As if it couldn’t get worse…

As if him spitting on Tevez, breathing down the ref’s neck, being a racist, being himself, and missing a penalty weren’t bad enough, John Terry just took it another step further by issuing this “apology” letter:

The Chelsea captain wrote:

‘To all the Chelsea fans, all my team-mates, the manager and staff at the club.

I am so sorry for missing the penalty and denying you the fans, my team-mates, family and friends the chance to become European champions.

Many people have told me I don’t need to say that but I feel I need to, that’s just me. I have relived that moment every minute since it happened. I have only slept a few hours and wake up every time hoping it’s all been a bad dream.

I have had some amazing support from fans, current and ex-players, family and friends and I need to thank everyone for that. But I am a big man and I take responsibility for us not winning.

I am and ALWAYS will be Chelsea through and through. I will give my all on and off the pitch to win this trophy as a player and one day as a manager. And I am sure we will win it.

That night in Moscow will haunt me forever and I feel I have let everybody down and this hurts me more than anything. I am not ashamed about crying. This is a trophy I have tried so hard year after year to win and it was just an uncontrollable reaction, I wear my heart on my sleeve, everybody knows that.

The road to Rome starts here, we have to try and turn this experience to our advantage. I am very proud of how far we have come this season with everything that has gone on.

Thank you for all your support for the team this season.’

www.chelseafc.com

Well, I have never seen that many “I”s in an apology letter. Love the self-indulgence. And who on earth issues a letter after getting paid 130k pounds per week only to win nothing? This is quite simply uncalled for.

I now believe in Karma

I didn’t before, but after the Champions League final, I believe in it now. Be good, kids, ’cause you’ll never know when Karma comes back biting you in the arse.

Here’s a brilliant blog explaining exactly what I am talking about:
Karma is a funny thing

Bits and Parts

I am really feeling indifferent about the Starfield concert.  Their first, largely acoustic album was ace, second was a nice change of sound, but their third and latest one feels like an album past its expiry date.  It feels like an album that had to be made for them to continue being relatively successful.  If I want to listen to the tired radio rock riffs, I might as well throw on some Foo Fighters or something.  With all this said, they have never failed to entertain in live shows, as my friend SJW pointed out.

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It’s the Champions League final but I am not that excited at all because football has become a joke, really.  Where are the real football teams like Ajax of ‘95?

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The Whitecaps are going to revamp the BC Place and use it as our temporary home, with the hopes of securing a bid in catching the heated wave of MLS expansion.  Good news but also bad news as this means any plans to build the Waterfront stadium can easily be pushed back.

Luckily I get to catch our home game against the Seattle Sounders this coming Friday! 

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I want to move away from Richmond because it’s no longer the little suburban town I was so fond of as a kid (I suppose anywhere South of where I live still is) but a place filled with, well, stupid places.

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I don’t usually talk about cars but I want one of those Audi R8s after seeing Iron Man.

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I want to play in a band.

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I have discovered The Smashing Pumpkins, only about a decade and a half late.

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I really like Ben Gibbard and Conor Oberst and really wish there were Christian musicians who can write songs like them.  Is Sufjan Stevens the only one?

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I just watched “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.  It was funny, cute, and the last little bit at the wedding when the dad finally came around really touched my heart.  Yes, the meaning of life is indeed to get married and have lots of kids.

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I don’t really want to go back to Vancouver.  But neither do I want to stay here right now.

Looking back at 07/08

This year has truly been an extraordinarily wonderful year. I have been placed around some very fine young men and women. Whether it is first years, third years, grad students, thirty year olds, or even sixty year olds – I have gotten the chance to meet a good handful of people who truly know and love God.

I used to think that you could just put on a good face and pretend to serve others – even against that evil voice only you can hear inside your head – and not a single soul would be able to notice a thing. This year, after meeting people who wear their hearts on their sleeves (a phrase I am stealing from a friend’s note), I have decided against such a naïve view of things. It’s a naïve view of life, to think that I can do anything well without aligning my heart to it.

