Chinese mothers, Chinatown, Dim-sum, Mute Math

Have you ever been treated for a couple days by a Taiwanese mother? On Friday and Saturday, I was. Geoffrey Herman's Mommy is a super sweet woman with a mix of New Yorker and Mandarin accents. JT and I went to the Herman household and had a wonderfully prepared traditional Chinese meal(better than anything you'll get in most restaurants). As I remember, there was the staple white rice, beef and broccoli, among other things. And after dinner, we had pork-filled dumplings for "dessert". At that point I started holding back a bit because I was full, but I still had a good share of dumplings.

On Saturday we didn't need to eat any breakfast. We went to Chinatown for lunch at Phoenix restaurant and had the best dim-sum in Chicago, so they say. It was quite good. If you've never had dim-sum I highly recommend you try it. But take someone who knows what they're ordering, and can explain it to you. They serve many Chinese delicacies and it is much different from your standard Chinese restaurant.

After that my body was quite done with food for the day. Literally. But it was great. We walked around Chinatown for some time, going in various shops. I bought some loose Pu-ehr tea, which is a fermented tea with a fruity flavor. I haven't tried it yet. We got some stuff from a bakery as well. We bought some desserts to take home. The fried dough with sugar and sponge cake cone were decent, but if I want Chinese dessert I'll get something with red bean ;-)

JT and I stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago Art Museum. We walked around looking at paintings for 45 minutes. There was some excellent stuff there. Picasso, Matisse, Ernst, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Monet were just some of what we saw. It's the best art museum in Chicago and I liked it a lot. I'd like to go back there another time, earlier in the day.

Finally, we went to Schuba's Tavern for a Mute Math concert. Mute Math is one of my favorite bands and they're on an album release tour. They're a Christian rock band but they are quite unique. Paul Meany is well-versed in all the popular styles: pop,rock, reggae, jazz, hip hop, rap, and electronica. They also are staying independent, as they are right now, especially from Christian labels that market their bands in a "nauseating" way, as the band would say. JT and I were in the second row. JT got to hold the drummer's bass pedal. I got to hold and play Paul Meany's custom-made instrument called the Atari, during the song Reset where he plays it. It was very awesome, and the best $10 I ever spent. One funny thing about Mute Math is that they tape everything. They use a ton of tape putting up their set. And best of all, the drummer Darren King duct tapes his headphones onto his head, like a bandage. Everyone cheered when he did that. This band does things like having everyone playing percussion, playing percussion with everything on their set. The guitarist sometimes plays by hitting the strings with a xylophone mallet, or hitting the body of the guitar with his knuckles. Paul also plays the keytar and an old school Rhodes keyboard. The bassist has his own bass drum set at shoulder height, as well as his guitar, and often plays it as an extension of his bass sound by hitting it with a mallet. Well, those are some of the cool things I saw at the concert.

Now, time to work on getting my PhD...

A Culture of Life

I went to a lecture tonight in Newman Hall in which Monsignor Swetland of St. John's Catholic Chapel and Todd Daly of Urbana Theological Seminary spoke on promoting a culture of life in America. This was a finale to the week of prayer for Christian Unity. I enjoyed it very much.

Todd Daly spoke on Baconian philosophy of the body. Francis Bacon was one of the fathers of the scientific method, and in the 18th century, the idea of the body being the repository of the soul became prevalent. By studying the human body as a set of intertwined discrete organs and studying and performing medicine on them as you do to a machine that needs tuning. Mr. Daly and Msgr. Swetland both proposed that Christians should view the body and soul as one. That is, humans are essentially corporal as well as spiritual beings, and you cannot affect one without affecting the other.

Important points:
We should take care of the least in our society. Those who are helpless and possibly hopeless. This makes sure that they aren't exploited by those who would marginalize them.

We should evangelize our culture, and not just people. By finding your personal vocation from God, your purpose on this world, you can create a culture of life wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Also, if God is calling you to something that's risky or unprofitable monetarily, do not push out those thoughts because of impracticability.

We should vote. Many of us should become political leaders commited to a platform of a culture of life. Vote for leaders that will make for the most just society, and do not make your vote on a single issue. Do not vote for a candidate that will marginalize a particular age group, race, or religion.

Culture is a combination of how we grow our food, eat, and worship. As a practical matter every day, eating meals together with family and friends creates a culture of life because it strengthens community. Being an active member in a church community does this also. Make yourself a burden on others. Do not make yourself as autonomous as possible, relying on nobody. It creates division within the body of Christ if you do not let others support you. The way I personally think of this is that I always accept gifts without feeling the need to give anything in return. Likewise I give gifts without expecting anything in return.

