Danny ChaiThis mymind is odd because I updated different parts at different times. So you gotta sift through to see what’s different. And it’s pretty unorganized. Fortunately my formidable eloquence rises above the thematic incontinuity.
I am amazed at how sinful I am. I mean, not just aware of my sin, but crippled and hobbled by it. I pretty much hate who I am. I’m just angry.
How dare I praise God. Sometimes I feel like my praising God, my very thinking I could praise Him, offends Him. I feel like the very presence of my sinful self in His presence just deeply offends His nature. Not to mention the hypocrisy I feel. Especially leading praise. How dare I. What the heck do I think I am.
I have struggled deeply with sin this year, sometimes to the point of questioning my salvation. I mean, I find comfort in the word, knowing that if you confess and believe, then you are saved, but there’s just this cognitive dissonance when I consider that I’m saved and then consider how the sin in my life seems to increase as time goes by. Sometimes I wonder how it is possible that someone who’s been saved can sin so greatly and so frequently. Where’s the fruit in my life.
The only way I can praise sometimes is remembering Psalm 51, and that God deserves our praise all the time, because it’s not about us, but about Him. That, yes, we are sinful, worse, we are even hypocritical when we praise, but even so, we must praise, even in our hypocrisy, because God merits praise. It’s not at all about us. Yeah, my mind wanders during praise. Who cares? I mean, I care, but you can’t stop praising, because He deserves it from everything and at every time. Even in the midst of our hypocrisy, He deserves it. So yeah, be bothered by your hypocrisy, but don’t stop praising God.
I’ve never really wanted to lead Worship Team. I mean, part of me does, but more of me has always hated it. The reason is, I hate my hypocrisy. It’s just, with my heart, my sin, how dare I even praise God, much less lead the people of God in worship. It’s just deeply unsettling. But nevertheless, I have a heart for worship. Does this make sense? God’s gifted me with a love for music, and I do feel I need to honor Him with that gift, regardless of my sin. So I want to be involved with worship, but just leading, there’s that cognitive dissonance again, like how dare I do such a thing. So I’ve always wanted to be a supporting member.
So I’ve never felt that I couldn’t lead, or that I’m a bad leader, although these may very well be true, they were never the issue. It’s just this deep feeling of hypocrisy. So I need someone else to lead, while I am still able to use my gifts for His glory and to the benefit of the body. I guess it’s false to think that others are less sinful than I am. But really, they are. Worse, I’m not even a man of prayer. Anyway, I hate hypocrisy, in others, and when I recognize it in myself, and it’s always been hard leading worship team. Not because of the music stuff, or even being the leader of a team, but because I’m a hypocrite.
Because I hate hypocrisy, I tried at Stanford not to set myself up as a leader, or to be seen as a leader. And I think that’s my legacy. Is that bad? I mean, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of having people not really respect me too much. When they think of me, they think I’m this strange guy, and a character, a dork, whatever. But I don’t think many, if any, really look up to me like they would to say previous leaders we’ve had at Stanford, except only because I’m older, but that’s OK. I’d say most people who know me know how much of a dork and a sinner I am. I mean, I always disappoint, let down, and offend people, and do what they know is wrong. I’m not proud of it, I hate it, but at least they know the awful truth about me. That I suck. Thanks for being my friends anyway. Of course, I use “friends” lightly. I have no friends. Except for Hagop Afarian.
Anyway, here’s my stance on the Senior Banquet / Senior Appreciation stuff. I mean, I pretty much see how a lot of it is false, and a lot of pretending of what was/is, and all that. The thing is, not everyone feels the way I do, and senior appreciation is at times less about the seniors and more about the people doing it. Meaning, I think it’s less a matter of whether we want them to do it, and more whether they want to do it. Is this a jacked idea? That’s what I think. Anyway, I do believe that there are people who don’t just feel like they should show appreciation but actually and really do feel that way, even to people who know it’s not merited. Anyway, they want to do it, and I think the responsibility of the seniors then is to accept it gracefully, regardless of how we feel about it. I really do feel it’s about the underclassmen, not the seniors. So when we’re not gracious about it, we make them feel bad, because they’ve honestly wanted to do something for us and we just kind of diss that. And I think that’s not Christian. Joonho, Paul Lee’s mentor, said something when he came back from college like part of maturity is knowing when to accept others’ sacrifice or whatever. So like, if people want to pay for a meal, you have to let them sometimes and not insist on paying yourself all the time. I think the idea is it is good to let them sacrifice and honor their heart. He said something cheesy like you have to accept their sacrifice or else you take away their riches in heaven, but I think the gist is honoring their heart.
