GH-049.jpg

GH-049.jpg,
uploaded by
Gryphon Hall.

Moblog:

GH-046.jpg

GH-046.jpg,
uploaded by
Gryphon Hall.

Moblog: My niece, currently being dedicated in God's presence.

Dad's new PC

Dad's new brand-name Desktop PC, w/c he bought out of need, not just his but mine as well. He financed it, but I did the research. All this, including all peripherals, the table and chair was had for just P28K. Next week, we will already have DSL.

What do you think?

As you can see, the brand is Red Fox... but that's not as important as the one-year warranty that comes along with it; because it is brand-name, the warranty is good. The hardware itself is also good: a nice AMD Sempron with really high quality speakers, keyboard and optical mouse... terno pa! O, 'di ba?

Hopefully, when the PLDT guys come around, they can install DSL quick... Dad will be happy with his download speeds, I can research stuff I need for work and, most importantly, I can chat with my wife, Ærynn, again. It has been too long since we had a long, meaningful chat. Because of my job, I couldn't even visit my Mom-in-law, where she usually finds a way for me to speak with my wife... it has been a lonely existence.

Click here to see the full specifications of the Red Fox Vengeance SE Basic. The only difference is that this package has one CD-ROM drive, one DVD-RW drive, two hard disks (one is 40GB, the other is 80GB), and 256MB of DDR RAM.

Anyway, I hope this snazzy, red computer will mean that our hearts will burn bright again...

I've become fat again, part 2

I just watched a special on TV about why diet plans fail. They mentioned three factors (or at least, I was able to absorb three factors):

1. When everybody else is eating a lot, dieters tend to much more.
2. When dieters binge on one meal, they usually throw off the entire day (or week) while promising themselves that they can start over next week.
3. When dieters are stressed, they usually will eat more to feel better.

From what I know, number 1 and 2 applies to me. I know I've been working hard to shed the extra fat by watching what I eat. But when others around me are eating liempo and lechon kawali, it is true, I tend to eat what they eat. I have, of course, been taunted a lot about the lack of discipline I have if I cannot say "no" to eating what others eat, but the TV program has assured me that this was unfair at the very least. For one thing, eating is a social act. It becomes unnatural to eat differently from others, even if they expect you to. That is why a family of thin people tend to be a family of thin people, and vice versa. Fat friends congregate with each other, and vice versa. If everybody else is eating healthy, the tendency is for one to eat healthy. That's why people in Japan or other health-conscious cultures tend to stay healthy even if they eat a lot, while cultures like that in the USA or even in the Philippines tend to have obese people, even if they diet and eat little. As I said in my previous mobile post (I actually posted that using my cellphone; I finally found a system that works), when the "meriendas" are not only scheduled and regulated, but when the only food that is served are oily and saucy foods, there is no other recourse but to stay away from the pantry except during the lunch hour.

Oh, and about stress... we've got a lot of that. I've always told others that the reason why I don't become a pastor is because, among other things, I can't see myself making a sermon once a week. It is just too hard. Now that I'm training for a call center job, the ACE training (Accent and Conversational English Training) that happens nine hours a day, stopping only for merienda and lunch, has us needing to speak out more than once a day and writing our "reports" and "presentations." This is stressful, to say the least, and trainees congregating to eat that delish concoction of beef, peppers, mushrooms in thick gravy seems to be a way to relieve some of the stress.

One other source of stress for me is the decidedly nonChristian atmosphere of the workplace. I am not saying that the place is decidedly "evil"—it is not. It is just nonChristian: we men unashamedly make remarks about the body parts of the female trainees and talk about the ones we like, for instance. I say "we" because even if, frankly, I don't find myself attracted to any of the females there, in order to fit in I have to find something to like in the females around. I have thus far "appreciated" only the "safer" aspects of the females: good dresser, good speaker, pretty, etc. but I have already crossed the line twice when I agreed that one girl's "ass was hot" and that another girl's "feet was sexy." It is also uncomfortable when the females themselves, most of them married and/or having children of their own are also engaging in a little "innocent" flirting. I guess I am just too conservative... but still, I don't see the logic in all of this behavior. A single co-trainee cannot get the eye of the females, no matter how much he preens and all; yet we married guys get the attention primarily because we are "safe" (I will deal with this reprehensible illogic in a later post). Even the married women are more brazen than the single women.

Anyway, my point is that this adds to my stress, making the already scrumptuous food even tastier to my palate; and I must do everything in my power to try and avoid it. Ærynn deserves to have the same fit husband she married months ago when I see her again, not some fat whale.

I've become fat again

GH-024.jpg,
originally uploaded by Gryphon Hall.

Moblog post: I have gotten fat again. After months of being just over 200lbs, I have experienced becoming almost 30lbs heavier in just a month. My belt has become tighter again after months of being too large. There was this shirt that I wore last month that showed that I was begining to have a neck again; I am wearing it again tonight, and there is on neck in the mirror now. It is, of course, needless to say that this is not good.

I've seen that there are several reasons for this sudden weight gain. First, I have not been getting much sleep since this new night-shift job. Of course, I've only been at it a week, but this shirt I am now wearing that is suddenly tight I wore just last week, and it didn't "stick" onto me this way. So, second, I think it is because of the instituted meriendas at work. You see, I don't eat merienda. Now that it is a tangible break & everybody is eating, I've been eating as well.

Well, not anymore. I have to be more disciplined if I am to avert all the damage to all the hard work for the last few months. I will again need to watch more closely my food intake, since I am no longer in Cavite and exercise will no longer be there just for the taking. More later.

Thinking Aloud: A Gripe Observed, part I

I am very perturbed. And, supposedly, I have no reason to be. . .

. . . Or rather, it's all in the way one looks at it, to see whether I have any real reason to be perturbed.

I almost wrote down "I married the most wonderful lady I've ever met, but I can't be with her" but I know just how sappy, clichéd, and generally annoying such statements are to those who have never been in the sort of situation I am in. I have married a wonderful lady. I have only spent a maximum of three weeks together with her. I had expected to be with her by next month. But, thanks to the cruel twists that can come, our reunion is going to be delayed, at best, and denied, at worst. Of course, "denied" is such a strong word. More properly, I would probably follow her much, much later than I thought; more like the two years apart that a friend of ours had to go through, when she was waiting to get her husband to the States.

All this "misery" is due to some misplaced good fortune.

You see, I have for some reason finally acquired a job that pays well. Good fortune indeed, except that it has come more than two years too late. Those who are truly familiar with the Job Market in the Philippines—and I'm not talking about those ten or twenty percent that get jobs on the get go and keep them for around 5 years; no, I'm talking about the majority of us out there—know that getting a job is like playing a game. So often, I have walked up to a snazzy building, freshly bathed, freshly shaved, with a fresh haircut and a fresh layer of dust that the metropolitan pollution has dumped on me, trying to feel confident. More often than I want to remember, I would ace their applications tests and exams, up until the final interview. How many times have I shaken a vigorous and eager hand just as the interview starts, then they take one good look at my resumé, see where I got my degree, see how many "jobs" I've been in, and see how short my durations were, and I get to shake that same hand that is now placid and uneager? I hate it when people try to broadcast the lie that companies here in the Philipppines do not discriminate against the "lesser" universities. They have accused me, and others, of just not trying hard enough. But they all want graduates from UP, DLSU, Ateneo, probably UST. . . they do!

Of course graduates from the "other" universities get jobs. Just not the jobs that one wants or was trained for. I have often found myself glossed over by these companies, even when I had the skills, and they choose someone who would later purchase those "Learn in 24 hours..." kind of books because they had to cram up on the skills. Our difference? He graduated from the Philippine version of an ivy-league university. So much so that most of my former classmates, even those that finished cum laude, can only find jobs as clerks, while less skilled and less smart rich kids get to ride around in business suits.

As a result, my resumé has become a joke. Only those small, no-name companies ever hired me, making my work experience even more pathetic.


