When
I was a little boy, just about 10 or 11, we visited my great-aunt
and great-uncle. In the yard beside their home stood a towering
pecan tree. Every summer pecans would fall off the tree and
sprout, producing a mini-forest of several dozen small saplings.
On the last day of our visit that summer, we carefully dug
up one of the tiny trees, placed it gently in the trunk of
our car, and took it home. We planted it in the corner of
our yard. And we waited.
I
remember counting up the number of years that would pass before
the tree produced any pecans, and realizing that if all went
well, it just might make the first crop the summer before
I left for college. It seemed like an eternity.
The
years passed, and the tree quickly outgrew me. Seasons came
and went, and the tree kept growing. I left for college, and
the tree was just beginning to produce. Today, it stands tall,
shading much of the yard. It will continue to grow and provide
shade and beauty for decades, probably long after I am gone.
We
planted many different things in the hard, unforgiving West
Texas soil. The flowers we planted bloomed quickly, but fall
brought their beauty to an end. The tomatoes and peppers we
planted were good to eat, but the garden spot is long since
covered by a storage shed. We planted those things for ourselves,
but in a sense, we planted the tree for someone else. Because
even though we get to enjoy its shade now, it is still just
a baby, and will be growing and reaching skyward for years
and years to come.
The
temptation is to plant tomatoes, because we soon can eat the
fruit of our labor. The temptation is to plant flowers, because
we soon can smell their sweet aroma. But the true challenge
in life is to plant trees, and not just any trees, but big,
slow-growing, long-living trees, because it is those trees
which benefit countless multitudes.
Each
day, you choose how you will invest yourself. Your hours are
spent on many pressing things which must be done today, immediately,
RIGHT NOW, without delay. Your days feel full to overflowing.
But look....carefully.... cautiously.....at the frayed edges
of each unraveling day are a few moments which you can choose
how to use. They are easily spent, so very easily squandered
on a fruitless desires or painless pastimes. These moments
must be gathered up, treasured for the treasure they are,
and carefully applied to the pursuits which will make a lasting
difference a year from now....or a decade...or a century.
Pursuits
like creating a future which most dare not even imagine for
fear it will intrude on their comfortable present.
Many
will plant flowers. Some tomatoes. The rewards are present
and plentiful and personal.
Plant
trees instead. The results can be far-reaching and eternal.
taken from blue letter bible. nice story. :)
Wed 14/7/04
haha long time no blog. very very very busy. really. here's a pix i drew during the end of getting started bible study lesson :)
it is a 3 eyed alien smiling at u :)
Sun 30/5/04
long time no update. sorry, cos 50megs.com had some weird problems.. it transferred ownership to some dunno what company and for a while i couldn't log on. not that i had much that i want to blog about anyway. whatever that has happened in my life these few days are either too private to be talked about in the open, or too sad, or i forgot them.. something like that. basically, i have nothing to say here. i cannot and will not disclose my heart's mutterings. till next time then. :)
Wed 5/5/04
just a bit of trivia
The loss of the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003 served as a powerful reminder that astronauts are not just another breed of technically sophisticated professionals, but they remain brave explorers of a dangerous and far-from-tamed frontier. Thus, it is
fitting that every space shuttle, Columbia included, takes its name in honor of a naval vessel that undertook the arduous and often dangerous task of frontier exploration for the sake of scientific research and human achievement.
Columbia is the namesake of the first American vessel to circumnavigate the globe, which it did under Capt. Robert Gray in 1793. Gray and Columbia were also the first captain and ship, respectively, to overcome the sandbars of the Columbia River in Oregon, and the waterway's name is in honor of the vessel.
NASA named the shuttle Challenger, lost in 1986, in honor of the HMS Challenger, a retrofitted British steam-assisted corvette that undertook a historic six-year expedition to sound the depth of, and gather biological samples from, the ocean floor in 1870. Similarly, the space shuttle Atlantis takes its name from the first U.S. naval vessel
devoted to oceanic research, the two-mast ketch Atlantis that served the renowned Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1966.
