Friday, June 29, 2007

It's Me

So I haven't blogged in a while. My life has settled down into a bit of routine now. I still have quite a bit of free time and I'm gradually figuring out how to fill it. Yesterday I got a Java textbook so hopefully I'll stay motivated to crack that open and take some time to learn Java this summer. On Monday I heard about a soup kitchen call the The Gospel Mission that is quite close to UD that needs volunteers, so I'm going to go over there tomorrow and help out and possibly set up more times that I can assist. I now have all of I John 1 memorized and about half of chapter 2, making a little progress every day.

Today is volleyball day. Every Friday a bunch of Arab students play volleyball all evening with whoever else shows up. Last week it was 10-15 Arabs, a French student, a Puerto Rican, a Chinese student, and half a dozen or so Americans. We divide into roughly four teams and rotate. Last week someone brought a rather ornate Hookah, which I now know is a method of smoking tobacco that is healthier than cigarettes and smells quite sweet (My asthma served as an easy way to avoid trying it myself). It's great fun, so I'm looking forward to it again this evening, assuming it doesn't rain.

My inspiration for blogging today was a random thought that I had. When someone I'm with calls someone on the phone and they start the conversation with "Hi, it's me" or just "It's me" and then go right into what they were calling about, I know that they know the person they are calling well. Often it's a spouse or girlfriend. Sometimes it's just someone they've been talking to a lot lately. Whoever it is, I know that those two have a strong relationship. When they talk, they have no need to identify themselves explicitly because those two words are enough for the hearer to know who is calling. God knows us so well that all we have to say is "Hi God, it's me" and he knows who's calling.

Rereading this, I'm afraid that what I was trying to communicate was lost in the words that I used, but I hope you understand at least partially my attempt to illustrate God's intimate knowledge of who we are and his eagerness to have a close enough relationship with us that all we have to say is

"Hey, it's me..."

Friday, June 22, 2007

Pictures

A while ago I had a request from my mother for a few pictures of UD so here's a few that I've taken from around and about. There are more on Facebook if you're interested.

The view from my window


Josh and I by the fancy entrance


Julio and I looking thoughtful


The exact photo requested: Me with the big UD sign


The view as we come out of the science building


This is part of the hill we bike up every day after work/class


Emily and Josh in the clean room

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Locked Doors Bug Me (when my keys are on the other side)

So when that little switch at the bottom is flipped my door locks. That's fine with me except that when I unlock my door the switch doesn't flip back...

That lead me to the situation of the morning. Last night when I got back I unlocked my door and went to bed. This morning I got up and went outside for a minute. The wind blew the door shut and there I was, no keys. It cost me ten bucks to get my door unlocked so my immediate resolution was to make sure that this was never going to happen again. First I removed the panel over the switch and tryed using duct tape to fasten it down. That worked exceeding well. So well in fact, that the door wouldn't even lock. Next I decided to try to make a jimmy out of a coat hanger. I stepped outside and closed the door to test if the coat hanger would fit in between and lo and behold! The door was locked, I was on the outside, and my keys were on the inside, again.

I had three choices.
1. Make the jimmy and hope it works. My pliers were inside my room, dang it!
2. See if by random luck (or blessing) Josh's key happened to open my door.
3. Go pay another ten dollars five minutes after I locked myself out the first time.

I went to see if Josh had pliers, nope. I tried bending the coat hanger using my knife (that I somehow had even though I didn't have my keys), didn't quite work. So I borrowed Josh's key and my door opened right up, I guess God does have a sense of humor. After that, I put my keys in my pocket and made and tested my jimmy, shown below. It works pretty well so I hid it outside my room so that I will NOT get locked out of my room again this summer.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Jon showed us some bike trails (for better or for worse :)

In the last two days I biked about 55 miles. That isn't far for hardcore bicyclists, but I hadn't ridden my bike much since college started, so my legs are a bit sore today. On Sunday morning I ended up riding quite a ways (13 miles) to get to church. Then that evening Josh, Jon, Jon's roommate and I rode around a bit. Jon showed us a trail that starts about a half-mile from campus and connects to a network of trails that go all different directions. In addition to being a fairly well maintained bike trail, there's some really nice woodsy parts around and much of the path goes along a river, so it's a nice ride. Sunday night I had a blast riding around and talking and stopping at picturesque spots (+14 miles). So yesterday Josh and I decided to go out again to get some exercise. This time we went hard and fast for miles, 27.5 miles in just over two hours. Now in high school once I rode just over 30 miles in one day, but that included a break for lunch and a much slower pace, so I'd call this my most challenging bike trip yet. In July there's a bike trip to raise money for some good cause that I can't remember at the moment that I may participate in. That trip is about 150 miles in two days. So I have a long ways to go if I'm going to get in shape.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Church Adventure

