My Testimony.. so far

When I was first asked to give my testimony, the first thought I had was, my story is kind of boring. There was no life altering event where God showed up out of nowhere like stories you hear out there. For example, those of you who were at Winter Retreat, Pastor Ioannis’s testimony was really intense. Mine is nothing like that.

But I started to think about what it really meant to give a testimony. Most people talk about what their life was before they met God or how they met God, but mine is more about what has happened to me after I met Him and my journey so far. If there is one way I can say that describes my life so far is that God sure does have a sense of humor. For me, I was never really able to empathize with that saying until I really started to look back on my life and really examining the different things that has happened to me.

I grew up in a very typical Asian family. My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the early 80s from China. I was born on a snowy winter morning on March 17^th of 1986 in Reno, NV. Throughout most of my adolescent life I had no idea who God was or any concept of Him. My parents are pretty atheist when it came to all things religious. The concept of praying to a higher being or an afterlife was ridiculous in their eyes because for them, the only person you can rely on is yourself.

In sixth grade I moved from San Jose to a small town called Burlingame and that was where I first started going to church. My best friend Anthony, who I had just met in gym class at the time, invited me to go to church with him and his mother. Like I said earlier, I had no concept of God so I had no idea what was in store for me. Being the new kid in town, I was very bored on most weekends so I figured why the heck not. My first day at church was quite the interesting one. You see Anthony and his mother attended an Assemblies of God church. For those of you who don’t know what the Assemblies of God is, Assemblies of God churches are very charismatic Pentecostal churches, who believed in the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues quite often. So you could imagine my surprise when the pastor’s wife started yelling out a foreign language I never heard before during service and then the associate pastor yelling out something else in English right after. I have never been so confused in my life. However that didn’t stop me from going to church and I eventually started going to youth group with my friends. That summer my youth pastor gave us a chance to accept Christ in our lives and I didn’t know quite what that meant but he put it this way.

“If you accept Christ and later in life you find out that this was all fake, you lose nothing. However, if you find out it is all real, you gain everything”

So I figured what do I have to lose? And then began my “Christian” walk.

Throughout most of my junior high and high school career I was what I called a ‘twice-a- week Christian’. Basically I was a ‘good Christian boy’ on Wednesdays for youth group and Sundays for church. Every other day of the week I was just like anyone else. In high school, I started doing a lot of underage drinking. It wasn’t until my senior year that I really started to take my faith a little more seriously.

Then came that one fateful summer night… I was taking one of my best friend’s home after a typical night youth group. I pulled into his driveway and waited for him to get out. He didn’t move. My first thought was uh are you going to get out or what? Do I need to get the door for you? What’s the deal? I was tired and I had work the next day so I just wanted him to get out so I could go home and knock out. Just as I was about to say something he finally spoke up. He asked me how long will we keep kidding ourselves. How long do you think we’re going to last as Christians in college if we keep living like the way we do. We know God is real but we don’t treat our lives seriously at all. My first thought was speak for yourself man! I am perfectly fine. But I knew that was a lie. I started to seriously ponder the way I lived my life up until that moment. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I didn’t do something that day, my faith or walk, whatever of it was real, would’ve just disappeared in college. So that night, July 23^rd, 2003, my friend and I rededicated our lives to God.

However that wasn’t the end. It wasn’t long until I found out college gave me whole new set issues I had to deal with. During my freshmen year, I started going to InterVarsity but I just didn’t feel very comfortable there. I remember seeing AACF when I was at my freshmen orientation but for some reason it I just kept thinking it didn’t seem legit to me. All the other Christian fellowships had interesting names like Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, and Epic. Asian American Christian Fellowship, that’s not a name, that’s a description! Anyways, in my 2nd year @ UCR I started going to AACF. Didn’t really want to at first but the only reason I did go was because I really liked this girl. As I started to make friends in AACF, I for some reason gravitated towards a certain group of people. You see our Double A at UCR had about 100 some odd people and that meant a good amount of cliques and a very clear split in the dynamic of students. There was the party crowd and the non-partiers. I think you can assume who I naturally was attracted to. It wasn’t before long that I went back to my old ways and ironically enough; all of my party friends were from AACF. I continued to live a lukewarm life where I did ministry for AACF but would go out with my friends almost every week. Again it was my senior year that I finally decided to tone it down and really start taking things more seriously. A few of the older AACFers who I really looked up to, talked to me about what I was doing and for some reason it really spoke to me. I knew that life after college was going to be very different and needed to shape up.