Only the test-vehicle Enterprise, which never operated in space but flew atmospheric maneuvers to verify the space shuttle's glide capabilities, had a namesake in honor of something other than a scientific vessel. In fact, it gained its title from the starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame.
The two other space shuttles--Endeavor and Discovery--take their names
from a pair of 18th century naval exploration vessels, both captained
by the same famous seaman.
WHAT FAMOUS EXPLORER CAPTAINED THE NAVAL VESSELS FROM WHICH TWO SPACE SHUTTLES TAKE THEIR NAME?
end 23.08pm
Sat-Sun 24-25/04/04
long time no go to saturday's service. today i went for it. was happy, really bubbly happy kind of happy. its really so nice to go to svc with the whole cg again, bible study also with that grp of wacky guys. i hope i can go for more saturday service.. sure astro is fun, but i still wanna go for sat svc n fellowship with my cg members. a refreshing change from the nj environment.
and guess what, i still have my frivolous, skin deep, side (as much as u think i'm this serious nerdy person :P). (hakkai! *swoon* mars!(the planet) *swoon*) weird bag - check. weird sense of dressing (mickey mouse!) - check. who cares about OP and billabong n quicksilver :P haha ok yeah i do have some of their clothes (my mum bought them.. not me) but they're so serious~ haha when i'm in a more serious i-want-to-look-good mood then i might wear them(which is not my mood today anyway). :P
end 2.29am
Fri-Sat 16-17/04/04
yeah i know i haven't been updating. here's some weird quizzes for u to see their assessment of my personality (not that its very accurate anyway, but i'm just putting them up for fun :P )
Heart of Chocolate
i'm both... haha i couldn't decide which ones to pick so i just did the quiz twice with 2 sets of ans...
You're the loving smile,the one that is entirely devoted to others,especially that one person.You really can't get them out of your head,but then,you don't really want to.
haha all these quizzes are endless and serve to boost our dear fragile egos by giving such nice comments like we're the best. take with a large pinch of salt.
quote of the days (since its been more than 1 day) "i won't ignore you". its really gratifying to hear that frm a really close friend (quite a long story on how this quote came about). it did bring tears to my eyes. and so now i say this to you, "i won't ignore you."
and i agree, treasure your loved ones.
end 2.45am
Mon 29-30/03/04
while i was walking down the stairs today (cos i went up to 17th floor instead of 5th floor in a moment of blurness), i
was thinking of my results so far. i am quite disappointed with my gp compo actually. sure i passed, but i want to get higher
for content marks. i did improve in my content marks, but still, i need higher marks. for physics, i sorta improved, from a
fail to an O. well is that good? i don't know. but anyway i'm also not happy with it. i was expecting better from myself, but
somehow during the exam time.. well... dunno, i just forgot the formulas etc..
so while i was walking down the stairs, i was thinking that my marks are just like what i'm doing now.. going down and
down and down. BUT there has to be a limit to how low my marks can get, i can't walk down negative level stairs anyway can i?
so if i can't go down, it just means that the marks will go up! haha of cos i gotta put in more work lah.. or else i'll just
be stagnant.
then i thought of a service that said something like first, we have to do our duty. we have to finish our duties. only
AFTER that when we finish our duties can we do things out of love. so do you love God? quick finish your duties before you
serve! so for a student.. well my duty is to study and get good results. (oops maybe that was the exact message preached
before.. but the impact sorta faded away i think.. but nvm at least the impact came back) yeah man, and then AFTER that i can
do whatever i want to do, serve, go cg, etc.
well, so if u have bad results too, hope u don't feel too sad over them but let it be a motivation for you to show the
world that you're made of more stuff than what they see on paper. ^^v
God bless
end 1.15am
Sun 28/03/04
sat service was good. its about your potential. its like everyone has potential that is God given, not determind by me,
but by God, given even before we were born. our job is to find out our potential n our purpose and use it to bless others.
