and the heart of the alvinator.
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Friday, January 30, 2004 God's grace... During lunch today, I headed over to the cafeteria, which is about 10 minutes away. I was thinking that since it is the end of the month, there might be a policeman near the street that I drive on. Probably, in 1 out of 20 times I go to the cafeteria, I see a policeman with a radar gun. This time, I drove by slowly to see if anyone was there, but nope, he wasn't there. I pulled up to a stop-sign and I braked kinda' late, although I did come to a complete stop, I was about 1/2-way in the pedestrian crosswalk...hehe. I look right and I see a police car sitting there. I'm like...uh oh...here's my first ticket. He doesn't come out, but two more cars behind me go, and then I see him pull-out. I make a decision to pull to a side street, make a couple quick turns, and then pop up somewhere else before heading to the cafeteria. My heart was racing at this time. He didn't follow me, but then I was thinking about how lucky I was not to get a ticket. and then, I realized it's all about God's grace. Thank you God for no ticket, even though I deserved one. Thinking about other things I'm so blessed with, thank you God for this job, even though I don't deserve it. I have been really blessed to come into Broadcom the time I did. Take a look at their stock price through the life of the company. Guess when I started here...I started in Oct. '02, near one of the all-time lows. Amazing. God's grace. God's blessings. Totally undeserved. And then I realized the forgiveness of my sins...God's grace. Totally undeserved. What's fair...it's fair for me to be eternally separated from God, but in His great mercy and grace...He chose me to come into relationship with Him. Wow...awesome. God rocks. =P. posted by alvin | Friday, January 30, 2004 Thursday, January 29, 2004 The China Itch... So, yesterday, I got a package from Gift of Joy. I visited this training center back in '02 when I went with PESI to teach conversational English. It was a 2004 calendar and an update of the two children I am sponsoring. On the calendar, which was pretty cool, there was a picture of me and eric in there. I was playing guitar and eric was singing. I want to go to China again. =P. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 29, 2004 Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Here's to a Year Hmm...I started blogging in Jan. '03. Cheers to a year of blogging. "hip, hip, hooray, hip, hip, hooray." =P. posted by alvin | Wednesday, January 28, 2004 WCC I didn't realize this till Saturday, but it will be my 5th WCC. I have gone since '00. Time flies. I guess sometimes there are biases at WCC where goers are somewhat regarded as more "spiritual", and that if we aren't going to the field, then we're not spiritual. I definitely hope this is not the idea conveyed or expressed at WCC. It's the idea of being intentional in our world christian journey. Missions occurs on the field, as often as it is every day here where we are at. Are we faithful where God calls us to be right now? It is true than many people at WCC are committed to following Christ every day, and that He does call some people onto the missions field. What I enjoy about WCC is that of being among like-minded people. People who desire to follow Christ daily, wrestle with the tough issues, and make the hard decisions about life, family, career, relationships, etc. It's awesome. That's why I also enjoy RW, since people also wrestle with these similar type of decisions. =P. On another note, my co-worker asked me today to confirm that I go to church. I said yeah, and then he asked how much is typical for a person to donate to a church. I had some difficulty quantifying it, but then went to the O.T./N.T. standard. I have no idea why he asked that question, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Other co-workers see that I bring my guitar in when I'm on worship team for RW, and are interested in learning more about guitar and such. I wouldn't say I'm a good guitar player, but I guess I will jam with them and teach them some stuff. Interesting doors opening. Exciting. =P. posted by alvin | Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Tuesday, January 27, 2004 Random Phone Calls... Since my first name starts with A, I am usually the first one in someone's cell phone directory. On multiple occasions, I would say over 10 times now, I get a phone call from someone I know, but then when I pick up, they don't say anything. It's interesting. I get voicemails as such also. So, just a reminder for people to lock their keys on their phone, or find friends whose names start before Al. =P. posted by alvin | Tuesday, January 27, 2004 Weekend Recap Alright, quick weeked recap. We had a good RW study, and our group had 10 people. A quite different dynamic than our typical 6 people in our group. It was good to see Sean