Aha, another chance to look at my day in retrospect, to judge my actions and critique my life, and last but not the least, spread some more poetry. I went to class this morning after a long internal debate. It was pretty useful so i was glad i went. I did some work in the afternoon but did very little work in the evening cos i gave in to temptation and played warcraft and watched "West Wing". I hope it does not happen again. Went to Bible study. The passage was kind of long so I had a lot to say but no time to say it. So frustrating, I wish there was a bible club i could join where people could afford to go deep into the bible and be controversial. Oh yes, i know where i can find that; Catalina. Hippee. Cant wait to get there. I have been feeling quite mischevious today. My roomate has had to take the brunt of my mood. I played 2 tricks on him and a trick on another. I spoke to my brother today who urged me to call my parents more. I am terrible when it comes to keeping in touch with people i cant see. I guess i am more of "out of sight, out of mind person". We took Staff photos for the freshman facebook today. My dorm did the 'Seven deadly sins', I portrayed wrath. I really hope i dont scare my freshmen away. I might have to damage control the first week. Below is one my favorite poems. "The river merchant's wife" by Li Po. It was translated by Ezra Pound.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

I wasted the whole day. I did absolutely no work today. I spent all the time playing games and hanging out. But I don’t feel bad about it at all. I guess I probably needed a weekend like this. I would probably regret this during the week but as at now I feel good. Church was pretty good. Its amazing how many people come to Christ at Abundant life. Toda, pastor Paul spoke about which direction he wants the church to go and how we should give more money to support the church. Even though it was not an evangelical message, about 5 people came to Christ. I truly believe that this church is blessed. If I leave the bay area, I think I will miss that more than anything. I found Pastor Zac Poonen’s website and I am listening to his sermons on Genesis right now. I really like Pastor Zac, almost more than Pastor Paul. Spoke to my sister and a friend about relationships earlier. They are so confusing, relationships I mean. Especially when you want a relationship, there is nothing more confusing than that. If it was not hardwired into our DNA, I think we would all give up on relationships. But as Kahlil Gibran said, sorrow and happiness are different sides of the same coin. Without the difficulties in relationships, we might not cherish them as much as they need to be. I think I will end here and go to bed. I don’t want to feel wretched tomorrow morning. Let me end with a haiku

Freedom, a mirror
For in it is where we see
Who we truly are

Woke up too early this morning. It was like 9;25am which was a good 20 minutes before my usual wake up time. Too make things worse, Ryan decisively won the Catan game i organized (he sitting next to me and made me write this). No one apart from me seemed to realise how dangerous he was (except for Greg). Well he won and thats that, but lets say, its not gonna happen again. Ryan and the other guys are trying to convince me to play for money in catan, but I dont think its gonna happen, unless its an official catan tournament where you have to win more than one game. I found some poetry that i wrote last year, brought back some good memories. In keeping with tradition, i will post one of the poems which i titled the busy bee.

The busy bee finds a flower
Red, embroided, a lover's gift
He doves for the nectar.
Sweet and nutritious
His motions, disturbs the pollen
they fall, unto the stigma
Life continues

The busy bee find his home
he does a dance
He goes in, makes his food
Honey, sweet and rich
Saves it for harder times
the sweet honey, attacts a bear
it eats, satisfied

Nature is beautiful
But ever stopped to ask?
Why the bear takes the honey?
It did not make it
Did not pay for it
But the bee can't complain much
maybe a sting or two
Just that, makes more honey.

Man i feel terrible. I have this flu for 3 days now and it doesn't seem like it wants to go away. It all started friday night when i went to see Troy. I guess it was because i had a hard week and the stress probably supressed my immune system. All the heavy physical activities i did on saturday didn't help either. Talking about saturday, that was a good day. Woke up on the wrong side of bed at 8:30 and got to dig up a sand box. Now the last time i did something like this was in high school when we woke up early on certain saturday mornings to do community service projects. The similarity was uncanny and took me to the land of nostalgia. I played soccer in the afternoon which we won despite the fact that we had no subs. Playing the whole game was definetely bad for me, so i struggled back to my room and promptly collapsed into bed. I woke up for church this morning but i chose to be in bad mood the whole day(I did wake up in the evening and eat some food before going to bed at 12). It was kind of fun, i have not been so negative in a long while. The best part was i could blame it all on the flu. I do plan on going to see 50 first dates tonight with Ashni and maybe John, and then collapsing into bed. I will go to Vaden tomorrow. I will end with a quote from 'The prophet: On work'

"And I say that Life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is in vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself,
and to one another, and to God."

I was going to end here but i feel its better if i had some more

"And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn for your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a houe with affection,
even as if your bleoved were to dwell in thta house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the furit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching."

Kahlil Gibran

Thank God for his redeeming mercy and faithfulness. Today, i heard an awesome talk at IV. Great message. I guess it made me realise that in a lot of ways I was too image concious, especially concerning my faith. I realised that I was too concerned about doing the right thing or the christian thing so as not to cause others to question my faith. This limited the freedom that i had in Christ and also made me defensive about Christianity. Today's message made me realise that it was ok to be a "foolish Christian". I decided to stop shaping my behavior and trust God to do that. So if you see me behaving wierder than usual, no that i am just being myself and not holding back. I must say that if feels great to be free. I am so excited about RAing next year. I will go beserk. Yay for Cardenal. I will end with a quote from the "Prophet"(my favorite poem) by Kahlil Gibran.

"But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears."

wow, what a social day. Woke up at 10:50. Went for my last RA interview which was the flomo field day. It was simply awesome. Had so much fun. Made me really reconsider east flo. I just might put it on top of my list. But i must pray first and make sure that I am doing it for the right reasons. I then went for a picnic with my house till 5. Took a quick nap. Went for Africa dinner at 8 (I went 30 min late but i had to wait for another 15 min, thats african time for you). Went to Jungeun's birthday and helped blow ballons for the prank that was going to be played on her. There were so many peeps blowing ballons(even profros). Makes me wonder what she did to generate so much enminity. I went back to Africa night for the party which sucked. Terrible DJ. I got to catch up with friends though so it was cool. I am not going to bed. By the way, i have to give props to Erin Hsu for giving me a TI-89. I feel so blessed. God is good. My bed calls to me now.

So my popular request (by me, myself and I), I will continue my post. You didn't think you will get rid of me that easily, did you? Let me tell you all about Saturday morning. I woke up at an unholy hour for my Frosoco interview. It was at 9:30am. I am sure i left the hammarskjold at like 8:30 but somehow i was still late. Phew, it was far. When we (the interviewees) were waiting for the interview to start, we started talking. The others were all friendly and laughing and having a good time, while i was still recovering from my journey. I even realised the CDs (RFs) were looking at me with some concern. I began to get worried that i was not being friendly enough. I mean i was trying, but those people were so friendly, I was beginning to get wierded out. Later on, i found out that they were all Frosoco peeps so they knew each other. No wonder, I felt much better after that armed with the knowlegde that i was amongst normal people. The rest of the interview went well. I had brunch at lag with some friends and went to my Vehicle Dynamics lab. That lab was awesome. We had to drive a mercedes that was rigged with sensors, and use it to do some fast double lane changes. It was in an empty parking lot with cones marking the lanes. I did 17mph first and did some smooth turning without clipping a single cone. Before i could even begin to congratulate myself, the TA was like "No, no, no that was bad, it was too smooth. You have make 90 degree turns only, you have to jerk people around". So i threw away all my safe driver instincts and went like 20mph, turn the wheel like a madman. It was great; the tires were screeching, the TA and my lab partners were being thrown around like rag dolls, but i only clipped one cone. I did it like 3 more times. I am glad i am an ME major. At 4, i went to church and it was packed. I did not even get a seat in the overflow room. After that the day got boring. Well i am off now. Leave a honk if you love Jesus. Shalom

Whew, what a week. Thank God its over for now. I was so busy that I had no energy left for blogging. I struggled to finish my 3 homeworks due by W,Th,F, respectively and also had 5 RA interviews at Flomo East, The Row, Frosoco, Cedro and Soto. I liked the Flomo and Frosoco ones the most. I am beginning to think that Frosoco might not be so far away after all. That place is nice. You know peaceful, quiet, lots of plants and trees; just like the countryside. It's like the California of Stanford. But then its very far. I am afraid that if i live there, I might get disconnected from my friends. I can just imagine it.
Kwasi: "Long time no see, come visit me sometime."
Friend: Yeah sure, how about dinner tomorrow, tell me where you live.
Kwasi: "Oh, in frosoco, we have some good food at Ricker dining."
Friend: "Oh man, i am sorry, i just remembered that I have a mandatory section".

