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This has alot to do with my quest to discover my abilities and more recently why I cannot seem to become excellent at something and just remain average or just above average at everything.

So today while meeting a guy after offering to fix his camera I asked him what he thinks makes the difference or the jump from decent/above average to excellent. He’s 27, studying for a phd and wasn’t happy with his engineering job after half a year graduating from mechanical engineering so he quit and went back to school. This is kinda the gist of what he said

I think it’s diminishing returns. The professional guy spends alot more effort just to get that little edge above that average guy.

And also, he said

2 kinds of jobs, one makes you rich one makes you happy. If you can’t get rich, at least be happy loh.. haha..

So that’s what intrigued me for the evening.. that and some talking in the car with my dearest. haha.. So I concluded i have no determination to get that extra edge because it takes so much more effort to break out from “decent” to excellent.

I just wanted to try some timelapse workflow, panning and zooming.. haha, pretty fun but takes forever.. I also wish I had a motorized panning head.

Do I love the gift more than the giver?

Is the question posed today during Sunday school. I’m definitely not a fan of glossing over material that has been picked out whether or not I think its useful.. all of God’s word and teaching is useful and there are always ways to incorporate anything you want into a lesson. Every topic you touch crosses into every other topic with many basic Characteristics of God and doctrine being the basis for other higher level deduced truths.

Anyway it was still an interesting thought from some “supplement” material because I was wondering how I can actually make this fact useful in my own life. As far as I could think I could only come to the conclusion that if you that God for only the things you like him to give you without regard for his will, you  don’t just have a problem with misplaced or absent gratitude, you have a totally wrong view of God’s character and how he works. Reading piper’s justification of many “bad” things (eg. death) as being gifts from God really intrigued me and how diving into the little nuances of the sentences yielded these conclusions too.

Still, the question remains.. how does this affect my life? and is it another one of those “LEARN THIS! AND YOU’LL BE THE SUPER ULTIMATE CHRISTIAN YOU WERE PREDESTINED TO BE AUTO-MAGICALLY!” kind of one principle to rule them all statement/axioms/summary-of-the-christian-life things? haha.. Honestly I’m so tired of people sharing the latest thing they learn as if everyone else is completely ignorant or unresponsive to it.. God works in different ways in different times with different people and everyone is at different stages of learning.. so lets not push stuff on each other and play the holy spirit.

I honestly think I might not be fully understanding what are the implications, but I think I’ll take a couple of days to think about the practical implications of consciously loving God more than the blessings he gives and more importantly, actually do it. There are days where I wake up and my first thought is of God and how good he is. I really like that.. I just wonder why it doesn’t happen all the time but I can’t remember if I’ve ever had a terrible day and sit down thinking God is so good too. That, is probably where the rubber meets the road.

Hyphen from Sam Hassas on Vimeo.

Found this at the website of a photographer I follow regularly. I think its his brother or somebody.. so I was looking at a promo video and then i clicked his other videos and saw this. This is VERY interesting to me. Simply because I’m in the age bracket (and I don’t feel abnormal cos I’m not married at 26). I’m also very comforted and at the same time disturbed that this youth to young adult transition happens in another country in another culture. Or maybe it because we have assimilated the culture and that’s why we have the same problems. We study till our adult life and don’t work till later in our lives and that’s why we have too much time bumming around as teens to become all messed up. Hmmm.. all hypothesis though. No concrete reasons as to why it happens. It could also be that as teens they never get rooted in God but in the group they belong in and when the group dissolves and gets too busy with life they have no reason to attend church anymore since coming to church to worship wasn’t the aim in the first place. Still, I’m sure the transition affects even the most devout of young Christians and it should be addressed.

3 months since children’s camp. I suddenly though of Stuart today. haha.. funny boy.. I wonder how he’s doing..

My eyes are sooo tired. Other than gluing the boat, changing the maid (thats a whole story in itself) I spent alot of today browsing through jobs online, DBS, Bank of America, looking at the classifieds and still came up with nothing really much. The DBS site has tons of stuff but wading through it is crazy. Applied for one and carry on looking through tomorrow. Shall do a small shoot with William tomorrow at night for our resumes and just stupid stuff like that. Now I’m really quite frustrated already with this. I’m trying to find what I really want to do and all the conflicting interests in my mind just can’t seem to prioritize themselves. I shall list a few.

I love to teach, but its super dead end with regards to doing something else in future and if I go now it almost seems like a first and final career. The starting pay is good but like every govt job the pay stagnates when you get more senior unless you are a high flyer.

I like to take photos and the enquiries here and there from my ads are honestly making me halfhearted when I apply for a stable job because each one makes me feel like photography is feasable. I feel that with enough learning, time and ads I can make it because honestly when I look at what I have to offer I think it is substantial and worth enough money. If I do this every week and every month I will get better and my pay goes up each time. But the bummer here is time.. Most successful photographers take 2 or more years to get a stable pay and not worry where the next job will come. I don’t want to invest time and have it fail. You can say I am scared to fail. Then I will have to start from here again.. where I am currently. I would be older and slightly outdated.

I wouldn’t mind a stable job and a paymaster so I know I have money coming in each month on a certain date and my career moves up and on regularly if I pay attention to it. I don’t need to worry about where the next job is coming or have to be a one man company. I just do the same job, over and over and over again and get very good at it, collect my pay and enjoy myself when I’m not working. Being a guy doesn’t this seem like the safest option? i mean, just after teaching, which I think I will never ever tire of?

How man how? I feel triple minded. All of them call out to me for all the different reasons. I feel so frustrated its like going to explode in my head.

So why am I in a hurry when I can part-time and ad-hoc my way through life? perhaps its multiple pressures from different sources, my desire to move on in life, others’ perceptions. Sigh. Honestly if I were single and staying that way, I think I’d be in very much less of a hurry and go for #2. #3 will surely most desirably preceed #1 but in the end.. I predict #1 will come to pass. I am seriously not

Ultimately, I am chasing money, which happens to be in the way of chasing the rest of my life. I really don’t care what I do, money is just the means. Job satisfaction almost means nothing to me at this point in life. Its just something people complain about because they have nothing else to complain about.

I don’t really know what to pursue.. and its slowly getting to me.

Happy Camper

What do you think? Haha..

So I got a box today, my sister came up the stairs and said something like “hey, did you see this its yours” or something like that. I was like whoopie! “Is it from the Czech Republic?” and i took into my room, it looked something like that.

So what’s all this got to do with receiving the word you might think. Alot actually. Some thoughts crossed my mind as the box sat on the ground.

Am I this happy to receive the Word?

Haha.. what a spoiler for myself right. So can you think of something you receive with gladness more than the word?

At the shepherds’ conference from home. Interesting. Don’t even need to go to the USA.