They say that hindsight is always 20/20; I believe this to be true. September is now over and I wanted to get one more blog post in to make this month a blogging mania for me. One down, many more to go.
Some say that the past influences the future. The only way by predicting the future is by acting upon it. However, some twisted people wonder if the future even exists. Then there are those that are totally out of their minds and say that the future influences the past (I first came upon this idea from reading Artemis Fowl). I'm not gonna bother and try my hand at explaining any of those, but looking back at September, it was definitely new.
To kind of recap, I moved to a new city and started school. I knew that there were going to have to be some things that I left behind, both my belongings and characteristics. School hasn't been alright; not the most ideal, but it will do for now. I have a lot to be thankful for, and that's how I try to look at things. I thought that it would be tremendously liberating for me to choose the transition that I did. But, without getting into much detail, it seems as if I've actually lost some freedom. I'm very limited to what I can do and it almost seems as if I'm being surveyed all the time.
I remember before I left, that my dad said, the minute I start this path, all eyes are going to be looking at me, for good and for bad. People were going to start looking up to me, or even down - depending on what I do to make it that way. In some occasions I've become the topic of conversation during supper time, even if it's just how to say my name. Oh, don't worry, I'm not just talking about being to "popular" when I talk about being surveyed. To kind of make it frank, I have a lot of venting I need to do, but there isn't anyone here that I'm comfortable to do it to yet. So, a lot of times, it just ends up between me and God, or stuck in my mind.
And now to the awesome. Again, I'm so grateful that I've survived a month of school. Everything that I have is a blessing, and I hope that everyone knows how thankful I am for any sort of prayers.
How long can someone go, in their lifetime, without requiring an external source of energy to keep them awake for the day? No, I'm not necessarily saying that I need coffee, because I don't. But I'm getting rather tired during the day - even on seven or eight hours of sleep. It's strange. I could start out the day fine, but by maybe lunch time, I'm dead tired. Let's hope that I never need to resort to c*ff**.
I never thought that I would be worth visiting, but I guess there are a couple people crazy enough to want to see me. I'm thankful for who you are that came to see me today, even if it's just the medium of where you were going to end up. Hopefully, I met your expectations of seeing me because I'm a really boring person.
Another 80 dollars for a bus pass, another month - here I come! I'm so gonna get owned on all my assignments/exams.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Psst!
Ever since coming to Calgary, there was one thing I noticed that happened a lot. There are certain people that really love to whisper into each other's ears. And because I'm new, I get stared at a lot; I don't like it. It often goes like this: I walk into the room, and someone stares at me for about a minute, then turns over to their friend and whispers something into their ear. Okay, there - I obviously know you're talking about me. I find it rather annoying. I understand that I'm new; and I know that it's a pretty small church, but you don't have to be so secretive of talking about me. But whatever, it's just how people like to communicate. For everyone that whispers, though, there's another that seems to already know who I am. I keep getting surprised at how I introduce myself to people and they already know of me. With the way it plays out, it's almost as if I'm like some big hot shot that they've been waiting for to arrive. Obviously I am not.
Anyways, as expected, things with school are starting to pile up. I'm falling behind in my reading, etc. I'm very curious to see how long it will take before I become a regular reader. I knew, going in, that I wouldn't be able to go from never reading to reading all day in a matter of days; but I'm just interested to see how long it will take now. It's hard to keep focused and the distractions just make it more fun. It's also different how intelligent and knowledgeable that everyone is at school. I wouldn't consider myself amazing at this whole theology stuff, but I'm lucky enough to be able to grasp them quite naturally; but the way some of these people think, it impresses me more and more.
Everyday, God continues to show up in my life; and, therefore, he deserves his own paragraph of acknowledgement.