Anyway, if people want to do something like appreciation night, as long as it’s not totally disruptive / unconstructive, I say let them, and honor their heart gracefully regardless of how we feel. I mean, that’s my opinion. Anyway, it’s not important to everyone, but it’s important enough to enough people that we should honor their heart by being gracious about things, is how I feel. I just don’t think it’s right that when people really want to do all this, and spend a lot of effort doing it, that we make them feel bad by not accepting it gracefully. Regardless of how we feel, that just doesn’t seem right to me. So I guess I feel that Senior Appreciation Night is more Seniors appreciating what underclassmen want to do for them night. I’m tired.
That said, there are definitely better ways of appreciating people. But whatever.
And I am really tired of all the cynicism that’s around me. Quite frankly it pisses me off. I just dislike the attitude that cynicists just think they’re realists and that they see things more clearly or accurately than other people. Whatever. I’m not a fool, and I’m cynical about people, but I’m just not cynical about things in general, because I cannot be cynical about my God. You cynics will think that sounds cheesy but it’s true. And I don’t think I’m that naive a person. Anyway, cynicism is just tiring. I can’t go so far (as I am yet unsettled) as to whether it’s sin, but it’s definitely tiring.
For Stat 116 we had a take-home midterm given out on Friday and due today. We also had an in-class midterm today. At any rate, me being me, I started the take-home at around 3:00 AM, and finished around 6:30. Around this time, you begin to wonder whether you should even bother sleeping at all and risk oversleeping. Because I wasn’t really that tired, but it’s hard to stay awake when there is nothing you need to do. At any rate, I decided to sleep.
I had this nightmare. And it had to do with Stats. I had to turn in either a midterm or a problem set or something, and it had to be in his office at like 12:30. So I do it, and get there, at around 12:15. Then I can’t turn it in because there’s a sequence of events that prevent it. Like, first I can’t find one of the pages. Then I can’t find a stapler. Then I realize I haven’t done one of the problems, and all I have is a big fat red marker to write with. A nightmare. When I finally finish I look at the clock and it’s 12:45. But I still see his box and didn’t see him take it, so I go over there, but the papers are all gone, meaning he must have taken them already. So I’m freaking out because it was due and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I’ll say and I’m freaking.
At around this time I woke up, looked at the clock, and it said 10:45. Ack! My class is at 10:00! So I rushed over there without combing hair, brushing teeth or anything sanitary. Luckily, he’s a nice guy and he let me take it in his office. But stupid stuff like this always happens to me. It’s the 3rd midterm I’ve overslept at Stanford. Yikes.
I gave blood a week ago and they sent me a letter. My cholesterol level is 171, which is desirable cholesterol level. At any rate, if you know my diet, this is pretty amazing. Because my diet consists almost exclusively of fried foods. it’s pretty gross. I love my genes. Of course, it’s the same genes that keeps my waist from getting any bigger than 26 inches, but that’s okay. Anyway, I’m still a little concerned, because last year my level was 163. Maybe I need to worry. I guess I’ll eat a salad once a week.
I think there are several tiers of people when it comes to intelligence. There is this guy in my dorm who is very much a genius. He has done every problem in the physics textbook they use at Stanford. He has not taken a Physics class at Stanford. He is currently taking CS 107, which he finds easy, without taking any programming courses. He prepared by reading a book over break. The man is brilliant. He’s Singaporean.
At any rate, there are those levels of people, that are really really smart. There are very few of these. Even at Stanford. Speaking of which, I was a little surprised at how many stupid people there are at Stanford. But there are quite a few. My roommate doesn’t understand what I mean by stupid, and he thinks everyone here is relatively smart compared to the population in general. And he’s right, I have no precise definition, but it’s still how I feel, that there are a lot of stupid people here. But I digress. There are very few of these supersmart people at Stanford. But that’s one tier.
Another tier is my tier, I think. We’re pretty smart, but we’re smart enough to know that we’re not genius level; smart enough to realize that we don’t belong to that top tier, and that really, we’re not geniuses, but really competent. It’s kind of a weird thing, because I think it takes some level of intelligence to realize that you’re not really smart, so it’s a pride knowing you’re this smart but a humility in knowing you’re not a genius. Kind of a pseudo humility I guess. Anyway, I think even this category is pretty rare.
The next category is the category that bothers me. It’s the people who are pretty smart, but not smart enough to realize that they’re not the top tier of intelligence (but actually the 3rd tier) so they’re arrogant about their intelligence. I mean, they actually think they’re the smartest people. I guess it angers me because I am smarter than them, but smart enough to realize that I’m not all that smart, so it annoys me that they don’t have the same realization. I don’t know if this makes sense.
Eddie has this Korean CD in his room, and Korean CDs are notorious for having bad English, and they all have English on them. For example, I believe one Solid album had as a song title, Amajing Grace or something like that. Anyway, I was looking at the credits, and they have all the normal listings, like drum, bass, guitar. Some spelling mistakes, like “keybord.” But the worst one was, I guess there’s this guy that raps on the album. Well they want to give him credit, but instead of writing “rapper,” they write “raper.” Yikes! That’s a doozy of a mistake.
