture, regrettably.)

Now, certainly there have been other Monta Vista people, say... Beverly Yang - being a junior rep for FiCS, Grace Yang - serving in IV and going on Urban Immersion, Albert Daesik Yi - playing bass on the KCPC praise team, Anthony Liu - co-leading a IV frosh group, and a few others whom I didn't know to be on-fire Christians in high school but have really grown in their faith in college, and are now faithful and visible servants of the body of Christ. But I guess in high school, we never really had a notion of fellowship and externally-visible Christianity in the campus environment. We did have a Christian group called WaterWalkers, and I did attend some meetings, but we were basically just an insular gathering of Christians. I wouldn't call the environemnt hostile to Christianity, but I think that in high school, at least Monta Vista, for the majority of us, even though we were Christian in our churches, we were not Christian in our lives, in our mindset. Maybe we were just super-competitive on the college-prep track. Maybe the atmosphere of a public school made us wary of having an Christian organization lest politically-correct administrators get too antsy. Whatever it may be, I was a Christian on paper, and I "pretended" to be one on Sundays, and not much else.

Anyways, once I got on campus An-Li told me about an group on campus called InterVarsity, and encouraged me to try it out, so I decided to give it a shot. And so it goes on from there. The changes that I've experienced through my participation in IV, and later, FiCS, have been mostly internal - for I am a mainly thinking person. Unfortunately, my story is not the material for a spicy fellowship-wide testimony. I was not super-party-guy, or super-troubled-guy or super-whatever-guy, or something similarly outwardly and dramatically differing my present form. But God has been working constantly, even now. And recently, I have been convicted. More on this later.

Thorough the fellowships I have been involved in, a large part has been the support and encouragement of my fellow Christians that has contributed to my new-found passion for Him.

One of the main reasons I decided to join FiCS, my present fellowship, was the strong sense of corporate unity and just the whole sense of brotherhood. It's interesting that for the most part, the Christians I know don't belong to fraternities or sororities (Clara and Sandy being notable exceptions.) Instead, I like to think of my fraternity as that of FiCS, and that of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters as a whole.

I think that a fellowship of believers encouraging one another and lifting each other up in Christ is important. As I alluded to in a previous thought, interfellowship events, such as All-Campus Praise are essential too to gain a sense of our larger united identity.

But what about the big question, that of outreach to non-Christians?

Even at Stanford, ignoring distinctions of fellowships and churches, I realize that there are two distinct social spheres, the Christians and non-Christians. My closest friends here at Stanford have of course been Christians. As for non-Christian friends, there's a gap that's pretty perceivable. It's more than just the fact that I see my Christian friends (those in FiCS at least) regularly twice a week. For with friends, completely sharing one's concerns in life invariably turns to religion. And, well, it gets... tense.

My observation is that human (certainly humans in FiCS) nature is like a spring or other mechanical system in physics: in general, the tendency is to avoid tense situations without some external applied force. Put these two together, and you can see the mixing of the two groups isn't as homogenous as it ideally should be.

As an illustration of what I'm talking about: I was recently at Desiree's little cua bing party. Anyways, Desiree, in my perception, stands out from many others in that she is one of those whose extended circle of friends draws from, and I mean draws from extensively and near-equally, both Christian and non-Christian realms.

So all these seemingly-random people come by for a cua bing social. And basically, after the initial and obligatory greetings/introductions, we split into two groups, the Christian FiCS/IV people that Desiree and Mimi hang out with, and the other non-Christian people (mainly people who were in Donner/Alondra with Des/Mimi freshman year.) Of course, it wasn't externally visible, but still, by who was talking to whom, these two groups were delineated somewhat apparently. Tense. So, I basically stayed within the Christian group for the entire duration.

In friendship, I've noticed that there's a duality involved - a level of a personal relationship and a level of a spiritual relationship. They are independent of the other, but still progressive: Friendship can only progress so far with discussion of classes, current events, computer games and the like. To truly be a friend that can be a source of emotional support and encouragement, it is necessary understand what other people are feeling, what they are thinking, what drives their emotions, and that means one must delve into their spiritual realm -- I use spiritual in a sense more general than that of Christianity, or religion itself.

As I have walked on the path of following Jesus, I realize that our gratituous journalism antics were a bonding experience for friends, as much as I hate to admit it, much like our Friday night meetings, class activities, and Sunday Bible studies up at KCPC are bonding experiences for my FiCS brothers and sisters. Without them, it's a lot harder to plant the foundations of a strong friendship. Even as high school journalism seems like a foreign world to me now, I know that between Kevin and I, we have fewer areas of commonality for our friendship to grow and develop. Which is not to say our friendship is becoming less healthy - but now, Kevin is like another non-Christian, with my natural inhibitions and "biases" if you want to call it that.

Many Silicon Valley companies have "student representatives" on campus whose goal is basically to act as a liason between the company and the campus, not only for potential recruiting and name-dropping, but just to see how their products are being used, to be a contact point for product feedback, tech support, marketing, and the like. MS asked us Stanford interns if anyone would like to be a Stanford student representative of Microsoft. I declined, but it got me thinking:

Now a question: Would a representative from Microsoft who is officially supposed to be promoting their products, hang out with, say, people who used Netscape web browsers, or Sun, or Silicon Graphics computers? Would such a representative avoid them completely? If I was the student representative for Microsoft, and my friend was a representative for a competitor - would that consitute a obstacle to my friendship? More importantly, if everyone is using Netscape, do I just say, fine, or do I try to tell them about Internet Explorer? How do I approach a Netscape-using friend? Say, "as a friend, it's fine with me what browser you use?" Could I have the courage to tell why my friend's company's products are behind those of Microsoft? Of course, friendship can't be reduced to such clinical and cold facts as this, but still, it raises some interesting points.

During the FiCS pre-fall retreat, themed "Spirit-Filled Followers of Christ", Pastor Paul gave us a message that we are "representatives" of Christ and that that we should be concious of that title in our daily lives, in our every act. I was truly convicted, in more ways than one, but what stands out here was the representatives of Christ. Of course, I guess this is implicit knowledge, but to hear it vocalized explicitly and eloquently by Paul made it truly hit home for the first time.

We are representatives of Christ. Now just what does that mean? What does representative evoke? It evokes an ambassador, a diplomatic instrument of a country who is supposed to be an important part of the implementatation of that country's foreign policy - or perhaps more mundane and understandable (unless you're Paul Lee), maybe the phrase "customer service representative" - a 90's euphenism for sales person. Yeah, maybe that's it: we are salespeople for Jesus Christ. I am of course not trying to trivialize, but rather, view it from a different perspective. Whatever that maybe, one thing became clear to me at Redwood Glen: That I should be focused on outreach more.

Two specific Stanford people (should I call them "potential customers"?) prominently come to mind: Mike Rosenblum, and Tammy Wang. I name them by name for three reasons: they have been on my heart a long time actually as two non-Christians that I know, they aren't into reading thought pages, and if they do start, I've become resolved that friendship where everything is just perfect and disagreement is absent is not really the truest level of friendship at all.

Anyways, there are undoubtedly others, but Mike and Tammy are the two that immediately come up because I know them well, deeply respect them, and they play visible leadership roles, Mike being the house manager in Xanadu, and Tammy being a RA in Lantana.

Mike was my freshman year roommate. I won't turn this Deep Thought into a resume listing for Mike, but I'll just say that he's finishing a co-term in Math and Symbolic Systems this year, and that he might very well be a future recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, Fields Medal, or a Turing prize. Keep an eye on him.

Tammy and I have known each other for quite a while from high school. In fact, her mom and my mom were friends from their college years. Anyways, Tammy lived in Junipero her freshman year, along with other famous and renowned people such as Danny Chai, Eddie Ahn, Grace Hsiao, Lorraine Shih, Fred Savage, and others. Indeed, she was Gracie's frosh roommate.

