Jesus Loves You - Part 2

Lately, I've been listening to the Kean's "Under the Iron Sea." I love the album, especially Hamburg Song & Try Again are two of my favorites in it. I had a chance to see them last year at a festival in Lawrence. It was a great show. We got free tickets to the show & Keane did an amazing performance. Loved it.

Beside listening to Keane, I was a little surprised to find people here in LA are more religious & waving their bible than people in Kansas or even Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa or even Missouri. It's not unusual to see someone handing out church pamphlets at the bus stop, in front of a coffee shop, or someone signing some church song out loud in the bus. On one occasion I was reading Victor J. Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God Does Not Exists" at a park. When out of nowhere this older lady came up to me. She saw the big bold word God printed on the cover & exclaimed that I'm reading a book about God.

"Yeah, it's actually a different kind of book. It examines the existence of God." I told her as I tried to continue my reading.

"Oh, you don't believe in God? You know when you die, you will burn in hell forever unless you accept Jesus as your savior. " As she puts her hand on mine sitting next to me.

At this point I look at her angrily & tell her, I'm not interested. She doesn't care about that, she shuts her eyes as she starts telling me her memorized lines about accepting Jesus. By now, I began to get really upset. I move my hand from her grip. She stops & opens her eyes to see what's going on.

"Listen, I'm not interested at all. I don't care either. I just want to go back to my reading if you would excuse me now."

She gets up to leave. Before leaving she tries to hand me a pamphlet. I just ignore her going back to my reading.

Jesus Loves You

As far as I recall, in Kansas there were only two times I came across someone trying to save me from hell. The first instance was, of course at the university. I started hanging out with few people I recently met. One day few guys asked if I would like to go to a drive-in movie in Kansas City. I was really excited about it since this was my first time at a drive-in theater. On our way, we stopped in Lawrence to pick up few more people, few great looking chicks too. I was getting more excited. So, we rolled in to the theater. Everyone got their lawn chairs out. Someone offered me one too since I didn't bring one. We all went to the little store inside the theater & grabbed something to munch on during the movie. I was feeling great. As the movie was about to start, everyone got up & got in a circle holding each others hand. I didn't know what was going on, asked someone & he said they were going to thank the lord Jesus before the movie. Huh?! Did I miss something?

So, I stayed out of the praying circle. Just watching. After the prayer, everyone claiming their sit back one guy came up to me. He wants to know why I didn't join them thanking the lord Jesus. I told him I am not very religious. He proceeded to tell me about the beautiful thing of accepting Jesus & so forth until he realized I wasn't paying any attention. Needless to say, I never hang out with them again.

The other instance was, I was hanging out with two of my friends & they asked me to take them to shopping. So, we went to Kohls. I left the girls to their shopping & I was minding my own business waiting for them outside. And then out comes this guy, we strike a good conversation about life, wife & what not. After a while, he starts telling me more about his family. How he's home schooling all his children & everything. I went to a private school myself, but the whole concept of home school really awed me. I was curious, I wanted to know how does it work, how do they go to college & all of that. After a while, he proceeded to give me few pamphlet & asked me to join their little school. Of course, I'm in college & I declined. He suggested I should at least check it out sometime.

Sony Vaio VGN-FE880E & XP

It's been a while since I've posted anything. And I am truly sorry for that. Actually I've been going through a lot lately. Such as??!!

I just moved recently. It's really great to have a place, a room of my own & not share with anyone. It also sucks. Sometime I kinda wish if I had all the guys from the "Rugby House" around so I wouldn't feel so lonely. On the other hand, it gives me the time I need to focus on other things such as getting my certification out of the way.

Also, for the FIRST TIME in my life I got jumped recently. It was partially my fault because I was walking home at 11pm & txting my friend paying no attention to the my surroundings. All of a sudden this person jumped in front of me from a van, held a knife against my stomach & demanded money. We got in a little scuffle, I got out fine without paying him a dime. It's funny the way I reacted to the whole thing at that time. I could feel the knife against my stomach, but I wasn't thinking about that at all. First, I tried to ran from him, then I just stood there & talked to him. He did had an accomplice with him, a lady in a van that was blocking the whole thing from others by driving right next to us.

I was frustrated for next few days. I knew it was wrong, but I was mad, angry & I would look at everyone with extreme suspicion. But it wore off. Thanks to my hot neighbor who helped me get my mind of off it =). I did went out & got some self defense protection & pay a lot more attention while walking home.

On the other hand, I have been meaning to do some more detail posting here. Here are some of the things I have in mind:

1. I recently bought a Sony Vaio VGN-FE880E with Vista installed. I used Vista for less than a month & couldn't take it anymore. So, I rolled down to XP Pro. I thought I could just download all the drivers from Sony's website & good to go. Nope. Most of those drivers are only stupid Vista compatible so it won't work with XP Pro. So, I had to spend over 4 hours making each one work.

So, I plan to detail out the whole process for anyone wishing to rolled down to XP Pro.

2. I also plan to install Ubuntu 7.0 sometime & detail out that process as well. I haven't seen any reference for the VGN-FE880E on the web yet. If any of you've done it already or know of a site, please forward it to me. I would like to know as much as possible before doing this roll out.

3. This one is a little different. While running only a two mile today (it was getting dark & I'm still a little traumatized) I all of a sudden started thinking about the time I spent growing up praying to God asking for many many things. Anyway, I don't want to go on details now, but you may get the jest.