Senior banquet was last night and it was again a 7 hour extravaganza. But it was amazing, I think everyone was very impressed by this year. I want to especially thank those people from Stanford who presented the song, that is Cat, Bev, Jieun, Brian, Stephen, George, Irving, Andy, and Phil. And Paul; sorry about that Paul. And other people who did things, like Gloria. If I’m missing anyone, I apologize, but it was appreciated.
Anyway, let’s be honest. In the spirit of not leaving anyone out, they invited a whole bunch of seniors whom I have never really seen before, and a lot who are not that involved. So it’s funny because everyone is just kind of like pretending they’ve done so much for the fellowship, when honestly there are a lot of people thinking, “who the heck is that person?” At any rate, the theme of the night was “Oscar night,” and every senior won an award (complete with trophy!) and got to say a 7 second speech. It was really interesting what people said. Albert Shim, as always, moved me by his eloquent simplicity. The best was what people who I didn’t know said. A lot said stuff like I wish I had been more involved, and stuff like that. But hands down, the best speech was this one guy who I won’t name. It went like this:
Unnamed person: Um, I don’t really know a lot of you, but I used to go to this church.
Congregation: (applause and cheers)
That seriously killed me. Other highlights were the Braveheart sequence, Speed, Titanic, and the Lean on Me dance. Very cool, indeed.
I realized this weekend that Senior Class KCPC is just on fire. I mean, a good proportion of them are hooked up. I was surprised. You bust that move, Senior class.
I saw He Got Game the other day. Bold movie. The boldest thing I think is soundtrack consisted entirely of Aaron Copland songs. I mean, entirely. Actually, the credits at the beginning say, Music – Aaron Copland. I thought bold. And then it says Songs – Public Enemy. That is just bold. And the credits are to the strains of Appalachian Melody. Is that what it’s called? Appalachian something or other. Anyway, that was just bold to me, and it didn’t work for me. The movie basically exhausted every well-known Copland song, including Rodeo (during a pickup game), Fanfare for the common man (during a highlight sequence), and everything else. It was just kind of weird hearing this symphonic music in a basketball film. It just seemed forced at times, like other music would have been better but he was stubborn on using only Copland. Bold. I gotta give props for the attempt at something so bold, but it didn’t work for me. The Public Enemy songs were pretty cool, though.
The Rockets lost today. The sad thing is the knowledge that we have absolutely no future. I mean, there is no one young and good on our team. It’s just really depressing to think about. I was watching the Blazers play the other day, against the Lakers, and I was so jealous because they have so many young players, and so much potential and excitement. But we’re just basically doomed. I mean, Clyde (super class act) is gone, Barkley is perpetually injured and way past his prime, and there is no one else good on the team. Argh! Hakeem’s the only one, but even he has lost a step since those championship years.
What depressed me most is the realization that Clyde is the heart of this team. The games I watched, it doesn’t always show up on the box score, but when he’s on, we win. When he’s off, we lose. Look at the Jazz series and you’ll find it to be the case, and it’s independent of how everyone else plays. So Hakeem is good, but Clyde was the heart, meaning he decided whether we win or lose. And now he’s gone. So sad.
Give us Steve Nash! Just out of pity! C’mon George, make this happen.
Another thing is, I am beginning to think the Charles Barkley trade was a foolish one. It made our offense very boring. Here is our offense. Pass it in down low, to either Hakeem or Charles, sometimes Clyde, and they go one on one, back up slowly. If they stay with single coverage, they take the shot, if a double team comes, they quickly kick it out to the open man and they take the three. Pretty one-dimensional. But the reason it’s so is because we have no point guard. We traded away Cassell and Kenny Smith left. It didn’t always used to be this way. Anyway, all things considered, it’s surprising we do so well. We need a point guard! I’m still very bitter over the whole Stoudamire thing. Argh.
The other day I went to take a shower. I normally undress in my room, put on a towel, and then go to the bathroom. But this time when I got there, Kenny (our fine custodial person) was cleaning the bathroom, and he said to wait a bit. So I went back to my room and studied at Irwin’s desk while waiting for Kenny to finish. Anyway, after a little bit, there’s a knock at the door, and I’m all oh no! and the door opens and this girl in our dorm walks in, asking for Irwin. And I’m all tense because I’m just in my towel, sitting at the desk. I was afraid she thought I was some freak who likes to study wearing nothing but a towel. And the worst thing is she wouldn’t leave! I was all tense, but she was all casual, like, yeah, where’s Irwin, when’s he going to be back, how are you yadda yadda yadda, as if conversations with men in towels were an everyday occurrence. She wouldn’t leave for about a minute. It was a very tense situation.