Let the Flood begin

This is probably the first of many xanga entries to come.

Crap, I completely forgot what I was going to talk about.  Ah!  Yes, now I remember.  I want to talk about role
models.

In my own life, I've had my share of role models.  I'll try to map it out here:
4-8 :      My dad
8-14:     Michael Liu
14-18:   Ben Pun
18-?:     ????

As you can see, at this point in my life, I have no defined "role model" per se.  However, throughout my life I've had people that I looked up to and tried to model my life after.  I'm not saying that after ages 4-8 I stopped trying to model my life after my dad and after i turned 14 I stopped looking up to my cousin, but I am saying that at these general ages, these people probably had the greatest impact on me.

Now, at this date and time, no primary role model exists.  Ben Pun probably still has a very strong influence on me, but he's in Boston now and that creates problems.  So I was thinking about this recently and have come to the decision that perhaps I have no role model at this age.

Instead, I have peers.  Peers that can challenge me and I can challenge them.  After going to H2K8 with the 06 class as my fellow leaders, I realized that these were the people whose opinion mattered to me.  Maybe not mattered as much as helped me.  Chris Lau is helpful and I enjoy talking to him.  However, he's not my "role model".  Rather, he is a brother in Christ who is my peer and helps me along the way, just as I hope I can help him along the way if he needs it.

Jon, Vincent, and Chapman, also all my peers, yet younger than me.  So, they too are not "role models", however, they still have a significant impact on me.

Even Aly and PJ have very distinct roles in my life.  Aly as a female perhaps cannot relate with me as much as the previously mentioned, but in certain cases, her gender and experience as a female can be invaluable.  In the same way, PJ is different in the fact that he's older.  However, I don't view him as a "role model" even though he does probably fit the age criteria (not saying that there really is an age "criteria" exactly).  Instead, PJ provides advice that comes with age, something which helped me through this Houson Project.

As I continue to rant about role models, I want to talk about Aly a bit.  In my mind, she's an excellent role model for the youth girls at CBC, yet she expressed some concern over that fact.  I believe that she is sometimes "put on a pedestal" as they say.  Role models are people we look up to, who are successful, and who are good.  So, in that sense, I don't understand why the girls have such a problem with her being their role model.  Instead, they seem to shy away from that since they don't think that they can measure up.  That in itself mystifies me.

Perhaps it's the experience factor coming into play.  She has no experience in boy girl relationships, or at least, not much.  Frankly, that may be all that is holding her back as the girls in the CBC youth group at this time seem very oriented on that topic.  They shouldn't, but they do.  Another entry soon to come on this topic.

I don't exactly know how to end this, so I'll just bid you adieu.  Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

Relationships and Hancock

Saw Hancock today, was pretty good.  Tom said he was disappointed, but I really thought it was a pretty good movie.  The end made me think about love a bit, but we'll get back to Hancock and it's ending in a bit.

Before that, I'd like to say that this last week I've been talking to Aly, Jon, Chris, and eventually Ben about relationships.  My first thought was that dating in high school might not be the worst thing in the world.  Mostly, since I feel so inept at college since so many people there have dating experience, I felt like dating in high school could be at least "practice" for dating in college/ the real world.

After talking with Aly, I felt like she raised some good points, but also some things that I didn't agree with, so I was kind of back to square one.  Then, I talked to Jon, who I also agreed with, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there were some fundamental truths about dating/relationships that I had wrong and he had right.  And then, through Jon, I talked to Chris, who gave me a bit of the 'ol "Carpe Diem" (Sieze the Moment).

Lastly, who I probably should have talked to first, seeing as he's the closest thing I have to a mentor, I talked to Ben.  He explained pretty well to me what I'd been lacking in understanding, and now, I do see how dating in high school can be destructive.  However, that also leaves me here, in college, without experience, but still, that's apparantly fine.  That just means that one day I'm just going to have to man up, something that scares me.