jesus was the ultimate who knew his purpose 100% n didn't go helter skelter doing all sorts of stuff. he could have, but
didn't. why? cos he was focused on his purpose, 100%, to die for our sins. our potential is just like a car. the power of a
car is not determined by you - the person who's using it(if you have a car.. which you don't, for now.. but just imagine you
have one ^^;;) - but by the manufacturer. so just like the capabilities of a car are already inbuilt, so our potential is
already built in us (by our dear heavenly manufacturer). it is up to us to find it and use it to the max. and so this brings
me to living to the max, where we should live to our potential and not compare ourselves with others, with societal norms,
with traditional norms, with anything else other than your own standard. its just like if you're driving at a place without
speed limits, and you're driving with a car which you aren't very familiar with at 80km/h amongst some lao pok cars driving
at 60km/h, of cos u'll overtake them and u'll feel great: ahhhh i've overtaken all the cars, i'm the top of the world! And.
then.a.BMW.speeds.past.at 200km/h, leaving you feeling like you're a stationary object (comparatively). then you glance at
the speedometer and suddenly find that the car you're driving can actually go up to 250km/h!!! you could have zoomed your way
at 250km/h instead of 80km/h, but you didn't!!! stupid right? but in real life, most of us are ThAt stupid ^^;; so you know
you have some potential, good, many people don't know that they actually have some potential in them. you are using your
potential, even better, cos some haven't discovered theirs yet. and if you're the minority who actually uses your potential,
are you using it to the M.A.X? if you compare yourself with societal norms, its just like you're driving normally among some
lao pok cars, you might overtake some cars(some people), but you're still not using the extra 170km/h (250-80 = 170)
potential in the car. so he sorta challenged us to use our full potential, not compare ourselves with society and use just a
teensy bit of it to etch out a bit of success(if any). hmmz this is the basic gist of the message.. i can still remember
somemore parts but i'm lazy to type (looks at the amt that i've already typed).i find that i take a lot of notes.. the pple
around me are filling in the blanks for the sermon outline and there i was scribbling notes all over the place, in front n at
the back. different sort of thinking? dunno ^^;;
overall i enjoyed this week. a lot of details i ommitted. sorry abt that~~ till next time~
In the early morning hours (EST) of
March 23, 2001, the Russian space
station Mir tore apart during a planned
reentry over the southern
Pacific Ocean, ending roughly 15 years of
service as perhaps the
premier manned human presence in space.
That's not bad for a spacecraft
designed to last only five years when it
first launched in 1986.
Three years after Mir finally,
deliberately, and violently returned to
Earth with nary an injury or property
damage to its credit, it's worth
noting how inexact the science behind "
planned" reentry truly is.
Perhaps the most famous example of the
random chance involved in
deorbiting a spacecraft is the tale of
the U.S. space station Skylab,
which fell to Earth on July 12, 1979.
Skylab got off to a rocky start, with
portions of its shielding tearing
away during its launch on May 14, 1973.
Unable to properly deploy its
solar panels, Skylab required a manned
repair mission simply to get its
basic power supply back online.
Despite this early setback, Skylab
hosted multiple capsule-launched
crews and performed several experiments
before its retirement in 1974.
NASA guided the station into a long-term
orbit, where it expected the
station to safely remain for years until
authorities decided how to
dispose of the craft or reactivate it
when the proposed space shuttle
program came online.
But Skylab's orbit did not prove
stable. In 1979, it made a largely
uncontrolled reentry that saw portions of
the station fall to the Earth
in a sparsely populated region of western
Australia.
Sparsely populated, however, does not
mean unpopulated, and Skylab's
debris showered the small town of
Esperance. While this caused no
lasting harm, it did result in local
authorities slapping the U.S.
