January 2010!

So January is coming to and end, I just thought I'd finish up the month of photo blogs with a list of memorable "woohoo" moments of the month.

1) LACMA with Kristina, Joyce, S★, and Zongwei.
2) Going to Evergreen then lunch with Esther. (This single event may have changed my entire year, possibly life?)
3) Janurary Jumpstart
4) Iceblocking/Body Sliding/Swimming with Intervarsity.
5) Volleyball (its fun all the time)
6) Eating Lunch with Kristina and Paul on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Theres probably more but so much has happened this month, and if I forgot them it would be wierd to put them on my memorable moments list.

This was supposed to be made up of all the pictures I took during the entire month of January, but its kind of biased to some pictures to get the colors right.

p.s, i went with Jordan and Kristina to Jordan's church today. It was really nice and the people there reminded me of my own home church. The message was short and sweet and we ate afterwards just like we do at home :] thanks joe-ordan and kristophertina. 

Nggeeeoooooow

Thats my attempt at trying to spell out the sound a light saber makes when ya swing it. After volleyball tonight, imma go to Earl's room and watch every single Star Wars movie (4, 5, and 6). I don't have any interesting pictures for today yet since nothing exciting has happened yet.

Update: The old star wars characters are so cool. Woohoo!

Watching all three star wars in a row was quite a feat.. or two.

This picture is for Esther because she likes to take pictures of the sky. However, usually hers' are of earthen skies, this one is Tatooinian.

psh, who needs photoshop when you got real life?

I'm really glad i decided to again lug my camera around to catalyst today. I had decided before that I would stop bringing my camera at night time because it is impossible to manual focus at night, and I hate using flash. Fortunately, I overrode that decision.

I try not to photoshop or crop pictures if I don't have to and I shoot with the intention of not having to photoshop the picture later. These next two pictures made me realize how beautiful God made his world. And even though we may have lived our entire lives thinking we've seen it all, he still surprises us with amazing things each new day. Woohoo!

I have no idea what caused this ring around the moon to appear. I've never seen anything like it before. All I can tell you for sure is that its not photoshopped (proof: if it was photoshopped, why would i lay down on the ground to take a picture of Kristina and an empty sky?) Whatever it was, it was super cool and I really want to fly up there and touch it.
Update: http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonring/.

This picture was in pitch darkness in front of  University Lutheran Chapel, before catalyst. I didn't want to use flash so I pumped up the ISO as high as my camera could go. Moral of the picture: Z looks really cool in the dark when people can't see him. Thanks to my camera ISO, we are able to take a peek at what this coolness looks like.

sick

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

- Somewhere in Mark.

Yesterday, we talked about that line in my first weekly mark. Basically it says Jesus is there only for the people who need him. At a deeper level, it implies that people must acknowledge and accept that they have faults and sicknesses before Jesus can take a part in their lives.

We all then attempted to apply this to our own lives and admit our own sicknesses. But for the entire rest of mark study and the rest of the night, I searched and searched, but I could not find, let alone admit, my weaknesses.

I had a conversation with Paula, and we talked about how the lesson was very contradicting because we are always trying to reach a point of happiness and content. But by following this lesson, we are breaking through our content shell and unearthing darknesses that are hidden deep within us. Its like we are looking for trouble in times of peace. But I guess that is better than having that trouble unearth itself in times of war.

So as for my weaknesses, I still cannot fully grasp what it is exactly. I can feel a void in my heart, but I can't put into words what it is from. I just pray that I can find out what it is soon, and that when I do, that I have someone to admit it to.

Ironically, I woke up today with a small headache and a cold. I ate an orange and orange juice for breakfast and I just made a cup of Airbourne.. mmm vitamin C!

Ash, no not the one from pokemon

Yesterday, I went to open gym volleyball as I always do here in LA on mondays, wednesdays, fridays, and sundays. Shawn told me yesterday that its not open gym if I'm not there, that makes me feel good :] Something else that makes me feel good is knowing that my new camera is fast enough to take sports pictures! (I still have to chug up the ISO over 1000 because the lighting in wooden is sometimes too dim).

I only got to take like 3 pictures yesterday before they made me put my camera down and come play.

Everyone, meet Ashley. Shes one of my bestest friends in volleyball, and shes one of the bestest players in volleyball. I only just met her a year ago, and when we first met, I never talked to her, cause she wouldn't come to OG that often. Even when we first started talking, it only consisted of trash talking across the net ("where you at, Ashley" lol). The trash talking somehow was a sort of ice breaker so that somewhere along the way we started to play on the same team, instead of against eachother, and we were unstoppable. We were a solid team on and off the court.