again, who recently came back from the Army Reserves. My main takeaway was to try to "experience God's love more." We studied Gen. 17:16-33, Abraham's negotiation with God about Sodom/Gommorah. God is so merciful, that He would have spared a whole city if 10 righteous people were found. His mercy stems from His tremendous love of His people. On Fri. night, after RW, I headed over to Jenkin's place in MV to play dominoes. It was my first time playing dominoes, and quite an interesting game. The group was atypical of who I would hang out with at RW, so it was quite refreshing to get to know them better. I got home like at 1 a.m., and had a full day for Sat. In the morning, picked up Spencer, and headed to Fremont for RW's leadership meeting. We arrived around 10:30, right when the meeting started. =P. We had long discussions concerning the vision for the fellowship and where we are moving towards, etc. We didn't reach any conclusions, and will have a follow-up meeting later, but it was refreshing to get a picture and sense of where people feel the fellowship is at. After this, Spencer and I quickly headed up to SF to attend WCC's EC's dry run, which is a time where the WCC leadership meets to finalize details for WCC. It was a super long meeting. I found out that in the group I am in (I'm the small group coordinator), the Features, I am the only guy. Me and 4 girls. The refreshments position hasn't been finalized yet, so we'll see. but yeah, baby, who's da' man!!!!! In the production group, there are no girls, but 6 guys. It was good to sync up with old friends, and meet new ones. It's always encouraging to be among bros and sis with common vision and common purpose. I have much respect for people involved with WCC. It was a long meeting, but it was good to get on track with people. I didn't realize that there were so many logistics to take care of still. hehehe. We need more small group leaders. Anybody interested? Anyways, since PC/EC directors had a director after the meeting, and some of the people who came from out of town had to wait around, I decided to stick around and hang out with them some. We went to double rainbow for some ice cream on Irving Street, and hung out for about an hour. It was pretty chill, but I was pretty exhausted. At around 11 p.m., we went back to church, and I dropped off Mary Ann at Bernie's/Colleen's place and headed home. I got home pretty late, and was pretty exhausted for church the next day. Usually I don't fall asleep at church, but I was nodding off during Sunday School. hehehe. =P. Sunday afternoon, chilled with grandpa at my parent's place and then at night, we had our family get together for Chinese New Year's. Good time with family, and Deanna, my youngest cousin, is such a cutie. She first cried when I was carrying her, but then stopped after I took her to see some cool things that my father has bought as souveniors from around the world. My fav. pic is her on the abslide. Check out pics from my cousin's Lizzy's site, under Wu family gathering. After the gathering, I headed over with Jason and Michelle to Johnny's place to play Texas Hold'em. I didn't win a single game, and let's just say, these people don't use probability, but just gamble. Quite crazy. =P. Folding is the key to success. A jam-packed weekend. I'm still recovering from it. =P. posted by alvin | Tuesday, January 27, 2004 Friday, January 23, 2004 More from my Psychology Final... Mention the factors that have shaped your self-concept and self-esteem? The main factor that has shaped my self-concept and self-esteems deals with how I find value in myself. Since I am a Christian, my value, my self-esteem, my worth, and ultimately my identity, comes from being a child of God. God unconditionally accepts and loves me for who I am. As a Christian, my goal is to become more like Christ every day. I guess bottom line is that I am happy with who I am. I accept that I will never be the smartest, handsomest, and socially adept person, but that I try my best in everything I do, and God accepts me for that. I feel I have a healthy self-esteem (sometimes too healthy). I guess, having the opportunity to fail at some activities, but still feel good about myself, allows me to be able to take more risks. It's not easy, but struggles and challenges are a part of life. ***** Describe your 3 top values and how they affect your life. From the values listed on pages 425 and 426, my top 3 values are a) relationship with God, b) being productive and achieving and c) intelligence and curiosity. a) For my relationship with God value, I have attended church and have actively participated in the Christian church for many years. My purpose in life is to glorify God in everything I do. Every day I meet with God to ask for guidance in an effort to grow more like Him day by day. Currently, I am actively involved with a local young adult group called Real World, which is affiliated with Abundant Life