State Department with a $400 fine for
littering.
just some entertaining stuff. $400
only!!!!!! wah~~~~~~~~~~~~ SO CHEAP!!
hahaha exceedingly funny :P
i love now~~ no exams.. but i think i would like my parents to stop asking when
my exams end. i purposely didn't want to tell them abt my exams to avoid nagging.
and yes i did avoid quite some nagging. good. but argh why can't i totally avoid it....
my toe is healed too~~!
hmmz what else... ah liddat lah.. haha till next time...
end 8.38pm
Wed 10/3/04
revealing the answers
cooking point - boiling point
Milky Manner - milky way
Continental direction - Continental drift
complicated numbers - complex no.s
Great standardized theory - grand unified theory
Possible energy - potential energy
Order of the size - order of magnitude
Red movement -red shift
Theory of the rope - string theory
Time Mistake - time lapse
Curtain of the colour - colour blind
Great Blow - big bang
Normal Choice - Natural selection
Bond absent - missing link
Room of fog - cloud chamber
Spin of harvest - crop rotation
ah when u see the answers they sorta go "ding!" right? hehehe~~ anyone interested in seeing passion of the christ(producer mel gibson) from april 1 to 3? should be a great movie~
end post 21:08pm
.x.x.x.x.x.
Thurs 19/2/04
been very busy lately. recently i've been reading lots of magazines, basically sky n telescope, discover, new scientist n
scientist american (the science-y ones avaliable in my sch) here's some comic relief. this is taken from Discover vol 24 no.
11 page 88.
One of Google's most intriguing services is language translation. As with all machine translations, the results are often
askew. (yada yada yada)
basically this guy translated a few words which are a bit more scientifically used in google. try guessing what these
words are.
cooking point
Milky Manner
Continental direction
complicated numbers
Great standardized theory
Possible energy
Order of the size
Red movement
Theory of the rope
Time Mistake
Curtain of the colour
Great Blow
Normal Choice
Bond absent
Room of fog
Spin of harvest
haha quite cute all these.. u'll find the first few quite easy to guess, but the later ones are harder. post ur guesses in the comments and we'll see how many u get correct ^^v
end 7.05pm
.x.x.x.x.x.
Mon-tues 9-10/2/04
Hello, at last i've added a *gasp* layout!! yes i know this is absolutely not an original layout which i intended, but..
aiyah i'm getting lazier.. if i wanna do something, i wanna do it well. And so therefore since i wasn't able to do the
original layout as i intended, i'm not going to put up a half done thing. and therefore... i just kope-d one from a webby and
used it, modifying from the source code as i go along. I'm no expert at html, i've only read one super thin smaller-than-A5
sized book on html before, many many many years ago (obviously i've forgotten everything in it..) and so it'll just take much
more time for me to edit and understand the logic from source, not to mention upload this and that...
in fact, i think the theory of doing a blog is really easy. just the time. well i'm always short of that..
and as you can see, i still opt for simple n plain designs. they're easier to load and easier on the eyes. i took this
from wah_biangz at www.blogskins.com. and anyway in due time u'll be tortured by my own design anyway, so i shall spare u the
torture first. :) enjoy
end 02.08am
.x.x.x.x.x.
sun-mon 08-09/02/04
haha haven't updated this for a long time. sorry for that my dear readers~~
You are
naturally born with a gift, whether it be poetry, writing or song. You love beauty and creativity, and usually are
highly intelligent. Others view you as mysterious and dreamy, yet also bold since you hold firm in your beliefs.
ah just a weird quiz... blogs seem just the place to dump weird quiz results... not that they're very accurate anyway... i
don't even know 100% of myself, how can a quiz know~? anyway i don't think i'm very artistic... my drawings etc are
atrocious... tho true, i love beauty n creativity, but doesn't everyone love these? for the other parts of the quiz results..
well u be the judge.. i don't know about how others view me, nor do i know if i'm considered highly intelligent. i think my
intelligence is normal, there are tons of people much much more intelligent, tho i shan't quote them here.
.x.x.x.x.x.
myself
a few self made rules that i abide. i never quote names. i use nicks or initials, but never names. i like anonymity over the
net. and pls reciprocate by calling me Flames, stormy, fireaurora, aurorastorm, stormchaser, or any of the nicks that i use
that i know refers to me. and don't worry if u dunno who i am talking about. chances are, if u dunno that person's nick, u
don't know that person either. and x_x is a person.
lluciditydesign?
