Is God There?

Taking a break from preparing course slides tonight, I scanned through the New York Times Op-Ed and caught sight of this article: A Saint's Dark Night. It talks about Mother Teresa's private journals and letters, excerpts of which were recently published. Interestingly, instead of a person who was always grounded in God and never doubted Him, apparently Mother Teresa suffered from long periods of darkness and doubt which lasted for decades.

When I was reading that, my first thought was to say, "No Way!" How could this wonderful woman, whose life personified what God would have wanted us to do with our lives, even have periods of doubt -- let alone a protracted period lasting for decades?

On second thought, however, I thought of a good friend whose faith I greatly respect -- one of those rare peoples whom I can point to and say that his life lives out the faith that he believes in. And yet he has also said to me that he thinks that there will always "be an element of doubt that will never be removed". Even Philip Yancey says that he wishes that God would just work a miracle for him and remove all shreds of doubt.

Maybe doubt is something that is inevitable, it will stay with us as long as we are on this side of heaven.

How horrible it must have been for Mother Teresa, though, to have such a long period of darkness, lasting *decades*! But I guess that God would not have put her through that if He had not known that she could have borne it. And the article writes that through these periods of darkness, she experienced an inkling of the sense of abandonment that the poor and destitute must feel, possibly contributing to the efficacy of her ministry to the same poor and destitute.

I guess, in Him, all things work together for good. Even if those things suck.

And the snake shall lie down with the hamster

Okay, so this is old news, but apparently the Tokyo Zoo has a strange friend pairing: a snake and a hamster.

The hamster was originally given to the snake as food during a phase when the snake wasn't eating, but the snake ignored it. Eventually, the snake recovered to start eating frozen hamsters again, but he has never tried to hurt the live one.

I guess the zoo knows a good media story when it sees it, and the two animals have lived together in the same cage since.

There's video of the two on here (warning: snake close-up in the first few shots):

A New Font for the Highway

Maybe it's because my handwriting sucks, but for some reason, fonts (yes, typefaces) have always been a fascination for me, even though they may seem like the most boring thing on the earth to most people. A beautifully designed font, properly used, can make such a huge difference in the presentation of an essay or article.

This was why I was so interested to read this New York Times article talks about a new font that has been designed for use on the US highway signage system. It's amazing just how much work goes into designing a new font and making it usable. The entire article is very long, but there's an accompanying slideshow that's worth a look at if you don't want to read through the entire article.

I probably should put this into part of my HCI class.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

This song has become one of the staples of the Hubei camp, with bits of the class singing the parts first separately, then in unison. I stumbled across this Pixar interpretation of the song tonight, and it's just too funny not to share.

Enjoy!

Feeling Special

The picture on the left shows the YX team from our school, getting ready to board the Shanghai-HK flight at the end of the tour -- or more precisely, most of the team, since 3 members of our team had to return to HK right after the camp and couldn't make it to Shanghai.

Anyway, the picture doesn't really have anything to do with the contents of this post. But just thought I'd share it.

I went to church today for the first time in 4 weeks -- I somehow managed to be out of town for 4 consecutive Sundays in July. It was really good to be there again -- I hadn't quite realized just how much I had missed it. The thing that really touched me though was that I managed to have a really good conversation with the new pastor. That may seem like it's nothing -- it's just a conversation -- but honestly, he made me feel that what I was saying was worth listening to and important (when even I don't know how important what I was saying really was!) At one point, one of the elders came up and asked him something and the pastor told the guy that he'd get back to him, and he continued talking with me like nothing had happened! I was very surprised and touched -- after all, I am really not anybody important like the elders, and he's here spending time talking with me!

What that made me really think about is how we interact with our students, especially myself, in particular. I have an "open-door policy" in theory, but there are times when I am so busy and caught up with work and administration that I have am often too busy for students who come and see me, even if my door happens to be open. In fact, there have been times last year when students came to see me for help just as I was about to rush off to something, and I had no choice (I didn't feel like I could reschedule the meeting and be confident that I would have time for them then) but to tell them to walk with me to wherever I was going, and I would talk with them on the way. Geez, I wonder how important *that* must have made them feel (turns sarcasm off).

I think I have a lot to learn still about being a good teacher and listener.

Hubei Afterthoughts

It's been more than two weeks since we left Hubei. After the cruise and roughly a week back at school, I think that my thoughts and emotions have finally sorted themselves out enough for me to give a coherent account of this year's Hubei trip.

