Personally, I'm pleased that Krista feels free to diverge from the transportation theme of her blog to write about Macbeth, for instance. I've not read Macbeth myself but my image of the story has literally been transformed by Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. This film was the first Kurosawa flick I ever saw (the first of fifteen in two months, that is) and made an unexpectedly strong impression on me. I won't quickly forget the menacing fog, the mask-like faces, the blood-curdling shuffle of "Lady Macbeth's" kimono on the floor, the final volley of arrows that finally dispatches the main character. It was amazing, and I was won over to Kurosawa's art.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that my wiki had been graced with some new pages written by Christian Stimming, my former housemate! Not only did he introduce himself but he also contributed to the running discussion between Krista and me on the joy of bicycling. Christian demonstrated concretely for me the power of many eyes. He read my quick page on my 1-year "sabbatical" from new committees and asked why I was still resting (since I had written the dates as 2002-2003); what I meant was 2003-2004. His comments got me to correct that piece.

Although I'm supposed to be on a personal
sabbatical year, I have a hard time resisting joining committees, especially
if they join two of my favorite things: the church and the web. On Sunday evening,
I attended the first meeting of the Web Advisory Board (WAB) for my church,
the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley
(FPCB), rationalizing my attendance as an opportunity to advise without having
to do any work (a great thing for dreamers like me).

Continue reading →

I've been running a public wiki for
almost three weeks now. What, might you ask, is a wiki? Not having done a comprehensive
search for a definition, I nevertheless recommend the following from wiki.org,
which I will quote here:

Wiki is in Ward's [Ward Cunningham]
original description:
The simplest online database that could possibly work.

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and
edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and
has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal
pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the
organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and
subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any
page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the
Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

Continue reading →

I remember The Timmins Public Library as divided between two floors. The basement held the children's collection, but the top floor was the adult section. I started out as a child borrower with a library card that indicated such a status. One day, while still a kid, for some reason I can no longer remember, I was given adult borrowing privileges. It seemed that my avid reading habits advanced me prematurely into the top floor. A new world was open to me, one that beckoned to me every Saturday morning for years and years to come.

Of course, I did not immediately become an adult reader in the full sense. I still remember learning about Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, specifically the controversy about its handling of love and sex. Being the curious child that I was -- and perhaps bolder than I ever thought I would be -- I approached the reference librarian to ask about the book. I don't recall her exact words, but apparently, she found a gentle but effective way to ward off my request to get my hands on the book.

hello

In the middle of a meeting with a group of undergrads last year, the phrase "baby faces" occured to me as I looked at the students around me. This is odd, I thought -- when I was undergrad myself at the University of Toronto, I certainly didn't see myself and my peers as "kids". The guys, we were men, fellow sophisticates. And those attractive coeds who lived in the dorms next door -- they were the most beautiful women in the world at the prime of their lives.

Somehow in the 17 years that have since elapsed, I've become one of those old fogies who think of undergrads as kids (in spite of promising myself never to call university students kids). The students do get younger every year, don't they?

Not surprisingly then, my friends -- and I -- look basically the same way to me as they did the day I first met them. It takes hard photographic evidence to make me see that the receding hairlines, new wrinkles, rounder features that are invisible to me on a daily level.

If this is the way that I see others, then could it be that those older than I have the same self-centric way of gauging age? In other ways, when I see only weathered faces, gray or bald heads, tired eyes, do others see the reality of a past that still lives on? The present is only skin-deep.

Re: Genesis 2:19-20. There are some days I'm rather impressed with Adam. I have a hard enough time coming up with categories for my blog.

A fine long day was topped of by dinner and a night out with friends to see the local institution Beach Blanket Babylon. BBB was fun, but would we have seen it if we hadn't been going out together?

Each book on every shelf has a story to tell. Should I listen to the dozens
of stories awaiting to be recounted? Or should I self off those books as quickly
as half.com can snap them up?

I can't seem to let go of A
Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem or Mass
Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition. Some books (such
as a copy of The
Best American Essays 1996 (Serial)) actually belong to friends with whom
I've more or less lost touch. And in the desire to master both Mandarin and
Cantonese Chinese (i.e., to Read
and Write Chinese) in my copious free time, I purchased Concise
English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary and Let's Talk Cantonese.

What
Should I Do with My Life? My goal is still Creating
a Life Worth Living. If only I could follow those simple formulae: Do
What You Are and
Live the Life You Love by Getting
What You Came for .

I'd like to have it all, I suppose. I want to experience The
Joy of Work that emanate from The
Effective Executive leaders all around me. Love would be wonderful too.
However, as one of those Singles
at the Crossroads, struggling with Boundaries
in Dating, I'm comforted that at least my would-be lovers are Caring
Enough to Confront me by saying, "I
Only Say This Because I Love You."

Maybe I don't need the love of a good woman. I just need to love humanity at
large. All I have to do is to start Making
Room in my heart, eating enough Bread
for the Journey. But as it ought to say in The
Activist's Handbook, we must work Peer-to-Peer
to spread what must be My
Only Comfort (or is that Wishful
Thinking?), that the Good
News About Injustice is that there will always be work for us do-gooders,
regardless of attempts at any Bridge to Understanding.

In the end, Finding
Faith in God and practicing our faith in the great God
in the Dark will answer the cry of the heart, "Please
Understand Me!" and that refrain, "Please
Understand Me II!"

Don't forget How
to Read Slowly. For you'll see that what started as an attempt to poetry
ended up to be Something
Like an Autobiography, full of Good
Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste.