Old notes

These are old notes I Blogged offline in the last 2 months. I was swamped by everything in the last 2 months. Sometimes being swamped is good. Let me correct my self. It is often good to have swamped experiences. It was seldom good when you were going through these times. After you went through such experiences you often find something good to feel about God (and yourself too). There were so many times I did not believe I could manage any more and somewhere deep down you found some reserve and kept going. There were problem that just look too daunting and then sudden a shining star (or a light bulb) appeared. I went through at least 5 or 6 such expereinces in the past 2 months. Work incident #1 My manager would not pay me OT I worked a lot of OT in late June and early July (about 50 hrs). When come billing time I gave my invoice to him. He came back and talked to me. He said something like this was not done the way he expected it. He said He had no problem with the extra hours but I should have gotten to the problem about 2 weeks earlier. That he said was the reason why he cannot paid me. BS in the purist form. Must give this guy credit he can be creative. I am telling you this guy is good. What he wanted to say is simply: " I will not pay you." I argued for about 15 mins and knew this was not going anywhere. He ended up paying me only 10 hrs. He should be happy he negotiated from 50 to 10. I hated games like this at work. I always lose. However it trigger me to think whether I was working for money or for the glory of God. I think we as Christian should not be taken advantage of. However, at the same time our motivation mustbe that of honor and not porfitability. This may be silly and hard to do but we need to do this. I was upset pure and simply because I lost the money and the negotiation session. After reflecting on this I become more at ease at work, trying to think to do a responsible job rather than just get by and collect my money. Work incident #2 Lonely nights in front of the CRT We programmers are a sad bunch. We spent hours and hours typing stuff into cyberspace that does strange things. Since I have been working late I found my mind began to wonder around 8pm. I started think what on earth am I here for? Should I not be home enjoying and relaxing? It is not an easy question to answer becuase we live in a culture that worship leisure. However I think God gave us work so that we can feel accomplishment. Sometimes it is not just the nature of the things we do but it is the fact that we were given a job and we fulfil it. That to me is accomplishment. To accomplish is to be human. Toilet seat fascintion. I was walking from TCBC to Village by the Grange. There was this garbage dump where this particularday was blessed with a huge pile of Toilet seats. There must be at least twenty of them. In the brief few minutes that I passed by I saw 2 different guys stopped and took a picture of it. I was fascinated by the people who are fascianted by these seats. I decided to stop and waited to see whether a third photgrapher will appear. Lo and behold, within 5 minutes a biker stopped and took a picture. I think we as Torontonian must have way too much time on our hand or may be we all got stuck at the anal stage, togather. Birthdays 1006 my much better half 1406 a cool kid I appreciate a lot 2207 my very handsome nephew (I did not say that, some girl did, no, I made that up) 2508 my fav niece 2x08 my buddy SS preparation. The whole idea of calling and spiritual gifts just came to me on the fly. I had no idea really what I need to teach after PDL. One night things just came together. I still did not know what to say but I know I need to say them. It was so strange becuase I am usually quite rational but this time I just fly by night. I talked about the urgency, holiness and discipline that God calling involve. Then I talked about the fact that calling is here already and is up to us to just response with our actions. Paraphrasing a line (taken entirely out of context) the exceptional speaker Brain used. "It is not the finishing line to accept Christ but the starting point". We just need to know more what that implication of that event is and move on. Bach cantata I can listening to them all day. There are over 200 of them. I usually stick to the Lutheran church year and listen to the ones for the week. Last week I found a gem in Cantata 101.