Now why aren't Tammy and Mike as close as people I know in FiCS or other fellowships? They are two very spicy and sociable people, and yet a lot of the resistance to just sharing my personal thoughts with them has been self-induced. It's the abhorrance of "tense" situations angle manifesting itself.

I was talking to a mutual friend of Tammy and myself who is Christian at a retreat last Winter, and she told me that personally, she has never really been focused on outreach to Tammy. Of course, Tammy is aware of this person's Christianity, and she tells Tammy whenever she goes on retreats, and other fellowship-related stuff. But those are just purely informational.

One thing to know that Mike and Tammy hardly fit a classic "troubled" profile - they aren't starving children in a developing country, or juvenile delinquents - both are highly successful here at Stanford. And Tammy's friend tells me that there is a right time for everything, including witnessing.

I'm not attacking this person, but I'm just mentioning it because the issue of outreach is a whole new world with conflicting issues that must be prayerfully considered. In a way, witnessing to friends, especially people like most non-Christians here at a place like Stanford, has a whole new dimension than witnessing on missions to relative strangers.

It's a fine and subtle line, and there are no hard and fast answers, really. But one thing that's added to my feeling of impetus to make my Christianity more external is that Desiree Ong emailed us just recently, strongly encouraging us to bring a non-Christian friend to the Billy Graham Crusade on October 10th, when FiCS will be making a group trip. In particular, this quote stood out:

"It is of little eternal importance if all of us Christians go together as a Christian activity."

So I pray that I might not only go by myself, but with a non-Christian friend. Anyways, I'm mentioning this on my web page partly as a reminder to myself, and partly for accountablility among my friends.

Outreach is a shift for me. You have to know your stuff well, and if not, you'll learn. In a way, it was like my internship and learning real coding and software engineering practices and procedures: Microsoft's internships, putting an intern straight into a full-scale project without a real "training period", can be likened to unexpectedly being thrown into the sea. If you don't know how to tread water, then you had better learn, and FAST. Those of us in FiCS last year took the "Essentials of Our Faith" final, and can probably recall the salient verses. But as is so often the case, learning it all in the classroom, in an academic setting can be very different from applying it in practice.

And I realize that this is a fundamental paradigm shift for me and how I devote myself to my faith in Him (yup, the buzzwords being thrown around at strategic planning meetings and presentations at Microsoft got to me a bit while I was there...)

But once you do learn how to tread the water, you gain a skill to benefit you the next time you find yourself in such a predicament. And so I think it is with sharing the Gospel. Being moved to share means that you'll pick it up much more effectively than studying for a final exam.

Well, I'm working on the Christian Big Sib web page, and I really feel good about it, because I feel comfortable using my gifts to serve the Christian body here. Indeed, the page is a bit of an outreach, and thinking it in that sense gives me a true sense of being as a part of the Body.

Anyways, Anne Bonner, one of the coordinators of the program and the UIC rep for FiCS, is someone I respect deeply. That very respect and admiration comes from the fact that Anne just exudes warmth and joy - she truly is such a representative of Christ as Pastor Paul mentioned. The Lord has truly blessed Anne as a true sister in our midst. Anne has the gift of dealing with people. Invoking the "representative" analogy, I'm sure any company would love to recruit Anne, fuzzy as she may be, as a marketing person for their products.

I think about Anne and I realize that it's near impossible for someone like me to reflect her seemingly-innate radiance and happiness. But that is no excuse I think to shirk away from the duties that we have been called for.

There are others too...

My sister at UC Davis.

And yes... Kevin Frank Chen - Currently, he does not attend church regularly, or being to a campus ministry. I don't know if they have a group as strong as say, FiCS down in UCLA, but he is someone that will be in my prayers.

Anyways, I think that's it for now. One thing, this public forum isn't a comprehensive prayer request listing, a journal, nor a compendium of the personal thoughts paralleling and extending what's been said on this page that I've shared to my close friends/small group members. If you want to know more, come talk to me. To some extent, Eric Yang does have a point. Secondly, this web page has been in the works for about two months or so, and it's gotten big, bloated, and delayed. Just like, say, Microsoft Windows 95 or Office. As Andrew Wong told me bluntly: "you need to update your thoughts page." So, here it is.

Enjoy.

Keith Lee Thing. Viennese Ball.

Welcome to our world

Hi Dave! I guess I'm a member of the club, too. =) My sentiments exactly on the whole web page thought exchange deal as well... And "brian fart." Ha! I love that term, coined by Henry Hsu, and my bold claim is that it will be the next "spicy." Tense. Whatever...

I'm pretty sure I know exactly the people who are reading this page. So I guess I should tailor this. It is sort of a network, I guess. The DC-GC-DH-HH-PL-DO-MW-AW thoughts page network! Hey Byue, if you read this page too, try permuting the letters and make some cool word or phrase out of that! =)

Unhealthy? Perhaps. Indeed, this is turning into a thought page on thought pages. And sooner or later, it will turn into a thought page on thought pages on thought pages. Like, dood, we're starting to get the recursion action going. Spice. But it is spice best saved for another time, so I'll return to the topic at hand.

Market research

I do think thought pages have value, and they have their own niche. For instace, I'm naturally able to express my thoughts more clearly and eloquently in writing than in speech, so the web page provides a forum where I can clearly articulate my thoughts.

So it seems that we're starting to tailor our pages for each other, more and more, rather than just the general web-surfing public. No, this forum will not become my personal journal or diary, and no Eric, I agree that they are no subsitute for true face-to-face discussions and interactions. So, in the interests of full disclosure, here is how YOU can play Sherlock and find out who has been peeking at your page! If you are not interested in a computer tutorial, click here to go to the start of the real thoughts page.

If you're on www-leland, check out the page on log dumps.

On the other hand, I, having given up the Leland system a while back, just have to type

grep mwang /n/graphics/web/logs/httpd/access_log

Anyways, in either case, you get back a list of accesses, with the computer name, date, time, and the file accesssed. You can usually deduce the people reading your page this way. For instance, if you see "fics.stanford.edu" then you can be pretty sure that I was reading your web page. Likewise, computers like "starfox" or "subspace" or "dragonballz" or "dimsum" leave little ambiguity as to who's the human at the other end. If you're unsure about who a computer belongs do, you can type "whois computername.stanford.edu" and you can find out all about it. Spice, no?

If you really want to be anonymous, you can try using lynx on a Sweet Hall machine, so all I'll see is "epicXX" or "elaineXX" or "sagaXX", but even so, one can at least guess... (Hi Eric!)

But, I mean, it's cool. Tailoring a product to its customers is good, right? (Hmmm... are Econ and/or IE majors supposed to be concerned with issues like these, or do you not really get into these things until you go into the real world or biz school? I don't really know --- after all, I'm just a one-sided CS major. =) )

Well, I guess being a CS major, whether one-sided or otherwise, I should decompose this thoughts page into separate files. since what is to follow is basically a whole different ball game. So I'll do just that.

Therefore, click here for part 2 of today's thoughts.

I've been thinking a lot about the opposite sex lately. Not in a scandalous or sinful sense, mind you, but more in a spiritual, relationship sense: specifically, my relationships with them.

No, I have never been involved in a relationship, and I currently have nothing on the radar, so to speak. And yes, there have been special girls in my heart.

[If you're reading this, you may already know the identities of the three people I have in mind. Well, maybe not. For everyone else, I'll only say that one of them is at an Ivy League school now, and the other two are currently at Stanford. None of them has ever read this thoughts page, and I am trying to make this page bolder and spicier but still, I don't feel bold enough to expli*censored*ly mention their names here in a page potentially seen by the whole world.]