Today, I led worship for the first time since moving here. It's the first time I did it as a member of a different church; and it's also the first time I did a Sunday worship by myself. I can say that I had never been so nervous before leading. It felt so strange because I'm usually pretty calm about doing worship, but I guess the whole new environment and the unknown just makes it different. The only other time I can recall being this nervous was before I led at YIC. But even then, I had my entire team behind me. It was a new experience, indeed. Also with a tiny congregation, it's hard to get a good grasp on whether or not people are really worshiping. However, strangely familiar scenes started taking place after worship; and you can probably tell where I'm going with this. More or less everyone that I crossed paths with complimented me in some way on my playing. I knew they like my guitar playing, I just hope that my voice didn't make their ears bleed.
Psalm 46:10 - Be still, and know that I am God...
I forgot what else I wanted to blog about, there was a lot.
Anyways, as expected, things with school are starting to pile up. I'm falling behind in my reading, etc. I'm very curious to see how long it will take before I become a regular reader. I knew, going in, that I wouldn't be able to go from never reading to reading all day in a matter of days; but I'm just interested to see how long it will take now. It's hard to keep focused and the distractions just make it more fun. It's also different how intelligent and knowledgeable that everyone is at school. I wouldn't consider myself amazing at this whole theology stuff, but I'm lucky enough to be able to grasp them quite naturally; but the way some of these people think, it impresses me more and more.
Everyday, God continues to show up in my life; and, therefore, he deserves his own paragraph of acknowledgement.
Today, I led worship for the first time since moving here. It's the first time I did it as a member of a different church; and it's also the first time I did a Sunday worship by myself. I can say that I had never been so nervous before leading. It felt so strange because I'm usually pretty calm about doing worship, but I guess the whole new environment and the unknown just makes it different. The only other time I can recall being this nervous was before I led at YIC. But even then, I had my entire team behind me. It was a new experience, indeed. Also with a tiny congregation, it's hard to get a good grasp on whether or not people are really worshiping. However, strangely familiar scenes started taking place after worship; and you can probably tell where I'm going with this. More or less everyone that I crossed paths with complimented me in some way on my playing. I knew they like my guitar playing, I just hope that my voice didn't make their ears bleed.
Psalm 46:10 - Be still, and know that I am God...
I forgot what else I wanted to blog about, there was a lot.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Time Well Wasted
Today was the second Monday where I didn't have to school. Let me tell you now that I enjoy it so much. Usually, even though it's only been two weeks, I would do all my school work and readings today. However, I felt consistently distracted today from my reading, therefore I didn't really get much done.
What was I distracted with? Well, I've always wanted to record music to kind of see how everything sounds. I know a lot of music that gets released nowadays go through a ton of studio engineering to make it sound all pretty; so not a lot of stuff we hear now are really raw - straight out from the studio. In fact, the term "acoustic" has been somewhat redefined to mean this very concept of raw music. When someone does an acoustic set, I usually think of "natural". So nothing would be plugged in, no special effects or anything like that; everything you hear is what comes out of the mouth or instrument. But now, unfortunately, the word acoustic has been given a new territory.
Anyways, the first time I recorded myself, I thought it was the most hideous piece of music I had ever heard. From the vocals to the instrument, it was just downright awful. The strange thing was that I thought I sounded fine when I was recording, but I guess the voice you hear from yourself is never the voice that actually comes out. I wonder why, because I love the voice that I hear from myself, but not so much the one that's actually projected. So since then, I've always been a bit reluctant to sing, and at times even talk, because I didn't like my voice. But I knew that God gave me my voice for a reason, so I tried to embrace it and do everything I could to be better.
Well, anyways, another thing was that people had been saying that I'm good at guitar for the past 5 years that I've played. I never believed it, so I decided to see for myself by recording my playing once in a while, kind of hoping that it was just like my voice - horrendous. But, it turns out that it actually isn't too bad - way better than my singing.
So with my procrastination today, I tried to record a little section of one of my favorite songs. I just did the instrumental part and a couple excerpts from the chorus. I'm new to this whole sound editing thing, so the timings are slightly off and it's very raw and imperfect. Nonetheless, give it a listen and tell me what you think!
Oh! Sorry about the low volume. I don't know why my mic isn't very loud. But I'll try to see how to fix it.