Yet, I now find myself with a good paying job with a good multi-national company. I should be overjoyed. I am not. I definitely need the money. But I should have had this job two years ago, not now when I am about to leave. I credit the fact that Canadians were the ones who interviewed and hired me as the reason why I was able to get in, when so many times in the past I was turned away. To a Canadian PCU is the same as UP, and I got my chance.

I don't care about demographics, you know, that "fact" that they are parading around in the Philippines that usually, UP/DLSU/Ateneo/etc. graduates are the better and smarter workers. That only became so because these universities take all the best high school graduates, not because on any inherent superiority in their systems. And even so, if you treat a potential student as, well, the lower rungs, they will behave so. I have met a lot of really smart and industrious individuals in my college that have since turned to mediocrity, merely because that was what was expected of them.

Still, I have this job. A "call centre" job. A job which, years ago, I would not have touched with a ten-foot pole. It wasn't what I was trained for. It isn't what I want. I will receive calls and try to solve technical problems. We aren't allowed a lot of freedoms. The work is hectic and demanding, with long hours during the oddest hours of the day. The job, itself, is not very fulfilling. But it pays well, and over the course of a few years the need for money has stifled my idealism. Like in the Thomas Hardy novel of "Jude the Obscure" where Jude with aspirations to become a scholar and skills in Latin and Hebrew still cannot rise above the station in life that society drops on his shoulders, I have come to accept that maybe I will never be a writer. There will never be any time. I need money. This is it. This is all I will ever be accepted for. To hope for more is to always despair. To start accepting my station is, hopefully, the start of happiness for me. A mere customer service agent, probably someday a trainer. But that is it.

Oh, there are benefits upon benefits. The starting pay is good. There is insurance. And quiet rooms, showers, game rooms, free coffee. . . why did I ever aspire to anything more than this? I had always hated the corporate atmosphere. . . I should have accepted that it will be what feeds me. Yet, this lesson comes too late. If I had learned this two years ago and had, back then, sold myself to wage-slavery, my wife wouldn't have needed to leave. I should still have her here, and we could have been married earlier, have had kids earlier. . . a man's lot. I had been too proud, and loneliness has been my punishment.

I want to be with my wife now in Australia. But I cannot leave, now that I have a good company that accepted me. I need to stay at least until October, probably November. . . but I want to be with my wife. But I can only allow her to really live and pursue her dreams if I can provide. This job will help me. I need it.

But I am not happy.


I am perturbed. My team-mates are very much like the high school students I used to teach: loud, arrogant, self-absorbed and self-interested. Yet, this is the world that I must belong in, this world full of the loud and arrogant. Should I also be loud and arrogant to succeed? I hope not. But, now, I must prepare for work: do my job to sell myself and make myself as interesting a human product as I can, so I can ascend the ladder and make more money. What is more important than money? I cannot see beyond the flimsy walls of my workstation to know for sure, but this I know now: with money comes happiness.

And only fools and poets think otherwise and die hungry and lonely.

Love is Something You Do, Not Feel

Our Mother, just like most other human beings on earth, has her share of faults; there are times when I wish she was a much better mother than she had been. Yet, in one area, she is a much better mother than any I have yet come across, if not the best. It was she that taught me the true nature of "what men call 'love'", even if she herself did not always remember. And knowing that nature, even if I myself do not always remember, helped me to find the best woman for my wife.

For one thing, unlike other mothers, Mom had always talked to us about how to treat a girl, how to identify the girl one wants, how to treat a girl one wants, what to do when one gets the girl one wants, and how to treat a girl when you aren't sure one still wants the girl—all beginning at the tender age of six. Mom would always speak from experience, never having read any how-to books on love or any of that; this is probably why during those times she would talk to us we didn't particularly trust her judgment. She bungled up turning down men who courted her, for instance, taking a Bible verse out of context. But for as long as I can remember, there was the advice: "Always be a gentleman" "Always give the girl the benefit of the doubt" "If she behaves so, she doesn't love you" "If she behaves so, then she's attracted to you" "If she does this, then it's probably love" "If you love her, then do this..."—all given long before any kind of desire or attraction to the opposite sex. When we would watch a romantic movie when I was just eight years old, she would patiently explain her take on the dynamics of the relationship in the same way my Dad would explain philosophical concepts. Thanks to her, the full glory of emphathy was mine when I first watched Tchaikowsky's Swan Lake in animated form at age 10; thanks to her, I understood jealousy, suspicion, and duty in many a Shakespearean play while I was barely in my teens.

It was my twin brother who believed the nonsense propagated by other mothers, that one can be too young to think about love. He now feels that he can never feel capable enough to find love in a woman; he never listened to our Mom on those ocassions, thinking he had plenty of time later. He would later let his 21st birthday come and go before thinking that now he can think about "adult" love (though, strangely, he always believed that he first fell in love as an eight year old boy). My other brother, now married and with a beautiful daughter (the niece I featured formerly) also listened to my mother's talks. It is this listening which I credit to his success in finding the girl he will love forever back when he was in his last year in elementary school, and loving only her until they were married more than a decade later; all this inspite of his faults and being tempted along the way. My twin, inspite of the nobility he tried to cultivate in his character, had made it a habit not to learn too much about insights gained from even failed relationships (first manifested when he would not listen to Mom as a child); as a result, his only foray into courtship turned so ugly it ended a lot of friendships and fostered a lot of bitterness in some individuals that survive to this day.

I am sure that I have my own faults, and I never would have found my wife if it hadn't been for the decades of preparation and insight my Mom gave me. Other mothers will steep their children in music or the arts in the hopes of having an accomplished musician or artist in the family; yet would think that it was improper to teach a kid about love or sex. How many relationships have failed because young people do not know enough, for instance, to spot the genuine from the not? How many who are in "successful" relationships live in various stages of distress, hurt, jealousy and pain, because they never learned how to behave in a relationship? How many are hurting, because they were never taught that love is not love without fidelity, loyalty, kindness and discipline? How many do not know the power of sex, and either underestimate it or overestimate it, to their detriment? Even when we didn't want to hear it, Mom taught us all that...

... and I'm glad I listened. Of all the joys in my mortal life right now, the chief and greatest is the wonderful woman that God gave me as a wife... and I wouldn't have recognized her if, years ago, my Mom thought it was improper to tell a young boy about a women and how to think and behave to preserve one's personal honor.

For that is, in the end, what love really is about—not the feelings and passions that one is sure to have, but how to act and what to do when in the throes of those feelings and passions. I sometimes do not remember, but I do not forget.

Dad: Travelling Companion

When I became old enough to travel, I think my Dad supposed that I was also old enough to accompany him to his speaking engagements. I have always accompanied my Dad around even when I was much younger, but the role of travelling companion actually belonged to our Mom before. But there was that rather brief period, from the time I was seven years old to the time I was around twelve that I accompanied my Dad almost as often as my Mom. My twin would sometimes accompany us on these trips.

I usually accompanied Dad whenever the place where he was supposed to speak was too far away for my Mom to travel comfortably or, if near, when my Mom was not feeling well enough. Because of that, I feel that I became a rather seasoned commuter much earlier than any of my brothers. I knew the right sort of bus to ride, for instance, if one wants to go to Taft Avenue from Dasmariñas, Cavite. I knew that the fare from Pedro Gil to Libertad was only a peso, two pesos from Pedro Gil to Pasay, but if we took the new-fangled Light Rail Transit, no matter how far we went, we would only pay two pesos. As far back as I can remember, I already loved following and making directions, and when I was a kid, I can rattle off all the details of a trip including the most trivial of landmarks the same way a child of my age can memorize TV and radio commercials. Of course, as with most of us former kids who no longer can memorize much of anything we used to hold as second nature because we supposedly had much more important things in mind, I now need the aid of a good map.