That is all for today. Have fun while you can.

How beautiful? very touching

I first came across this great video on this blog. All I can say how beautiful? Very touching. Only if we were all like that.



If we were all like that without stressing over religion, political points of view and of other things.

Little Heaven in my backyard

It's been 3 weeks since I've moved to LA. Different place, different flavor, different people, everything here is different. I realized now, I wasn't quite prepared for this sudden change. First week, I spent at my host family's house. Very nice people, I had a hard time eating & sleeping though.

I just got a place on Westwood near UCLA campus. I'm living at the Rugby house with bunch of Rugby players. It's a great time, we are always having a good time. I still miss my friends in Ks a lot. I've been thinking about visiting them sometime next month for few days, but then again I'm not so sure. Some of my favorite places in LA are: Point Dome, Malibu Beach, UCLA track, Chipotle in Beverly Hills, Nike Town, and few other places. I went to checkout the UCLA main library yesterday and it was OK. Westwood is not that different than Lawrence. Except there's only two bar in this college town & no pool table. Not a single one. That really sucks.

I am always used to running on dirt, like when I used to run on the levee by the Kansas River. I've been having a hard time running here on sidewalks. It has affected my training & my overall performance. Few days ago, I went out for a run as usual, but this time instead of going left I went right. Lo behold, there sidewalks are all dirt. It was an amazing feeling being able to run on dirt again, my feet was enjoying each strides. I was really happy. This is essentially a circle around campus, it's great except you can only go downhill or uphill. It's hardly ever flat & that really sucks.

Oh well, something is better than nothing, I guess.

Never...not on a Snickers bar

Lately, I've been sleeping a lot. Just today I slept through the whole day. And that's not normal for me. Ever since as a kid usually I can't sleep more than 5 hours a night. So, sleeping all day took it's toll this evening when I went for a run. On my way, I was feeling really hungry. Quick stop at the Advance Auto for some engine oil (haven't changed my engine oil yet) and since there wasn't any energy drink, I bought a snickers bar. Bad Idea.

My plan was to eat only half of it, save the rest and eat it later. Once I started, it's as if I couldn't stop. I finished the whole bar. Went to the levee for a 4 mile run after eating the snickers. After the 1st half mile, I'm not feeling so well. Red flag. I was like, well maybe I will just run 3 miles instead of 4 miles. Which is what I did, I only ran 3 miles, but with many small breaks along the run.

I was feeling really fatigue, as if my body was still tired. My legs felt heavy. I think the reason is pretty clear as to why: 1) sleeping through out the whole day, and
2) eating a snickers just before the run.

Well, enough on that. My all time favorite runner is John Landy, but since there's hardly any thing on the internet of him here's something to enjoy, very inspiring:

Trip to chicago, PT Cruiser & PVD

Friday morning I come in to work as usual. Around 10am check my gmail & I got an email about Paul Van Dyke playing at the Vision club in Chicago. By then I'm going nuts. This is my one chance to see him live. I call up Andrei & break the news. He's pretty excited & he's like lets do it.

So, we rent a car. I wish if we had gotten something better than a PT Cruiser. Me and Andrei, we both agreed, that car sucks. The gas mileage is bad, really bad. The seats are very uncomfortable, and the response is really bad. I would hit the gas expecting a quick pickup, but it would take ages for the car to pick up some speed.

Around 12.30am that night we leave Lawrence for Chicago. Andrei was so excited he throws my direction away & just starts driving. After driving for an hour, in MO we see a bunch of cops, firetrucks & ambulance in one exit. For no freaking reason, Andrei takes the exit. The firetruck are blocking the other way so now we can't even get back on the highway except to turn around. It turned out a FedEx truck was on fire on that exit. I had a feeling that Andrei doesn't have a clue on how to get to Chicago. So, I made him pull over at the Sheraton hotel, went inside & got directions from the desk clerk.

We arrive in Chicago around 9.30am on Saturday. Andrei suppose to have a hotel reserved, but he didn't do it & he didn't tell me about it either. I got really pissed this time. So, I suggested we check out the club, parking's in that area first. After checking those out, we had a huge launch. After the launch Andrei is tired. But remember I'm pissed?! So, we drove around from one place to another, went to the Public Library for next two hours trying to find a cheaper hotel & he's ass was getting more & more tired.

Anyway, we checked into Carlton Hotel. We both slept for 3 hours. Around 5pm, we went out to do some site seeing. We check out few areas around downtown. Come back to the hotel, take another quick nap & then get ready for the party. We went to the Vision club around 10pm. All I can say is it was simply awesome. That's all I can say. We got home around 6am in the morning.

We checked out around 1pm on Sunday, visit the Field Museum, then head back to Lawrence, Ks. The Field Museum is absolutely a great place. It's a 3 story building. We got there around 2pm & they closed at 5pm since it was Sunday. We only had the chance to see half of the 1st floor only. I definitely plan on going back to that museum again sometime.

This time, I had the hotel print out the direction back to Ks. I drove for the most part, except Andrei took over from KC to Lawrence. I would've drove that too, except remember what I said about the PT Cruiser sits. My back was hurting, going numb.



The gas price in Chicago was outrageous. The whole time we were there, we never filled up our tank all the way. Still we paid $3.65 per gallon. Nuts.