This is the third year that I have been involved with this project. The first year was simply as a participant, the second year involved only with the IT part, and this year, first as a planner/promoter, then as one of the organizers and finally as a teacher and coordinator.

To be honest, I think that I kind of overestimated my own abilities this time around. I had confidently expected that I would be able to "handle" it -- after all, this is my third time around, there shouldn't be any surprises. Leading up to the camp, I had hints of foreboding that I wasn't adequately preparing myself mentally and spiritually for the camp, but the overwhelming schedule that we had managed to saddle ourselves with in the 2-3 weeks leading up to the camp meant that the departure date was upon us before I was aware of it.

The stupidity of my foolhardiness crashed down on me on the second day of camp. I woke up with a sore throat and a heavy head, which proceeded to progress into a general fever and flu and an almost complete loss of my voice over the next few days. The worse was on the third and fourth days, when I woke up in the morning and seriously wondered whether I could last through the day.

But He was merciful. I have had it good this year with the best team I could ever have asked for: I had a fantastic co-teacher (who also happened to be my colleague) who was always there to pick up for me whenever I faltered and ran out of things to say (yes, it does happen. THE CAT can't talk nonstop, really); an enthusiastic youth leader who is one of the warmest people I have ever met; a devoted Wuhan student who put us to shame with her heart and zeal for Him; and a quiet, sensitive IT student who turned out to be fun and mischevious, but at the same time reponsible and mature. Together, they took so much of the load off my shoulders -- I always knew that if I felt that I couldn't handle anything, or even if I just wanted a break, I could just hand it off to them to keep the students occupied while I caught my breath.

And the students that we had this year -- I couldn't have asked for better. Three years ago, I had a group that took about 3 days of arguing and bickering before they decided to settle down and gell with each other; this year, our group was absolutely sweet and adorable and started looking out for each other right from the beginning. They were definitely well-behaved and cooperative, all of them -- I am glad that we did away with the practice of nominating the "best student" in class because I wouldn't have been able to choose any particular one of them!

(The funny thing about the "best student" nomination was that the students seemed to agree with me on the last point. We had left the "who is the best student in the class" question on the survey forms by accident, so all the students filled that out. I was in charge of collecting those forms, and I glanced through those of other classes -- the students in my class all put "everybody", "all of us", or something like that as the answer, unlike many of the other classes, which usually had one or two accepted "bests".)

However, even with all the blessings that He put in my path, there were so many occasions on which I felt overwhelmed and that everything was beyond me. On occasion, I caught myself heaving a sigh of relief at the end of every day and thinking "only 4 more days to go", "only 3 more days", etc -- and then feeling so overwhelmingly guilty about the fact that I would be looking forward to when the camp was over. Every night, my colleague and I would pray together for our students -- both those that we had brought from Hong Kong and also the YX students in our class -- and in my prayer every night, I would plead with Him to change my heart such that, when the camp ends and I tell my students goodbye and that I would miss them -- that it would be words spoken from my heart.

He answered my prayer, not in a dramatic fashion, but rather, through little things that had just as much impact and brought just as much comfort. Other more experienced team members confided their own feelings of tiredness and exhaustion to me, reassuring me that my guilty feelings were only natural and little gestures of concern from others showed me that He was looking out for me. And yes, when I told the kids goodbye and that I would miss them, I meant every word of what I was saying.

Over the course of the camp, 6 students in our class came to accept Christ as their personal Savior, and I know that 4 of them stayed behind in YX over their Summer holidays to attend new believers' classes at the local church. The seed has been sown; we have done what we can, save praying for them. All that we can do now is to pray and hope that He sends others along the way to nuture these seedlings as they grow.

Do I have any regrets about this camp? Sure -- I wish that I had spent more time with my students, both the local students and the ones that we had brought from Hong Kong, rather than being so caught up in managing the logistics and things. I wish that I had been more trusting in Him to take care of things, rather than trying to be a control freak and panicking whenever things did not go my way. Regrets aside, though, there is this overriding sense of gratitude and humility that once again, as flawed as I am, God let me have a part in His bigger plan. Not only that, but He also showed me that even when we feel that we are just treading water and making no progress, it's all part of His big picture and He will weave all the parts together into a unified whole.

That's all that I can say right now, and as you can see, my thoughts are still fairly unorganized, as so much happened during the camp. I will have more to tell. But to ask the big question: was it worth it? Yes, unequivocally.