It always occurred to me that to become a man (or a woman) is to be ignited with passion – to the extent of becoming selfless for a cause. To become a man (or a woman) of God then is to simply plug in “God and His people” as the “cause”. This is truly a cause worth suffering for. And guess what, nothing gives you more passion than the Word of God, as I have learned from the people I have met this year.

This is the passage that I believe sums up the attitude we ought to have when it comes to the Word:

2 Timothy 4:1-5 (ESV)

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Paul calls Timothy to preach the Word and to do the work of an evangelist. I think it only requires simple logic to deduce that this ought to also be the calling for EVERY Christian young and old.

I have been privileged to personally witness the transformation process: that people who truly love God’s Word become people who genuinely love God and His people. Their lives become displays of authentic Christian living. They lift up every concern in prayer. They reprove, rebuke and exhort one another, doing so with complete patience. They can’t stop thinking of ways of which God can use them to transform the world.

Notice that I am talking about “them” and not “we” or “us”. I am still so immature. Most of the time I am.

A teen complained to us leaders that he got told off by the aunties at church to not play the drums, as it disturbs them.

My initial reaction was, “So what? Back in the day we didn’t even have a drumset at church. We practiced weekly at my place only to get a chance to lead worship once in a blue moon. Yet we didn’t complain. You are enjoying the fruit of our labor you spoiled kid!”

That’s how I felt. And no, that definitely does not fall under the “boasting in Christ” file cabinet. It’s a disgusting attitude to have.

Time to meditate on 2 Peter 1 again.

I leave you with some photographs of me and (most of) the lovely people I’ve gotten to meet this year:

The Szechuan Earthquake

16,000 dead is the latest figure I heard on the news.

I don’t think I can ever wrap my mind around figures such as this.

And then you watch the more in-depth reports and see on your TV screens that these people are all the children, relatives or even parents of the hundreds of thousands around, and your heart just aches.

 

Church-visiting

Disclaimer: this blog was written when I was a bit downtrodden. It does not necessarily reflect what I believe, but more so what I felt at the time. I post it because I believe it can serve as a warning.

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What is this Christianese – “church-visiting” – I talk about?

I am not talking about your regular “church-hopping”, where one permanently moves from one church to another to another to another like a Halloween pub crawl with the frat boys. Because, as we all know, such behavior is destructive to both the church-hopper and the church herself and often, deservedly, gets looked down upon (especially in Korean circles, I am told).

I am not talking about “church-shopping” either, where one takes bits and parts of every local church and end up developing only skin-deep relationships all round. “I love the smallgroups at that Baptist church, the morning service at this Anglican church, and the evening service at that Black Pentecostal church. They just make me feel so alive!”

Not that.

I am talking about “church-visiting” – ‘I check you out, but I can’t settle and serve even if I wanted to because I am not from around here’.

I have church-visited twice this past month. And I hope to do it a few more times as it can be fun.

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But anyways, long story short, throughout all this I have come to see a disconcertingly lack of synergy. I see a massive difference in maturity level across congregations. Some churches are moving forward, yet many are falling increasingly behind. A 20 year old can be a leader of men here, but another 20 year old over there who has gone to church all his life cannot tell you the first reason why Jesus came to die.

Some churches are totally big on discipleship and authentic Christian fellowship, fitting into the “Acts 2″ mold like a glove, hence blessed with very committed men and women. Some slip under the radar as your regular Evangelicals, teaching the right doctrines and praying big prayers yet doing little in reality, creating a lukewarm atmosphere. Yet others cannot be called anything Christian, where there’s little selflessness but truckloads of legalism and politics, leading to crowds of people going to church for all the wrong reasons.

Yet, if every church appointed leaders according to Titus 1, you really wouldn’t expect to see this happen. If every leader had the heart and attitude seen in 1 Thessalonians 2, you wouldn’t expect to see this happen.