Christian fellowship. I help to lead Bible Study along with playing guitar and singing for the praise team. b) For my being productive and achieving value, I enjoy a dynamic lifestyle with many interests and activities that take up my time. I set high expectations for myself and achieve them the best I can. I finished my college degree back in 1999, and started working full-time after that. I finished my graduate degree in 2002 going to school part-time and working full-time. My hobbies include swing dancing, playing guitar, digital photography, playing sports and using my computer. c) For my intelligence and curiosity value, I always strive for intellectual growth. This value can be seen through even my taking two for ?fun? classes this semester, this class and also mandarin. I am still working full-time, but realize the importance of stimulating and challenging my mind to grow. I am open to trying new experiences, such as my friend inviting me to paint pottery the other week. I also started swing dancing in '01, which was definitely not typical for me. posted by alvin | Friday, January 23, 2004 Thursday, January 22, 2004 Autobiography So, I decided that I would like to post some stuff from my Psychology class from last quarter. This assignment was an autobiography, where we had to capture significant life experiences. I basically wrote this in 30 min. before the assignment was due, because I totally forgot about it. The previous statement is to caveat if the autobiography is all over the place... ***** When thinking about this autobiography, I wanted to capture the year of 2002. I am an INTJ from my Meyers-Briggs personality and it's tough for me to live life without clear, set structures. However, during the year of 2002 I was very stretched and I grew a lot in character. I worked for HP, and in Jan. they sent me to Thailand to support the project we were working on in January. This was actually my first time going overseas. I thought I was actually going to Singapore because that is the place HP usually sent engineers, but since I was supporting an earlier phase in the project, I went to Thailand. I have been quite sheltered growing up, and going to Thailand opened my eyes to many things. Since Thailand is well-known for its “sex” industry, my heart felt grieved as I saw many young people sacrifice their lives for prostitution. This trip helped me to gain a better understanding of other cultures. 2002 also marked the year when I finished graduate-school, completing my MS in Computer Engineering at Santa Clara U. I went to grad school part-time and worked full-time for over 2 years. I ended up finishing in March 2002, very burnt-out from doing both activities. Also during this year, I broke up with my first serious girlfriend. Although we only officially courted for 2 months, the immediate time after the break-up was very challenging. We broke up only 3 weeks before I headed out to China for a Christian missions trip. I went to Hong Kong and China for the first time, with a Christian missions organization called PESI. It was my first missions trip overseas, and first time being able to head to Hong Kong, where my mom was born, and China, where my father was born. I took 5 weeks off of work to head over there. After coming home, HP subsequently laid me off in late Sept. I found another job and started in late Oct., but between jobs, I had the chance to travel to the East Coast (New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.). I also traveled to San Diego and finally after finishing my paper work at my new company, I headed off to backpack in Europe for 10 days. My grandmother on my father’s side, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. After a 6-month bout with cancer, she passed away the weekend before Christmas in 2002. I was very close to my grandma, and seeing her pass away was very difficult. I have peace in my heart because I know she is in heaven. All in all, 2002 helped me gain a better perspective on life. It helped me to better understand myself. It helped me develop a love for traveling, a deeper faith in God in trusting Him in tough circumstances, a deeper appreciation of other cultures and people, and also a time of stretching me in my personality and growth. I have grown to appreciate more the times in my life where I face challenges, and where I need to “walk the walk” when I “talk the talk.” I am very thankful for the year 2002. ***** posted by alvin | Thursday, January 22, 2004 Underworked and Overpaid... Hmm...so, work lately has been tremendously slow. We are in the lull as we are waiting for another rev. of the chip to come back. The future projects don't really have a firm deadline, so nothing too exciting going on. I feel pretty stagnant, and pondering the young adult life career questions, "what i am doing here? where am i going? how does this make an eternal impact on anything?" I think in most of my professional engineering