These are some of the points as I remember them. Oh, and Msgr. Swetland made a funny when talking politics:

"We don't vote for the lesser of two evils. It's the evil of two lessers"

^_^

Happy Birthday Observations

On January 12, 1982 you were born at 102 Lawton Ave. in Brookline, MA.
Your mother had a hard time getting you out of the womb because of your
big head. Your head was so big compared to your long thin body that
sitting up was a comical task. Your center of gravity was in your head
instead of you belly until you were about 12 months old. One of your
favorite activities as an infant/toddler was stacking blocks. You would
sit on the floor, literally for hours, stacking, unstacking, stacking,
unstacking and it seemed to please you without end. You always had a
happy and pleasantly calm demeanor except for a few weeks after your
birth, when I would sit up at all hours of the night rocking you because
you wouldn't sleep and your mother had difficulty nursing you.

You loved school from the very beginning. Your participation in baseball
was admirable, not being particularly athletic, you did well, but most
importantly you were an excellent team player. You never seemed to be
upset or express complaints about anything...sometimes that bothered me,
but generally I also considered this to be your ability to cope with
adversity. You caught on to the difference between right and wrong and
have developed a keen discipline in keeping to a high standard of
morality (as far as I know). I know however, that no one is perfect, but
you appear to have a strong integrity. I have always been impressed by
your sticking to your goals for yourself.

I have always been proud that you are my son. So if a son could succeed
at being a son, you have, and it inspires me too. So remember, it is not
from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are, so strive for
humility first, before you strive for the praise from others. And as
Mother Theresa said...."We cannot do great things, we can only do small
things with great love."

Love You, and Happy Birthday,

Dad

The Wonders of Proper Relaxation

I've started a new routine this past week in which I go to the gym in the late afternoon, around 5:30, and I run for a couple miles around the indoor track, and perhaps do some free weight exercise or two. After that I get in the hot tub for about 10 minutes. Then I get in the pool for another 10 minutes. I then get out of the water, towel off, sit down, and read a book for 15-30 minutes. Then I leave. Tonight I saw some fellow graduate student navigators, Natalie and Joel, working out while I was running.

It is extremely beneficial to my body to do this routine. Given that my back is not in the best of shape(chiropractically speaking), it often gets sore very easily. Being in water helps a lot because it relieves the pressure to a large extent that gravity puts on my back. Both the hot tub and the pool have very strong jets that I can massage my back on. The gym I'm going to is right in the middle of the campus of University of Illinois, where I go to school. It was just opened last spring and it is quite luxurious.

--
Love is the greatest thing in the world, but we mostly settle for so much less.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's!

Living life is about perspective. No two people can sense exactly the same realities around them. If you limit yourself to your own perspective, you will miss the beauty of the world. Just a thought...

For Christmas I went to Cincinnati first and then Rachel and I drove up to her Grandma's house in the northwestern most county in Ohio. It's cold and flat and there's nothing there. But there is Rachel's family. Rachel's parents and brother and sister came also, from Maryland, and we had a good time together. Rachel's Grandma is a sweet and quiet woman who is generous and thankful. I think Rachel will be somewhat like her when she gets older(that's a good thing). :-)

I saw a good movie called Tampopo which means "Dandelion" in English. It's a wonderful movie about food and noodles. It's about a widowed woman who garners the help of skilled noodle chefs and others to make herself a truly great noodle chef and be able to have a successful business. It's a work of art about food. The tagline is "The first Japanese noodle western!"

Another good movie that I just saw last night for the third time is What's Up Doc? It stars Barbara Streisand, and while I do not care for her music, she is quite an excellent actress. It also stars Ryan O'Neil. And for you ladies out there, I think back in 1972 he was something of a Ewan McGregor ;-)

"Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon." -Miro, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.

End of Semester

On Saturday at 6AM I finished my paper, thus finishing out my semester. I at least did alright in my classes. Can't say I did as well as I like, but then I have high standards for myself.

There's a nice service called del.icio.us that is a social networking site for sharing web links. They have buttons I can put right in my Opera web browser and post links to things that interest me. I can send the links to Rachel, or anyone else who uses the service. I can categorize the links by keyword or "tag" so other people can find them by searching for links labelled with a particular tag, or by subscribing to receive links with a certain tag. It's very interesting.

I'm also trying a new beta version of Gaim(2.0.0beta1), to see if I like it at all. AIM's ads have been getting on my nerves, screwing up my windows interface with those pop-up ads. They seem to have the effect that when I close the AIM buddy list window, I can't open it up again, and closing AIM from that point crashes the program.

The Bush administration needs to avoid the hilarious headlines it's been getting lately, like: Bush Vows More Eavesdropping.

Pigtails

I let Peggy Loo put my hair in pig tails. Looks pretty good I must say, although Chris my roommate strongly objects. So right after she braided my hair I did some one-armed pushups to reinforce the concept of my manliness despite my hair being in an apparently unacceptable state. Chris said it didn't matter. Oh well, I like it :-P