Throughout that year, I had this feeling that my time was not done at AACF. My staffer Warren at UCR, asked me if I thought about staffing for AACF and my first thought was HECK NO. Are you crazy or something? That’s the last thing I want to do after college. But like I first said God has a sense of humor because look at where I am right now!

As I continue to discover this thing called being an adult, God is always giving me new challenges and definitely doesn’t sugar coat any of them. Earlier this year, on January 18^th, 2012, I suffered a minor heart attack at the age of only 25 years old. When I say minor, on a scale of 1 to 10 it’d be a 2, but it was a heart attack none the less. Doctors were baffled that someone my age had one. It was a 1 in a million chance and I was that 1. I don’t think my life was in serious jeopardy at the time but it really got me thinking. People say all the time that life is short and for most of us, we finally get it when it’s something that hits so close to home.

God continually reveals to me crazy things in my life, paths I didn’t think I’d go on and people I may or may not have wanted to meet. I don’t know what else is in stored for me but I do know that it will be an interesting ride and I want God to be my driver.

Cooking Like Ramsay

A little over a year ago I decided to watching some Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu and I immediately was hooked. In case you're not familiar with this show, this reality series TV show, has world renowned chef Gordon Ramsay go around to failing restaurants around the United States, and help them save their business. He assesses the problems and then implements changes in these restaurants. May sound kind of boring at first but it was probably the most entertaining show I've ever seen. Why? Well, aside from Ramsay being an amazing chef, he also has a "no bull$#!%" attitude when it comes to running a business. He's not afraid to tell it like it is and boy do some of these restaurant owners and chefs need to be told. I believe the best way to describe this show is "common sense, isn't so common". Anyways, this show started my obsession of all thing Gordon Ramsay. From there I moved on to his other shows like Hell's Kitchen and also Master Chef.

After watching how amazing Chef Ramsay is, I was dying to know how he was so special. One thing Gordon Ramsay always stresses is that cooking is something anyone can do. All you need is some basic knowledge on basic principles and it shouldn't stop you from producing good food. I soon found some clips on YouTube on some basic tips of preparing food. These tips have made a world of difference in my food life, for example chopping an onion. Something very simple but can be nightmare if not done efficiently. I'd recommend everyone to just watch some of these videos. They will definitely make cooking easier and more enjoyable.

being an adult series

Recently I've been talking with some new and old friends who are just beginning to pop into the working world after college. Most are complaining about the hours they work and the kind of realization of what being an adult is really about. Now I'm not saying they're all just whiners, I went through many of the same emotions as they did. However now after 3 years of working I've come to find there are many many perks to being an adult. So here starts a new series of mine where I will continue to list as many perks as I can as why being an adult is good and the things to look forward to. I will try to name as much as I can in this post but will continue to add as more come to mind.

Perk #1: No Homework
Depending on what you do for a living after college, some jobs may have work that follow you home like being lawyer might have you doing research and looking up files at home if you don't want to be stuck in the office all the time. For the most part, everyday when I come home, nothing follows me home. The bliss of knowing theres nothing to read, no problem sets to do and no papers to write. I can't begin to describe the kind of freedom that brings. Everyday when I come home, I think to myself "I can do anything I want!"

Perk #2: Income
For those of you that have not been working before school ended, this was probably a new found revelation for you. Finally not having to ask mom and dad (or lets hope you still don't) for $20 for food or going to a movie gives a great sense of financial independence. KNowing that every dollar you gain and spend is purely yours and knowing that your parents no longer 'own' you so to say with their income.

Perk #3: Knowledge
Not sure if many feel this way but I've learned more in the last three years than I did in the 17 years or so I was in school for. I've realized that unless you're in a knowledge specific occupation like engineering, medicine, law or whatever else requires a certain skill set, then all school is really good for is building your work ethic. Sadly it even fails at that because in school you were forced to take classes you never cared for and for many of us, we didn't give those classes 100% of our effort. You're probably asking 'what's the big deal?' Well, as many have realized, there are tons of things we do in the working world that we hate doing. But to not give those tasks 100% means a boot out the door. In the real world, everything you're given is expected to be given an A-grade effort. Everything from something as small as filing paper to executing key projects to launch your company that one big step is required to be as good as it can get. Anyways, there's a lot of things you simply cannot learn in a classroom. There are basic principles but exercising those principles is a totally different story.

Top 5 most annoying facebook profile pictures

1. The Baby Picture

The Problem: These are all the people who dig up old baby pictures of themselves just to post on facebook. Seems like a good amount of work when you have to look for one you like, scan it or take a picture of it and then load it up. Why do people do it? Because they are seeking attention like no other. Talk about digging up the past, these people want all the comments and 'likes' from their friends and whats a better way to do it than to dig up multiple baby pictures of yourself. Seriously once or twice is fine, but after multiple posts it looks like you're just getting desperate. These folks are generally attention whores who are incredibly insecure about how they look right now and instead of posting a more current picture they resort to point in their life where everyone thought they were cute.

Alternatives: If you have a kid/siblings/cousins that are babies and you felt like making a profile picture of you and the baby then that's fine. Everyone is proud of their kids and hell, babies are just cute. But posting yours is just crying 'LOOK AT ME!'

2. The Infamous Bathroom Picture

The Problem: You're getting ready for a night out and just when you're ready you figure lets snap a few pictures before you forget the night. Usually, this is ok but when you have multiple poses and facial expressions that is just plain weird. When you think about it, this person probably loves looking at themselves in the mirror and so lets capture the moment of me looking at myself.

Alternative: Taking just ONE picture of yourself smiling is fine. No need to purse your lips and do all this crap that no one cares about.

3. The Model Picture

The Problem: Everyone today are so narcissistic that they believe anyone can be a model when in reality thats not the case. These people grab one of their photographer friends and forces them to use them as a model. Doesn't matter what it is, they just want to get into some kind of dress or bathing suit and shoot all day. The pictures are then used for themself all over facebook because apparently you need to be staged in order to take a good picture and not just regular ones.

Alternatives: If one of your friends loves bringing along their SLR to every damn thing, then something good is bound to pop up out of the million shots so in those cases sure. But if you have albums worth of these pictures then its like really? Is that necessary?

4. The Recycled Picture

The Problem: Do you ever see people reuse the same 3-4 pictures over and over and over again? Every few weeks or so, they switch to something they used 6 months ago and then it just keeps repeating. No new ones are ever added. Now I'm not telling you to upload a bajillion photos but obviously you want to change up your profile picture here and there and just using an old one is almost insulting to our intelligence thinking we won't notice and also show you're just plain damn lazy.

Alternatives: If you have nothing new then just don't change it.

5. The Over Exposed Picture

The Problem: You always want to capture the moment when you're out, thats what cameras are essentially for but sometimes you're just capturing too much. More often than not you find girls aiming the camera high in order to get them and their friends, what you find later is that they have aimed too high and the camera captured some ridiculous cleavage and if just a little higher can pretty much capture the ground. Now I know its hard to get the right angle, but I know you at least check what the picture looks like before you post it up for the world to see and when we see that ridonkulous boobage its like wow are you really going to play dumb and be like oops? You know full well of you're putting up and you want the attention of the world knowing you have something to show off.