career, I haven't experienced harsh environments where I have felt extremely pushed or pressured to finish things. I would say that working at HP was probably the closest I have felt to such, where I was micro-managed more than I am here. I have never worked more than 50 hrs. a week, and over the course of my professional career (4 years), I have worked maybe like 5 weekends total, and that for maybe only 6 hrs. a weekend. Usually, I'll work very close to 40 hrs. a week. =P. So, while most people feel overworked and underpaid, I feel underworked and overpaid. I feel it's quite ironic. There is always the need to brush up on technical skills, but let's be honest; you only learn skills when you need to implement them. Now I guess you're also concerned that there is not enough work for me and they could lay me off and such. I feel much peace if this scenario does ever happen, even with a house mortgage to consider now. In my last layoff process from HP, God opened the the right door at the right time and gave me much peace about the situation. God takes care of his children. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 22, 2004 Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Biblical Wisdom for Interpersonal Relationships Since some RWers are going to this class at Stanford, I decided to bandwagon last night to learn about "Sensitive Communication." Samantha, Spencer and myself were there from RW. The course material dealt with anger, both with Christians and non-Christians. I felt overall that the material was solid, but what always brings a stronger message is the quality of the messenger. I am very impressed with both the teachers' character. I am so attracted and respect people with solid character so much. I value character a lot. Steve and Erica, are Stanford alums, official Biblical counselors, who have been teaching this material for almost 25 years. They head the Parakaleo Christian Ministries. They are so in love still. I was so impressed by the way they looked at each other and encouraged/affirmed one another. They speak with tremendous authority and truth from the Word. The material is very challenging and convicting. The current quarter focuses on fruitful interpersonal relationships. The spring quarter focuses on male/female relationships. The class is free and meets on Tuesday nights. Please come if you like. posted by alvin | Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Happy Chinese New Year Wanted to wish my readers a Happy Chinese New Year. I think it is officially tomorrow, but tonight is New Year's Eve. =P. posted by alvin | Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Monday, January 19, 2004 Weekend Update Alright, so I apologize to my readers for not posting weekend updates the past 2 weekends. I am a slacker. =P. On Fri. night, I sorta' bypassed ALCF prayer meeting, and ate dinner with PESI pal Iris and Iris' cousin Joyce at the taiwanese restaurant on Castro. I first went over to Iris' place, and watched some Warriors bball. PESI pal Christine was getting ready for a night on the town, and was choosing which shoes to wear. She wore these boots that made her like 5'10". I saw HOC5 homie Ken as he came by to pick Christine up too. Iris, Joyce and myself just chilled after dinner. Joyce headed home, and Iris and I ended up watching "A Perfect Murder" on TV. She fell asleep near the end. Dr. Doolittle 2 was also on, so I flipped back and forth. I love their cable TV, but I could see myself wasting a lot of time watching TV, especially since there are so many channel selections. I don't think I'll get more than basic cable at my place. =P. On Sat., spent most of the day packing and moving to the house. Lots to clean, and such still there. At nighttime, headed up with Liwen to Wayne's (co-b'day party with Mike) in Oakland. We got a bit lost heading up there, as the house it was held at was in the boonies. Very interesting party, as Mike has a lot of friends from different networks who went. I haven't seen a lot of Wayne's/Irene's friends, since I mainly met them at their wedding last year, so it was good to sync up with them some. I didn't have a chance to get into too many deep convers. We played darts, mario cart, and foosball. I did have a good conversation with my high school buddy Clement. My team actually won the foosball tourney (interesting highlight...in the 2nd game, the opposing team proposed taking a swig after each goal scored on you. i told them i wouldn't drink, and my teammate basically took 2 swigs per goal scored. we won 10-4, and those guys kept commenthing how i wasn't drinking...funny guys.). the final game, my teammate actually left the party by then, and i was planning to play the opposing team 1 vs. 2, but then Eugene stepped in to be my partner. We won like 10-3. =P. It's nice to be in different environments and get to know different people. I was testing some of my social skills and tried to extrovert