At any rate, those long trips with Dad were, for me, one of the most memorable because I felt that my Dad and I became so much closer. Long talks happen on long trips, and usually, those long talks were the ones that set the tone. Dad would start of as an adult with a child, with the usual adult-to-child banter of "Would you like me to buy you some of that candy/peanuts/etc.?" or "Would you like to sit close to the window/driver?" or even "Would you like to hand over our fare to the bus conductor?" Eventually, Dad would forget that I was a kid as the trip "dragged" on. He would talk about the church or group of people we were about to meet, he would talk about the politics and person-to-person dynamics, for instance. He would then discuss his sermon/speech/lecture with me, which was easier for both of us because I had been looking over his shoulder the night before as he made it. I would ask questions, and he would patiently answer, teaching me new words so that I can understand the oftentimes complex concepts. I am so glad those trips were long; I feel that Dad was talking to me the way he did, patiently explaining things, precisely because the trips were long and there had to be something to talk about while we travelled.

Sometimes the result of our talks was that Dad had some new material at the very last minute, already discussed, weighed and debated that by the time he arrived he would have a much better talk than he had just before we left. That was just one of the only perks: Dad loved eating in restaurants, and if we were not fed by our hosts, he would take me to the really nice restaurants and order food which I normally don't get to have.

But, the best of it is when my Dad would call me forward and introduce me (or us, if E- was with us) as his son to a room full of grown-ups. I (or we) were shy, but I always loved hearing the love and pride in our Dad's voice as he would tell them about his "boys".

I think I learned more from those trips about everything that needs to be learned than any one class in school. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking were much more illustrative when our Dad was living it and not when some teacher was merely reading out of a textbook (or worse, listening to us read out of a textbook).

This Fathers' Day is probably the very last I would spend with my Dad, for I will soon leave the Philippines (I don't know how long I will be away). Unlike previous Fathers' Days in the past, today wasn't so glitzy or flashy. My brothers were all off on their own assignments somewhere, and I am the only one with Dad now; but even he was too busy... too busy, in fact, to eat the lunch my Mom lovingly prepared for him.

But no matter where I am, what I am is because my Dad, even when he committed mistakes (a lot of them really bad ones, but he didn't mean it), he still raised us better than I thought was possible. We aren't so rich... we aren't "ahead" as much as I want to. But he taught us the importance of integrity and the authenticity of intellects, while other Dads were meanwhile merely teaching their kids to merely beat the system. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Thanks Dad.

Becoming a Better Witness for Christ

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This is a sermon that I will deliver tonight; it is my first sermon ever.

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Introduction

There is a reason why I am the only one in the family, other than my Mom, who is not a pastor. So, just in case I do not sound so good, I hope you wouldn't take it against my Dad. I decided not to use the lectionary, and since I haven't been here in Fairview Park very long I have no idea about your particular needs that I can speak about. I thought that the safest bet for me is to talk about something that I know about and feel strongly about.

I don't think I can be called an internet junkie, that is, somebody who cannot have a day pass without going online and surf the internet. However, I until recently, I have been online quite a lot and, apart from checking my eMail and updating my website, my brother, my Dad and I have developed the habit of joining online forums, where we can discuss anything that comes to mind. It was, of course, while we were joining these forums that we found that even if we expected that people will not always agree with you, they will disagree with you in quite unexpected ways. And this is especially if they know you are a Christian.

For one thing, I had always assumed that Christians were generally liked around the world. Oh, there were those countries with Muslim or Hindu extremists that want us dead, of course; but in more civilized countries, I had thought that even if they disagreed with us, we were generally respected, if not liked or loved. I was shocked, therefore, to learn that there are more people who dislike and hate Christians than those who dislike those followers of other religions.

I can spend the entire evening describing the sort of "injustices" that forum moderators put Christians through, from unfair and very partial treatment, name-calling, provoking and outright disrespect. We were victims of some of it. What bothered me is, first of all, that their stereotype of us is very different from what I had thought Christians stood for, even in supposedly "Christian" countries. Another thing that bothered me is that, up until they found out that we were Christians, we were treated with respect and friendliness, and our opinions were treated fairly by people who also seemed to be fair and open-minded. How did all this "misconception" (if any) happen? The primary reason, I find, is that non-Christians on the whole just find us unbelievable. A Christian singing group called DC Talk put it very aptly:

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is christians who acknowledge jesus with their lips
Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

It is a big mistake to say to ourselves that "No, that's not me... everybody knows that I'm a Christian. My life glorifies God everyday! Maybe they are talking about somebody else..." All the atheists and agnostics I have corresponded have very different reasons as to why they don't believe in God, but they are one in seeing all Christians, even the ones that seem to do okay, as people who are bad. The implications of this is grim: we are being ineffective witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world. And this has happened because we have neglected our Christian and Bible-based duties in the following areas, which, if we had followed it, would allow us Christians to still be respected even if they do not agree. Two of them I will present to you tonight.

We have become unconcerned about what we should know

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

I Peter 3:15–16

One very common problem with Christians is that we have become unconcerned about how much we know about our own religion. I mean, c'mon! So, we were sinful... we deserve death... Christ died for us so we wouldn't die... end of story! How simple can it get? A lot of us would cheerfully state that our Christianity is uncomplicated, with only just the basics and none of the trappings. Well, of course, "Mere Christianity" is an ideal worth working for, that is, if what we mean by "trappings" are those useless rituals, "godless myths and old wives' tales" (as Paul warned Timothy about). But if it is knowledge about the history and story of our faith and for the hope that we should all have, these are trappings that we cannot afford not to know.

For instance, one of the most bitter internet debates I participated in was the question on what exactly does it mean to be saved. If someone asked you that question right now, how will you answer it? It sounds preposterously simple, doesn't it? Saved from our sins, of course! But what are sins, and why would our sins incur penalties from God? Are sins arbitrary or absolute? And why would a supposedly just and loving God punish someone for, say, something as innocuous as eating certain types of foods or behaving a certain way? If one was not familiar with the Bible stories we so carelessly label as "Children's stories"— not just some, but all of it — one cannot hope to explain the necessity of salvation to a world that prides itself on it's supposed open-mindedness and it's relative morality.

"Of course," one may reason, "I don't ever associate with unbelievers. Faith, after all, and not knowledge is what saves you." Even if that last one was true, not knowing enough also harms Christians. First of all, our fellow Christians, especially our children, get a partial idea of what Christianity is about and, if we are not careful, may twist what little knowledge they have about God and his relationship to man. Jesus (in Matthew 18:6–7) says

[W]hoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

Matthew 18:6–7(NASB)

Very strong words indeed! People who cause "little ones who believe in" Jesus to sin (NIV) incenses Jesus so much that he wants some millstone hung around that guy's neck and dropped in the ocean to "sleep with the fishes". That's akin to the Mafia practice of giving a person concrete boots then dropped into the river. That strong! But how, one can ask, can a person botch it up so much? We all know about the sin of comission and omission; yet everytime we go out and give even fellow Christians the wrong idea about God, we commit both.

During those online debates, I would mentaly cringe everytime an uninformed but well-meaning Christian makes hasty declarations based on their partial knowledge of the scriptures. There are atheists and skeptics have made it their goal to go after these sort of Christians to prove that Christianity is an illogical and irational religion and go on to "prove" that it is the source of all prejudice, bigotry and injustice in the world. It perpetuates the notion that atheism as truth to the atheists while destroying the faith of those weak Christians. What a stumbling block if there ever was one!

For instance, how do we explain what is now considered a trite phrase — that we love the sinner but hate the sin? Think, for instance, of the gambling lord, the pimp, or the openly gay individual? A lot of us just don't know enough to explain why what they do is a sin and it should stop being done, while at the same time why we want them in our churches and not away from it. Do you know why gambling/prostitution/homosexuality is wrong? Or whether it should be wrong? What if one of these individuals walked through our door right now, wanting to worship with us and take communion... will we accept them? Do we know why we are accepting them?

A young lady in a former church I was in was talking about how lovely that story Aishite Imasu was. I could think of a lot of reasons why that story was really good (which it is), but was unprepared for her particular reason. You see, she was particularly touched when the character of Jay Manalo still chose to love the character of Dennis Trillo even after he found out that he was a spy and a man. "Biro mo, minahal pa rin siya kahit na lalaki siya!" It seems logical—Ichiru (Jay Manalo's character) loves Ignacio (Dennis Trillo's character) based on his personality and not on his political/cultural loyalties and his gender. Of course, that homosexuality suddenly gets this sort of blessing, that you can love whomever you want regardless of gender, is taken for granted. One can appreciate, perhaps enjoy the movie for its historical significance and the insights it can teach us; but really, if our youth cannot even distinguish what is sinful from what is noble and true, Satan can take a vacation and just leave us to tempt ourselves.

