*boloh*

 
This is what I'm craving right now.

I've been feeling like a living doormat lately. If I'm not getting frantic emails from students in my class telling me that my recitation time doesn't fit their preferences, I'm getting frantic emails from my colleague telling me that I'm late in giving him the portion of a paper that he was supposed to be responsible for. Oh, and then there's the "I'm sorry, it's just not my priority" lines being fed to me from committee members right after they say, "But since I made the commitment, I will follow through." Bullsh*t. I'm sick and tired of always being the person who "takes it for the team" and stays up past 4am doing work that no one else wanted to do because they were too busy feeding their own selfish ambitions. I'm sick and tired of having to filter my communications so I can be more diplomatic and make it a "teaching moment." Screw the teaching moment, these people are flakes! Flakes! Flakes! All of them! A combined head of dandruff, I say. It doesn't matter that you see how I've put my heart and soul into this project, and that you've agreed to help me. It doesn't matter that you're causing someone else to suffer for your own selfish ambitions and change of heart. It doesn't even matter if you're supposed to be my friend. It never matters. Because people of this world are ultimately selfish. They care not for the public good, if their private gain is small. Argggh.

So..I got me-self a Nikon Digital SLR Camera this week, and have been going camera happy with everything around me. While I distract myself from this international trade paper that's still due from last semester, here is my attempt at being artistic.

Watching my baby niece Caitlyn gurgle and coo as she tried to put everything within arms reach into her mouth, I came to sharp realization that a lot of who we are today started from when we were her age. I mean, look at her. She wakes up every morning to a mother who naturally wakes up at 6:30-7am who has already cleaned the kitchen, written emails, and checked the latest store fliers of the day for sales, and a father who leads everything in our little community almost by accident. She picked a darn good family to be born into. She gets kissed a million times a day, hugged a billion times a day, and her name has probably risen to the top word uttered in our house after "the."

If there's one advantage in life, it's got to be love. It made me remember those children at the Starfish Foster Home in Xi'an, China. With cleft lip and palettes, spina bifida, and a host of other medical conditions these children are also orphans. These children come to Starfish Foster Homes to have their physical ailment fixed via surgery, but it's my hunch that they leave with much more than the benefit of physical health. The question is, is it enough?

Another year, another decade, another passing of time. I've been obsessed lately with choreographed song and dance numbers, which has almost replaced my love for the movie montage this year. So here you go, and I apologize for having to put Taylor Swift in there. Although I'm way past my tween stage, I had to give credit where it's due. It was, afterall, a pretty entertaining performance. Other than that, don't knock the penguins. They're awesome.

10. Slumdog Millionaire Jai Ho



9. Happy Feet's Boogie Wonderland



8. Step Up Till the Dawn



7. SYTYCD Canada's Tara-Jean and Vincent's It Doesn't Hurt



6. Taylor Swift's Should've Said No




5. How Does She Know from Enchanted




4. Oprah's 24th Anniversary Block Party with the Black Eyed Peas




3. America's Best Dance Crew - Jabbawockeez's Apologize




2. Glee's Somebody to Love




1. SYTYCD Chelsea and Mark's Bleeding Love

I was reading today about the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings, and wanted to know more. So of course, I went to my trusty google search and typed in "Elisha" - after filtering out the closely pornographic photos of a certain blond actress, I hit on the links of various bible-history.org, biblestudy.com, bible-this-and-that websites. What struck me was the utter and complete lack of credibility these websites had. There was no accredation, no endorsement by my church, nothing really to say that these interpretations and historical backgrounds are accurate.

Yet it is so easy to just hop onto the website without thinking, grab whatever information I want, probably print it out for the bible study I'm leading next week, and off I go.

If you thought going to my church's website would help, it didn't. Redeemer Presbyterian is oddly lacking in helping me understand what information out there on the web is credible or not. An affiliation or stamp would really be useful here.

This plays into the larger conversation I had earlier with a colleague, about the rise of citizen journalism on the web and blogosphere and news-by-twitter. For all the benefits of mass democratization of internet ownership, there is also a huge issue of credibility and reliability.

The NYTimes published an article on the front page of the website about this crazy new phenomenon spreading amongst teenagers. It's called hugging. Apparently it warranted the calling in of sociologists, psychologists, and other experts to deconstruct why teenagers are now hugging each other as oppose to high fives.

I'm sorry, high-fives, but you'll have to move into the corner of has-been trends along with the mop while you watch the hug and the swiffer bask the limelight of cool.

Seriously?

It's hugging, for pete's sake and it's nothing new. I hugged in high school and that was a good ten years ago. There was nothing substantial in this article to warrant an entire story. If there was a sexual harrassment charge stemming from what started out as an innocent hug, then okay. But instead, there's George G. White junior high school, which banned hugging altogether. Ridiculous.