I decided to go to Apex Community Church this Sunday because it had been recommended to me by a couple of people and I briefly met two student age people who go there. It's a five mile bike ride to get there, which is a bit long for a Sunday morning, but I figured I'd do it once and hopefully meet someone who lives in my area that I'd be able to mooch rides from in the future. Another factor was that they have an 11:15 am service, which is conducive to sleeping in after a late night. So I set out this morning on my bike with a map in my head including the street the building is on, major streets I'd cross, and the big street before it and the one after. After riding 6.5 miles, I concluded that I had somehow missed it and so I went back about a mile to another church I had passed that looked friendly. (It turned out I had ridden right past it and that it was just down the street from the one I went to)

So I went in and managed to catch most of the sermon. After the sermon the teaching pastor spent quite a bit of time talking about their new building project. The pastor was responding to a possible lack of commitment of the congregation to supporting the project financially. Part of what the pastor shared indicated that he saw the new building as an evangelism project.

Afterwards, I seriously considered walking up to him and asking "How will the new building aid/improve/strengthen your church's efforts at evangelism?" From my perspective there was nothing wrong with their current building (which is probably incorrect to some degree), and in my humble opinion American Christians spend too much on building temples unto themselves instead of treasures in heaven. The other interesting aspect was that after the service I waited around for a few minutes. I managed to make eye contact with less than half a dozen people, and two people greeted me verbally in passing. I could see that the people in that church have excellent families, good relationships with one another, and from all appearances are a growing body of believers. I really don't mean to knock them because I imagine that if I attended the college Sunday school I would have met some people and gotten rooted in a little better. I also might have been greeted had I been on time. But if the only welcoming thing about that church that I experienced is the big banner by the door proclaiming "Welcome" to all who enter (actually I didn't notice it until my way out. Irony, anyone?), I don't see how getting a new building is going to turn the church into a bunch of evangelists. The next question that I ask myself is would I be any different from these people at a church that I was a regular attender? And to be honest I would probably be no different.

What if instead of building a new building they took that 6.5 million dollar project and used it to send medicine, Bibles, and food to needy churches in Africa? What if they used it to support native missionaries in India? What if they sent it to Russia, where instead of one hundred and seventy-five baptist churches in Dayton, Ohio there are less than one hundred churches in a province larger than the state of Ohio?

I'm reminded of a (true) story I heard from someone I personally know who visited a church in Russia. The small body of 100 or so believers have no plumbing in their church. The bathrooms are quite literally a small outside building with a dirt floor and a hole in the ground. Quite uncomfortable, to say nothing of the bitter cold in the winter. A few women of the church asked the elders if they could get indoor plumbing and install proper toilets. They did some research and found that they could do so for the same amount of money it takes for them to send one missionary to another city to start another church. They concluded that before God they COULD NOT spend money on indoor plumbing instead of sending another missionary. 80% of their annual budget is spend on sending missionaries and so they pee in a hole in the ground for the cause of Christ.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for churches here to have indoor plumbing, but sometimes it almost disgusts me how nice churches are. Is God glorified by a beautiful building with a state-of-the-art sound system with subwoofers built into the stage? Perhaps. But God IS glorified by people who sacrifice earthly comforts for the sake of reaching the lost. Yes, there is a balance, but it seems to me that in America we err on the side of comfort all too often. I'm not positive what I'm even saying here. But it seems to me that there is a problem with the church in America and the experience that I had this morning is a good example of that problem.

Let me try a summary statement: American Christians are too concerned about themselves and about having nice things and should be more focused on reaching out to those around them and using their finances to further Christ's kingdom.

A Wild Weekend (well, at least for me:)

This weekend I hung out with Josh, Julio, and a couple other people they knew. On Friday night, I went to what could probably be called a stereotypical party. Ten or twelve of us ended up chilling at someone's apartment where the main activity was ingesting alcoholic beverages and the goal of at least some of those present was to get wasted. This however, was not my goal, so I limited my intake and watched events unfold. In retrospect, I don't think it was a bad thing for me to do. I had a good conversation with a guy from Kenya, discovered that I don't like cheap red wine (at all), strengthened a few relationships, and had some fun while I was at it.

Saturday night Josh, Julio (a cool guy on our floor), and Jon (a cool guy in our building), went to see two independent band play at a bar. I didn't drink anything stronger than water in part because things were expensive and in part because I just didn't feel like it, so I drove home :D. This night I had a really in-depth conversation with Jon that started because he has been to Africa and I am hoping to go next summer.