Friday, September 17, 2010
First Impressions
I've been out of school for over a year, and it was expected that some time was needed to adjust back to the whole school routine type of deal. The first full week has ended, although it seems like it's been forever, and here are just some random thoughts that I have stored in my mind.
Ambrose University is one of the "cheaper" Bible colleges, but you still have to be rather well off to be able to attend without any financial aid; a lot of people I've come across do, indeed, come from above average income families. When listening in on some conversations, you can just tell that these people aren't people who have to really worry about how much or what they spend their money on.
I've wanted a macbook for a few years. The thing with these things is that they're very expensive: at least a grand; and I don't have that kind of spare change to pay for one. The envious side of me is absolutely exposed because 85% of the laptops that people have are macbooks or macbook pros. Like I said before, they're wealthy families. Everywhere I look, someone's got their book open and I'm just like, "man, why can't I have one?" However, I am very happy with the laptop I have now, and it's been good for me; and I expect it to be good for at least another few years, unless I get a macbook. Haha.
I've realized that a huge reason why I am no good at making friends is because I haven't needed to do it in the longest time. Most of the friends that I made, from junior high to my first year at the UofA, all have some sort of connection to the friends I already have. So, when you throw me into the game for some solo stuff, I choke and have no idea what I'm doing. It shows how much I've lived in a box for my life and how I never had to break some boundaries to get out of my comfortable self.
I was told that I am very brave for trying to bus to school everyday. Not only am I busing, it's pretty much a road trip with the length I have to go everyday. I'm being warned over and over again about the winters, and I kind of know what it's going to be like. My guess is usually just because people forget I'm from Edmonton, and it's definitely more consistently colder there, but I don't want to be rude to remind them, so I just agree. But then I started to think about it. My answer, or response, is that I'm not brave; I'm just very dumb. If busing will really be like what I'm thinking it will be like, especially with all the wait times I already have, it's going to be madness when it's -20 degrees. Why did I do this to myself again?
After being told that my first year English credits didn't transfer, I had to find out for myself why that was the case. I'm not a very intelligent person, so when I go into a class, I expect to be completely confused for the first few classes, or weeks for that matter. But when I finished my first couple classes of Effective Writing, I was about to explode. It's a course for high school students. Like I said, I don't go into classes expecting myself to know what's happening; but looking at the syllabus, I learned that material in Grade 11, Grade 12, and first year English. If I had to do this again, I would really die. So I finally took the initiative to get the down low on this biz - I know! Man I'm on a role with doing things for myself lately. After sorting everything out, it turns out that my English credits did transfer the way they should have. Thank God! Whoever told me that they didn't needed to get their eyes checked. So I very happily dropped out of my class, and am left with four classes for my first semester. I didn't add another fifth course in there because I am in a very tender situation here and I need to make sure my GPA is at a good point after the first semester. Or else, things could get real ugly.
As for the rest of my courses, they're alright. My 8:15 class, introduction to Christian spirituality, is my favorite class. It makes getting up so early worth it - almost. I am not a fan of my evangelism and missions class because it seems like the professor just isn't very good at teaching. I don't want to get into details, but I got that impression almost immediately into the first class; fortunately, I'm not the only one that thinks this way, so maybe we can work together to just pass the freakin' thing. My Old Testament class is an interesting one. The professor I have is new, and very young. She is intelligent far beyond and out of our first year leagues. You can tell she really wants to make it work and stoop to our pathetic intelligent levels, but she's just so full of knowledge. There are a few "upper-classmen" in the class, and when they looked at the syllabus, most of them agreed that there is no way this is a first year class if they didn't know better. I'm going to have to pick up the slack with this class. Definitely. My theology class is also an interesting one. According to, what seems to be a pretty big consensus, the prof is the hardest prof in the school. When you think about "baptism by fire", that is what the freshman ministry students are in for.
My brain is fried. My body is burnt up. I'm almost ready to be served as a side dish to your lemon grass 6 oz. halibut. I wouldn't taste very good though, because I'm all bone and dorkiness; not very tasty. Time to rest it up!