Sadly, at the height of one of our winning streaks during spring quarter of last year, Ash landed wierd off of one of my sets :| and tore her ACL. After braving knee surgery, she still could not play even after a summer of rest. Even though she couldn't touch a volleyball, Ashley still came to open gym to WATCH other people play.. showing true love for her sport.

Now almost a year after her injury, Ash is back on the court! Though we havn't reformed our solid 6 man team (it would probably be too unfair if we did) I got to play with Ashley on my team one night, and obviously we won all night. I'm really proud (and amazed) of her! Even after 1 year of not playing or practicing, she comes back and easily digs all my hits, shes one of the few at open gym that I have to worry about aiming away from (the two others are Tuyay and Brandon so thats saying something.)

p.s, woohoo!

Zinny: Day 1

Today I had lunch with Kristina, Esther, Connie, CQ, Steven, Dominique and Josh. We taught some people how to play left hand slap and the sandwich game. We even may have created a new jinx game. If I learned anything from joining IV, its that they like to make games out of everything. I like games.

After we ate, we went outside and we got free plants, highlighters, and reflectors... all three of which are related somehow. The plant came with a small brown disc of soil maybe 2 inches in diameter and half a centimeter thick (slightly larger than a ritz cracker). After adding water to the disc, it expanded into about a cup of soil! Amazing!.

I planted Zinnia seeds into the soil. The seeds looked like small dead leaves, kinda like dried tea leaves. They don't look alive enough to even support themselves, let alone, flower. We will see, I'll keep ya posted on my new room mate.

The tally on the post-it note to the right of the cup keeps track of how old the plant is.. for example, today is Day 1! woohoo, happy birthday Zinny (yes, i named my plant.)

p.s, I now have Weekly Mark on Tuesday,  so my small group was moved to Wednesday :| I have volleyball already on wednesdays. The main reason I joined IV and stayed was because of how much I liked my small group. I don't know what I'm gonna do this week.

Simply Pooh

I was tempted to title this post, "why so serious." Recently, i feel that my posts have been too complicated. It was moving away from who i want to be. The Pooh i knew was pure and simple. My visit back home to the weekend reminded me of this.

I went to my home church again today for the first time in almost a month! Its nice to be home, I missed everyone. My aunt crocheted this cool owl hat and stuffed animals.  I've always wanted a pair of pilot flier goggles since i was a kid, kinda like the kid from UP, but it was my idea before his :] The owl hat kinda looks like a pair of flier goggles. When i was a kid i used to pretend i was a pilot and make airplane noises, I like flying. My favorite movie in my childhood was Aladdin, and my ultimate favoritest scene was the magic carpet ride. I sang "a whole new world" coming out of the theather; and that was before I learned how to speak english. haha woohoo.

Bye bye Hair!

I'm getting my hair cut today, update later!

Update: A little late on the post, but better late than never!

It's grown a little since I've cut it. I like this hair length. Right when its cut its usually too short for comfort.

Just because you can see doesn't prove that you're not blind.

If only life were as easy as finding the girl with the yellow umbrella. You see, the problem is that there are tons of girls with yellow umbrellas.

Ted Mosby has it easy. Hes telling the story only after hes already found his yellow umbrella.

I hate the saying "There's plenty of fish in the sea."

Obviously, but i don't want all the fish in the sea, I just need one. And not just any one. I truely believe there is one perfect fish for everyone in the sea. But that doesn't make it any less hopeless: if everyone in the world only had one perfect fish, it would be impossible to travel the worlds seas to catch that specific fish--  even if one fished their entire life.

Life's already too complicated for us to be worried with filtering out colors and looking for that one perfect yellow umbrella. I pray that God will help simplify my life, and maybe then, my eyes will be opened and I will be able to see all the other colors right in front of me. woohoo?

Jesus hits a J and scores 2!

Rachelle, shes cool. Shes super nice and takes pictures on her nikon just like me. She does kendo and watches me play volleyball from the window on the second floor of the Wooden Center.

Andy, hes a solid guy, friendly and thoughtful. He is very articulate with his words and everything he says has meaning.


Today my two friends, Andy and Rachelle officially accepted Jesus into their lives. By doing so, they openly admitted that they were ready to have their lives changed.

Little did they know that Jesus was going to immediately start affecting their lives tonight.

The hedrick IV people threw Andy and Rachelle a celebration party. We started off the night with pie and chips, and soda; it was delicious and sweet.