All this get my heart feeling a tad watered down and discontent. At times very disappointed.

The late Dr. Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, said this: “Win the campus today, reach the world for Christ tomorrow”. Of course, much of that is based on what Jesus said in Acts 1:8 – that His followers, being filled with the Holy Spirit, shall reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel.

Yet, I have become disillusioned as to what it means when people say God is at work and that we can really join in and change the world. Can we really?

Is not every culture moving in the direction where faith in God is increasingly being ridiculed? Is not morality being thrown out the window, incoming the ‘everything is okay as long as no one is hurt’ ethics?

Genesis 1:26 says this, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Yet congregations are always needing to be built up from the bottom again and again; people are walking away; so few are maturing that there is no multiplication but simply 1:1 replacements.

Is God really at work?

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Those of you guys in the C4C circle would probably have already read Samuel Chua’s blog written during his missions trip in Uganda (where he still is). If not, go look it up on his Facebook:

“Silver and gold I have none to offer, but the message of the gift of life and God’s gift to the world. Do you know where hope shines the brightest? It shines brightest in the darkest places, the eyes of the Ugandans who have found the light of life.”

Well, clearly our Lord YHWH is at work.

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I told you many times, didn’t I? I hate it when my heart hardens. I mean, what the hell.

This past Sunday I attended a service where the preacher probably came from England and had some sort of an English accent. He preached on Jonah 4. While I dozed off my mind during most of it, the passage itself was a lesson I needed. Jonah never liked people, yet he thought he loved God. But how can anyone claim to love God when he/she does not love what God loves?

On loving God and people, I quote Paulman Chan:

“In other words, you and I can talk about ending poverty, or we can talk about bringing the Gospel to people lost in spiritual darkness. But the thing that matters is living out a life that makes Jesus your treasure, first, and making it your priority to help others to know Him, followed by the inescapable desire to bring comfort and help to those who need it physically, socially, or emotionally.

Spiritual needs are the most important, even if a person is starving. But a person who says he loves Jesus but does not care about a starving person is living a lie, to a large extent. The solution then is not to force Christians to care for the poor; I believe the solution is to help Christians become great lovers of God so that we naturally want to care for the poor.

That kind of change of heart is what’s known in the biz as a “miracle”.”

Indeed, Proverbs 31 describes the model wife……I MEAN, I need a quick injection of adrenaline straight into my heart Mia Wallace style……I MEAN, I need to love people.

My heart hardens everytime because I do not love people.

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In other news, I got this from my brother, which I will take it as a grad gift:

Better than Gillette Mach 3 Turbo – the best a man can get?

Attitudes and Feelings: Both desirable and sometimes secretive

‘It surely is hot here in Hong Kong’ was the first thought that came to mind when I first got off the plane. But then again, for me to travel thousands of miles closer to the equator and then complain about the heat would be like taking off my pants in the middle of a worship service and complaining to the clergy that I felt exposed at church.

Hong Kong is where my family is. Hong Kong is also the place where I have access to many luxuries. My aunt’s Lexus seals out so much roadside noise. My mom’s plasma TV and her surround sound system gives such a better presentation of the same Xbox games I have back home. My brother gets me custard pudding of top class quality for some very reasonable price.

I got asked a few questions by my uncle, who’s the businessman of the family. He asked me what my degree is. He asked me whether I can speak Mandarin fluently. He asked me what kind of research or industry I want to go into. He asked me what I want to do with my life.

I felt uneasy. I felt like I had to makeup answers. To be frank, if there is anything I am passionate about, it probably isn’t what I studied during my undergrad years. It probably has more to do with music and football and theology. But I didn’t think I would sound very smart if I told him that.

But if I truly didn’t care about my studies that I shouldn’t have felt uneasy. I could’ve just said I don’t give a crap what I do. But I do care. I do care that perhaps I could have a successful career like my uncle and my cousins. Herein lies the struggle: if there was ever a reason why I would consider living in Hong Kong for good, it’d be because of family…but perhaps even more importantly, it would be the Chinese ingrained hand-in-hand relationship between a successful career and real manhood.