A potentially-scandalous bit from my past: When I went to Stanford, one of my "goals" was to try and find a significant other, ASAP! One could imagine how I felt about it by thinking as if there was a 1-unit P/NC activity course called FINDING A GIRL that appeared on my study list. Tense. Yeah, I know, how could you be thinking that? Well, it was never really externally visible, and I guess after freshman year, I just sort of laid the whole women issue by the wayside. It's kind of like the Vulcans in Star Trek (a la Spock) "Here on these shores, our ancestors forever cast our their animal passions and from then on, devoted their minds to logic" the inscription somewhere on the planet Vulcan reads. (Note: I am by no means a Trekkie -- I just like to watch their movies and read their novels from time to time and I remember random trivia, so it might not be accurate.)

But now, I'm looking at it from the other extreme of the spectrum. While I don't "openly" "avoid" girls like, say, some of my fellow FiCS brothers, looking at the big picture, I haven't really been into developing close relationships with them -- my relationships with most of them have been on the superficial side compared to my relationships with guys. Have I "overcorrected" my desire for female companionship? Is this a good thing? Bad thing? And it's been bothering me because I know there's no real rational reason for being so detached from my fellow sisters in Christ.

So my bold claim in this thought is that I suspect that a small part of it has to do with FiCS itself, and how there is this "facade" of pretended "disinterest" towards the opposite gender: that if you are seen, for instance, talking to a girl, or say, bringing them food if they're sick, it is viewed as being scandalous, or tense. Don't get me wrong -- this is by no means an indictment of FiCS, but just some interesting thoughts on how group mentality can manifest itself. I use the word "small" because it's an issue whose core has to do with solely my own nature and character, but still, how my brothers and sisters think still come into play somewhat.

Anyways, I'm just thinking. Our unity as FiCS and our customs and trends that are present in the group -- how exactly has it influenced us, both directly and indirectly? Is we shaping the fellowship, or is the fellowship shaping us? Is the flux in one direction greater than the flux in the other?

Even more fundamental than that though: What do people think of us as a group, anyways? I'll admit that a reason I decided to join FiCS was its Asian atmosphere. Even though at times, it might be a bit strange to an outsider coming from a more heterogenous environment than this, it is, in an overall sense, an asset, not a liability.

Anyways, my take on the whole LA Korean thing that's been raised and discussed on various thought pages recently.... as a non-LA non-Korean who has pretty much been an observer to all of this culture, it interests me the most, just from a "anthropological" viewpoint: it's interesting to see how such a culture is articulated here at FiCS and KCPC.

As far as the "fitting in" issue, from talking to some other people not in FiCS, such as people in other fellowships at Stanford, or in other KCPC ministries, while maybe not feeling outright discomfort, sometimes they do get a sense of exclusivity, of not belonging unless you're already in it by default. Of course, other people don't feel this way, too. So, like I said, it's as much, and much more, in fact, a personal issue as much as it is a group issue, and one has to make the effort to reach out, gradually, starting with a few people that share common interests, and then gradually expanding outward in friendship, kind of like diffusion. And it takes time, definitely.

Hey y'alls!

Just as an example to illustrate some points, there's one group that I want to mention -- the Georgian contingent here at Stanford. None of them read my web page anyways, so I'll just take the time to mention they're all da bomb. Everyone that I know from there just exudes an aura of Southern hospitality. I guess that is a real notion. For instance, Steven "Our Dad's da bomb!" Chang. Just by reading, say, the e-mails that he writes, you can truly see a heart on fire for the Lord. Kind of like, say, the Asian version of Scott Dollar (who doesn't read this page either.)

Also, another person I deeply admire is a former roommate of mine, Leo Jeng. As you might know, he went to missions in Kunming, China, last summer. I regret being so busy sophomore year that I never really got to develop a relationship with him. Leo, if you ever read this, I'm sorry I wasn't as present and supportive a roommate and a brother sophomore year as we both would have desired. Yet, just by talking to him, and hearing about the frosh group that he is leading for InterVarsity, His spirit has been working in Leo, and he has a true servant's heart and a sincere desire to reach out to others, as he did in China and he's doing now with some members in his small group.

There are others, of course, like Lorraine, Becca, Jenn Chou, but I'll let you discover their spiciness for yourselves. Finally, here's a special shouts out to Joyce Shou-Fang Koo. She is just an exemplar of a holy lifestyle, living in the grip of the Lord. But she still goes to dances and stuff and in general, doesn't try to insulate herself in a bubble away from the things of this world (not that this is inherently bad, or anything, of course) -- in other words, her reputation is not something that would create negative connotations of Christianity to non-believers, and so she is someone that any Stanford student can easily relate to and strike up a conversation with, and relate with.

In short, Joyce just brightens everyone's day. She is one of those people that I can NOT visualize being angry, and her companionship is something that I have truly missed this quarter. And, importantly, Joyce is not someone that people, including myself, would feel tense or excluded being around.

So does this mean that Georgians are naturally more open than LA people? I doubt such a generalization holds, but I do perceive that while they're united (perhaps even more so than the SoCal people -- they all go to the exact same church back home and everything) they do try to know others more, and really realize that at Stanford, we should be meeting new people instead of just banding together with our friends from back home. It's really encouraging especially to see for example, Steven Chang, just growing so close to everyone in the fellowship, projecting his heart outward and taking the time to know people, step by step.

Through the looking glass

I know that freshman year, I would have been the one on the outside and feeling a bit tense. Often, I felt a bit uncomfortable in the few FiCS meetings I went to, at least initially before the meeting was over and I had a chance to talk to people, and honestly, I thought it was better that I had the chance to grow spiritually and personally, developing friendships and my communion with God, outside the context of FiCS.

Yet, I know we've still discussed this issue quite a few times, both the officers, as well as some of the brothers amongst each other. What _do_ other people see us as: perhaps this hip, exclusive Asian group, like the Lambdas? It's kind of interesting because we want and we value our identity -- it is a differentiating element to be valued and preserved. But that preservation should not come at the cost of intimidating other groups. Is our identity a stumbling block right now? We have a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and we do show it pretty visibly at times. It's a question that eludes a simple binary-valued, black-or-white answer, and indeed, I think that it differs with people and personalities. FiCS isn't everything to everyone, and it shouldn't try to be, just like the computer I'm writing this on isn't the best choice for everyone. Anyways, this is getting tangential, so read my earlier thought on that for some more interesting stuff.

In any case, since freshman year, FiCS has diversified -- there is little question about that. Unfortunately, can everyone perceive that diversification? Or more accurately, has this diversification fit in with FiCS growing closer together as a group? As we've become larger, we've also remained pretty tight -- even though we have our individual classes, and everything, we still have that "one big happy family" feeling that you get with few other groups here.

So the tightness and "exclusivity" or lack thereof of FiCS, while a very interesting issue in its own right, also leads to the question of how the fellowship is influencing me and my own character, in the areas of relationships:

Ground rules

Technically, of course, we actually do have some explicit ground rules on relations: as multiple speakers (definitely Pastor Eugene and Pastor Paul, for sure) have said, the core of it is: "NO NON-CHRISTIAN DATING!" But to most people, that unwritten standard of FiCS seems to be just "NO DATING" or even "NO PUBLIC INTERACTION WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX," and the latter is what seems to be partly influencing me and defining how I pursue relationships with friends.

Just look at family time. There's the co-ed family scattered here and there about the place. But we're all generally either all-guy or all-girl when we split up into our little circles of discussion and prayer.

So, it is the infamous "brother-sister-relationships-or-lack-thereof" issue that has come up quite a lot in FiCS; but, like a hot potato, we never seem to want to hold it in our hands for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't know about the other classes, but amongst us juniors, we've talked about it, at retreats, at class prayer meetings in Cubberly 229, and amongst ourselves. And there seems to be no consensus on this issue.

