I am sorting things out, packing, transporting belongs in my spare time I have. On top of my regular work of teaching, interviewing new students for Fall 2009, supervising thesis projects, giving workshops, attending conferences, we are in the process of moving. So, I need two of me. Every time I move, I promise myself I will not accumulate more things. But I don't keep my promise. Since we moved to the parsonage in San Lorenzo about two years ago, I bought more things to fill the house. Now we have to move them. My husband begged me not to buy these heavy, big rosewood buffet table and a wardrobe cabinet that are imported from Vietnam. But they are so pretty, I said, and insisted that we need to buy more pieces to complete the sets. Our house now looks like a Chinese furniture warehouse. I have to find a way to move them and find space to put them.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Keep my eyes on the path I am on
Last week I had an early morning meeting in San Francisco, so I rushed into my car and drove off. On a stretch of Highway 101, near the SF airport, my mind wandered off. I found myself on an unfamiliar street. Instead of exiting onto highway 280, I went straight on 101. I tried to get off at the next exit and reverse my route. “Simple”, I thought to myself, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t see the highway entrance. The more turns I made to find my way out, the deeper I got into strange corners where I had a harder time getting out. Eventually, I found my way to the university, feeling stupid and anxious about missing an important meeting at work.
Afterward, I considered my getting lost experience. It happened in a split second. My mind was not on where I was going. As a matter of fact, I was replaying in my mind an unpleasant incident that happened the day before at work. The more I replayed the incident, the angrier I became. Instead of giving it to the Lord and forgiving the person, I was trying to figure out the person’s motive. My mind [and my car] ran off in a wrong direction.
During our Christian walk, we often lose our way, if we are not careful. Just as I knew my destination perfectly, most Christians know where we are going. And yet, if we are not aware every minute during our walk, we could miss our exit and turn in a wrong direction. As soon as I learned of my mistake, I turned around. It still cost me an hour to get back on track and I missed an important meeting. I caused other people to wait for me and several meetings had to be rescheduled. If we take our eyes off from the path we travel, we may end up in a wrong place and bring grief to ourselves and cause problems for others.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Web 2.0 conference
I had a great time at the conference. I attended sessions from 9 am to 5 p.m, and yet I had to miss many interesting sessions. Also, I enjoyed observing behaviors of people. There were so many young, bright people on stage and off stage. I met two Korean women, one from Canada and one from SF area, we hung around for three days together. This year's theme was "Power of Less", and more people talked about humanity than technology, which made the conference more interesting. I even heard Lev Vigotsky was mentioned in a presentation. One person based his presentation on Pink's book, and noticed many of these innovators are artists. Almost every presentation started out with a story, and they used well designed PP to tell their stories. The most often used words were like "relationship", "community", so Facebook won over Flash this year.
When my relatives who never used e-mail are now on the Facebook, and they update several times a day. One smart person saw the power of Facebook, and wrote a book. Her name is Clare Shih who made an excellent points about doing business utilizing Facebook power in her presentation.
There were many interesting presentations, if you are in itec 830, check out presentation files and video from the conference in this site.
The president of RISD talk was very inspiring and also interesting, so I am posting a video of his talk here.