I am back.

It’s me. It’s Anh. I know, I have not posted anything here for decades. And I surely have been feeling terribly sorry. Excuses? I suppose I have some, since lives change, and my life has changed surprisingly since the new semester started. But as Mama Sukut said, “The busiest person I’ve ever known is Mr. Gianforte, but he still blogs.” Therefore, no excuse is sufficient. Most people don’t accept lame excuses, but unfortunately I like giving explanations. So here is it.

For every single weekend I have been thinking, “I have to post something up there! I have to post something up there!” But then, just like T. Coraghessan Boyle describes how a murder response to a detective’s question “What happened next?” in his story Greasy Lake, “I don’t know, something came over me. Exactly.” Exactly. And failing to keep my promise takes away my courage to read others’ blogs, and things get only worse.

Because of that, couple minutes ago, I said to myself I had to fix this as soon as possible. And so, trying to forget all the tests and works and stuffs for a moment, I am typing something for this blog right now. Yeah, I am back.

Things need to be changed a bit. I can’t really blog every weekend as I wanted, so I’ll change to …Mr. Koenen’s solution, which means I will blog here whenever I do. Secondly, I will sadly change my purpose of blogging in this page. I will not always be “composing” here, but instead will do what Richard has suggested, “telling what happens”. Hopefully this will make things easier.

This sounds like a sad stuff, but I have to go now. I am being late for my job. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some to eat before working. So yeah, I will read and comment your blogs later. Good to be back again.

B for Becoming better

When I graduated from Petra, I clearly understood that I was an incomplete graduate, that I lacked so many things which any true Patrafied graduate should have had. Since then, I have been concerned how to become more sophisticated.

I was thinking about it again yesterday night, and suddenly realized one stunning fact: I have learned almost nothing from Mr. V’s Bible Interpretation class! I remember I have tried to ask several questions about Christianity, but they were all off-topic, so Mr. V denied to answer them, and Richard’s responses to my questions weren’t really efficient since I couldn’t understand much what he said back then. As a matter of fact, the only thing I think I’ve learned in that class was merely knowing “what’s going on” in the books Esther, Ruth, and the Gospels. I did not understand the “points” or any innate lesson from them, and I didn’t have any idea what the book Philippians was talking about. How crazy it truly was!

Surely, I am not going to criticize Mr. V at all, especially after watching “true” graduates making their speeches, any single one of them expressed how challenging Mr. V’s classes were, and how many things they have learned from him. However, I truly don’t think it was my fault neither (bad me.) I did try in that class and I got an A for the final, and a high B for the class. The only thing bothers me is that somehow I’ve missed a chance to be a better interpreter, and if only I could go back and attained his class again, I might have been appreciate the class much more (and maybe I would have mentioned Mr. V in my speech also.)

Back then when I received my final grades, I kept thinking that if only I have got an A in my Bible class, I would get straight A’s and become… another Richard (never mind about this.) As now I am thinking back, I am actually glad that it was not an A, or else things would have become really ridiculous.

The thought leads me to wonder if I really deserve all the A’s in the other classes. I realized the difference was that in those classes, I really learned things and my knowledge in those fields have improved a lot. Because of that, I was given A’s even though I was still so far behind my classmates. An A was not showing what level I was at, but how big the improvement I got. Realizing these, I am extremely thankful.

“Hey Anh, how're your grades in college?”

“Are you asking about the official grades or the real ones?”

__________________________________________

I wrote this post last night, after I went to bed about two hours.

The proof

When I was taking my Philosophy course, the professor defined “faith” as the belief without proof (By “proof” means through reasons and logics.) At some points, I can argue that almost everything does not have good proof, but of course we know what he means by this definition. Of course, Christians’ faith is not some unjustified fallacy, and we do have a lot of solid proofs that if only we regulate them with our minds, we may clearly feel that everything makes sense. However, not everyone can obtain such knowledge sufficiently, and since most people are rational thinkers, a slight doubt in a fragment of second of the nature of Christian faith can be unavoidable.

Shamefully, I myself did that sometimes, though I tried to “fix” that by making me become more sufficient with books and prayers. One thing I am so thankful is that any sincere prayer will surely be replied, and yes, He did. Now thinking back about it, I feel it inappropriately funny if some believer asks God for “proof”, but somehow I did ask, and He did give me some “proof”. Though I am going to share the story, it is not a testimony or anything close, but simply a “story” to share.

