:: Saturday, November 29, 2003 ::

Wow... picture fest yet again. ACF's annual Christmas party took place last night at St.Luke's. The place was so jam packed. I can still remember not so long ago when the party was held in Pam and Roger's old house, and there were so few of us that we could gather around the Christmas tree and sing carols. Wow... have times changed... there were almost 80 people there last night with tons of food and yummies. The picture gallery is updated with tons more from the night.



There's Joanne Tse and first year froshie Shirley. I still think they look like sisters.



Dr. Mark and I. He was wearing the same thing as Richard in the picture below.



It was so awesome seeing my long time since birth friend come up and visit me in London. As you can see, we still have yet to grow up.



Tons of froshies... I can't recognize their names. That cool lighting effect was from another satelite flash from another camera on the right.



Caleb and Carie... boy I can sense the love...



Cheryl and Cora smushing her face. Cheryl always has funny faces.
Look here for instance...



Rich and I coming out of Demetri's into the beautiful freezing cold wintery weather...

:: Jesse 2:20 PM

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Happy birthday Priscilla!!! Hope you like the present!!!

Never fall asleep in the library. This guy below had his head like this for a long time.



Nor fall asleep like this person.









We have lots of fun in the library. Webcams are really fun too... it's like a digital camera wherever u go!

:: Jesse 7:00 PM

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I remember reading somewhere in Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets about how sometimes God waits for us to ask him for things before He grants us those things. One of those things is safety. Dutch Sheets raised an interesting question, that if we don't ask him to protect us, does that mean we may be in harms way in the future?

Tonight Brian and I left from Kingston at 9:00pm. It was gonna be a long long ride back to London, so we decided to pray for some protection on the way back. I was asleep for the first little while until I was awaken by a whole line of headlights from the oncoming traffic. Wow... what an intense accident... I thought as we drove for about 10 kilometres before the oncoming traffic ended. It wasn't much longer than a few minutes before our lane came to a halt. Odd... we just passed an accident.

We had just been stopped. There were red flares all over the ground. After a few minutes we drove slowly past the scene of the accident. We just missed it. There were so many flashing lights and firetrucks and personnel circulating the area. 3 lanes had been sectioned off. There was a bright halogen light illuminating 4 firemen using the "claws of death"... I couldn't even see a passenger under the totally crushed metal and glass.

Interesting thing about this all was that after we had prayed and filled up gas in Kingston, we ended up turning the wrong way and made an unplanned coffee pickup at the nearby Tim Hortons instead of getting it along the highway. Had we left immediately onto the highway we could have been in the midst of that accident.

As we drove slowly away from that scene with intense prayers for all those involved, I knew that God had delivered us from a potential extreme tragedy.

:: Jesse 2:02 AM

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Gotta love sponteneity. :) Found out Brian was heading to Kingston this weekend, and well... couldn't resist. So here I am.

Queens is SO nice. Western is beautiful in campus life, but Queens has beautiful building interiors. I'm studying here at Stauffer Library and boy is it "studious". There's NO comparison to Weldon. Stauffer Kinda reminds me of central library in London... there's so much adequate lighting, the tables are all new, not like the tables in weldon where there's graffitti all over and the thought of wearing a white sweatshirt will quickly dissapate when returning home with grey sleeves. The chairs aren't bent all back, the air circulation is wonderful... boy is this place nice.

Western is gorgeous... but only on the outside. The dentistry building is currently going through massive construction and I'll probably graduate before I get a chance to sniff the newly renovated hallways. I figure both are important: the school's exterior and interior.

There's this wonderful view of the lake (dunno which one... I almost failed geography in grade 9) outside Priscilla's room. I think Billy would have a field trip with his camera if he could also wake up every morning to a sunrise over H2O.

Campus life here is definitely different. Everyone lives soooo close to one another. Bars and restaurants are within 15 minutes from campus and no one really takes the bus. Bethel Church is only 10 minutes walk from residence. Unlike London, where there is no sign of food if we study on campus (yuck... Manchu Wok and Harveys which close so early). It's taken loitering and indecision after fellowship a real drag, where we'll sit around trying to decide where to go, arrange rides, and finally after we've made our decision we miss the bus we were intending to catch and end up waiting another half an hour.

I'm still thankful to you Western... you've treated me well. 7 years of tuition should suffice, no?

:: Jesse 3:09 PM

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Caleb as his usual self...

It was 10:30am, and we had about another hour and a half in our removable prosthodontics class. I had just broken my upper denture into two purposely, attempting to learn how to fix and rebond a shattered and awefully time consuming piece of acrylic. Just as I was about to make an impression out of stone, BLACK. Total and utter BLACK. All that was visible were the beautiful 6inch high blue bunsen burner flames in a symmetrical fashion down the aisles.

Was it the rapture? Nah... I didn't feel different. Was it a power outage? Definitely. Was it SouthWestern Ontario wide? We had no idea. All we knew was the familiar feeling I had in grade 5 when the lights would go out and all excitement would blaze through.

Funny thing is the same thing happens no matter how old you are. The same excitement and wonder swept through my 20something dental class the same way it did when I was half my age. People were laughing, screaming bouts of joy, lying on the ground, chatting here and there, and making the most of what was the first interuption in classes I've had since high school. The basement of our building has no windows whatsoever, and navigating around was near to impossible. Thank goodness for that trusty funky blue light that's come so in handy during blackouts and photography sessions (same light in weird pic below). Thanks sis for the light!