A bold claim:

I think that "tense" has exerted sort of a Heisenberg effect on certain people, myself included: in using the word tense as an observation of state, it actually can cause a real increase in "tenseness", or otherwise, change the atmosphere in said state.

Moreover, it gives us an excuse to be "tense" when we would otherwise not be tense. I'm not faulting you Dave for saying these expresssions, and I find nothing wrong with them. But, even myself, I find myself saying (even mentally!) "tense" when I am, for instance, alone with a girl. For example, if I am in AmStud (the only people I know in AmStud are girls) I am "tense". If I am in the second floor of Serra, I am "tense". But would I be tense if I didn't know what "tense" was? If we didn't have a name in our language for something, could we still perceive it or experience it?

As part of my work with the Computer Graphics Group and the RIVET project, I've been doing research on how we perceive various components of color, and this one guy makes a claim in a book that we humans can more readily differentiate, compare and perceive psychologically various hues ("red", "blue", "yellow", "purple", etc) than various levels of brightness becuase we have various words in our languages for those hues, and nowhere as rich a vocabulary for brightness. Spice, no?

So food for thought: if we didn't know what "tense" meant or entailed, might we be "tense" less often when dealing with other people, especially those of the opposite sex? Or "scandalous" for that matter?

So, back to the opposite sex. Again, I'm not criticizing FiCS, or Dave's sayings, or being apart from women, I'm just trying, I suppose, to bring up these issues in this medium. Now besides these, there's the personal element as well -- a lot of this "tenseness" I feel with women is generally due to elements of my own character. Case in point:

Personally, I feel especially tense if I'm talking to a girl that is hooked up already.

Freshman year, I knew a girl who is currently an RA in a certain dorm on campus. At that time, I was sort of afraid to have any kind of deep conversation with her, because at that time, she was going out with someone (one of my current drawmates, in fact.) So near the end of freshman year, out of the blue, she sent me this long email saying how she was so concerned because she felt that our conversation every time we met was superficial, and wondering what, if anything, she had done to alienate me! I still have it. And it was frustrating because she wanted to get to know me all this time, and I was just tuning her out, not letting our relationship progress beyond this certain threshold because I didn't want to offend the person she was going with!

Crossing the line?

Nowadays, I somewhat feel the same way I felt freshman year with the aforementioned girl, but this time with Linnea Kim, Lorraine Shih, Jelin Yen, etc... again -- it's that feeling that I can converse with them on the "hi, what's up?" level, but I feel as if I'm crossing into dangerous territory if I take the conversation beyond that. Sure, I can discuss EE282 with Lorraine, or even human reproduction and the "miracle of life" ( =) ) with Jelin, but I've never even tried to really ask them personal questions.

Granted, when we've all got our own SO's and spouses, certainly we should be spending time with them and they should be the ones that we share our feelings and emotions with, but friendships are still friendships, and those that we cultivate will still last a lifetime. Even if we can't always maintain them to the degree that we do know, what is here now. Agree? Disagree?

We definitely should be closer to the sisters. Not just at Valentine's day either, but as one body. Inviting them over for dinner on that day was a good start, but it has to be something ongoing, right? I'm not saying every day, but more often than one day of the year. So, I guess, that I want to encourage my brothers, simply as a fellow brother and not speaking from any position of imagined leadership, try to at least join with sisters in family time. Maybe invite them to dinner, you know, just for some talking, sharing, or what not? It might be tense, but hey, someone has to be pioneering right? I guess then, I should start doing this myself.

Another point is that I'm not saying we should have coed small groups in FiCS like they do in, say, IV -- and I will claim that single sex groups *are* better, simply for sharing, for that is what small groups are intended for. In the spirit of Ecclestiastes 3, there is a time for everything, including being apart from the opposite gender, and being together with them.

But nevertheless, pure friendship should be transparent to gender barriers. Like I said, Joyce Koo, who is not in FiCS, is one of my better girl-space-friends, and I will admit that I have a deeper relationship with her than any FiCS sister. And there is no "tenseness" there, either.

Anyways, Desiree, in her very first thoughts page entry, writes: Throughout our lives, people come and people go. We meet, we talk, we laugh, we cry; we experience life together. We are friends. But there comes a time when our paths must diverge. What now? We promise to write and keep in touch and never change. But things change. Slowly our coorespondence trickles and all we are left with are faded pictures and fading memories. We find that, as time goes by, we have less and less in common. And the person I once thought I knew is no longer the same. That person is me.

Though we may not see each other often or ever again, this I know:

You have touched my life in a special way. You have made who I am. You are a part of me.

Because of this, we can never be far apart for you are always in my prayers and in my heart.

So, we should be grabbing this opportunity now to open up our hearts to others to leave their influence on, to indeed touch or lives before the moment passes.

So, coming full circle now... Expressing our thoughts solely as a conversation carried on the medium of web pages: unhealthy -- perhaps. But very cathartic, definitely, too. Those two concepts might not be mutually exclusive...

Well, enough theorizing and waxing sentimental. Back to studying Maoist China for Anthro 118A. A place, by the way, where, I am pretty sure, there would be absolutely NO "unhealthy" thoughts pages to worry about. Heck, if the WWW existed back then, and we were attending school in China, and we wrote this kind of stuff, we'd all be branded counterrevolutionaries. Of course, not that we aren't already, to some degree. =)

Maybe I'll write a thoughts page on that.

Later.

We had our FiC dinner tonight. I saw random people from FiCS, FiCB, and random other fellowships. I got a business card from someone named Grace Yang, who is an Associate Consultant at Bain and Co. in San Francisco. Ranch 99's tofu makes a good vulcanized rubber subsitute. I found out that Lina Somsouk is Thai but not Thai. I re-enacted Titanic. The 1999 upcoming wedding count for me is now 4. I found out that Albert Yi should go to broadway and ditch the EECS thing. Hail Monta Vista High. I love Andy Hsiao. The scandalous nature of everyone in our senior class was revealed (yeah, HC!). I rode in Keith's BMW 325i. CH uses really spicy shampoo. Random is my favorite word. Scandalous is the second. Props to you, Desiree Dawn! It was the highlight of my day.

"Love Me Good" -- did MWS have the FiCS senior and junior brothers in mind when he wrote this?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 00:39:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Wang (mwang@graphics.Stanford.EDU)
To: You (you@wherever.org)
Cc: Mark Wang (mwang@graphics.Stanford.EDU)
Subject: survey

Here's what you're supposed to do. Copy this entire e-mail and change all the answers so they apply to you... then send it to everyone you know, INCLUDING the person who sent you this. So you should get back a lot of other get-to-know-you e-mails, too. You'll learn a lot about your friends that you maybe didn't know!

The Ultimate Survey For: Mark Wang

Nicknames: mwang (to many Stanford people); Marky Mark (Justin Chang and various random people); CS guy (Keith Lee); Ryu2 (MV journalism class); Samurai (AOL video games forum); Mark Smurf (elementary school) Kai-Kai (parents)

Hometown: Los Altos, CA

Croutons or Bacon Bits: Bacon Bits

Favorite salad dressing: A mixture of lite soy sauce, sesame, and wasabi

Do you drink alcohol: Only during formal social occassions

Shampoo or conditioner: Both (PERT Plus)

Have you ever gone skinny dipping: No.

Do u make fun of people: Yes.

Favorite color: Dark blue (the exact shade found on the cover of Hughes' Disciplines of a Godly Man, or the tails of United Airlines planes)

Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Almost...

Best online friends: Random people from that little liberal arts school in Cambridge, MA

One pillow or two? One.

Pets: Simon the bear, bought from FAO Schwarz in New York, and currently residing in Twain East 165.

Jedi or Yoda: Yoda all the way.

Favorite Type of Music: Basically anything except country and rap (exception: songs written for FiCS brothers' birthdays), but especially CCM, some alternative, and anime/video game soundtracks.

Hobbies: Anything involving high-tech.

Dream Car: Some upscale but still economy Japanese car, maybe the Honda Accord EX, but loaded with gear -- GPS navigation system, CD changer, MD player, six surround speakers w/ subwoofer, the works.

Type of Car u drive now: None

Words or phrases you overuse: _____ action, _____ guy, inTEResting, basically, random

Toothpaste: Aquafresh

Favorite Food: Fresh sushi, satay beef, lemon chicken

Online crush: None, they've all been physical.

Current Boyfriend/Girlfriend? No.

Piercing or tattoos? Nope.

Most romantic thing that ever happened to you: Being in discipleship group with Justin Chang and the boys.

Coolest thing someone ever gave you: Jesus Christ.

How do you characterize yourself (a hopeless romantic or non-romantic)?: Hopeless romantic

Do you get along with your parents?: Generally.

Favorite town to chill in: Hong Kong, but I've only been there once. Singapore is pretty cool as well. Last summer, I discovered the charm of Atlanta, Georgia, too.

Favorite ice cream: Cookies and Cream gelato, from the place near University Avenue.

Favorite Drink: Powerade, especially that really really deep blue flavor.

What's your bed time?: 3-4 am

Adidas, Nike or Reebok: Nike

Favorite Perfume/Cologne: cK Obsession for Men.

Favorite Songs at the moment: "That Where I Am, There You..." from Rich Mullin's "The Jesus Album", "In my Arms Again" from MWS' "Live the Life", "Once Again" (Matt Redmond's rendition), "I Could Sing of your Love Forever" (Delirious' rendition), "Sephiroth" from the FF7 Reunion CD.

Favorite Musical Groups/Artists: Jars of Clay, Rich Mullins, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, U2, Pet Shop Boys, Nobuo Uematsu, Danny Chai.

Favorite Movie: Chariots of Fire

Favorite TV Show: I don't watch TV now, but in an earlier era, it was the Smurfs. My favorite episode was SmurfQuest, the 90-minute one that was in five parts.

Favorite Novel: 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke

Favorite Magazine: NEXT Generation

Favorite Website: Danny's mind

Favorite Subject in school: Computer Graphics

Least Favorite Subject: First-Order Logic

Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Sake

Favorite Sport to watch: Multiplayer Starcraft, Mario Kart 64, Shogo MAD, or Rainbow Six, when Keith plays it.

Most humiliating moment: Attempting to do the Smurf dance in front of the entire FiCS and FiCB senior class, Pastor Harold, and various other random people, during the Senior Dinner.

Loudest person you know: Andy Hsiao (w/ his megaphone), sometimes Davis Lee when he gets a cramp in his leg.

Craziest person or silliest you know: Eunice Lee -- in both categories. More power to you, Lees!

Favorite Holiday: Christmas -- as with Danny, it is really emotional for me because it just reminds me how much we have to be thankful for, and getting together with family and friends, around a Christmas tree with a farm fire blazing just reminds us of just how incredibly blessed we are to have a tight family in God's arms. Needless to say, I also get very sappy and romantic in my thoughts, too.

What do you look for in the opposite sex: Godly, intelligent, missions-minded, a strong yet witty personality; preferably not from Stanford or California for that matter.

Say one nice thing about the person who sent this to you and be sure to send it back to them: I really sense a kindred spirit in you, Danny Chai, and I am not being hokey or cheesey when I say it. I really admire the class before me -- I really do, just for really teaching me a lot, even though you all probably don't realize most of what you've taught me.

I had a very hot dinner date with Paul Lee the other evening. It was in the basement of Sweet Hall, in the room with the raptor workstations. Paul and I both had spicy chicken combos from JitB. It was quite romantic, mind you, talking about missions, vision, and various other tantalizing things. All that was needed I think was the candles, and it would have been complete.

Fortunately, it was "above reproach" of course.

It was the highlight of my day

In many ways, my Stanford experience has been one where my thoughts and atitudes towards things of life have come full circle.

One of those areas has been dances. In high school, I used to be totally anti-dance. Then, once I got to Stanford, for some inexplicable reason, I totally was gung-ho about going to all the dances. Maybe it was just me trying to break out of a artificially-constructed notion that I had led a "sheltered" lifestyle in high school... whatever that meant! I even asked a girl out to the Viennese Ball. =P Of course, this was freshman year, during my... um, shall we say, wild years.

Now, after taking Social Dance I this past quarter, my feelings now could be best described as ambivalent.

The reason is simple: I just can't dance.

Even though the Bible tells us otherwise, I am bitter about it, and when I see people like Will Chen, Dave Hong, Keith Lee, etc bust out those moves, I become just frustrated. I realize that I shouldn't be expending this emotional energy, because I don't get phazed knowing that there are people who are better in CS that I am, for example, but I just get mad at myself for my own inability to have dance moves sink in, mentally and kinesthetically. Sometimes I feel I have a curse just like Jim Carey in Liar, Liar, where he is physcially inable to lie in any way, shape or form: in my case, it's the inability to dance coherently and smoothly in any way, shape or form. What's wrong with my body?!?!

Because of this, in dance class, even though there certainly were a very good number of girls and guys that I knew, I actually tried to avoid girls that I knew, opting instead to dance with "random" girls whom to me were complete strangers.

I figured that if I didn't know them, they wouldn't know me, and certainly wouldn't remember me after class. Of course, that probably wasn't the best attitude to have -- now I find I do remember them when I see them (at least their faces, but not their names). Furthermore, I suspect that that rememberence is mutual, so I often feel tense when I see them. Oh well.

So anyways, one of my biggest worries now is Viennese Ball. My rational side, says, no, don't go to only make a fool of yourself. But my sentimental side says not to miss out with this time with friends -- especially it being senior year and all!

Last year, I vowed that if four certain people went, I would go as well. Expressed in tbe language of symbolic logic:

KL & PL & DC & DH => MW

where KL, PL, DC, DH, and MW symbolize predicates Keith, Paul, Danny, Dave Hong, and Mark Wang respectively go to Viennese Ball. (Yeah, that's something I do mentally often: try to sanitize throny issues like these by thinking of them as just another CS problem.)

Of course, last year, only Danny ended up going, and I wasn't particularly excited about going anyways. But the fact that this is for most people I know their last year, just looms tall over me like some dark appraition, always lurking in my thoughts.

I would at least like to have the possibility of going to Viennese Ball, and since we know that Dave Hong is out of the picture for this year, we have to remove him -- otherwise we have a unsatisfible expression. Then again, obviously Keith Lee and Danny Chai are givens for Viennese Ball attendence. So, the above equation can be basically simplified to:

PL => MW

That is, if Paul Lee goes, then I will go.

That of course, as every student of logic knows, does not imply

~PL => ~MW

I mean, I could very well let my emotions just overcome me, Kisoo or no Kisoo, and take the Viennese plunge.

OK, so if I do decide to go to Viennese, that just opens up another dilemma: who will be the one that I go with?

I will be frank: There isn't really any girl at Stanford that I feel overwhelmingly comfortable enough going with with no hesitation. [Of course, there's always Val Hsieh... =) Then again, last year Georgie was a pretty good sport -- taking a licking and just keeping on ticking. I on the other hand tend to be extremely self concious, and as a result, become embrassed easily. This was most apprent in dance class, where often times, Richard Powers would come up to me one on one and correct some egregiously wrong mistake that I made, and boy, did I feel tense. Now to feel that way with a girl, surrounded by my peers...]

[It should also be noted, however, that I am NOT bitter because I have no special someone that I could automatically go with. I have become anti-dating (as in the sense of romantic involvement w/o committment, not "dating" as in casually going to a dance), thanks to the encouragement of several awesome brothers, and Joshua Harris.]