I'm excited for the draft on Sunday (=
Ambrose University is one of the "cheaper" Bible colleges, but you still have to be rather well off to be able to attend without any financial aid; a lot of people I've come across do, indeed, come from above average income families. When listening in on some conversations, you can just tell that these people aren't people who have to really worry about how much or what they spend their money on.
I've wanted a macbook for a few years. The thing with these things is that they're very expensive: at least a grand; and I don't have that kind of spare change to pay for one. The envious side of me is absolutely exposed because 85% of the laptops that people have are macbooks or macbook pros. Like I said before, they're wealthy families. Everywhere I look, someone's got their book open and I'm just like, "man, why can't I have one?" However, I am very happy with the laptop I have now, and it's been good for me; and I expect it to be good for at least another few years, unless I get a macbook. Haha.
I've realized that a huge reason why I am no good at making friends is because I haven't needed to do it in the longest time. Most of the friends that I made, from junior high to my first year at the UofA, all have some sort of connection to the friends I already have. So, when you throw me into the game for some solo stuff, I choke and have no idea what I'm doing. It shows how much I've lived in a box for my life and how I never had to break some boundaries to get out of my comfortable self.
I was told that I am very brave for trying to bus to school everyday. Not only am I busing, it's pretty much a road trip with the length I have to go everyday. I'm being warned over and over again about the winters, and I kind of know what it's going to be like. My guess is usually just because people forget I'm from Edmonton, and it's definitely more consistently colder there, but I don't want to be rude to remind them, so I just agree. But then I started to think about it. My answer, or response, is that I'm not brave; I'm just very dumb. If busing will really be like what I'm thinking it will be like, especially with all the wait times I already have, it's going to be madness when it's -20 degrees. Why did I do this to myself again?
After being told that my first year English credits didn't transfer, I had to find out for myself why that was the case. I'm not a very intelligent person, so when I go into a class, I expect to be completely confused for the first few classes, or weeks for that matter. But when I finished my first couple classes of Effective Writing, I was about to explode. It's a course for high school students. Like I said, I don't go into classes expecting myself to know what's happening; but looking at the syllabus, I learned that material in Grade 11, Grade 12, and first year English. If I had to do this again, I would really die. So I finally took the initiative to get the down low on this biz - I know! Man I'm on a role with doing things for myself lately. After sorting everything out, it turns out that my English credits did transfer the way they should have. Thank God! Whoever told me that they didn't needed to get their eyes checked. So I very happily dropped out of my class, and am left with four classes for my first semester. I didn't add another fifth course in there because I am in a very tender situation here and I need to make sure my GPA is at a good point after the first semester. Or else, things could get real ugly.
As for the rest of my courses, they're alright. My 8:15 class, introduction to Christian spirituality, is my favorite class. It makes getting up so early worth it - almost. I am not a fan of my evangelism and missions class because it seems like the professor just isn't very good at teaching. I don't want to get into details, but I got that impression almost immediately into the first class; fortunately, I'm not the only one that thinks this way, so maybe we can work together to just pass the freakin' thing. My Old Testament class is an interesting one. The professor I have is new, and very young. She is intelligent far beyond and out of our first year leagues. You can tell she really wants to make it work and stoop to our pathetic intelligent levels, but she's just so full of knowledge. There are a few "upper-classmen" in the class, and when they looked at the syllabus, most of them agreed that there is no way this is a first year class if they didn't know better. I'm going to have to pick up the slack with this class. Definitely. My theology class is also an interesting one. According to, what seems to be a pretty big consensus, the prof is the hardest prof in the school. When you think about "baptism by fire", that is what the freshman ministry students are in for.
My brain is fried. My body is burnt up. I'm almost ready to be served as a side dish to your lemon grass 6 oz. halibut. I wouldn't taste very good though, because I'm all bone and dorkiness; not very tasty. Time to rest it up!
I'm excited for the draft on Sunday (=
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