If due to some freakish event in the time-space continuum I run into the 19 or 20 year old me. the younger version of me will react "you did WHAT? Bars and parties are bad places to go. People get drunk there." But now I'm realizing that there really isn't anything wrong about going into a bar or to a party (now that I'm legal). This is what my friends here do for fun. If I refuse to enter a bar on moral grounds, that damages our relationship. And if I go and drink responsibly and "be good" it strengthens our friendships and I even have a bit of fun. Its an environment that I'll never fully embrace or seek out, but if that's what my friends do... Paul said to be all things to all people, and if I'm afraid to reach out to people in their own environment I'm not doing much good. The people I met and hung out with are pretty cool people. Even if I don't like drinking as much as they do I can have fun with them, I can learn from their different perspective on life, and I can show Christ to them.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Leave Comments!

Just a side note: I'd like to encourage you to leave comments if you have anything to say, agreeing, adding, disagreeing, whatever. It's nice just to know that people are reading this :D

Update on my life (in case you care:)

Yesterday Josh was riding his bike to the garage to pick up his fixed car when he hit a manhole cover that was a couple inches lower than the road at high speeds and took a big digger into the pavement. He's doing pretty well, hopped up on Vicodin he can walk around without much pain and is showing every sign of a quick recovery. Today we had our first lecture on nano fabrication which was quite interesting. Then we went adventuring in his now-healthy car and found a Walmart with no food and a grocery store that had lots of food.

This evening I played Ultimate Frisbee with some people who are here for the summer. It was really fun, but now reminds me that almost everyone here has a solidified circle of friends. It's easy for me to go and hang out and be friendly and they be friendly to me. But the relationship just isn't there and the only thing that will change that is time. I think this is a good experience for me in light of preparing for new student outreach next fall at Platteville, but I'd much rather be able to have the perspective without going through the frustrating stage of having only a few shallow relationships. I know from talking to other friends who are now far away that I'm not the only one going through this, which is comforting to some degree. I think the main thing that I'm realizing is how important it is in the beginning for an insider to "adopt" the outsider and help them with whatever they need until they become an insider. That hasn't happened for me here yet. Maybe it will, and maybe I'll end up making do with a bit of determination and courage instead. Only time will tell.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The Existence of God

I was listening to Ravi Zacharias today, and he said something as an aside that I found fascinating. take the person who says "God does not exist." "Well, why do you say that?" They say "I know God does not exist."

If I say "I know that no black rock with white spots exists in the universe," I presuppose that I have infinite knowledge of the universe.

To claim that you know that God does not exist is also a claim of infinite knowledge of the universe, a truly God-like quality. So the statement in itself is self-contradictory.

I'm explaining this poorly, so you should really go to rzim.org and listen to him yourself.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Movie Comments

This evening I went to go see "Waitress" at an independent film theater. Apparently it's also made it into main theaters now too. I really liked it and feel like recommending it, except that I can't really think of any particular reason that it's a good movie. So I guess I'll start writing my thoughts and see what happens.

Basic premise: A waitress who makes amazing pies works with two other waitresses and a horrible boss. One thing that I found interesting was that both of her coworkers find "love" during the course of the movie. One says the equivalent of "Well, he loves me and no one else does, so I guess I'll take him." The other has an affair with their boss because, as she puts it, she has someone to look pretty for and it's exciting, even though the guy is a jerk and married to a nice woman and she doesn't love him.

Two women who both are involved in relationships for two very wrong reasons. The stories do end up happier than the part I told (for those of us who are romantics at heart), but these stories provoke thought about what a good reason to enter into a relationship is. I think that's why I like this movie, there are interesting people with interesting relationships in it. The part that I described is just a subplot, so don't expect the whole movie to be about those things. Some characters you hate, others you just can't make up your mind about, and some you root for all along. The end is a bit unexpected but it was happy enough to leave me with a warm feeling.

One of the best parts about it was that Nathan Fillion has a large role in it. He is the main actor from the tv show Firefly and the movie Serenity. I really enjoy his ability to work with good dialog. He had quite a few clever interchanges with the lead actress.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Why do people go to church to pray?

This morning as I was waking up, I thought about the challenge that I and many others have in spending meaningful time with God regularly. One of the things that makes it hard for me is that I have only one room, so almost everything that is in my life that could distract me is less than ten feet away. Here in Dayton I have my own room and it has two desks, so simply sitting at the desk that my computer isn't at helps a lot.

So I was thinking about this this morning, and I remember how some people have a little area of their room or house set up as a "prayer corner" of sorts--A special place where they can go to remove distractions and put their focus on God. The Romans in ancient times had "household gods" in a special room where they could make offerings.