Anyways, I propose we solve that problem of "who" and also, provide some incentive to really overcome one's dancing phobias by combining the randomness and tenseness of Screw Your Sib with the elegance and class of Viennese Ball, and really ratchet up the stakes for people to bring on their very best!

That's right, baby: Blind dates and setups for Viennese.

If you end up having a horrible SYS experience, you blow, what, maybe $40 at most? But with Viennese, you kiss bye bye to several hundred dollars potentially! And boy, your date probably WILL remember you however the night goes! So the pressure WILL be on for you to have the best social experience possible to maximize your return on investment!

All this would be optional, of course. But hey, for the vast majority at Stanford not already constricted (I think that verb is pretty apt, in some cases) by any special relationship, why not spice up the experience? After all, SYS shouldn't be the only time of year for some "screwing".

Admittedly, I've only had one true blind date experience which I'd much rather forget -- SYS sophomore year, with someone in the class of 1998 who I won't name. I didn't know her AT ALL, not even by name, in any case. It did have its bright spots. For instance, I first met Chee-Chee Hsu during that event, the most incredible dancing machine I have seen, ever. And most of it stemmed from a failure to realize that there are TWO Hong Kong Flower Lounge restaurants in the Peninsula, and NOTHING specifically related to my date. But, in a way, I'm still reeling over the trauma of it all.

Just like they say the success of the US in the Gulf War was a "vindication" to its collective psyche for the morass of Vietnam, here's hoping that a blind Viennese date will "vindicate" that SYS experience for me.

Bring it on! ==> mwang@cs.stanford.edu

Due to excessive lameness with this thought, I've deleted it for now from the public view. Email me if you really want to know what I thought. =)

As many people, including myself, have observed before, thought pages are far from being a Stanford-only phonomenon.

I was surfing the pages of one Alexander Tsai, Harvard class of 1998, and a current grad student in economics somewhere in Canada.

Although we do have quite a few mutual connections, I've never met him personally. But thanks to his home page, I know that he was in HRAACF, lived in Currier House, went to London spring break, is from Louisiana, has a friend named Sushant, wrote his senior thesis on VC issues related to biotech companies, and has a lot of mutual friends/acquaintances with me. Anyways, the cool thing about Alex is that he just started his own thoughts page. Props to you, Alex!

He even mentions as inspiration Danny (which he thinks graduated from Andover!!) and Desiree's pages by name, even though he goes on to say he's never met them.

I would suggest you all go and read his page for a bit. The most interesting point that he suggests forming a group that would somehow tie all our disparate though pages together, but then he becomes somewhat disappointed at finding out that there are already groups for that.

Anyways, Alexander, if you read this web page, I agree wholeheartedly that we should band together! No man is an island, as they say. The thing is, those web rings, confederations, groupings, or whatever you want to call them, they're just too general purpose. We should focus on the common niche that we all occupy:

I propose we start a web-based association for Asian American Christians with thought pages.

Kind of like Gwen's (one of my acquantances which I did meet via the web, have emailed a couple of times, and actually had lunch together with, once) Nerdy Asian Network.

Indeed, perhaps we should resurrect it, same name and all, with this new purpose in mind -- indeed, we can have our own chat forums, or even a email list, a la fics-chat! Then again, we can just "chat" with each other thorough the media of our own web pages. How beautiful is the body of Christ.

I guesss I'll get to work on it sometime. Keep on checking my home page for updates!

Update your page, Gwen!

Before you screw around in the other stories, post test comments here...

I think that out of all the engagements amongst my friends, I think Chi-Hua and Sohi's marks a turning point for me and my friends, being the first guy in our FiCS class to get engaged.

No, I'm not whining because I'm not in his shoes... I'm enjoying my singleness, thankyouverymuch. =) It's more that this is the first person whom I view as a total peer in every sense of the word, someone I can just hang out with, talk about whatever's on my mind. He's just one of us. The girls, sure, everone expected them to get engaged before us guys. And the '98 and above guys I do look up to, as one normally looks up to those older.

And once he gets married... wow... no more fun times at Crestview, late night conversations, dressing him up as Pooh, cracking jokes, and other guy things which probably shouldn't go on this public web page. ;) It's still a bit surreal to me. But yeah, it definitely marks the end of an era.

I just returned from Tahoe, chilling with Irving, George, Jenny, her two siblings, Des, Ashley, and Eric Yoo (in Irving\'s KCPC small group). It was just a quick weekend getaway; most people spent Saturday skiing at Heavenly, but I, being on the verge of a cold (BTW... Slim and Esther, hope you guys are feeling better!), decided to not push myself, and elected to stay home with Des and Ashley.

Nothing really eventful for me -- watched Initial D and slept. Two things I did realize:

For me, it\'s good just to relax and do nothing, up to a point. It\'s something that\'s still sinking into me, being totally contrary to my working life.

Second, don\'t go on a trip with a 1 year old baby in tow. =) Well, just kidding... don\'t get me wrong Ashley was definitely fun, but this being the first time as an adult I\'ve spent an extended period of time living together with a baby and parent, I definitely got a first-hand taste of how aggravating and difficult it can be to be a parent at times. Yikes -- how will I ever prepare myself for that time?

Today's been a pretty good day, compared to the rest of the so far unmemorable days of my new year. Up to now, I've been coding on and off to keep my skills sharp, to learn new techniques, and to have something presentable to potential employers if need be, but it's mostly been just more or less what one might consider "fooling around": experimentation and modifications of existing demo code, without a unifying purpose to tie them together.

But, relatively suddenly today I had an epiphany about what something I could work on: a specific type of game that I've always found interesting, and the engine to power it. It's not groundbreaking, but at least, I've got the genesis of an idea from which I can really start designing and spec-ing out stuff. I'm psyched. =)

Also, heard from a friend of mine on the east coast that was truly a surprise to hear from -- you might consider the friend in the category of "someone I've hung out a few times with, have several interests in common and have the desire to know better". (Yes, it's a girl, and no, the relationship is strictly platonic...) Anyhow, I got a belated Christmas card from this person, and the pleasantly surprising nature of it made my day, and gave my hitherto flat morale a further boost. =)

It's interesting how both Dave and Jieun mention physical pain in their recent thoughts, because it's something I've been very recently dealing with as well. For much of my break, I was struggling with my back and neck being sore, aggravated by my Tourette-induced "tics", most likely from suboptimal posture, or plain sitting in front of the computer for too long, without getting up. And I still am, to some extent. I've actually been getting acupuncture therapy for it, and it actually seems to be helping... we'll see.

As a result, for much of break, I've been forcing myself just to lie down at times, doing nothing. It's been difficult, because I've got the urge to do something productive -- and yet, most productive things of mine involve sitting in front of a computer, be it coding, job research/hunting, or even writing thoughts. The fact that most of my friends had gone home for the holidays didn't make things easier for me to find stuff to do.

Yet, this whole ordeal reminds me in many ways of a time winter quarter of my senior year, when I suffered acute laryngitis, and was unable to speak much. I just looked back on a email (excerpted below) I had written to several close friends during that time, and realized that this current challenge, and the things I've felt, mirror this earlier episode uncanningly, to the point of giving me newfound encouragement from reflecting on the past...

OK, I admit I haven't got the slightest experience in the investment banking world, and have no idea what really goes on in there, but talking to friends who've gone through summer internships like places like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, or reading pages like Sammy or Soojin's who whine and complain about their work, I have to ask: just what's the allure of i-banking that draws so many bright minds into it? I do hear that some of the salaries that the senior partner-level people make are insane, but then again, don't the junior analysts make a pittance, considering the inordinate amount of hours worked?

So, you may ask: what's so great about the software industry? Well, there, at least you're contributing to a deliverable product, and in all cases, you can clearly and objectively delineate and identify the part of the code that you worked on, even though it may not be visible to end-users. But with i-banking, you're just someone crunching numbers, passing them on to superiors who pass them on to their superiors, right?