I've decided that "terrified" is the best word that describes my feelings about actually asking a girl out on a date.  A couple weeks ago, college Sunday School started off by listing off 3 fears you have.  I listed four.  Here's how they went :
-Vampires
-Girls
-Failure
-Large Hoop Earrings
Looking back at that, I realize that it's not that I'm afraid of girls, rather, I'm afraid of rejection.  And of the unknown.  As I've noted in previous posts, I'm someone who obsesses about the future, about potential outcomes, about what is going to happen.  But asking a girl out on a date is something that I can't predict, and the unknown terrifies me.

*Hancock Spoiler Alert*

Back to Hancock, the premise goes that Hancock and this girl are immortal.  They are technically 'husband and wife', but the closer they get to each other, they become mortal so that they can enjoy full lives with each other, rather than eternity.

Eventually, the girl get's mortally wounded after they start becoming mortal, and Hancock is forced to run away to save her.  Through all the things I've learned about relationships and love over this past week, this concept stuck out to me.

I asked Ben why I would even risk ruining a friendship with a girl by asking them out on a date.  If they reject me, then the friendship is kablooie.  So why even try?  But he told me that it would be better to not even have a friendship with someone than to harbor feelings for them and never say anything.

That kind ties into this...at least to me.  I don't know.  For some reason I connect these two ideas together.  I mean, the paradox of love.  Hancock loves her so much...that he leaves her?  On some level that makes sense, yet, on another, it doesn't.  If you truly love someone, you'd want to spend as much time with them as possible.  Yet, if you truly love someone, if necessary, you'd never see them again just to save them.

Jesus.  Yes.  Haha.  The paradox of love.  He loved us so much...that he died for us.  Rather than to spend time wiht his disciples, who asked him over and over to not leave them, he loved them so much that to save them, he'd leave them.  Imagine if you were one of the twelve.  Your teacher tells you that he's going to leave you.  Why?  Because I love you.  Wow...the concept of love is...incomprehendable.  Can I love like that?  Love so much that you forgoe yourself to attend the needs of your loved one?  I suppose.  I mean, on a certain level, I love some of my family and friends on that level.

The idea of sacrifice is what Gene Yee taught us was a main factor in friendship.  Jesus was the ultimate friend because he gave the ultimate sacrifice.  And yes, I would sacrifice for my friends and family...so does that mean I love them?  I sure hope so.  Hm...yet again, the paradox of love shows up.  Let's say instead of just running away, Hancock, oh, I don't know, kills himself.  Sacrificing himself so that his loved one can live.  Does that really make sense?  Hm...For the one left, I'm sure it doesn't.  If the two truly love each other, how can one live without the other, knowing their lover's death was their fault, knowing that because of them, their loved one made the ultimate sacrifice?  I mean, yes, in love, we may sacrifice, but then, on the other side, is our sacrifce pleasing to those we love?  Do they want to see us sacrifice for them?  Is that love?  Loving to see each other sacrifice for each other?

Wow.  Tangent.  Haha.  I think I lost track of what I was saying in that paragraph, so I'll sleep on it.

H2K8 is coming up.  Jon said a week ago or something that this mission trip is going to be very cool.  And I agree.  He said that this mission trip, we get to see the youth grow up...to become leaders in the youth group.  I mean, until now, I guess, they've had people to look up to within the youth group.  After Jon, Mary, VLo, and Chap leave, I guess its Tom's group that will be the leaders...and seeing them in this mission trip, taking responsibility and action will be very cool.  I can't wait to see the direction our youth group is going to go through with Tom's and Dork's classes growing up.  I just pray that they don't get comfortable with how we are now.  They have such potential to change things, yet I can also see them becoming lax and allowing their time to come and pass them by.

Well, I need to pack for H2K8, starts tomorrow!  Pray for me.

