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Name: Gary
Country: United States
Metro: San Jose
Birthday: 3/21/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: Intl. relation, social justice, foreign policy, digital photography, love.
Expertise: Airlines Frequent Fliers Programs
Occupation: I write for a silicon valley t
Industry: Networking hardware
Message: message me
AIM:  undersky
Member Since:
5/16/2002
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| I never like the game of chess, but I do see the resemblance of the world in it. Not in the strategy aspect that you are probably thinking though, I don't think those with the superior strategy are guaranteed victors. Unlike chess, we don't play our foes at a level field. We don't begin the game with equal pieces. Outcomes are largely determined by unpredictable and seemly trivial early events. Life resembles the game of chess in that there are different pieces. Most pieces, half of all, are pawns--the least powerful soldiers that are often dispensable. While more important roles come only in pairs, there is only one king and one queen--the most important and the most powerful. In a way, the majority of the people in this world are pawns. Regardless how hard they try to move up, there destined to be as many occupying the bottom of the food chain as there are the rest. Upward promotion is coupled by another downward movement so at the end, there are always enough commoners to feed the upperers. To move up, we don't want to stay someone else's pawn, but the queen, or maybe the princesses. (Is that a chess piece?) In this competition to the top, we plot, we fight, we seek alliance and we make strife. We stand on other pawns and schmooze the king, we shuffle off mortal coil up and down it goes. That is not how life resembles chess. Life resembles chess in that, whether you are a prowling pawn, a proudly knight, or a precious princess, you are only a piece in the palm of your Lord. At His mercy, He gives and takes away. Even if we summon all the wisdom and trickery of this world, we still can't outwit the one that moves us. | | |
| On any given Sunday, the trophy doesn’t go to the team that gives a hundred and ten percents. At the top of their games, professional football players spend their whole lives training to be the best at their positions. Exposure to impossible expectation starting in high school calms the quarterback at fourth-and-17, so he can pass to his receiver with grace. Yet one out of every two teams must lose, on any given Sunday.
The world order—insomuch taught by our schools and parents—is based on the noble belief of meritocracy. Conditioned as such, I think all of us could spew lengthy gripe for the unfairness done onto us. After a closer look, it is not any noble belief, but greed, hypocrisy, selfness, and narcissism governing the world order.
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The wise man who has seen through the pretentious vanity of it all, is wise to become a predatory opportunist—an opportunist actively seeks out opportunity to exploit without regard to consequence or principles. The wisest man however, stays foolish and places his hope somewhere else, for he knows the foolishness of this world is wisdom. He knows the world is a perpetual and universal container of broken dreams and unmended wounds, a collection of unjust ironies and subtle betrayals. In that unsatisfied longings, we find our true home in heaven, where every tear is wiped away, every unjust undone, every wrong made right. | | |
| 500 thousand years ago when we hunted elephants for dinner, there was as much Human Rights (hereinafter as “HR”) as predators swallowed their preys. During Biblical time, “an eye for an eye” was a fair standard, while Jesus and the great Chinese thinker Mencius pioneered the “general love” which dictated the same amount of universal love toward all mankind. In other words, I would just die for you as I would die for my mother; I would do onto others as I would want to be done onto me. Therefore the importance of so-called Human Rights is a rather recent philosophy I must say. (Certainly an emperor or a king would be far more concerned about supremacy and totalitarianism…) But at those earlier time (let’s say pre-industrial), human values were relative low compared to now. (And let’s not say it was undervalued then, because it might be overvalued now.) High infant mortality rate and troubling diseases caused mankind succumb to fate. Slavery, servitude, sacrifice, class, child labor, were largely overlooked; the ability to breathe, to live on, to survive, was in itself precious and mystical. Without dental hygiene, clean water, pesticide and oven gloves, who really paid attention to “child safety seat on the horse cartridge” or “reasonable work load for a 12 years old” or “the emotional health of the 4th wife” when the daily life were considerably more stressed? Then thousands of years later when technology enabled the building of clock, water mill, steam engine, and every other belts and whistles within Monticello, surely the time seemed to ripe for entertaining the equality of man. Oh no no no, the man of the year and the writer of the most valuable piece of American history himself, kept a shack-full of slaves as a “necessary evil,” as the man on the nickel aptly put. I am not sure the exact wording, but I am sure he went something to the tone of “all men are