Then, to practice "risky persistent action" we went ice blocking near Jan steps. The grass was wet and at first I was afraid to get my clothes dirty. In the end, I could not resist. I was really bad at Iceblocking cause my butt is too big. But since the grass was already wet from all the rain, I could just slide down the hill on my stomache. I'm a pro at that cause its just like volleyball diving. This girl with a slick jacket challenged me to a diving race. She didn't stand a chance against my refined pancaking skills.

After we destroyed the Iceblocks, we all went and jumped into the Friends Fountain. Never in my 3 years have i even touched that water and I didn't expect to ever have that chance again, so i just went all out and swam in the fountain. It was super cold. I'm still shivering...from excitement. woohoo.

this is before i jumped in, btw. Afterwards, I was too cold and too wet to take out my camera. Haha, I  just noticed I'm in this picture too.. I'm near leslie.. actually, I'm on leslie.

p.s, I'm really itchy. 

p.p.s, my jeans are now fashionably grass/dirt stained, and not to mention they recieved a natural cold water wash. it looks like I pooped and pee'd in my pants at the same time. 

another rainy day

And "the rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling. Down down down." Hah i can quote songs in my blog too.
Yea, its pretty wet here in Southern California. I hear my home town, Long Beach, is flooding pretty badly. The rain at ucla makes cool looking (but annoying) waterfalls on the stairs near the Engineering V building.

This is a picture from my room of my dorm away from dorm, Hedrick. It took maybe like 30 shots to get the right exposure to get the rain drops, but it was worth it :] woohoo.

p.s, not photoshopped!

Poohtography? we wanna see some ACTION!

I just finished my video of January Jumpstart. If you didn't get from my previous three post how much I enjoyed it, maybe my movie will be able to show it.

Check it out:
Facebook Version
YouTube Version [High Quality] er.. stupid youtube only took half my movie.. ill get back on this.

In other news, if you liked my account of how God changed my life, check out Earl's blog. If you think my sharing was risky and open, after reading his mine will seem like show and tell in kindergarten.

And if you are into photojournalistic blogs like mine, check out Esther's! She just got a new camera and cool photoshoppy pictures.

Experience their blogs and other cool people's by clicking on the links in my blogroll on the right side panel.


Now for the picture of the day:


Me, Kristina, and Paul went out to lunch today after Jazz class (only 1/3 of us are in the class) it was an interesting lunch. Afterwards, Paul amazed the lounge by playing on the piano that was in the room (i didn't even notice there was one while we were eating and we were sitting about 3 feet from it). Thanks kristina for being the only real actress in my movie.. haha. Woohoo!

P.S, Isn't her outfit cute? I didn't just say that.

Getting my feet wet

Today, in the last hours of Mark Study, my medium group went over what exactly stood out to us this past weekend. My two previous blogs already express my personal "OH WOW" moments. But I want to some it all up with the definition of faith my group spent hours deriving: Faith is risky, persistent action driven by desire to experience Jesus' power.

I believe the most important aspect of this definition is the word risky. To show our faith, it is not only important to believe in Jesus, but to also take risks when trying to follow him. I guess my first personal application of this risk taking was writing about all of this in my blog. Yes, it is a small risk, but I hope it leads me to being able to take larger risks, like opening my heart (not literally), breaking down roofs (both literally and not literally), and getting my feet wet (not literally because I've already done it literally.)


Yea.. we were basically swimming to Mark Study this morning.

Oh and another significant part of my day today: I went with the hedrick IV people to brunch after Mark Study and we threw marshmellows and tried to catch them in our mouths at the dining hall. I almost got kristina to catch a crumpled up napkin in her mouth. hehe. Woohoo!

If you like Small Group, and if you like Large Group, then you'll love Medium Group

In high school, I got straight A's, I was captain of the volleyball team, and even graduated valedictorian; Yet, I did all these things all by myself. I figured that other people would just slow me down, so I never put dependence on any of my friends.
In medium group today (i call my mark study group my medium group because its bigger than hedrick small group but smaller than catalyst large group) we studied the definition of faith. Let me add that the verb "studied" is a severe understatement of what we did. A part of faith that some Christians often miss is that it does not always reflect an individual's connection to Jesus, but also it reflects a person's dependence on their friends.
Mark specifically tells us that Jesus forgives the paralytic's sins because he saw the faith of the four men carrying the paralytic, not the paralytic himself.
And that, my friends, is what I learned in school today. Trust your friends; become vulnerable to them.

Oh and all of IV went bowling together as an application of the lesson. It was fun. This was my first time going bowling besides a time in elementary school when we had guard rails and ice cream. I bowled 131! Some call it beginner's luck, I call it natural skill.

eek, i didn't notice until now that 1st year connie, katherine and powla arnt in the picture and wes and roni too!