:: Jesse 10:12 PM

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Wow... after a few hours all those paper became one... I'm almost done this annoying essay! It's incredible what one can learn when he or she actually puts some effort in.

I'm back to my roots of undergrad: Periodicals A of Weldon Library. I'm also quite distracted like before when friends come by and study with you. Cynthia is still here giving me some company.

Had lunch today with Billy and had an interesting conversation about constants in our lives. Being away from home for five years, I'm starting to cope and understand that things at home will change. I got thinking about how friends have kinda scattered since high school, I'm still not used to the new renovations in my church, my parent's continual aging to retirement... and realized that if I was determined to imagine things as if they were in the day, I'd be pretty upset and frustrated.

I've been going to the Church of the Nazarene here in London. The thing I love about it is the abundance of elders and "Amazing Grays" whose exceeding wisdom and kindness are just waiting to be tapped into by our generation. This is something that lacks in the Asian American church, where language alone marks the barrier between old and young. During my youth years, I was so concentrated on the English congregation and its needs, failing to realize that the body of Christ isn't complete without those of the older Chinese congregation. I was reminded of an elder at NTCBC who has been around since I can ever remember. This guy was one of the roots of the English congregation, but funny thing is that most of us barely know him or would even think of his name when we think of the English side. This man (now probably in his 60s) would be there week after week, leading us in joyous hymns (which only now I've come to appreciate after exposure and sharing from those older than me) and bearing a smile that would never die no matter the crisis at hand. Little did I know that before my very eyes all along was an example of passion, endurance and humility. Oh how I long to meet others like that.

:: Jesse 3:44 PM

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Can someone say AHHHH??? That's a picture of all my articles spread everywhere over my extremely cluttered desk. Thank goodness I have a laptop so I can bring this mess somewhere else! I've been so busy these past few months to even bother making updates to this site, but I realize that updating this is sometimes the funnest thing I can do in a day.



I'm so glad Stitch is here to give me company.
There's always the question people ask me, and it's "What have you learned so far in dental school?" I try not to overwhelm them with terms they won't understand. So far we've encroached upon dentures, crowns, composite fillings, treatment plans, prescriptions, diseases... and at the end of it I realize how little I actually know about these things and it kinda freaks me out that I'm supposed to know what I'm doing in 24 months. Hahaha... Dr Wong... wait... this isn't on the record...

There are things to look forward to... I've been a lot happier these days, filled with Joy (not happiness). There's something I learned and it's that joy is a virtue, happiness is an emotion. Joy remains, happiness may fade. Joy is of the Spirit. As hard as it may be sometimes, joy is something I need to remind myself of, because God has blessed me with the joy of his love and goodness.

As the worship team got together tonight and did some open worship and instrumentals, I realize that God has brought me a long way from September. Back in September, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing since I knew I received an annointing this summer. Well I had a humbling experience through first semester. It's when you realize that you're not the most important person in the world and what you think all the time may not be right. Somewhere between the lines I get lost in good intention and forcing my opinions on others. Praise God, there are some pretty strong and Godly individuals out there who have helped in this humbling experience.

A note to some of you who like playing practical jokes. Though I may have sent a few to hospitals from practical jokes gone wrong, it was a while since I almost had to go myself. Before you play a practical joke, think. Think about the consequences. Hahaha. Oh... and never hit someone on the head with a textbook if they're eating Udon and have their head in a very vulnerable position. You may... just may... give them a minor concusion. Symptoms of a minor concusion include loss of balance, loss of appetite, nausea and drowsiness.

Oh and on another note, the guestbook is updated, since almost all my entries were deleted.

:: Jesse 11:35 PM

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I've updated the photo gallery of some happenings.. Brian and Simon's birthday and Derek's.

:: Jesse 1:46 PM

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Wow... I've been off the face of the world.

Nevermind. It's been so busy. I just thought I'd share some fun pictures with you from my fun filled weekend at Queens.



This is my first time visiting Pris this year since driving her in during move-in. Lots of people ask me what Priscilla does and this is typically what I say: "She's in OT, she's at Queens, and she's a Don." Their response typically is: "Wow... isn't that insane?" Well she's superwoman. So this is her spacious Don room and us getting ready for her Occupational and Physiotherapy formal.



This is the wonderful Andrea, who spent her Friday prepping Priscilla's hair and making her all excited before I got there. She's got cool eyes.



Priscilla has a pretty cool room. Her don room has a nice couch for people on her floor to come in and chat. It's about 3x the size of her room last year. Gotta love the full body length mirror.



Excited to be in Kingston!



We had a chance to stop by at The Coffee Company. That beret ended up giving both my forehead and Priscilla's an itchy irritating scratch. She claims that it's clean and barely worn.



Rez rooms are extremely dry. My eyes were so dry and exhausted that I took the oppourtunity to rehydrate my eyes with her humidifier...



... and take some interesting photos like usual.



Finally we find ourselves at Windmills, the restaurant that we always end up going to and never enjoying. That's Pris and her girls accountability group. Left to Right: Priscilla, Andrea, Dez, Vivian.




When I was at the urinals of Windmills, I saw this hilarious sign. Enjoy.

:: Jesse 11:53 AM

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