myself more. On Sun. after church, headed to play bball with RWers at Paly. This was the most injury prone session to date. I got injured first, as I tried to tip this rebound, but ended up getting undercut. I landed on my back, with my left arm absorbing most of the fall. I got scraped in my left elbow, and my left forearm is bruised. I actually landed straight on my back and also feel on my left hip (which I have had previous injuries with before). My right hand pinky also got jammed and my right hand thumb is jammed a bit too. Mike rolled both of his ankles. DaveS, after grabbing a rebound, refused to let go of the ball, as 2 peeps were reaching for it between his legs. He just held onto the ball, and ended up falling on the left side of his face, to sustain his fall. He got scrapes on his forehead, and his left side of his face was darkened with dirt. Pretty intense stuff these days. Afterwards, headed home, and packed up some more stuff, and headed over to the house. We had a family dinner with grandpa, as yesterday denoted the first time staying at the new place. After dinner, I headed out to bowling for Bun's b'day at Cambrian Lanes in Campbell. I met some of his extended Highway community. Good times. =P. Headed home, and went to sleep. It will be interesting living in this new place. Without my computer there yet (I'm going to move it tonight), I feel weird. =P. posted by alvin | Monday, January 19, 2004 Friday, January 16, 2004 Goodbye and Goodluck... To one of my most faithful blog readers and AIM buddies, Heidi. I wanted to send a special shout out to Heidi as she is moving to Chicago today from the Bay Area to be with her husband Jon. The bulk of our friendship (like 95%) has been over AIM, so I don't see many things changing, but I just wanted to say good luck to her. With every ending there are new beginnings. =P. She has been like a big sister to me. Thanks Heidi for the friendship. posted by alvin | Friday, January 16, 2004 Thursday, January 15, 2004 Convicted... Hmm...so Tom sent me this CD of a marriage series by Pastor Rick Holland, from Grace Community Church in LA. There are 13 sermons in this series, and I just listened to the 1st two. They are quite interesting. His first talk weaves through the considered "biblical model" of courtship, and talks about other biblical models, encouraging the hearers to keep an open mind that courtship is not the only biblical model, and should not be considered the "de facto" biblical model towards marriage. The way Abraham and Sarah met, Solomon, Isaac, Jacob, etc. are not considered in the courtship model. He talks about the "straw-man" approach to reasoning where a single example is used to draw general principles. We need to be very careful when using these type of arguments. He does go on to say that any exploration of dating/courtship or whatever it is called, should be for the sole purpose of investigating marriage. In his 2nd talk, he beings to examine the qualities of a Godly man. He focuses on having solid character, and I was just terribly convicted that I fall so short. In describing this ideal "man", he keeps saying, "women, is this the kind of man you want to marry?". With all those qualities he discussed, yeah, I would consider a man like that a superstud, having both "real-world" and "church-game". Any girl would be lucky to have a man like that. Anyways, personally, I need to be more proactive in letting the Word of God sink deeply into my life that it continually transforms me from the inside-out. =P. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 15, 2004 Woohoo... After taking this LOTR test, my results: ********* "You are most like Aragorn (Stryder) Son of Arathorn" Aragorn's decisions often seem against conventional wisdom, but he knows what to do and why it must be done, regardless of the cost. You are good at making contingency plans and come up wiith efficient means to acheive clear-cut ends. You are highly independent, and continue on with your plans even in the face of data that might suggest to others that it's no longer feasible. Time alone is important and solitary activities refresh you. You have a tendency to introspection. In your desire for clarity in life, you may have the tendency of being remote or even "heartless". You try to schedule your life as much as possible. You tend to finish your work before resting. As the foil to Aragorn, Sauron clearly embodies the evil side of this personality. Traits: Pragmatic, autonomous, ingenious, resolute. On the dark side you could desire power and domination. ********** You can take the test here: LOTR personality test. Seems like this is an ISTJ type of MBTI personality description. =P. I also can look scruffy like Aragorn. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 15, 2004 Surreal As I have started packing to move this weekend into the new house, I was feeling that it is a bit surreal. I officially got the house on Dec. 9th, and finally after 5 weeks, we are ready to move in. After repainting about 1/2 of the house, moving the water heater/washer/dryer to the garage, upgrading from 2-prong to 3-prong outlets, along with setting up and cleaning everything, I can't hold off any longer. It's time. As I clean up the room in which I have grown up in, I realize there is no set timetable when I will return, or if I will ever return to live at home. It's a bit sad as I look through the "stuff" I have collected over the years, and realize how quickly time passes. I guess, being the youngest, I feel much security and comfort at home. When I went to college, I didn't expect to come back home, but in a sense, I turned down two more attractive job offers from Intel and HP to come and live at home. I'm such a mamma's boy. =P. Okay, I'll admit it. =P. I like living at home. I like coming back from work and having my parents there. I like not having to cook and being able to putz around in a big house. I like coming back from the gym and knowing that there are people there at home, even though they are asleep. I like going into my parents room to bother room about random facts, concerns and issues. I feel that I have enough freedom to be able to do what I want, and frankly, I'm home usually just to sleep or chill. I'm at work most of the day. Maybe some of the joy in living at home, is that I feel less lonely. I don't know. Anyways, my motivation in buying a home stems from having a tax shelter and making a wise, sound investment. It's freaking amazing how much taxes decrease when deducting mortgage interest from your income. In Canada, the mortgage interest isn't deductible. For my sister, who is also moving from home to my house, it's moreso an issue of freedom. She is 2 years older than me, and feels constrained living at home. People are surprised when I say I will move back home if my sister finds a roommate, and they give me like 10 eprops for doing so. I have lived away from home back in college, so I know what it is like, but college is different than working 40hrs. a week. Bottom line, home is nice. I guess, I'm continuing this journey of independence, and seeing where God leads. It's been an exciting, wild, roller-coaster ride, and since I'm passionate about personal growth, I have learned a lot through these 5 weeks of home ownership. I guess it is now time to grow my cooking and hospitality skills. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 15, 2004 Saturday, January 10, 2004 At Work Here I am at work on a Saturday morning. It's kind of a weird feeling as I haven't worked weekends in over a year. At HP I maybe worked 5 weekends through the whole year, and it was for less than 4 hrs. at a time. I guess I am a lab rat, and since I am a systems guy, I set-up some systems tests for the chip guys. It's all quite simple and straight-forward, but it's just time consuming. It's like being on-call. It takes about 1-2 hrs. for the system to fail, and it takes me about 20 min. to capture all the data, change some parameters and restart the test, but then it requires me to sorta' not feel I can be fully away from my work. I shouldn't complain much, as I do work close to 40 hrs. a week. I woke up early today since I knew I had to be in the office running tests. I'm planning on leaving by lunchtime, but then I will need to come back during other hours of the day. Just kinda' is inconvenient to come back and forth to work. Very quiet in the office though. posted by alvin | Saturday, January 10, 2004 Thursday, January 08, 2004 Busy, busy I apologize to my readers, but work has been tremendously busy for me the past couple days. I haven't officially moved into my house yet, but will probably do so within the next week. I was waiting for electrical work to get done, and it should be completed today. Since the house is old, it needed an upgrade from 2-prong outlets to the standard 3-prong outlets. Changing the locks, along with installing security lights outside, and painting one more room will highlight my weekend. =P. New years was a blast, Monte Carlo night was a ton of fun. I had a good time dealing blackjack, and mingling with other folks. Club Cupertino was also fun. Spent time working on the house throughout New Year's weekend, but did have a chance to go to Nicole's B'day party at Top of the Mark in SF. A highly recommended date locale. It was very chill and high class. Then, went swing dancing on Sat. night, and finally had a chance to play bball with RW on Sunday. posted by alvin | Thursday, January 08, 2004 Tuesday, January 06, 2004 New Album Posted Nicole's B'day album posted. posted by alvin | Tuesday, January 06, 2004 Monday, January 05, 2004 3 New Albums posted Check out Family Christmas, RW Talent Night and New Year's at Monte Carlo. Pics from Nicole's B'day will be posted soon. Thanks. posted by alvin | Monday, January 05, 2004 |
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