The difficulty is that those who will justify sin have done their homework. They know exactly why their sin isn't really so bad, graduating to the point that they question and openly mock God for ever considering that sin worthy of punishment (and therefore blaspheming God). Do we know that God does not delight in punishing people "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9) yet "cannot tolerate wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13)? Can we ever explain any of that to one who asks if we only know a little? The Bible says

¹¹Much more could be said about this subject. But it is hard to explain, and all of you are slow to understand. ¹²By now you should have been teachers, but once again you need to be taught the simplest things about what God has said. You need milk instead of solid food. ¹³People who live on milk are like babies who don't really know what is right. ¹⁴Solid food is for mature people who have been trained to know right from wrong. 6 ¹We must try to become mature and start thinking about more than just the basic things we were taught about Christ. We shouldn't need to keep talking about why we ought to turn from deeds that bring death and why we ought to have faith in God. ²And we shouldn't need to keep teaching about baptisms ^[a] or about the laying on of hands ^[b] or about people being raised from death and the future judgment. ³Let's grow up, if God is willing.

Hebrews 5:11–6:3 (CEV)

If we know too little, we wouldn't know what we are doing. And sometimes, those actions we do with very little knowledge are being closely watched.

We have become unconcerned about how people see us

¹¹Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. ¹²Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

I Peter 2:11 & 12

Sometimes we are so sure of our salvation, so sure that God is a forgiving God, that we sometimes forget that whatever other people know about the Christian God is based on what they see of us, and just do whatever our passions instruct us. Nothing can be more destructive, for instance, to suddenly discover that some highly respected church leaders were involved in adultery, or embezzlement, or in some other "sin", except perhaps knowing that these leaders justify or rationalize their sin or, if they "repent", they callously throw it off as just one more sin that God will forgive anyway. The Bible says

No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

I John 3:9 & 10

This does not mean that we will stop sinning magically once we are born again. This means that sinning will no longer be natural to us as it had been. Justifying an affair based on the supposed "love" they have, for instance, inspite of all the biblical injuctions agains it is clearly not the way to go. In fact, sins like that which require focus, dedication and deliberateness shouldn't happen anymore! We would be left with bad habits, of course, which we strive to eliminate, and we battle with our worldly desires everyday. But to knowingly do a sin not only endagers us, it gives the wrong impression to fellow believers, and makes us look like idiots to unbelievers.

For example, it seems to be alright for unbelievers to believe in free sex, apparently; that's what they say, and we rightly condemn that. Yet, if Christians, while saying with their lips that it is wrong do it anyway, our credibility with anyone goes out the window.

I once taught in a Christian School where, as a matter of course, we teach the students that it is wrong to cheat and have public displays of affection, among other things. At the beginning of the term, we still had our credibility intact and the students follow us (out of fear, if for nothing else). Yet, by the middle of the term, it was obvious that there were much more delinquent students that we thought. Now, the honest thing to do is, well, grade them fairly, and let the delinquents (no matter how nice they are personally) fail. Yet, to our surprise, we had a "meeting" where we gathered to bring the quota of failures down to just twenty percent (20%) per section. To do that, we had to willfully manipulate the grades to believably ensure that even if their grades weren't sterling, they passed. Sometimes, we had to choose between two students to decide who passed or failed, not on their performance but in an arbitrary manner. If it were just the failures, the damage wouldn't be so great. But we also had to tweak even the grades of good students highter if they seemed to be lower than was expected of them, and poor students lower who unexplainably perform better that quarter.

If we didn't do that, the parents swoop down on us like vultures and question our skills as teachers. So we did it, and no one was the wiser, right? Wrong. In fact, the students themselves, who knew very well that they didn't do well but suddenly found themselves passing or, worse, failing when someone with similar performance passed started suspecting that there was some hocus pocus with the grades. The result is no longer any surprise: good students become complacent and lazy since they have already established themselves as "good", mediocre students who pass realize that they can get away with poor performance, and those poor few who can't pass cannot see better performance as the key, since an improvement is apparently seen with suspicion.

So, later, we may bring them on spiritual retreats and give them evangelistic talks. We may take them on "Trust Walks" and guide them through emotional and tear-stained deliverance sessions. But, if my observations were anywhere accurate, they saw all of these motions as just a part of what a normal student had to go through in school, like exams, quizzes, and bullies, and then promptly forgotten. Who can blame them? They know, even if their parents don't, that we have let go of our morality at the drop of a hat.

When we don't follow our own rules, that is, live out Godly lives inspite of the consequences, we shouldn't be surprised if the pagans don't trust us. We will be mere hypocrites in their eyes, muttering "do as I say not as I do." Jesus said that that is for Pharisees in Matthew 23:3; we don't want to be Pharisees, do we? It's just like that commercial on TV: "Sa mata ng bata, ang mali ay nagiging tama, kung ito ay ginagawa ng mas-matanda." Same thing with Christians, not just with non-believers but with Christians as well.

Conclusion

²⁴For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

Romans 2:24 (KJV)

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 5:16 (KJV)

⁵For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. ⁸For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:5-8 (NIV)

²⁶For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

James 2:26 (KJV)

I would like to close with these four verses. There is much more at stake here than merely being insular, taking care only of our own. We have seen that even when we think that we are providing a good example, there are many times that we don't. It is useless to think it is not so, or that it is their fault as to why "mahirap silang umintindi". God once told Ezekiel that a man's blood is on our hands if we don't try to save him (Ezekiel 33:8-9), but at the rate we are going we don't have the knowledge to be credible enough to warn him and even if we do our actions make hypocrites of us all.

The danger in giving sermons like this is that even the preacher isn't perfect. Sometimes we stumble, sometimes we fall, sometimes we lose our step, all of us. "²³For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23, NIV) but, the good news is that though we all make mistakes "are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24, NIV). How then do we become better witnesses?

The key lies in remembering that very fact, that even we can be mistaken. As a former high school teacher, my mates and I have been sometimes taught not to show any weakness and to pretend that we know more than we actually do. This becomes tricky during times when we don't know and the students do. We have been sometimes told that students will learn to disrespect us if we ever let out our ignorance. Thank God, that little myth is being disproven. I found that what students really think is the real factor that earns our respect is consistency. We need to show them knowledge, that is, we need to be trained in what we do and our particular area, but we will never lie and say we don't know. We will tell them what is expected of them and follow it ourselves, even if sometimes the powers-that-be over-rules us. It prevents us from becoming ineffective and unproductive as teachers. Or, at least, tip the scales favorably.

As Christians, it is our duty to do the same. What a student really hates is an ignorant yet know-it-all teacher, and the world and baby Christians hate an ignorant yet know-it-all, hypocritical Christian. We should increase our knowledge para 'di tayo mapahiya and be consistent with our actions para 'di tayo pagtawanan, but being big enough to admit that we don't have all the answers.

What If I Stumble?
by DC Talk

[the greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is christians who acknowledge jesus with their lips
Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.]

What if I stumble?
What if I fall?

Is this one for the people?
Is this one for the lord?
Or do I simply serenade for things I must afford?
You can jumble them together, my conflict still remains
Holiness is calling, in the midst of courting fame

Cause I see the trust in their eyes
Though the sky is falling
They need your love in their lives
Compromise is calling

(chorus)
What if I stumble, what if I fall?
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You never turn in the heat of it all
What if I stumble, what if I fall?