Alternatives: After thinking about it, I don't know if this a problem.

non-team players aka douche bags

You know who I'm talking about. There is always that one mofo who just doesn't help out the team for whatever reason. These guys will never help complete the objective at hand and are only out to help themselves. For instance, if the point of the game was to capture a flag or a king of the hill game, these guys would just stand off to the side or go off on their own way. Chances are they only care about one thing and thats their kill/death ratio or KDR for short. In objective based games as to straight deathmatch, there is no killing quota so being in objective based games means you can kill as much you want and it won't end the game.

Whenever I play Modern Warfare 2, I like to play the game domination. In domination, there are 3 flags on the map. The objective of the game is to capture these flags, hold them and accumulate points. The first team to reach 200 points wins. Each team generally has a flag right next to their spawn and then one in the middle where it is sort of a 'no man's land'. To accumulate more points faster you must capture more than one flag. When there are more than one person on a flag it captures faster, so generally you want as many people on it as possible. Get it? Good, because I'm not explaining it again. So whenever I play in this game there is almost always one or two douche bags that just don't want to help the team out to get that W (Win). Many times I would find myself running to a flag in order to capture it and then I would see my teammates just keep running past me. I'm like thinking to myself "Wow thanks for the help in capturing this guys", and then what usually ends up happening is these guys run off, get killed, leaving me alone on this point and then I get killed and so therefore we don't end up not getting the flag. The other situation I find myself in is when one out flags gets captured and as I'm running towards to get it back, I see my teammates running in the OPPOSITE direction and AWAY from it! I'm just like "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHERE ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING?"

"But edwadokun, what if they were trying to protect you while you captured the flag?" BULL!!! It takes twice as fast to capture a flag with two or more people so why don't you just help me capture it so that we get it twice as fast and then we can both defend the flag. Plus, even if they kill us in the process, chances are you probably would've died facing against them all by yourself anyways.

"But edwadokun, If you don't kill people, then they would be all over the place and you wouldn't be able to capture anything!" True to a certain extent because yes, in order to capture a flag you'll need to eliminate the threat surrounding it, but my point is that once the threat is gone, where is everyone to take the flag? Sure killing someone would reset them to a spawn point which also buys you more time to capture but capturing points can actually help your KDR because in domination, a team spawns in near their safest flag so in some cases for instance if you are able to capture two flags then the enemy team will be stuck spawning in one area where at this point you can do what is called 'spawn trapping' which is where our team surrounds the enemy team and make it impossible for them to advance. This will basically eliminate the likelihood of someone flanking.

So you see folks, don't be a douche bag, when its a team based objective game then play for the team and the objective. If you care that much about your KDR or just want to get kills then play free-for-all or team deathmatch. Don't waste everyone else's time.

the tester

For those of you with a PS3 you might have noticed that SCEA has made a reality game show called 'The Tester'. In this show several individuals compete against each other in order to win 'the ultimate prize' which is a position as a QA tester. Now sounds kinda cool right at first but as a recent QA tester I can tell you that this show is freaking RETARDED!!!!

These people are complete morons in competing for a position that literally ANYONE can get as long as they are somewhat articulate and can sit in a chair for 8 hours a day. A tester is also at the bottom of the video game hierarchy. So I ask why the crap would these people want to compete for a crap job? Most likely they either don't know about the whole hierarchy or they think 'Hey this is my chance to get my foot in the door' but its like you can do it WITHOUT competing these other mofos for it. These people are wasting their time and Sony is wasting their money. The Tester is by far the most idiotic show ever.

'you're such a noob!!!'

Where to begin... I guess from the beginning. For as long as I have been playing video games (20 some odd years) there has been some form of social competitive bracket where gamers fight for that top score at the arcade and compete for the title of being the best. That was back in the day, now lets fast forward 20 years or so and now there is actually a professional league for gamers, the Major League of Gaming (MLG). Yes, the face of competitive gaming has changed from the arcade leaderboard to a professional league, but enough of the history, lets talk about the social aspect.

Recently, like millions of others I have been hooked on the game Modern Warfare 2 which is the latest installment of the Call of Duty franchise, in case you don't know what it is.