Oh and its Ryan Jirapong's birthday today, we went to get boba. Happy birthday Ryan. And Michelle is the best driver ever x4.

PS. I try not to photoshop my pictures, but I mostly took video during January Jumpstart so I didn't really have any good artsy pictures, so I made them artsy. Ok goodnight, I have to wake up at 7:55 tomorrow for the last day of JJ. Boohoo.

Forget the mind-- MARK STUDY BLEW MY HEART

I can't even begin to explain how much Mark Study with IV has been so far. Going into the conference, I was told by many people that it was going to change my life, blow my mind, open my heart.
Honestly, I was very skeptic that a few days of reading through a book would change the rest of my life, and I pretty much made up my mind that I wouldn't waste my three day weekend, and much needed rest and time for academics. Fortunately, I went to lunch with one of my best friends from IV one day and she told me about her experiences with Mark Study last year and how it was like looking at the bible and the word in a different lens. I could genuinely see the happiness glowing from her face.


And so I find myself here at my computer, only half way into the conference, with my fingers rampaging at the keyboard trying to get all the feelings in my heart onto this finite blog space.
I entered the conference hoping to get a specific thing out of my head. Specifically, I called out to God for guidance and direction in how to deal with this thing. For the past week (maybe month) it had been eating at me; I could not take a step without it pulsing through my head. Tonight, through my study group, God told me "Pooh, don't worry about it. I got it." In the spirit of letting it all out and respecting the courage shown by people in my study group, I will share with in my blog that my problem is about an unsure relationship with someone (thats all i will say on the internet, jordan i hope you're happy).
This post is getting way too long for my photo-journalistic blog so I will close in saying that God's answer for me was simply to follow him, and the rest will fall in place.

"Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men" Mark 1:17

Now for a picture actually from January Jumpstart:

me and my IV girls minus a few and plus wesley

This one picture no where near represents everything that happened at Mark Study so far. I have 4 gigabytes worth of 12.4 megapixel pictures to upload to my facebook and still that is not enough.

Stay tuned for a video from January Jumpstart as well. WOOHOO!

Before I can Start January Jumpstart

As an Electrical Engineer, taking a weekend off without doing homework is almost suicide. Intervarsity's January Jumpstart starts today. We will be studying the book of Mark from Friday all the way to monday. Therefore, this whole week I've been forcing myself to complete my school work before the weekend starts. The result? A messy desk. Boohoo.


Funny Story: I was talking on the phone while walking down bruinwalk. This flyer guy stuffs a flyer in front of my face. I take it. I look at it. It says something something ISLAM. 10 steps later, I see his friend handing out the same flyer. I give my flyer to her. I just flyered a flyerer. Woohoo!

P.S, Blog is on hold till I get back from January Jumpstart. Cya!

Narnian Adventure

Yesterday, I went with Steven and Jordan to explore the parts of UCLA we've never seen before-- this mostly consisted of rooftops and elevators. We started out stalking Jordan as she got out of work at Ackerman. After picking up Jordan (who kinda reminds me of Dora the Explorer), Steven led us to the PAB rooftop. Its really nice up there. I like all the red color even though I'm a bruin. The stairwell is really trippy.


Steven and I then followed Dora the Explorer to Broad where we threw stuff off the side of the top floor, and snuck around the art studios. We ended our adventure in Anderson, where janitors yelled at us for picking oranges from a tree.



I had a really good time exploring all these places I had never been in my 3 years at UCLA. Every corner we turned I felt could have been an entrance to Narnia. Woohoo!

FYI: Tonight is Worship Night at Catalyst and I'll probably take more pictures then so I may have two posts for today.

Rain, rain, go away

Well, today LA saw its first rain of the Winter2010 quarter. That means less people at the gym tonight at volleyball open gym. Water falling from the sky some how deters people from wanting to play sports (even indoor sports). In other news, my fake vans got really wet, I wish I had jedi boots like Kristina Cheung. Boohoo.

Update: That earlier picture was from this morning. Here's what it looks like now:


Good ol' Southern California. Maybe people will come to open gym afterall. Woohoo!

First Entry, Hopefully not the Last

So I had a dream yesturday night. In the dream I started a kind of photo blog in which I post a picture each day which ideally should reflect my life through my new camera. So taking the dream as a sign, I brought my new Nikon D90 with me to school today. In my first class, I dropped my calculator on my camera o.o



And thus, my first photo entry is sadly not taken by my D90:

I can't send it in for repairs until next next weekend when I go back home :| Heres my temporary repair job so the crack doesn't spread. At least I can still see my remaining shots and ISO; aperture and shutter speed are visible in the view finder.


I feel like I lost an eye today. Boohoo.