created equal.” Let’s not argue the irony of the definition of “a man” and “three fifth of a man” later in the section in regard to voting right, I think we all agree that the issue of HR is not clear cut. It was never clear cut to greatest thinkers, founders of our nation, could it be clear cut to you and me? A very prestigious professor of my MBA program once said, at the last mesmerizing lecture he gave us, that the idea of all man are created equal was both brave and questionable. Is it true? He wasn’t sure. What he was sure, half-jokingly, was that all men are all distributed in a bell shape curve! That’s the statistical truth of the year, isn’t it? I think any guiding philosophy, or any moral value, is transient, is modernly tangential to its time. Every period of human civilization requires a set of rules to govern its peace and ensure its common welfare. May it be slavery that does the job (that’s otherwise undoable), may it be polygamy that took care the need (of widows as a result of most men dying from warring), now we have found the shiny term Human Rights for you and me to uphold. We need this term as much as we need freedom, democracy, or whatever belief, because we all need something to hold on, to put our faith in, to abide to, in order to sustain our national identity, in order to justify our international campaign, in order to leave something to our posterity. What Human Rights really entails, is really a semantic that is up to you and me, and our children, and their children to define and modify. | | |
| The topology surrounding Las Vegas is very interesting. Well, it is interesting to people who never live extensively in the desert. When one imagines desert, either a flat horizon filled with sand or continuously repeating sand dune comes to mind. In reality though desert (at least the desert outside Las Vegas) is just as hot, but not as predictable.
First of all, though it never rains, the sky is not necessarily plain. Clouds of all shapes and kinds, even dark and angry ones, often come and go. Inhabiting the land are all sorts of cactus and bushes. What more surprising are tall mountains in the backdrop, mountains so tall that clouds are visibly blocked. Then the wind, the fast moving dust carrying wind, blowing across the road from east to west, like an army of ghost piercing through drivers and passengers on the highway. Switching the AC in my car to recycle mode, I braced myself for the impact of the dust storm.
A music CD that I just burnt accompanied me on the road. I couldn't really decide what Third Day was singing when the lyric went, "Just to be with you, I'd do anything." I thought what he meant was that we would do anything to be with God, after all, the theology that God wants to be with us was kind of strange.
Singing along, soon the later verses made me realize it was God who was singing to us, that to be with us, He'd do anything. Listening to this song over and over again brought me to tears and sobbing.
Who am I that He, the almighty God, would do anything to be with me? I mean, come on, there are only few people in the world, ever, would have said that-few of my exes and my parents, that's it. But He, He says He would do that, that He actually wants to be with me so much, that He would do anything for me...why?
As if this is the same desert, as if this barren sand dune was Golgotha, I can see a cross standing on top of that hill. As I drive through the boiling heat, I imagine His cross standing right there, telling me how much He loves me and wants to be with me.
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| Pulling into the parking lot, right to the backdoor of my condo, I shut off the engine. The parking lot seemed to be quite empty at midnight on a Friday, perhaps the predominant university population had not returned to town from the summer. I lifted the switch on the metal fence that led into the back porch, stepped up the stair and quietly slide open the glass door to my kitchen. The inside of the house through the vertical blinds was pitch black. As I weaved through the blinds, I wondered if the condo remained intact, since I did not lock it when I left. Taking off my flip flops, the uncarpeted kitchen floor felt cold on my bare feet. Not wanting to disturb the darkness, I purposely did not turn on any light. After I found the stair and locked all doors, I climbed up the stair to where my bedroom was.
The futon that I bought and built yesterday, in its new green stripes sheet, lied flat in the middle of the room. On one side of the wall was my table and an arm chair. On the opposite corner there sat a light green square coffee table, right next to a light green file cabinet. Scattered on my desk sat various keepsakes that I unpacked out of some nine boxes that had been sitting in the storage for the past four month.
The temperature in San Luis Obispo, like its weather, is perfect tonight. During the day it never got hot, I had to wear a jacket for the most of the time. During the night it is quite chilly, even in July, just cold enough to comfortably snuggle in my blanket with the window opened, opened into the mysterious California Central Coastal night.
Second day in California, alone, at the doorstep of the next chapter of my life, my heart is filled with excitement and anticipation. Many questions are yet to be answered, and I can't wait to find out.
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