Back to regular(?) everyday(?) mundane(?) real(?) life now... Yesterday: Morning being dragged around in heavy rain and traffic to do shopping. Afternoon fellowship was strange, seeing lots of birds flying (or not), and then the short awkward prayer meeting. Evening dumpling making where I helped by squeezing out water from vegetables using my palms. Today: Two services in the morning again. Sleep in the afternoon. More dumpling making (and eating) in the evening, and then sent my mom back to Yen's place. I don't know, I felt kind of sad and angry for most of both days...mostly because my mom was almost always with me, wanting me to do this and do that, taking her to here and there, nothing like the minimal disruption that she promised before she came here. I guess I should also be honest and say that I wouldn't be doing anything else anyway, but somehow I didn't want to spend all my time with mom, either... Ah...just two days of experience out of three months...

Random notes...

• How strange is this: There's this song called "Better is one day," and I've heard it once during a kwcac English service back in 2002, and never heard it again. That is, until last night, when I was flipping through my iTunes music list, saw that I have this track and played it. Strange thing is, we sang this very song this morning at cfc...it just sends some chill to my spine to see such coincidence happening... "Better is one day in Your courts, better is one day in Your house, better is one day in Your courts, than thousands elsewhere."
• So for this weblog, I have this long-running format of having three totally unrelated paragraphs in each post. Now with the introduction of random notes containing an odd number of totally unrelated items in point form, it's like having disarray within disarray...heh.
• I feel like a fake again. The prayer meeting, the worship, the sermon messages...I find that my heart wasn't into them at all... I keep getting sidetracked from focusing on God. It's like unlearning almost everything learned in the past year, which is kind of disheartening.
• One thing leftover from Thursday's dinner at Mongolian Grill...I bumped into Clarence and Christina there. That was quite a surprise. Considering that Clarence had been saying repeatedly over the summer that he wanted to go to Mongolian Grill, and that when he actually went there, I was there as well just by coincidence...it's a bit mind blowing when coincidences like this happens...
• One sentiment which arose on this family trip is that all throughout the trip, I'm constantly focused on taking great photographs of what I've seen, trying over and over again to get the right look, right angle, right brightness, right colour and stuff...and rarely succeeds. That's why it was surprisingly devastating to me when I found out about the grey blob that appears in almost every photographs... What this does is that by focusing on the photographs, I often forget to just take time to enjoy the scenery and appreciate God's creation. That's something I do regret. Perhaps one day I'll go on a long trip without taking a camera...well, that's kind of impossible, eh?
• I find in me a mild burden to spread the gospel to people like Kai, Li Zhen and Chen Jie, and to help spiritual growth in people like Francis, Aaron and Clarence. But then I looked at myself and said, who am I that I dare to do these things when I myself still have a lot of lingering questions about the reality of the gospel in my life, when I myself have very limited spiritual growth?
• Well, there are good things that's been happening these days, so I need not be always so negative, eh? For instance, the poor rainy weather this weekend reminds me of how we were blessed by God with the great weather for the family trip. Also, there has been less focus on my addictions, which is great, but still a long way to go. And there are now more dumplings to eat...heh. (And I just realized that I have made this point disarray within disarray within disarray...a 3D-disarray...)

I'm grateful to God for...

• helping me realize that the coincidences are no mere coincidences, they are hints of Him working in my life;
• His abundance of blessings during the family trip;
• healing my back so that it feels much better;
• helping me realize that it is possible to be less dependent on modern technology and live a simpler life; and
• reducing the level of sexual and violent desires in me these days.