It happened when I was… flying to Montana for the graduation of Petra (yeah, life is comprehensive sometimes.) Sitting next to me was an old woman. We got to talk to each other, and I knew that she wasn’t an ordinary person, but an eighty nine year-old historian. Well, basically she was a Christian, and she was going to try to “evangelize” me, but since I already was, her story was amazingly significant to me. She was distinctively a rational scientist, many of which are strong atheists. The important thing was that she was a historian professor, and therefore, whatever she could find shouldn’t be too far from the truth. Indeed, from trying to deny God’s existence by finding proof, she was convinced herself by the fact that what the Bible said was surprisingly true. She told me a lot of stories, showing me how the three sons of Noah were really the ancestors of the three races, and many others (I just can’t re-demonstrate all of them efficiently.) And I realized, this was the proof given by God.

How do I know it? Can she tell lies? Can she surely be the historian only because she said that? Was all what she said reliable?... If I wanted to ask myself these, there could be much more, but then nothing can be come up with in the end, and probably the conversation wouldn’t have even existed. I understand what I saw and what I heard exactly how God wants me to. The clear explanation belongs to another dimension of knowledge, so it cannot be provided. The fact is, I saw the proof I needed, was amazed by that, and got my faith strengthened greatly.

It’s 1:16 a.m. right now, and I don’t know what I am getting at. However, I have the formula for my Christian life now: Keep trying, fall, try harder, and pray. Look at me, some of the hair of the black sheep is getting lighter!...

God bless…

The slacker is back.

I clearly know that I did not post anything here for the last two weeks. After I had written Some notes for my readers and couldn’t keep the promise, I truly feel really sorry. There isn’t any excuse should be sufficient - it’s true, but maybe some explanation should be a bit helpful.

First of all, my lack of posting doesn’t really mean that I didn’t write anything at all. In fact, two of my entries for this blog have been done already, and I’ll explain why I didn’t post them later.

After I came back from Bozeman this summer, things have got crazy here. Since I was attending “squeezing” summer classes, one day in class was technically equal to one week in a normal semester. Therefore, skipping a week does hurt. Of course that I do not ever have any hesitation about visiting Bozeman, but then, philosophy final became a tough one to keep up with. I did fine, fortunately. However, my new class, Micro Economics, was even more intense (in a different way). Since I have to read a massively huge text book, it was even much harder for me to keep track with my reading plan! (Oh, my!)

Yeah, it only means that I have to try harder, I know. After all of the things I have learned so far, I understand that hard life is critically necessary. However, the real trouble was that I have been challenged (or I can say, attacked) psychologically and mentally for the last couple of weeks. I cannot tell the story, but since it happened, my finished entries turned out to be confusing that I wondered if I should post them or not (there are nothing wrong with them, though, it’s just me.) Anyway, I am doing fine for now. I am glad and thankful for that.

Wow, this retarded post is getting pretty long. Maybe a tiny random story in the end wouldn’t be too bad.

Last night I had a dream. I don’t know “how” and “why”, but I saw Kim and Rochelle in my dream (!). There were discussing about another girl X (I don’t remember/ know who she was). And the discussion was like this:

K: X is prettier than me! T_T

R: No, you are prettier than her. ^^

K: No! X is obviously prettier than me!

R: No, she is not. . .

So I jumped in and said, “It’s not really matter. Guys like pretty girls, but nice girls are the ones we want to get married.”

Hearing that, Kim and Rochelle was “oh, ok…”

Then I turned to Rochelle and said to her, “So yeah, you should be nice, Galadriel, and you should stop …being taller also.”

At that time, I felt awkward, “What in the world did I just say?!! O.o”

That’s the end of my weirdest story. Thanks for reading till here. I’ll try to post something better next time :D .

Just a lame step of sacrifice

I have been keeping thinking about Mr. Koenen speech at the Petra 2008 graduation. In order to practice the idea of “sacrifice [myself] for ‘something’”, this was the first thing I came up with: The Prince Caspian Operation (!) (When you read to the fancy name of the operation, please imagine some ethic music appears along with it.) This is the second so-called “operation” since …the KKK operation, which surely wasn’t any racial stuff but simply was… how to get to Kim’s birthday party. The mission was accomplished barely in May 2007(*). However, the mission this time seems to be much tougher.