So like any other game with a competitive scene a player will either be branded as a 'noob' or a 'pro'. There seems to be little to no middle ground. Now what qualifies someone to be a 'noob' or 'pro' seems to be currently dictated by the general community of gamers. Currently, the 'noob' qualifiers are using weapons that require little skill to use. For instance, in Modern Warfare 2, all assault rifles have attachments and one of them is a grenade launcher which has been so dubbed 'the noob tube'. This little guy fires a grenade and will kill anything within its kill radius. "Whats the big deal?" you might be thinking? Well the big deal to the gaming community is that this is too easy to kill someone. You don't need to really aim, just be able to judge the relative distance and POW goes a shell and BOOM there comes another frag. The attachment is balanced by only being able to have 2 rounds. After the two rounds are gone, you are forced to switch back to your rifle or if you have the scavenger perk on, which allows you to replenish your ammunition and equipment from dead enemies.

Another example, is the thermal scope attachment for all assault rifles and sniper rifles. This little gizmo gives you the same amount of magnification as a regular sniper scope but also turns the world to grey and white where enemies show up on the scope as a silhouette of white and all other inanimate objects are grey. This allows the player a great advantage where enemies are as clear as night and day. So no matter how much yout try to blend yourself in with the map or dark corner you plop yourself in, the thermal scope will pick you out. The only way around this is if you have the cold-blooded perk which basically blocks its effects. So you might be thinking 'Why doesn't everyone just use cold-blooded then?" Well, this funny little game did something weird where another perk called stopping power can be used to kill people faster. This perk is in the same category as the cold-blooded perk so to use one is not to use the other and players are extremely reluctant to give up more power to kill someone over not being spotted by the thermal scope.

The list can go on and on with guns/attachments that every player thinks is 'overpowered' and what not. For some players it seems like their ego is SO BIG that whenever they are killed, whatever set up the other user is using is considered 'noob'. It;s like they think they are so good that god forbid they will ever get killed because that's just not possible! *sarcasm* I first noticed this behavior from my 14 year old younger brother who screams 'WOW!' and 'ARE YOU SERIOUS?!" every time he gets killed and begins to swear whenever he's done in by a 'noob' weapon. Now I can agree that it gets annoying if every corner I turn theres a dude with a noob tube waiting for me or a sniper thermal scoping, but hey guess what. EVERYONE CAN USE IT! So therefore SO CAN YOU! I know I know, you don't want to lower yourself to that level but then you're just digging your own grave. Basically what I'm trying to get at is that these things are part of the game. Sure some are cheap but its not like it's limited to certain users. All users are allowed to use it so what's the point in whining when you can just do it back to them. One time my friends and I encountered this team where that the grenade launcher was all they used so I decided to fight fire with fire. I brought out my own grenade launcher and so did my friends. End result? We kicked the crap out of them.

In my personal opinion, the game is pretty well balanced for the most part. It's not a perfect game but it's good enough that there will never be that one thing that makes you a juggernaut and everyone else is screwed. If someone is noob tubing then snipe them or flank them. If someone is thermal scoping then they are stationary so flashbang them and advance forward. There is ALWAYS a solution and a way around it.

At this moment, I would like to promote KEN. No, not the blond guy from Street Fighter (so S-class) KEN was originally just a guy's clan tag in Modern Warfare 2 because his name is Ken, Ken Burton to be exact and who is a YouTube director where he makes random gameplay videos about various aspects of the game. He's not very good but he enjoys playing the game and always seems to have a great time. His positive attitude rubbed off the community so much that others started sporting the KEN tag, so now the KEN tag is known as "Keep Everything Nice". The KEN tag promotes good sportsmanship and overall fun gameplay. Don't you just hate it when you enter into a lobby where you got all these mofos yelling at each other? Who always seemed pissed off for one reason or another, and who screams into their mic at every little thing? It just makes me not want to play it. So all in all, Keep Everything Nice.

this is edwadokun