Little Miss Sunshine

 I know a lot of my entries have been about movies, but hey, that's where I get my inspiration.  So I'm watching Little Miss Sunshine right now and there was a quote that really stuck out to me.

"You're only a loser if you're so afraid of losing that you don't even try."

Sadly, I think that quote fits me to a degree.  And by that, I mean fits me almost exactly.  At one point, I even decided that the motto for my life would be "Expect the worst because disappointment is worse than surprise."

Hearing those words from the movie really made me think.  In my life, I've been so scared of failure that it keeps me from doing things.  If someone invites me to go somewhere and I don't know a lot of people there, I probably won't go.  Mostly, because I'm bad at meeting people.  So I'm so scared that I'm going to fail at that, and people won't like me that I just refuse to even put myself in that situation.

Also, in regards to the ever important girls.  So afraid of rejection that I don't even want to try.  Don't even want to put myself out there.

Speaking of rejection, that's also what keeps a lot of us Christians from trying to share the gospel.  We're "so afraid of losing (being rejected) that you (we) dont even try."

Movies

Recently, I saw Cloverfield.  Not too bad of a movie.  Some of Tom's friends said they didn't like it apparantly, but I thought it was a pretty cool movie.  It was all done like, from the point of view from a person's home video camera.  Sure, the camera work was sloppy, it wasn't supposed to be perfectly clean like in most movies.  Another thing that was mentioned was the fact that the point of view gave us (the viewers) an experience like watching the world through a tube, something I thought was really interesting.  Our view of the world in the movie is limited by what the characters in the movie can see, which is usually small glances of the action around us. 

Not being able to see everything really added to the movie, making our perception of the movie much like how our perception of life is.  We don't see the big picture in our lives usually, only our limited view on things.

Somehow, the style the movie was recorded in made the movie so real.  It made me think about movies.  We watch these movies because we want to be in them.  Well, not in them, but rather, in the world of the movie.  We want to experience the excitement and thrill of running from the monsters.  We want to experience the pride we would get by saving someone out of the rubble of a toppled building.  We want to experience the sadness of losing a loved one.  We want to experience the fear of when things we don't understand happen.

But at the same time when we say we want to experience these things, we don't really want to experience them in our lives.  Rather, we want to experience them through the movie.  I know that when I watched Cloverfield, I was feeling the thrill of the chase, the fear of the monster, and the sadness of all the dead.  But at the same time, there I was, sitting on the couch, safe and secure.

Eh, just decided to blog about that.  Might blog about something else soon, we'll see.

Un Soir

I am a member of AACM (Asian American Campus Ministry) at UT, and apparantly, there is a tradition that the freshman guys set up a dinner/banquet kind of thing for the freshman girls for Valentine's Day.  However, AACM was also having their Talent Show, and enormous production, so the dinner was postponed till February 30th (or March 1st, haha, we just wanted the event to still be in February so we made up a new day).  We named it Un Soir, or One Night, just to be fancy shmancy.

Everything was pretty hectic the last week or so.  Six hours of shopping for groceries.  Four hour meetings.  Six more hours of shopping/returning.  Twelve hours of cooking.  It was exhausting.  But hopefully worth it.  I was part of the cooking crew, and we were seriously pressed for time, which is what I'm going to talk about a bit.

It seems to me that when faced with stress or a difficult situation, I really try to step up.  One of my biggest regrets in my life is my inablility to be myself when meeting new people.  So, here I am, the quiet guy in AACM, trying to step up in this role.  And I really think I succeeded.  I mean, I think that when I try to step up, I try to take a leadership role, which is what I did, I think.  But with that leadership role, I sometimes become a little intense, something that I think helps me sometimes, and sometimes hurts me.  But anyways, I feel very good about how I really started to open up and show the leader that I can be to the people in AACM who don't know the real Robert Liu.

I made some friends, honored the girls, and got to test my cooking skills.  All in all, worth the $450+ and 24+ hours of work....maybe.