:: Thursday, November 28, 2002 ::

There's Steve Wong... Interesting... he looks like his hair got fried. Haha. Cool thing... being in Europe and all, what's the chance of him meeting a friend of mine that's doing exchange studies? Well if you're Steve Wong, you're the Godfather and everyone will eventually know you. Yup... I'd never expect it but I also did... Steve met up with Steph, best friend of Liz Kwong and girlfriend of Angus Fan. Coincidence? I think not.

Man... men's cell tonight was INCREDIBLE. I must say, that this group of guys is so different than years past. Everyone is coming with an initiative to share and to pray and to encourage one another. Sure we had 14 people but still almost everyone had a chance to share... I'm looking forward to some great growth with these boyz.

Caleb Chu always has wonderful insight. His analogies are money. Tonight he did one of his most famous renditions of "studying" Christ... see... as Caleb would put it, we are taking a course in which God is our professor. We don't only go to lectures and just listen to the professor, nor do we not just skip class and ask our classmates for info from the lecture, nor do we just study the textbook... no we do all in relation to one another... likewise God is our professor, so we should listen from him. We should also consult the bible as our textbook for further reference, and also speak to our classmates (brothers n sisters) about our studies (walk with Christ)... so simple... yet SO EFFECTIVE.

:: Jesse 12:11 AM

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Hrrrmmmm...


Finally our horrible class pictures came out. See if you can identify:
a) all the geeks
b) all the Asians
c) all the Koreans
d) me
e) Vin Diesel



This is me at Billy's place. Yes, that's a skull and I'm attempting to look like Hamlet... in much thought. Tonight, instead of heading over to the library as usual I decided to chill and study with Bills. His place is really nice... really clean... really Spic n Span. I must say that I slept quite a bit at his place, especially coming home at 2am from Kingston this weekend... yay... Kingston was so awesome. Priscilla's residence is peculiar in that her floor has only 12 single rooms... makes for quite an intimate atmosphere. Gerrome and I ended up breaking into an empty rez room to get one more bed to sleep on. Let's just say that it took more than an hour and some tedious but crafty skillz using coathangers underneath the door...

Happy birthday Priscilla!!! Her 20th birthday will be on Tuesday the 26th. More pictures from the weekend to come... once I get around to developing them... gosh...

:: Jesse 12:23 AM

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First thing's first...

I GOT 10,000 HITS!!!

Yay... I feel so bad because I barely update this page but I know that this is one of the methods a lot of you use to check up on how I'm doing and thanks alot. It's really given me much encouragement to write a bit more these days... especially compared to Billy's website... this has no comparison... and plus that boy's got crazy guestbook stuff going on!!!


Top Left to Right: Steve | Grace, Connie and Ada | Justin
Middle Left to Right: Caleb and Josh | DLo, Steve, Glendon, Rob | Connie and Steve
Bottom Left to Right: Glendon (that's finger up his nose) | Cora | Caleb

Here are the latest pictures of how ACF has turned these days. Man some of these people are crazy. You see, you don't see the pictures from the night before when a whomping 18 guys came over and had a LAN party at my place playing Warcraft III throughout the whole night AND all of Saturday. Funniest thing was that Eldon used some Warcraft game tactics to describe struggling and suffering (how enemies kill the heroes first or something) during Men's group tonight. Beautiful thing... last year we only had 10 men in one group... this year each group (2) has at least 16 men... wow... so many blessings this year... it seems like finally the effort put by some of the guys a few years ago have finally reaped the harvest. Oh yeah... I found the word Ziggurat describing the temple of Babel. Hahaha.

An update on how things are going... exams just finished last week and I forgot how wonderful it actually is to be pseudo free. WE actually had about 5 hours of class cancelled this week and so far I've been spending that time with movies and friends... what a blast. There is one thing I'm looking forward to the most... and that in about 40 hours I'll be off to Kingston to celebrate Priscilla's birthday with a bunch of my boyz. She'll be breaking the 20something barrier very soon...

Okay... off to sleep so I can actually be awake for the Rubber Dam race tmrw in Operative Dentistry!