Father please forgive me for I can not compose
The fear that lives within me
Or the rate at which it grows
If struggle has a purpose
On the narrow road you’ve carved
Why do I dread my trespasses will leave a deadly scar

Do they see the fear in my eyes?
Are they so revealing?
This time I cannot disguise
All the doubt I’m feeling

(repeat chorus)

What if I stumble?
Everyone’s got to crawl when you know that
You’re up against a wall, it’s about to fall
Everyone’s got to crawl when you know that (2x)

I hear you whispering my name [you say]
My love for you will never change [never change]

(repeat chorus 2x)

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You never turn in the heat of it all
What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You are my comfort, and my god

Is this one for the people, is this one for the lord?

Thinking Aloud: Missing Comforts

It is, of course, possible for a person to survive without that much stuff. There are certain "comforts" which, if pressed, a person can learn to live without. Even if some have objected and called merely "surviving" as not living, even if surviving and living are the same thing, it cannot be denied that life is much more bearable with at least those things that provide comfort.

One of those missing comforts for me right now is the capability to go online. I have existed (there's another word in addition to surviving and living) for so long without needing the internet, and I am sure I can exist again. But, it is a missing comfort and as such not having it is uncomfortable. While the internet was around, I can communicate with my wife inexpensively. I can also satisfy my craving for more and more knowledge, download books to read, as well as give me the thrill of exploring. It also allows me to communicate my thoughts with the joyful threat of it being read by someone who may care.

That is what galls me the most about this lack of access to the internet, the fact that I cannot express myself when the stimulus is felt. For there are a lot of other "comforts" which is currently denied to me which I cannot gripe about (comforts some of which I am entitled to, most of which I definitely am not entitled to; which doesn't change the fact that lack of such "comforts" are extremely uncomfortable and frustrating). The object of most good writing is not a mix of ramblings with no one topic, or a lot of topics connected by the mere denominator of me. No; what people actually want to read is one article with just one topic and one treatment... and it was much easier when you had today to write about the frustrations of losing important things during a transfer, tomorrow to write about the indignities one must go through during the general introductions and the "getting-to-know" phase of being in a new place (especially if the people you want to introduce yourself to thinks much more highly of themselves than you; no matter how humble one is, and I'm not very, it is still an unpleasant experience being looked down upon), and then the next day to be annoyed at the household shenanigans.

Oh, why not keep a logbook then? Like a diary or a journal? Well, "been there, done that" and my journals are mere dusty, termite eaten books in a small box. Anybody who has ever written has always written for somebody else to read. It is a big lie that all we writers, good and bad, or especially the extremely mediocre, that propagates the lie that we only write for ourselves and only for ourselves. People who talk to themselves either have invisible friends, or they belong to a mental institution—these people have problems, issues, etc. Yet people who write to themselves are somehow seen as being... what? Heroic? True to their art? What a laugh! People write to be read... the reason why we want to believe that it doesn't matter whether we are read or not is because we cannot please everyone and it is easier to pretend that we have pleased ourselves.

For instance, I have always wanted to write the sort of articles on the level of TIME, Readers' Digest, or Christianity Today... you know, the sort of articles that discusses something in more than just three pages. The only way one can ever learn to write that way is to have as much practice as one gets, and I am quite sure that in the past, people are given that opportunity to grow. To grow, that is, one can be at one time not so skillful, or witty, or endearing, or any of those lovely adjectives, and keep on writing until one becomes skillful, or witty, or endearing, or any of... well, you get the picture. Yet, and I am at once admitting that maybe my experience is unique, I find that writers should be good the first time around, they are demanded to be good... or they just will not be given a chance. Well, at least, when I can blog regularly, I can have that practice, even if my readership is low, and the few "friends" who know about it don't find any inclination to read it... but I can practice, at least. And, I practice giving it in those little bite-sized lengths that this generation can stand to occupy their attention.

Well, that's just the problem: even if good writing manifests itself in tight, one topic, one goal and one objective writing, the swirl of ideas in my head now is anything but. I hate the whole process of transferring to a new place (I know I can write at length about that), I hate having to get to know new people again (ditto), I hate having to lose my stuff (ditto; oh, heck! ditto for the rest of the list), I miss my wife, I feel so unwanted, I feel so unneeded, and I don't know what I want to do with my life. They are all a jumble, and as such, when they remain a jumble in my head, and nobody understands a jumble, it drives me to lethargy. When I write, I take the first steps to understanding myself, the world around me and my place in it; at least, insofar as those subjects that I write about.

But I am not immune to criticism... I have ever wanted to please. Who can I please? So far, very few; so even in this, one of my beloved activities, I find myself mediocre.

The one thing that stands so clear in my mind, in bold 40 point type, is that with money comes happiness. All the people who have much more money than I are happier than I am. The answer seems to be simple: just get a good enough job that supplies that money. Yet, to get those sort of jobs, one must first have money: to study for, to prepare for, to seek, to find, to keep the job. Some have argued that I am smart. Well, no matter how smart one is, if one doesn't have the money, that all one guy will be: merely smart. I want to give my wife and family a better life, and I know I can... but to get that better life, it seems, I must purchase it. I have tried so hard to start as I am, for years, with no success. Even those I know who have the smarts, even if they are not in the ministry, do not get plenty of money or security if they had started out poor. Yet those with mediocre minds and mediocre hearts, just because they were born with more money than they can spend, they are the doctors, the lawyers, the scientists... in short, everything that I have wanted to be. I have met a lot of people who, with their money, was able to acquire enough polish to be what this world would characterize as "intelligent" or "smart"... they have acquired accents, acoutrements and the "means" to be as "high class" as they seem.

Yet, because my Dad was poor, though his IQ is 152, he remains, well, remains the way some mediocre probinsyano can hope for. He has very little polish, though he is smart, and because of that, even if he is smart, opportunities are denied him. My mother-in-law, no matter how industrious and skillful, because she started poor, can only have the security of her own home, but will never be free from financial worries. . . . They deserve to be happy and carefree as the next coñotic around, and yet both have to work harder than they deserve. . . and for what? Neither are truly appreciated, if what little pats on the back they get cannot be considered "appreciation."


And so there remains just one logical question left to ask: are poor people, no matter how skillful or industrious, ever entitled to the same comforts that rich people have (even if they never earned it)? Are all people ever so equal to ever hope to be entitled to the same sort of comforts? The answer, apparently, is "not ever."

We Know He's Guilty, But There's No "Evidence"

One of the things which has continually confronted me during online discussions with atheists and non-Christians is the need for evidence that they can acknowledge. They sometimes need a photograph of God: sounds simple enough, but that photograph has to be authenticated by all, I repeat, all the photography experts in the world that this photograph wasn't "faked". It doesn't stop there, since now all, as in all religious people in the world, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikh, Hindu, etc., would have to agree that, yes, that person in the photograph is God and not someone else. Yet, I have met the atheist who is also a skeptic which, even if this preposterous requirement of "evidence" is met, will still not believe, because they have already assumed a priori that since Premise 1 - All sightings of the supernatural is an instance of hallucination, Premise 2 - All "evidence" of God is a supernatural sighting, Conclusion - therefore any evidence of God is just an hallucination.

And yet, despite the unwarranted assumption that the lack of any "solid" evidence for a phenomenon automatically means that that phenomenon hasn't happened, outside of relgious arguments, "supposing" is seen as equal to science, if not science itself. One of my favorite shows on TV are the CSI: Crime Scene Investigator series of shows. Numerous times, the investigators reconstruct a crime scene based on whatever "evidence" they can find. Most of the time, they are able to get an admission of guilt, by reconstructing what happened even if they had never been there to see what happened. Yet there are those times when the evidence only goes so far, and the criminal goes free because the evidence isn't enough to arrest or hold them. We, as the audience, are usually privy to what actually happened, and sometimes we feel the frustration the fictional characters feel when the fictional characters go free.

Yet once in a while, in real life, criminals get to go free inspite of the overwhelming evidence that should have kept them in jail. In A Celebrity Murderer Beats the System, an unrepentant murderer named Wilbert Rideau gets to go free for being, supposedly, "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America"; it doesn't matter that he blames everybody but himself for the crimes; even when

[i]n 1961 Rideau robbed a Lake Charles, Louisiana bank using a gun he'd purchased the day before along with a buck knife. He ordered three employees into his car and drove them to a bayou. There he emptied his gun into them at point blank range, hitting two in the neck and a third in the arm. One escaped into the water; one feigned death. The third, Julia Ferguson, made the mistake (according to the others) of begging for her life. Rideau drew his knife and plunged it into her heart, killing her...

he still thinks that he isn't criminally liable because

• it's the fault of the weapon he happened to have; if he didn't have it, he reasoned, he wouldn't have committed the crime
• it's the fault of the bus that he missed; if he hadn't missed it, then he wouldn't have been so pissed that he needed to vent his ire on a bank and its employees
• it's the fault of those he shot; they tried to escape—he only did what he logically had to do, shoot them
• it's the fault of racism; those he shot and stabbed were white so, he reasoned, of course the jury will find him guilty, since he's black
• it's the fault of being too young; he was just 19 years old, so now that he's older, he's not liable anymore
• it's the fault of the media; they turned it into a media circus, so he was flabbergasted into admitting guilt

So, what has this to do with the skeptics and the atheists? The fact that a lot of people honestly think that Rideau was the victim rather than the criminal, inspite of all the "evidence". Those in Rideau's camp have claimed that the facts were in their favor, not the other way around.

We know that God exists. We know that Jesus is who He says He is... we know that Jesus fully intended to claim that He was God, and that the only way to salvation is through Him. Yet, inspite of all the "evidence", they would convince us that the facts actually are for atheism or paganism. In the above example, Rideau's supporters claimed that Rideau was not guilty because a mob of angry white people wanted to do Rideau bodily harm, therefore he was innocent (even if it doesn't logically follow); atheists love to point to the supposed viciousness of the Crusades and groups of misguided Christians as the reason why Christianity is not true (even if history shows that the popular conception of Crusades being run by power-mad popes is a misconception).

We know that God exists. Yet whatever evidence we have will never be accepted and, in fact, be controverted to prove otherwise, as Rideau's lawyers have done to make Rideau "the victim" instead of the victimizer. Christians will always be the "bad guys" and the atheists will be the "good guys", no matter what we do. We know what really happened... yet even now Christians will mouth the philosophies of the lie instead of the truth just so that they can seem to be learned. Seminary professors and University summa cum laudes, supposedly Christian, but who would rather deify Marx and Mao than fall down at the feet of Jesus.

As Ærynn would say, it is a fallen world; so what did I expect? My anxiety pushes to the roof when I think that I will be raising my children in this world.

I sometimes get really frustrated with my Dad. Even though I take pride in the fact that my Dad is one of the only really "old" people (he will be sixty-five this coming fall) to be able to use the a word processor on a regular basis, backup his files, search and sort his eMail, copy and paste information from the internet, and other stuff which will boggle other senior citizens from our particular cultural heritage (and he learned it pretty late, too; only about 12 years ago for word processing and two years ago for sufing the net), my Dad still manages to frustrate me over things which I have since taken for granted as a given or obvious.

For instance, my Dad was a pretty skillful WordPerfect 5.1 user—he can layout a page using that DOS program as if he was using a high-end page layout software like MS Publisher or the good ol' Pagemaker programs. Very skillful. Yet, when I upgraded to WordPerfect 6.1 after an install of Windows 3.1 (yes, this was some years ago), he went bananas. Why? I not only had to "re-educate" him on the nuances of a fully graphical and WYSIWYG interface but also to reconfigure the keyboard layout in the original WPDOS system, that is, the original keyboard layout of the DOS program. Because I had to use that program with my Dad at home, I had to continue using that original layout, inspite of the more recent and (in my opinion) better keyboard layouts that are available.

This repeated itself for versions 10 and 12—I've had to make trips to his office just so I can "configure" the software for his use; he can't ever use it out of the box.

Recently, I've tried convincing him to switch eMail providers, from Hotmail (with its pitiful 2MB inbox and interface) to Gmail (which gives 2 Gigabytes for free). Since he is a Yale alumni and is provided with a lifelong email address, he can essentially change eMail providers whenever and wherever but still having his old eMail address (which is an @aya.yale.edu).

But he won't. Why? Because he can't "understand" that new Gmail. It doesn't matter that Hotmail has a more cluttered interface than Gmail. It doesn't matter if Hotmail's filing system is chaotic compared to the elegance of Gmail. It doesn't matter that even with the differences, those differences aren't much when it comes to functionality—there's an inbox, there's a "compose" link, etc.

Still, I will see that he makes the change. When his office computer, for some reason, cannot run his beloved WordPerfect, he reluctantly learned (on his own) how to use Microsoft Word. True, MS Word is severely limited in a lot of things that WordPerfect excels at, and there are plenty of things my Dad was unable to do in MS Word that he used to previously in WordPerfect... but that's beside the point. He learned on his own.

So, I will transfer the connection of his Yale eMail from Hotmail to Gmail, and he can learn the hard and traumatic way—the way, it seems, that he learns new things best.

I've always wondered at that. My Dad has, in his youth, consistently tested at an IQ of 152, which is much higher than anyone I know (although I know that there are higher IQ scores). Yet, when it comes to "things new" he seems to be just like one of us, bumbling and craving for the old comfort of familiar things. Dad has been taught for as long as he can remember that there is just one "correct" way to do things, and maybe that's the reason why, for him, interfaces should not change. So, inspite of the IQ, thanks to the way education is done here in the Philippines, where there is only "one correct way" and that teachers are always right, he cannot get beyond his limitation and accept that there are new ways to do old things.

Still, he has that IQ (which I have hoped for years that I had). Maybe he will surprise me if once I cut him loose. Maybe I've been holding him back by "helping" him too often.

I'm a Third Culture Kid

I have always wondered why I've found it difficult to fit in. I don't see myself as anti-social, or as particularly unfriendly. But for most of my life, except for interactions with my nuclear family, I've found it much easier to be aloof. It doesn't mean that I like being aloof or alone. It doesn't meant that I don't crave for companionship and some place to "fit in". I just find it "easier" to just not "fit in". Now that I have my wife, it is just another way of interacting only with my family. For instance, no matter how welcome I am in the home of my in-laws, at the work place or in school, places where I should be at ease, I am not. There is always this need for personal space.

For a while, I thought that my twin and I were the only ones who had this condition, and that our super-social youngest brother didn't have this unease to be with other people. I was wrong. He would socialize as a way of coping, but he too wanted his "Fortress of Solitude". And he was only able to be at ease with his wife's brother only because they live near each other enough to be included as the nuclear family. All Pastor's/Preacher's Kids or PKs I have talked to craved this personal space, this place that is uniquely theirs and no one else's.

I had, of course, assumed (wrongly, as I later found out) that the reason why we PKs long for such places was because, being in the ministry, we had no house. Oh, the church provided free lodging for us, of course. But, it wasn't ours; we were temporary boarders. Frequently, the free lodging was too small, even for small families. But it didn't explain why those PKs who stayed at at a particular church practically their entire lives, or who had their own houses, or (especially those Bishops' or District Superindents' kids) who had really large and spacious lodgings, also felt the same way. Almost immediately, a PK who grows up will try to find a place to settle down, a house (if it can be afforded), and a group of people to belong to. Still, this assumption was good enough to explain a lot of things.

Until I came across this article on my research on what Boarding Schools were like. It is about what is called a Third Culture Kid (click here). I quote it below, with my emphases in italics and in a different color:

Third Culture Kids (TCKs) is a term for children whose families move frequently, usually because of work obligations, and who have grown up in so many cultures that they don't consider any one of them to be their "home" culture. These include military brats, the children of diplomats and Missionary Kids. The term can also be expanded to cover children in other circumstances, such as those sent to boarding schools or the children of immigrants.

The term was coined by Ruth Hill Useem in the early 1960s. According to her, a Third Culture Kid learns to cope with a new culture rather than adjust to it, becoming part of a situation and yet remaining apart from it in a certain sense. Their experiences among different cultures and various relationships makes it difficult for them to have indepth communication with those who have not experienced similar conditions.

While Third Culture Kids usually grow up to be independent and cosmopolitan, they also often have trouble "fitting in" with anyone who hasn't had the same combination of cultures that they have. Some of them come to terms with the tremendous culture shock and loss that they have experienced. They gain a broader understanding of the world through their varied experiences, while others spend their adult life trying to come to terms with those issues.

The term is sometimes also used to describe autistic kids and people with Asperger syndrome who grow up in their childhood in considerable isolation and without much social relationship, largely in a conceptual world.

All this time, I had been searching for a "home" and although I have found it in my wife I think I am still coming to terms with it. At least I know now, and so does my wife. One thing I am sure of: I do not want my own children to be a Third Culture Kid. Oh, I know the experience may bring wisdom and a broader understanding, and I may change my mind about this years from now... but right now, I find it extremely debilitating.

One more reason for me to wish that my wife and I had a life in the Philippines rather than in Australia. I want my kids to grow up in the Philippines, not Australia.

Professional Killers and Kidnappers Have Rights, Too

---

Note: This entire post does not reflect my real views. It is sarcasm; it is my attempt to use the "logic" that has been used to justify some questionable actions.

---

The world is no stranger to legalized gambling or to legalized abortion. Right here in the Philippines, legalizing jueteng (a numbers "game") is seen as being beneficial in the long run, while legalizing abortion will prevent under-the-table dealings that cause preventable deaths. But, as I said, this isn't new; gamblers and those who undergo or perform abortions have gotten their rights guaranteed in various points in the world. There are those who decry it, yes, saying it is wrong according to some moral or religious codes (or preferences), but they did get their rights. Pinoys will get these rights eventually.

However, practices which have before been much more moral or honorable are continuously denied. The right to vendetta, the right to duel to the death, and the ancient right to the practice of ransom used to be a part of everyday life because they are supposedly "wrong" and "violate" the rights of others to life and property. Yet, gambling and abortion can equally be argued as violating other people's rights of life and property, especially the rights of those who cannot defend themselves; but they will have their rights guaranteed.

Yet professional killers and "kidnappers" are forced to go behind the law, forced to hide or go into exile or even sentenced to death without anybody defending their rights. Oh, they are given excuses, like extreme poverty or insanity; but never really about defending their rights to kill or to hold someone for ransom.

Fraternity members, for instance, have been forced to go into hiding or into exile, never finishing college and never being able to lead normal lives or find jobs, at best, or sentenced to life imprisonment or to death, just because they also have been forced to sneak around and kill their schoolmates in ambush. Whereas in times past they could have honorably challenged them to a duel, in full sight of the public, and regulated by a code to prevent abuse. Thanks to some namby-pamby excuse to "preserve life" (in this case, the life of another frat member who would have done the same thing; life, apparently, only becomes important once you are dead), this is no longer possible.

Not just vendetta, but it also used to be an acceptable policy to assasinate your enemies. That is why we are laden with leaders who are indecisive and who take for granted their obligations in leadership: they never went through the fire... they never had to learn to outwit and outlast their enemies... they never had to learn to live for their people. Assassins are seen as common criminals now—they are shorn of any honor they used to have.

If they legalize killing, don't they (the government and all the "conservatives" out there) see that instead of wanton bloodshed we get discipline and order. Each time there is a "killing" it is ordered, controlled, and people have the chance, the right to defend themselves. Instead of having frat members having to sneak in the shadows and commit "murder" (as they call it), both parties have the opportunity to choose the weapons, choose the battlefield, and choose the way they ought to die. They are given dignity, even in death. The relatives of those who die will stop seeing it as a tragedy but as an honorable way to die, as we all will do, in combat.

Those who assassinate and are assassinated, given a code of conduct, an assassin's code (if you will) shall be more careful about who they kill, that is, only legitimate targets and no innocents (as assassins are frequently forced to resort to because they are forced into the shadows). Our politicians gain respect for other politicians, instead of endlessly filibustering each other in session. The government, of course, regulates all this; or, if they are unwilling, let an impartial body decide. With assassinations so controlled, with those targeted given ample opportunity to defend themselves, such political killings will be brought out of the corruption that they have been embroiled in.

Killing is a way of life, and no religion has any right to deny this. Besides, this does not mean a loss of choice; anyone is perfectly within one's rights if one doesn't want to kill. But to force one's preference (or squeemishness) over killing over everybody else? No one has that right.

How about kidnapping? Or, more accurately, the abduction of persons for the purpose of ransom? This used to be done very often as well, in fact, by honorable knights against other knights. How could such honorable practice have fallen as the practice of knights to the practice of thugs (as they claim). They abduct the Chinese in our country for money, sometimes for exhorbitant sums of money, sometimes much more than the families are willing or able to pay, circumventing the actual worth of the individual. This has come to this situation only because it has been outlawed. As always, if only it can be legalized, the abuses and the frustrated killings of the abductees will be lessened. Killing is fine and good on its own, of course; but they should be given the right to defend themselves, as knights were given the right: if they lost, they are held for ransom.

Too often, "kidnapping" has degenerated to a crime of passion or of revenge, or even of bigotry, when it should have been a part of an honorable profession. If legalized, it means (of course) regulation. Only those families that are capable of paying will be seen as legitimate targets, and each abducted individual will be valued accurately. A college student will, quite obviously, not "cost" as much as the CEO of a company. In the current practice, such ransom demands are shamefully arbitrary. If legalized and regulated, the government stands to make money out of it also. It can be taxed; the country stands to benefit from even a percentage of the sort of amounts that is being exchanged here. Why are a lot of abductions are sloppy, why a lot of law enforcement authorities get injured or killed, why the abductees are injured or killed when both parties could have gotten what they both wanted, and all the rest of us benefitting, too? It will mean more jobs, for those who can be bodyguards, for the teachers and martial artists that will teach the bodyguards, not to mention those involved in training abductors.

Bigotry will also not be tolerated. Currently, only the Chinese and the Americans get abducted... why? Why not those of other nationalities? Why not movie stars? Why not the Cojuangcos? Once it is regulated, only a certain quota of any group will be abducted. The Philippines will be known as enlightened.

The only reason why it is dangerous and dishonorable is because it is not legal. It is done by amateurs and hatemongers, when it can be done by professionals and those who are dispassionate about doing a job. It becomes a game, with no loss of life for those who want life, but an opportunity for an honorable death and acceptance of death for those who can.

Bottom line, legalize organized killing and organized abducting. Only those without the courage and strength of character, only those who do not care about choice will oppose this.

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It appalls me the way this has turned out, trying to use the arguments and the justifications of those who think that legalizing jueteng and abortion can ever be a good idea. I had wanted to show the weakness of their argument by parodying their logic in presenting two of the most reprehensible acts as acceptable using their reasons. Instead, as I read through it again, I am shocked at how hard it is to show that killing and kidnapping is wrong and should never be legalized. How? When and if I appeal to the rights of persons, the magic word of "choice" crops up. What if a person chooses to die? What if a person "chooses" to kill? What if "choice" is the only inalienable right that all humans have? In fact, appealing to any moral code will just, in their eyes, weaken my argument. They would say "Well, that's precisely what you would say, you conformist, conservative, backward bigot." The thing is, the basic premises already differ; even if their syllogisms are correct, yet when the premises are not valid but cannot be proven to be invalid, what is to be done?

It is like all those episodes of CSI, where we as the audience are privy to what actually happened, that a criminal is really guilty, and that the Crime Scene Investigators know that the criminal is guilty, but they just have no evidence for that; what does one do? They are constrained from punishing whom the law says are innocent when, in fact, they are guilty. How does one say that things are wrong, then, when you cannot prove that there is something above and greater than us, even if you know that that something exists?

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Stop-over at Tagaytay

We had spent the day at Batangas for some swimming and enjoying the famed LorJay's cuisine (mmmmm-mmmmm!) On the way back, we stopped over some place for a little picture-taking, where I took this panoramic shot of my sister-in-law and other relatives.

I just wish we had been a bit closer to Taal...