I might feel lesser of a man if I didn’t come to Hong Kong to have a “real” career.

Anyways, without family and without any really really close friends in Vancouver, I have to say that there are always certain things that I miss here in Hong Kong. This career thing isn’t though. I’d be happy working at McD’s if that’s where God points my heart to.

I just don’t think this is the right environment to raise kids.

And so I’ve landed safely

And so the surprise worked like a real gem.  The expression on my mom’s face was priceless.  She was in tears and everything.

And if you didn’t know, I had just flew to Hong Kong yesterday for the sole purpose of spending Mother’s Day here (which also happens to be Pentecost Sunday, I believe?).

My brother got us a nice chocolatey cake and some custard pudding and we had a nice little dinner at home with the four of us.  It’s been a while.  The last time we had dinner like this must’ve been close to a year ago now?

No pictures to show though. 

Anyways, going to be meeting some more family and old friends.

 

Heading straight into a middle class reckoning?

Well, welcome to my new blog!

What better way to kickstart it all than by beginning with the pics from today’s BRL (Blogger Reunion Luncheon):

Steph, Myself, and Paulman

Well, after all these months of stalking each others’ blogs, we finally got to sit down to talk about Hillsong United, C4C, and all things related to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was very good to have conversations that were edifying. Yes, indeed. But on my way home, I couldn’t help but ponder upon the question that has been bugging me for the past few weeks (ever since I started telling people that I am graduating). This is indeed a very sensitive time in my life. This is indeed a question that deserves the bugginess. It ought to bug me for the rest of my life, really:

“What are you going to be doing after you graduate?”

Well, here’s what I have been doing since the exam period started (note: not ended):

• Watched every episode of “The Office” (US Version), along with a few movies here and there
• Videogames
• Sleep, eat, and run
• Church
• Listening to random bands
• Going on the odd scenic drive around pretty Vancouver
• Applying for random jobs online

You see, if life carried on like this, I can safely say that I will most certainly become a 21st century North American middle class adult-lescent “Christian”. In fact, that might just become what I desire for my life – to live a life that is comfortable and self-serving. Find some random job. Live for the weekend.

Isn’t it a sin though – to want to remain middle class and comfortable? I mean it is most definitely fine to be middle class and comfortable, but to confuse it from being the means to actually the ends?

But this must all sound very cliche. There must have been millions of people – especially the millions who are involved in the financial advising business nowadays – who have already said things like “I don’t want to sit in an office from 9-5; I want to do something exciting, something I love, like helping people”. I am sure we have all heard it all. So, if I don’t want to sound cliche like them, shouldn’t I just be realistic and accept that life isn’t going to be exciting like they tell you in storybooks, but that I should consider myself lucky to even make it as a middle class North American?

“You should learn to count your blessings”, some might say.

Nevertheless, these are some bible passages that I very luckily read through in the past few weeks:

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Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

1Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Romans 5:2-5 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

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Do they bring instant conviction or what? Isn’t it challenging to see what biblical manhood actually looks like?

This all reminds me of one of my “dreams” from a few years ago. I had always hoped that one day I could go to a music school, meet some friends, and start my own band. I had always wanted to figure out a way where I can have a career that ties football, music, cognitive psychology (used to be Physics), and theology together.

But, back down on earth, in the past year or two I have totally given up on playing music, as I have slowly come to accept that I have little talent. I play weekly at church but you don’t need a charismatic to tell you that I am not exactly inspiring as a worship leader.

I am reminded of one of my all-time favourite verses:”Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I really need to have a checkup on what I delight myself in.

A friend at church asked a very insightful question. She asked, “Are you scared or happy [about your life after graduation]?”

I told her I was excited about my future after school.

But I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t know what I have been abiding myself in of late.

It’s sick.