Or take consulting or law -- I do know many friends there, and in those areas, you may be doing "grunt work" as well, but, at least you're (supposedly) helping others as well and contributing to a clear objective, rather than just increasing a bank's coffers and wealth. And you're (generally) not working the crazy hours that bankers always seem to work.

Is it the business and networking opportunities? Does i-banking really have these opportunities that other professions don't?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not knocking i-banking, but just genuinely curious. Any i-banker or someone familiar with i-banking want to chime in, and enlighten this ignoramus? What attracted you to i-banking? Or are you just sadomachistic? =) Please post a comment, or email me, because I really am dying to know.

Arrgh -- reading Joe Yang's latest entry made me more annoyed than I've been in a long while after reading someone's thought page. It's simply the old left-wing rant that we've all heard before (fix our problems on Earth before going into space, blah, blah), and there doesn't seem to be anything new of substance.

Of course, I don't think that NASA is perfect, and I do personally have the opinion (having worked with them quite a bit in high school) that it's mired in politics too, and some of those politics (eg, having a viable shuttle replacement repeatedly put on the back burner) ultimately caused the demise of 7 astronauts and billions of dollars worth of space hardware. Yet, I continue to be staunchly pro-NASA and pro-space exploration in general.

Why? The leftist rant repeated by Joe ignores the fact that much research in space, or related to the space program, will trickle down to benefit society -- for instance, new drugs which can be investigated in weightnessless, new manufacturing techniques, computer technology, the adoption of the Internet, etc.

Nothing personal, Joe, but just want to point out that you're failing to see a major side of our space program.

...Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. -- Philippians 3:13-14, NIV.

Reading Simon's latest long thought really struck a resonant chord within me, for I have been guilty of the exact same thing: of letting my emotions, and impatience get the best of me when communicating with others, subsequently causing much unnecessary pain for myself and others -- whether vocally, in email, or yes, even in writing online. In the latter case, I am referring to two specific bits from my page: my short thought of 10/14/2001, and my long thought of 5/7/1998.

In both those cases, I was writing in what was essentially a blind, primal rage, where the feeling of anger towards the subjects of those writings was the only thing I felt. And upon reflecting in a more sober mood (and, in both cases, very harsh and well-deserved rebuking from various people as well), I've realized that they're nothing rational or didatic, but only vicious weapons forged from my own sinful heart, with a purpose to cause pain and division, without even me explicitly intending them to do so.

So... I would like to say publically (even though I've communicated my apologies privately to the affected parties in the past): I am sorry for the pain, the hurt, the sorrow that my words have caused you. What they reflected was not my real feelings at all, but a twisted, wretched self, blinded by my own darkness. I betrayed your friendship in writing these words, but more importantly, I betrayed Christ and His commands to us to love one another and keep the peace, and now I pray that you may find it in your hearts to forgive my sins. Amen.

Unlike Simon though who took down his "offending" thought, I've conciously made the decision to keep those two controversial thoughts intact... even though many times, I've considered and re-considered taking them down. There are two main reasons why I have chosen to keep them up: first, my online writings are sort of a "history" of me, and to revise history is rather troubling to me from a philosophical standpoint -- whether it's say the Japanese leaving out their atrocities in WW2, or myself leaving out my own similar "atrocities". Secondly, and more importantly, I think it serves as a public reminder of my own sinful self, and just how depraved even I, as a child of God and someone not too prone to emotionalism in public, can be when blinded by twisted, self-centered passions. They simply show me how much I need Him.

Seeing Cat again and sharing our visions at WCC in Santa Cruz, catching up with Eric over pearl milk tea, IMing with Paul in Africa, calling up and sharing with Jimmy and Ivy in Boston, looking at Davis' engagement pictures on the web, discussing physics simulation with Keith, emailing Helen in China... in being with friends, I find happiness, even though I'm such a lazy slacker when it comes to keeping in touch.

Just like you become more sensitive to light when you're in the darkness, so I think that I've been more sensitive to interacting and spending time with others when I've got an abundance of free time without day-to-day distractions.

It's not significant whom you consider your friends, I've learned, but rather it's significant whom others consider you as a friend. I thank God for friends that He's placed in my life, and I pray that they see me the way I see them, despite my weaknesses, and I'm thankful for those who see beyond my flaws and see a heart to influence.

I know that if there's but one thing I want to be remembered for, is that I have the discernment to likewise be a faithful friend to them as well. But I'm such a hypocrite when I say this, because I'm usually so lazy about keeping in touch with others. But I'm glad that at least I have the time, and no excuses right now to not do so.

I found it interesting that Danny talks about downloading TV theme songs when less than 3 years ago, he was ranting against Napster. Changed your opinion since then, Danny? If not, than what a hypocrite... I unabashedly and freely download songs too, but at least I don't rant against it while continuing to do so... ha ha ha. =)

But anyhow, I would say the best cartoon music from my childhood years were the Smurfs. Why, you might ask? Well, most (if not all) of the music on the Smurfs were drawn from the classical repertoire. Being the culturally ignorant person I was back then, classical music was all that I listened to, and had a familiarity with, and I have to say -- the Smurfs really expanded my musical horizons. Since then, when I've heard a new classical piece, more times than not, I'll go -- I heard it on the Smurfs!

I found it fascinating that the producers of the Smurfs could weave such a rich musical tapestry from pre-existing songs, always suited for the right mood -- from Beethoven's agitated 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata for the times the Smurf Village was being ransacked by Gargamel and Azrael, to the idyllic "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussourgsky to accompany a wide shot of the Smurfs lazily going about their daily lives, to the lush, rich theme of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony as the Smurfs set off into their world in SmurfQuest (still my favorite episode, and the zenith of Smurf quality, in my view), they always seemed to have a piece for every mood, with perfect integration, despite spanning several centuries and styles from Baroque to Romantic, without resorting to compose a single piece of their own (other than the theme song).

Truly a musical tour de force. Then again, maybe I was just pathetically sheltered as a kid. =)

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.

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...

...of unemployment, that is.

I'll be honest -- I never thought it would last this long, and the job search this hard. Granted, I'm being quite discriminating in the field of work and job description I'm looking for myself, but even still... it's mind boggling to think that 3-4 years ago, you had to fight to get the recruiters off your back.

How have things been different life wise? For me, the more salient question to ask would be how things have been the same. When I first experienced, for the first time in my adult life, a period without daily school or work commitments a year ago, I was ecstatic because it would give me time to catch up with my own languishing spiritual life. And yet, what I've found is that even in the absence of a daily work routine, there's still a temptation to get caught up in another cycle: look for jobs... get rejected for lack of professional experience... develop and refine some graphics/game demos... repeat over again, hoping that the "experience" gained during that iteration will actually make a difference. In the absence of work, we humans (at least the techie worker type) will seek to fill it with the same.

I'm certainly blessed -- with a family that's understanding of my desires and my situation, and a living arrangement that basically eliminates any expenses related to day to day living. What I think I'm more affected by is the whole uncertainty of it all -- the job outcome deciding my living situation, etc, and that in turn deciding many other things, such as commitment to church, etc.

But really, I'm not discouraged or discontented... at least by the fact that I'm jobless thus far. It's not even a pride thing -- the fact that someone with my qualifications is still looking. Nevertheless, I do feel those feelings -- and what prevents those feelings from consuming me totally is the realization that the source of these feelings is not my job situation or personal pride... but rather, my relationship with God. I realize that I need to rebuild that spiritual discipline, that seemed to hit a high point during my missions trip in 1999. Thankfully, it received a boost during my last trip to Asia, and I'm praying that I can continue. With a renewed relationship with God, my heart feels, the right job will surely come. So, when people ask me at church, can I pray for your job search, I tell them no -- the first priority that I'm seeking is my spiritual life.