Adios!

:: Jesse 11:19 PM

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It's been a week. So much has happened... that during the week I was so overwhelmed to put them down to share with you. But here the stories come...

The Car: Just the past Sunday my mother and father graciously came up to visit me in London. This is their first time coming up since the summer time, and things had changed quite a bit. Since my schedule is so demanding this year, I have been really neglectant on the cleanliness of my room and therefore dust had accumulated everywhere. After a wonderful day of studying together (???) at school, I drove the car to drop myself off before my parents drove back to Toronto. For those of you in Western Ontario, we experienced what I think was the first minor flood of my life. As I was driving down this hill, at the end of the hill was about 1.3 feet of water. As I drove through I hoped to clear it all but the light turned red and I slowed down. Bad Idea. The laws of physics took place and water pretty much covered the hood of our car. The engine stalled on the dashboard the car told us that there were battery problems.
Initially we thought that all we had to do was wait for the battery to dry. Turns out that the car's internal circuits, catalytic converter and all the sensitive stuff for the engine were totally shot... meaning... total engine overhaul... meaning... lots and LOTS of $$$ to repair. Thank goodness my dad had insurance that would cover this "flood insurance" and hopefully a new car may appear on our driveway.

My Prof: I got an email from that prof I was speaking about below. Apparently he's now taking a step of faith in searching for Jesus, and well I guess God let me be part of his journey!!! More to come on that...

Exam blues: Finally FINALLY FINALLY!!! Exams have come to a temporary halt. I finally have time to watch Smallville, catch up with old schoolmates (met up with Han, Dana and Jen), make some food and most importantly... SLEEP!!! Yeesh... so this is what it felt like to be in undergrad!!! Oh btw... my room is clean cuz my parents stayed the night and did all my chores for me!!! Yay for parents!

Priscilla: Pris and I have been attempting to wake up at 6am every morning to read God's word and pray together. I must admit, it's been really good and encouraging to know that someone on the other line is trying to stay awake at the same time as you... however... some mornings can be quite exhausting and all you wanna do is just sit there and passively pray and doze off instead of doing some more deeper reading. So far we missed one morning this week... but God has really blessed the time spent with Him.

Dentistry: I just got the marks back from my first half of my semester... I did relatively well. The toughest course, Operative Dentistry, really freaked me out cuz I ended up failing a class 2 cavity preparation, and pretty badly too. Even though it's just practice on Mr.Man (that's my manaquin's name!)... those mistakes would have costed me quite more in the real world. I also found out a bit more on TMJ (temporomandibularjoint problems) and how many years it has caused me such grief and pain in my jaw... clicks like mad!!! Looks like my chewing is all messed up. I also learned how to PROPERLY brush. Oh some other funny stuff... our building had a Colgate Sale... but it was kinda not worth it cuz you had to buy in bulk. Who buys 12 toothbrushes at a time??!?! And.. I saw the funniest thing. 2 x 150 yards of "glide floss".. 300 YARDS!!! that's 3 football fields!!! CRAZY!!!

Today we started working in the upper teeth and therefore I had to use a mirror the whole time. Man, there I was sitting... thinking... okay up is down and down is up... left is right and right is left... woah...I hope it's gonna get easier... like how easy it is to comb your hair or shave in the mirror... boy is it tough... meanwhile I hope Mr.Man doesn't mind...

:: Jesse 11:09 PM

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It happened.
Last night was incredible.
We sat in with my professor to speak on issues of Christianity and Dentistry.

He's agnostic at the moment, but he still seeks to find the meaning of Jesus in his life. But he still encouraged us to be real and discuss our faith.

I know God has been teaching me so much through this prof, about what it means to be an effective servant of the Lord. We all enjoyed some Lasagna over conversations about his ministry, his kids, his story about his wife and how they met... makes me wonder how come he doubts at this time but I guess he must have reasons. It's really cool how we are all apart of that story now.

Anatomy came back. I actually did extremely well. I don't know how on earth I could have performed after sleeping over at the dentistry building on hard waiting room chairs but I guess it must have done something.

Thanks for all your prayers.