Then I realized with greater clarity than before why people go to a church to pray. It isn't that God is any nearer to us at church. It isn't that he cares more about people who pray from a church. Out of all the places there are to pray, a church is one with very few distractions. It is a place where you don't have to worry about other people thinking you're strange. Everything in that place is designed to aid one's focus on Christ, so prayer can be far more meaningful and effective. So if you're in the Dayton area this summer, don't be too surprised if you notice some crazy person going into a church during the middle of the week and realize that it's me.

LOLCODE

Zach IMed me this link a few minutes ago and I thought it was worth sharing. Apparently the programmers are at it again, developing a new code that "has no practical or educational value, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun." The geeks and nerds among us will probably get a big kick out of it, and a few minutes of time from a non-geek/nerd would probably enable said person to understand at least some of the humor.

http://programming.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/06/07/1654251&from=rss

Thursday, June 7, 2007

See Me

I will be spending quite a bit of my time this summer in the clean room here. If you want to see it and what's going on inside live, check out http://homepages.udayton.edu/~sarangam/nanofab/ It's usually pretty boring though (come watch us wait for the turbomolecular pump to depressurize the sputterer!). Okay, so that SOUNDS cool (minus the waiting part), but it does involve a lot of fussing with details (and waiting). We are currently in the process of building a light filter that will transmit 100% of a certain range of Infrared light and reflect 100% at a different wavelength range, or at least the computer model says that it will.

Tonight I attended a local college/young adult Bible study. I was quieter for that study than I have been in any Bible study in I don't know how long :). I guess it was because I wanted to get a feeling for how the group interacted so that I would fit in. It seems that most of the people there had at least an undergrad degree, a few had jobs and others were going for a masters or PhD. There were plenty of engineers present, so that was a nice bonus.

I got the feeling that something wasn't quite right, but nothing that I can describe well. It was a feeling that while we were gathered with the best of intentions and desires to follow Christ, we weren't going about it the right way, or something like that. Whatever it is, I think I've seen it before and will probably see it again. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just that it was different from what I'm used to, I probably need to think about it when I'm not tired.

"Disc Golf" or "Adventures in a new city"

On Tuesday evening Josh and I set out to find a disc golf course. This was a difficult undertaking because of a few complications. I don't have a car and Josh's car was parked a half mile away, so taking our bikes seemed much easier. We had no internet in the dorms because we didn't have login names. We do have a lappy with us, courtesy of Dr. Li, so we biked to Panero's, a sandwich place, for dinner and used their wireless internet to look up Belmont Park and memorize the map so we could bike there. We stopped off at Josh's car to leave the lappy and procure his discs and then we realized we had made a mistake: We knew how to get to Belmont from the dorm, not from his car. But Josh said he thought he knew how to get us there so off we went...

3 miles later we had found the road that we knew ran N-S just west of the park, but not the park. We rode south about a half mile and didn't find it, so we asked a couple that was waiting at the bus stop:
"Belmont Park, I don't know where that is, but it's probably in Dayton."
Cue dramatic music! I thought we were in Dayton! How far had we veered from our intended path?
"Um, where are we now?"
"You're in Kettering."
"Oh, well, I guess we need to go back north then."

North we did go, and found the park maybe a mile in the other direction. I had been told that while Dayton itself isn't that big, the cities just run into each other so that the Dayton area goes for miles. Josh and I now have first hand experience with that.

The disc golf course was quite nice. A good mix of hills, trees, long and short holes. It was a good time. I am definitely going to get buff from riding up all the hills around here though.

Background

So last December I heard that Wei Li, one of the physics professors, was looking for two students to help him on an optoelectronics research project that he was working on. I applied for the job and found out early in the Spring semester that Josh Duran, a classmate and good friend of mine, and I had been selected. It was part time over the semester (about 3 hours a week) and full time over the sumer. Josh mentioned during the semester that we'd like to do some hands-on research in addition to the theoretical stuff we were working on. So Dr. Li arranged for us to spend two months this summer at the University of Dayton, home of a class-100 clean room (which is really good) and an accomplished electro-optics program. WAY MORE than either of us expected, but its looking like it'll be a great learning experience and will be a leg up to get my masters if that's the way I want to go next year. 

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Trying this out

Well, I made it to Dayton, on Monday the 4th of June, 2007.  I've had a lot of new experiences and a lot of free time lately, so it seemed to me that this would be a good way to remember some of the things that happen as well as telling a few friends about it.  However, it is now quite late, so I will have to resume this mighty undertaking at a later time.  If I get ambitious, I'll try to post some pictures as well.