And even I find the fact that my heart's desires lies as such sort of miraculous, and a sign that God is with me during this stage of uncertainty. I'm not anxious... just perhaps tired at times from all of this. But yeah, He's sure kicking me in the pants, and I'm thankful for it.

It's just so interesting to me the situation that I find myself in: that the work of finding a job can make me even more dissatisfied with relying on my own means, and more realizing that God is in control. It's seemingly paradoxical in the world's eyes, but for me, it's a living embodiment of many a verse in the Bible admonishing against putting the world before Christ in what we seek -- a mindset that Christians are reminded of over and over again in teaching, but for me, was largely hypothetical until now.

I'm here in LA for Lina and Charles' wedding, and so far, it's just been hanging out with Joe and Grace at Keith's place... he being absent due to his work.

Anyhow, I whipped out my laptop and proceeded to check email, thought pages, and the like. As I was reading Grace's page, with the writer in the immediate vicinity of me, I asked her what prompted her to write her latest entry. As we were talking, I realized that it was interesting for me, as it was one of those rare times that as I was simultaneously reading someone's page, that someone was also present in physical form. It added a whole another dimension that I was able to "respond" to someone's thought in a face-to-face manner, not simply via electronic text... through which I was able to get a lot of extra nuances and see the "story" behind that particular entry, not just its distillation into letters and words.

And it's sort of got me thinking: even amongst those of us who read each other's pages, and also happen to see each other in real life, it seems that no one ever talks about thought pages, or their content, in another medium of communication other than the web itself (or at the very most, via IM or email). It's rare that in a face-to-face conversation, we'll bring up a particular thought page, or such pages in general. To me, it's almost as if they were a parallel universe of communications, augmenting what we tell each other via other modes and media, but never crossing over.

Interesting... has this been anyone else's experience? Why is the discourse between us thought page producers and consumers seemingly limited in its own scope and the forms it takes?

Excitate vos e somno, liberi mei.
Cunae non sunt.
Excitate vos e somno, liberi fatali.
Somnus non eat.

Wake up, my children
The cradle is no longer
Wake up, children of destiny
The peaceful rest is no longer

-- "Liberi Fatali", Final Fantasy VIII

Why does life have to be so complicated? Really, it's not so much the complexity of the current situations that I find myself having to deal with and navigate through soon, it's the capricious nature of everything. One moment I was in "peaceful rest", and now this.

It's not all bad -- in fact, some of it is exciting -- but in many ways, I'm presented with the opportunity to really take some leaps of faith, both professionally and personally. I've talked the talk... can I walk the walk? Many of my friends have gone down these paths I find myself treading in parallel -- and now I start to cautiously tread in their footsteps.

Yesterday afternoon, trying not to be overwhelmed by what God threw at me in seemingly rapid succession and the irresistable human urge to find out What It All Means when only God knows the answer, I went to Crestview to witness its last moments, and helped Rich, Ilaria, dT, Sohi, and Nancy throw out a pile of remaining odds and ends. As Slim observed, seeing the empty rooms that previously housed seven of the coolest guys I've had the privilege of knowing and their various accompaniments looked so surreal -- to the point where I wished I had my camera with me to document it. Even though I wasn't intimately involved in their daily lives, I had my share of fun hangout times there as well and good memories of that place. Crestview's change -- is it to be symbolic of what might happen to me soon?

From Crestview, I went to GrX small group, which was quite enjoyable for me too. I'm glad that I've come across such a great, dynamic church in the South Bay, and that I've even started to find a niche within that community -- much more quicker it seems than it took for me with KCPC or Wellspring. As with Crestview, being with friends and at least starting to tell them about my potential future path -- involving Asia, missions, and perhaps even gaming -- really did a lot to take my mind off of some of the other issues on my plate...

Anyhow, just chilling with Rich that afternoon, even though it was relatively brief, made me happy, talking about his future plans to corner the boba market, and experiencing his playful teasing and his uncanny ability to make me laugh uncontrollably for minutes on end. =) The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or I guess, to be more honest, the more uncertainty comes my way, the more solace I find in the familiar things of my life.

Was my time with Richie the first of a long string of farewells that I might be going through in the next few months?

No matter what I decide, as for the future, the only thing I'm sure about is that my character will be strengthened. I know that much, and that gives me a sense of hope.

Just got back from SIGGRAPH last week -- as usual, it was hectic and yet exciting to see the forefront of computer graphics and its applications, both in academia and industry... not to mention meeting and interviewing with a bunch of companies large and small, and meeting up with various friends in SoCal.

One posting on the free-for-all job board got my attention -- a meeting for a group called "Christians in Animation" Unfortunately, my schedule didn't permit me to stick around in San Diego for the meeting, but I wonder -- how would such a group be like? And what would the purpose be?

Don't get me wrong -- I think that graphics and animation can indeed be a powerful medium to share the Gospel (witness Veggie Tales, for instance). And perhaps they have something as goal-oriented and purpose-driven as say, making the next Veggie Tales, in mind.

But if it's just a group labeled as "Christian" for the purpose of meeting seems to me as just promulgating the notion of the "Christian bubble" to non-Christians. Isn't that what the church is for anyhow? In much the same way as Desiree felt when she read that "Praise God" comment on Amazon.com, does slapping a "Christian" label on everything, and having "Christian" subcommunities within everything just for the purpose of gatherint together alienate us to others, or diminish the value of our faith?

When is it a good time just to give it all up? When you know you've done all that you can, and you realize that the direction you take from here on is really up to God, and not your own ways? To realize to "lean not on our own understanding" about what's best, and to view it not as defeat but acknowledgement of His sovereignity?

This has always been the greatest weakness of mine...

In response to Jieun's latest entry, I get emails and letters from Stanford about special events for "alumni of color". So I guess that Stanford University shares your view, Jieun. In any case, I find it interesting because I never thought of myself as being of "color" -- in the sense that "color" here is apparently a synomyn for minority. After all, for much of my life, especially during high school, Asians were the majority or nearly much so.

Also, the implicit connotation of the term colored to mean minority means that those not of color (ie, white) are the majority. What term would they use in places where whites are the minority, I wonder? =)

I actually got rejected as a friend on Friendster today... the first time it's ever happened in the course of the dozens of friends I've added. =P

And it's not like I was stalking some random person I didn't know. I've known this person for several years, we've been going to the same church together, and we see each other and talk to each other every week, in a very friendly way.

It consoled me a bit to browse this friend's friends list, and saw that it was quite small, less than 20 people (even though said person is quite sociable and knows tons of people), and included only people from this person's college years -- many people I would consider to be much better friends with this person weren't on there either.

Of course, it's not like I'm devasted (Thankfully, I'm learning to be less sensitive to such things and focus on what matters), or it affects my perception of our real-life friendship, but considering some of my friends on my Friendster list are people from my childhood I've not talked to in years who nevertheless happily accepted my requests, I was sort of surprised, as the modus operandi of most Friendster members seems to be increase the size of your network, not make it a small exclusive one.

Hahahaha... I can't believe people are this gullible!

Apparently someone found my parody of Lifeway's 2004 VBS and wrote me this email (some info removed to avoid massive embarassment for her ;) )

From: "Gullible person"
To: <redneckrally@markwang.com>
Subject: 2004 VBS
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:02:55 -0500

Please send me a catalog as soon as it is available as we are in the process of deciding which VBS curriculum we will be using in 2004.

Thank you!

Gullible person
Some church
Some street
San Antonio, TX 78209

Phone: 210/ XXX-XXXX

email: someone@somechurch.org

Hmmm... should I be nice and tell her she's been fooled? Or should I, in the light-hearted spirit of the original parody, just play along and see how long it takes for her to realize it? =) I'm still laughing about it...