My Niece

My beautiful niece, DeeCee, whom I haven't seen personally in a long, long time.

--
forged in

Gryphon Hall
(google branch)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My Web Site Project Is Finished!!!

After a few weeks of lovely toil, I finally finished my project for C2 Handcrafted Collections. This project was put on hiatus for so long—I took this project last year so that I can fund my wedding. As it turned out, what I thought would be just a two-month project ended up taking nine months to finish.

Well, that's not strictly true. It did not take nine months of work to finish. It actually only took three and a half weeks to finish. Rather, the project was shelved very often because I didn't have the capability to give what the client wanted last year, and when I did have the capability, I was already knee-deep in wedding preparations and an ill-advised 2nd stint in Storgedelphia. Let me explain.

When I first created the original C2 website almost four years ago from this writing, I was a webmaster and HTML coder that didn't have a place to host the website for free (since C2 was a small business and cannot affordt web space) except in Yahoo! Geocities. Furthermore, I was just learning HTML then (HTML 3.0, at that) and there were problems about cross-browser performance. JavaScript was a new and magical weapon at a time when glitzy web sites were the fad. So, with those limitations, I coded and created.

Of course, the main drawback of that old school approach to creating websites was that, if the content needed to be updated or revised, the webmaster had to actually delve into the code again and make revisions there. I didn't even want to think about revising the look at that time—it was impossible and difficult to do and would mean that I would have to start from scratch; that is, if I was foolhardy enough to actually take the job of revising the site. I guess I was feeling foolhardy.

One thing about a web site for a small business in the Philippines is that prices change very often, and often very dramatically. It came to the point that having a web site for them was just an empty boast. We have a website! Yeah, right... even if the information in it is old and obsolete. Now, the proprietor of C2 tried to get my old boss to do the updating. Even if he had HTML experience (which was even more limited now than what I had years ago) or even if he had the time (which he didn't, since he was too busy doing the "network" thing), I mean, he wasn't stupid. It was difficult for the original designer, let alone somebody trying to understand my very old and unsemantic code. I had, thanks to my earlier training in programming back in college, made the code as structured and as "commented" as I can without making the HTML file too large. Still, updating the site means I would have to edit each and every one of the web pages. My ex-boss passed it on to me and I accepted it because I thought it was easy money and I was feeling creative.

That is, until I met my hitherto indirect client.

Though unschooled in the creation of web pages, or maybe because of it, she said that she wanted an easy way of updating the site without having to hire a webmaster to do it for her. What? I said. She thinks she can enter the info or edit/update the info herself? Inwardly I laughed and tried to "educate" her; but she was adamant about having that capability. And, oh... adding more pictures. It was with a sinking heart that I found that she was serious and that she expects to get what she wants.

I knew much more about HTML, JavaScript and, my new toy, CSS by now to know that the project was remotely possible. Plus, I had created a very attractive wedding site for my brother in Geocities and I was feeling pretty formidable. But there was no way she can edit or update the contents in what she demands in as simple an interface as possible. It is, of course, possible to create such a site, but not in a free site like Yahoo! Geocities. I needed a server that will allow PHP code, or probably Perl Scripts that will allow her to enter a site, type/edit within a form and make the necessary adjustments. I thought that, in the meantime, I would create the "look" of the new site (it had to be a new site, the reasons of which will be clear later) before entering the "code". So, I did my research as well as I can, drafted a contract, put up a price, and started away...

... into nothingness. I can't find a free server, or a provider, or a host that will do it for me. I was also finding that learning PHP or Perl on your own is next to impossible if I have to work on other smaller, less ambitious jobs so that I can keep a roof over my head and food on my table. I can, of course, use frames, and the only type of text that she can edit are those that require the least amount of code, but that was a desperate move.


Finally, in all my researches, I came across these wonderful, very informative sites which have changed the way I look at creating sites: glish.com and A List Apart (or ALA for short). For the first time, I encountered elegant, speedy sites without all the Flash and glitz. It was there that I first truly learned the power of CSS—Cascading Style Sheets—for creating what I needed; actually, creating all of the web sites I would ever create. I also found that my knowledge was somewhat limited after all, and that most of my HTML is already obsolete or being phased out. Still, finding those sites was the first of some very important breakthroughs.

The second breakthrough actually should have happened months ago, specifically, around the month of January of 2004. My friend, Wulfgar, was keeping a blog at Tabulas and I became introduced to it because of something really tear-jerking post concerning my brother's wedding on the 3rd of January 2004. I had, of course, known about blogs before this, but had thought of them as the recourse of people who knew no HTML to set-up their own sites and is non-customizeable as far as visual design was concerned. As I said, it should have happened months ago, but I only read that particular post. Around August, I just wanted to relive some happiness by visiting that post again, then exploring his blog, and finally making the discovery that one can make limited customizations to the HTML code of the blog itself. Breakthrough number two: if I can just create one master template with the graphic design I wanted, then my client can just later on enter or edit her previous posts.

However, I found Tabulas too unwieldy and the URL just wasn't, well, domainish enough for me. I, instead, found the original Blogspot and found that, at that time, the templates can be customized. Besides, I apparently joined Blogger since March 2004 to detail the wedding preparations process.

I already had all I needed but, as I said, I took an ill-advised stint in that school to be its Computer Teacher again. There were a lot of other factors that contributed to my having to work harder than last time, involving a self-important individual and people with misplaced trust; but at least, in actually teaching the new XHTML I solidified my knowledge on it. I still can't claim to be proficient in coding without a manual, or doing more than just copying and modifiying CSS or JavaScript, but I had progressed to the point that I can teach students to create Blogs and later modify their templates using whatever knowledge they have.

In the meantime, of course, the project was not being done.

By November, I had resigned so that I can more fully concentrate on preparing for my wedding. My wife was in Australia at the time and I had to do a lot of the work myself. She was coming on the first week of December and things were coming to a head.

I got married on the 2nd Saturday of January 2005, went on a honeymoon, did a lot more odd jobs for about two more months as well as fixing a lot of the required paperwork to be able to follow my wife to Oz, before I finally officially started work on April Fools.

Basically, I had two templates that I could have easilly built the project around. Basically, it involved the use of a three-column layout, with a fluid middle column and a header and a footer. As I still am not an expert in CSS, I thought it would be faster if, instead of creating the basic template from scratch, I would instead make modifications on it. The two templates are from glish and from ALA. I experimented with both and decided upon the ALA method of using negative margins as the more flexible and modular layout.

I had been working on the code for about a week before I showed it to my wife. I had, until then, been basing the visual designs on the original graphics of the old site, and Ærynn wasn't happy with it and wanted it changed. Now, in the old days, changing "the look" of a site after a week's work of design was just too much to ask if you are on a deadline (I was, by the way, more than six months overdue; hehehehehe). But, thanks to the "magic" of stylesheets and semantic markup, all I did was, yes, change the stylesheet... until I hit upon a snag.

Apparently, with all the little modifications I was making to the original ALA template, simply changing the stylesheet wasn't a solution. Still, semantic markup still saved me, since it has made the structure of the page itself much more apparent to me. Using the new stylesheet, I eventually did start from scratch, creating my own markup and (oh, joy!) my own stylesheet. It was still based on what I learned from ALA, but at least it was not a carbon-copy anymore. Plus, I was able to create a separate stylesheet for when the page is printed out.

One reason I lagged so many months ago is that I had forgotten that form followed function and not the other way around. I had been trying to create the visuals first before dealing with PHP or whatever came later. That was wrong. One has to have the bones in place first before fleshing it out. With Blogger, I didn't need PHP to generate content and since the content is not destroyed even when I change the template, it was the best solution. Plus, it allowed me to design around function. The graphics, which took more than a week to set up, was just secondary.

A number of other tools helped me as well. I have already been using Mozilla Firefox for a while as an alternative to Internet Explorer, not because it was a safer browser than IE (which it is) but because ALA said that it was more web standards compliant than IE.

Of course, there was the lovely Firefox Web Developer Extension (which I downloaded from here) that made my life easier when it came to validating my code and experimenting with CSS.