:: Jesse 1:01 AM

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Wow. I've never studied 13 hours in a row. That happened as of yesterday, and will probably happen again today. I'm in the Learning Resource Centre in the Medical Science building. It's pretty cool... they have really REALLY nice computers here to use, even clean optical mice as our best friends. It's only been one day of intense studying here, but already there have been so many funny things that have happened:

- On Friday night, Jesh and Derek were at the vending machines buying food at 3:00am. They saw someone that appeared to float dragging a garbage bag in the hall... Jesh thought it was a ghost! Hahaha what a fool!

- These computers are so awesome that we installed Kazaa and watched our favourite show: Smallville. Looks like we'll never miss an episode... and I can save on some much needed bandwidth with Bell at home.

Well looks like I'm gonna be freaking out and pulling an all nighter. I haven't pulled an all-nighter since 2nd year working on our Business 257 Feasibility study. Yeesh... I'm getting so used to this building. We have couches in the basement, microwave for popcorn, access to the building with Card Swipe at any time of the day... wowzers... all we need is a coffee maker, a jitz table and some bubble tea.


This is a wonderful picture I saw on a fellow shutterbug's blog... actually it's on her collection of photos. She's quite a camera geek and a talented one too. Her name is Erica. She even has tons of pics from Mike's house warming party from a while ago. Oh yeah... something really freaky... Erica and her bro Ivan have awesome musical talent... at Joe Chan's wedding, I witnessed them sing a song they wrote, Erica played Piano, Flute, Bongos and Sang... all in one wedding! So Woahers... Freaky thing is that my parents introduce me to her parents. Guess what? The musical talent gene allele must have been passed on cuz her parents sang for my parents' wedding eons ago. Woah.

:: Jesse 3:37 PM

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A pinnacle to why I am here at Western and in dentistry will arrive Wednesday night. We've finally confirmed... a bunch of the Christians in the class will be going over to our Professor's house to have a discussion on what it means to be a Christian and a dentist. Funny thing is... he's Agnostic at the moment. Once a dedicated and passionate Christian, I will soon find out what exactly are the questions that he has that have pulled him away from his faith. In a sense, I'm excited to see that we can be open about our faith, share with one another (since he's encouraging that), and perhaps this may just be the kick start needed in me and my classmates to get real with our faith and perhaps see where we stand... it won't necessarily be one of those comfortable fellowship/church settings, but may eventually be more of a debate and discussion. Nonetheless, I've been praying for this day to come ever since I met my professor and discovered he had turned away from the Lord.

It's weird, how as a man of Asian decent, age seems to always have a factor in wisdom and respect. It seems as if I'm always seeking to gain respect from those older than me, and discovering how difficult it is. But meeting this professor, I've learned how open he has been with his students and how he desires to share with us some of his deepest thoughts.

As I was sharing with Billy (my classmate) over lunch yesterday, I felt as if it were fresh, that it was difficult to balance my life in dentistry. Funny thing is, it's not the balance in my own life, but the balance I seek to help people acheive in their own lives. Watching people worry themselves and exhaust themselves in areas that could be filled instead with thoughts and yearnings for the Lord ends up exhausting me. It's like you want so much for a person to experience so much of God's goodness... but if only they would take the step to seeking something deeper than what is so "surface Christianity". I realize that it's not my place or my responsibily for their spiritual relationship per se, but I am my brother's keeper and I hope to encourage them to grow.

As my exams come down to their final stretch (Freaking Whole Body Anatomy on Monday, Cavity Preparation Practical on Friday, Biochemistry on Wednesday), I find myself thinking more about my professor, my classmates and other friend's spiritual states than I do about dentistry itself. Ya know what? It doesn't bother me at all. Dentistry is but just the means to reach to a person anyways... and God's been teaching me so much as of lately that it's only that. Once I get engrossed in the studies, the teeth, and surgery, I lose what was in my original calling to dentistry:

That it be the trade that I pass on the love and hope of Jesus Christ, as he has passed onto me.

2 months of school can teach you quite alot! Praise God!

:: Jesse 12:07 PM

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