My most interesting day was Friday. I had an ME140 group meeting after class, and i was supposed to have done some programming before. As an hour before the meeting, i had done nothing. I really didn't want to be the only one who had not done his work, so i skipped class and finished it in an hour. Ironically, I showed up at the meeting only to realise that I was the only one who had completed his part. That was a good feeling. For the first time in like forever, I was on top of things, the leader of the pack, the bastion order, the defender of the faithful, the last hope, the foundation, the trailblazer, THE ONE. Man, that I was walking tall. Opps, must have gotten carried away. Lets get back. So i picked up the slack and completed more parts of the project till 2pm, went to Math class, then to lab. Played basketball, took a 2 minute shower, went to the Cedro interview. Made dinner, went to the Soto interview.... I dont remember the rest cos i was too tired. Well this post is too long, so i will stop here. Ciao

I stayed up late again doing my RA applications. Went to bed at 4:30 and woke up at 9:50 for my 10:00 class. Was late to class as usual. Came back home, had some lunch, went back to work on my RA application. Finished it and turned it in at 1pm. Yay!! Hurray!!! no more staying up late(yeah right). But truly I am glad I am done with the written part of the application. It was quite demanding. When I was done i felt the adrenaline flow out of my body while the effects of 10 hours of sleep debt kicked in. Not a very good feeling. I still had to go for my math class though and come back to work on a group project. I was so tired, thus it was not surprising that we couldn't do the homework. Went to wine and cheese and then to the bulgarian party. Played Catan with John, Amit, Wilson and Maleche. Maleche won and pretended to be all cool about it, pretending to be casual but i could sense the elation in him since he would stop talking about how he came back from behind to win. Anyway its bedtime for me now. But wait, I am kind of hungry so i will go down to the kitchen and get some food (the joy of an open kitchen). Cheers amigos.

So i woke up late for my ME 227 class as usual. Quickly rushed to class and learnt some cool stuff about steering cars around curves. Problem was i did not understand any of the technical stuff the teacher was saying. That scared the heck out of me and made me form a study group immediately. Went swimming in the afternoon which was a lot of fun. My teacher is the coach of the men's water polo team so he is pretty good I believe that i will be doing laps pretty soon. Went to Math 52. Took a nap, had dinner, went IV, came back home and worked on my RA application. Dude that stuff is just too long. I wish i was done. Anyway enough of this boring stuff. Did some interesting things today like scare someone witless with a green giant statue. i also called my sister and sang her happy birthday. Man, i still sound boring, well i will try to make my next entry more interesting. But for now, I have to finish those RA applications. Cheers.

thoughts i put down after reading corinthians 13


Love is patient, love is kind, love does not boast nor is proud. Love is not rude or self seeking. Love does not keep any record of wrongs. Love is great. Love is easy to attain yet hard to find. Love requires commitment. Love is the way to go. Question, why as a Christian do I not walk the path of love. Why do I find it so hard to love the guy on the street. Why do I not love the homeless as much as i love my sister. Why do I not love frat boys as much as IV folks. Is love really that easily attainable. I really wonder. God is love and the source of love and all that is loving. As humans, we are capable of love but that love does not compare to the love that exists in God. The love of God is unsurpassed by nothing and defies comprehension. When I try to love, I try to do it by myself. I fail to realize that my love is imperfect at best and I should be drawing from the source. I fail to drink from the well that is Jesus. I fail to drink the cup that Jesus offers. Even at this point of realization, I still have a reluctance to accept God’s love. The desire to draw love from myself without God is too strong. That desire cannot remain. *Pause* *Pray asking for God’s love to flow*. God is faithful and does answer all our prayers. Always remember that its best to let God's love flow through us to others.

I am back, after an absence of half a year, I have began to blog again. Why? good question, but i dont know the answer. Probably due to the fact that Jeannie Rose wanted me to blog so much that she gave me a laptop to do it. (If you guys see her, tell her she is awesome). Maybe more so due to the fact that I am taking all techie classes this quarter and thus i have to do some writing else i will go insane. So next question, What should i write about? well lets start with my day. I woke up like 9:00am, showered, dressed up, ate breakfast and got to my 9:30 vehicle dynamics class. Yeah i know, I am fast. Oh forgot to mention that i did my quiet time during that period too. Class was good and after that came back home, made some lunch and went to swimming class. After swimming, played some warcraft and went to the frosoco RA session. I must say that though i am a east campus fan, sterling quad is a beautiful area. Wont mind RAing there at all. I also had a good discussion about war poetry with one of the frosoco RFs. Had a quick dinner, watched the later end of the womens basketball game and saw them lose by just two points, if only chelsea trotter had caught the rebound. Went to the allfrosh houses info session in the evening. Hanged out in the house later. Played some warcraft and started to blog after reading some peeps blog. Helen's had a entry about when i made fufu for her and June. Its really fun to see my name in other people's blogs. Am I self-centered or what :). Anyway feel free to mention me anytime and i will give you props for it. Ok, i think i will stop now and go read some more blogs. Which ones? very good question, let me think; who will have my name in it; cant think of any. Well, thats not a problem, i am sure there are some funny ones out there. Ok dudes, see all y'all later. Peace