What in the world is “The Prince Caspian Operation”? – Well, everyone should recognize easily that it should involve somehow with the movie The Chronicle of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I saw any single person who was talking about this movie saying that it was perfectly great (one example should be Kim’s “prince caspian”). This just makes me want to watch the movie so badly. However, there are rumors about the difference between the movie and its original version in the book of C. S. Lewis. Also from personal experience of Harry Potter, I believe that it should be more beneficial if I read the book before watching the movie. The thing is, it’s not so easy to do that.

I am now working with the Bible (currently the book Judges). According to my plan, I will then finish the second half of Harry Potter and the deadly hallows, which have been delayed for more than a year. Until then, The Chronicle of Narnia will be read. Unfortunately, I am not the kind of reader who reads several books at the same time, and I don’t want to change my reading plan neither. Therefore, Mr. Prince in the movie will have to wait for a while. And that’s all there is to it.

That’s not an act of sacrifice! – Well, I think that’s a pretty challenging thing to do (and as I said in the title, it is LAME, isn’t it?). Besides, I suppose I need to get some guts before doing some greater sacrifices, and, I did said that was my first step (at the 1^st paragraph) – means that I have been doing “something” else also.

So yeah, I need to finish this post for now, that I can continue the “mission”. Wish me luck! :D

* For more information, please contact Kim's mother, living in where-ever-it-is.

Some notes for my readers

First of all, I want to apology for the lack of writing for a long period of time (from April 11 till May 31, excluded The lil' pride of the black sheep). Of course there are excuses such as “finals” or “I was focusing on my Vietnamese blog”, but they are not really true. When I heard that someone considered seniors’ blogging as Petra (new) tradition, I simply felt that I didn’t do what I was supposed to. Therefore, from now on, I’ll try my best to maintain my blog weekly, no matter if I’ll have no comment at all.

Secondly, I just recently added a comment at The blessed girl as a description, since there wasn’t any comment and I am afraid of some misunderstanding about the poem. So please read it sometime to see if it helps.

The next thing is about the website rssfwd.com. I didn’t see any email telling me that Kimberlee has her new post. However, I then found the message in the “spam” section of my mailbox. So if it is a case for anyone, you can open the email, choose “Not spam”, it will be moved to your inbox, and you are done.

And the last thing I want to say, thank you all a lot. (Yes, you also, even if this is the only glance you’d spare for my blog.) From now on, I’ll try to observe things more, in order to pull something out of my head to write and post. So if it’s lame, please laugh, but not too hard. I’ll cry.

That’s it. Thank you.

For the class of 2008 in Petra Academy

I sometimes take several days to finish a post, but this is the first time I had to rewrite the whole thing. Writing something for Petra graduates is extremely hard, but to do that after I have already been to the graduation and listened to great speeches with all the sufficient points included is so much harder. Therefore, I’ll make it short.

First of all, congratulation!!! You have been through all the hard time in Petra for such amounts of time and yet survive. Even though there is a whole gigantic burden thing for any Petra graduate to bear, you should be proud of yourselves – maybe just for a few seconds. I believe that appreciate your efforts significantly contribute to greater achievements in the future.

Since now you are all petrified, there will not be any difficulty can ever stop you. (Of course I am not talking about the super power to blow a building in one punch – you know what I mean.) However, there are plenty of things out there that are entitled “glorifying God” that no individual should do all of them at once. Therefore, correct choices are important and also efficient, especially when we first “enter” the vast world.

Despite what Mr. Koenen said in his speech, I think sentimentalism can be important. Please don’t forget the time you spent here in Petra. The morning prayer times were good; the lunch times were fun; and the times when the bell rang were splendid. Please don’t forget all the intense house competitions, the Marathons, field days, and many others. You did have some great time, didn’t you?

As always, when one tale is over, another one gets started. Can’t you see, your futures are waving, with colleges, new knowledge, private places, and parties? So, fly! The whole world is waiting! Do sacrifice yourselves and do “something” – as Mr. Koenen said, but don’t forget to have fun sometime. Enjoying life is also a way to glorify God, I suppose.

So yeah, congratulation again, my brothers and sisters. May God bless you all!