Even Petra Academy has a popper. Even a popper believes in Faith, Hope and Love. And even though he doesn't have a proper writing skill, he still wants to convey things that he is inspired.
This post here is nothing beautiful, sophisticated, appropriate, or something like that. For some people, this may even be offensive or even heretic. If you still want to read a thought of mine then here we go.
So yeah, I am screwed indeed. Recently I realized that since I became a Christian, I seemingly have no chance to get a wife who really is for me. This does sound ridiculous but not too unrealistic.
Here is the deal: After all of these years, I have reckoned that a good wife for me should match me (be like me). I surely know a horde of movies which are about love-without-border and Hollywood does a great job convincing people that we can get married with alligators if we have our “true love”. But what I think is: two totally different people just cannot share their lives with each other. Different backgrounds make the two experience different things, cause them to love, hate, appreciate, despite, believe… differently from each other. An American and a Vietnamese wouldn’t be a right couple since one believes in capitalism and likes Bart Simson, and the other in communism and Thanh Giong (What the heck is “Thanh Giong”? Exactly!). So even though I can easily have a crush with a lot of American girls (and actually I get several new crushes every day), I know none of them are for me.
Vietnamese then! I can just fall in love with a nice Vietnamese girl, get married, convinced her to believe in God, then live happily together forever after or whatever. Oh, if only it’s just that simple!
Actually I used to believe in that until a month ago. I attended a Bible study class and learned how a wife and a husband ought to treat each other (by some verses in Corinthians that I am sure if you ask Richard he’ll know) and so it just doesn’t make sense for a Christian to get married with a non-believer. At the same time, I was discussing with my mother about God (who wasn’t a Christian and hardly knew anything about Christianity), and I realized just how hard to share my belief with someone. My faith and knowledge was only sufficient to convince myself and strengthen my belief. To help another person to know God and follow Him is next to impossible. I won’t be able to do that to my non-Christian wife.
So I will stick with either someone who won’t be truly for me, or a non-Christian wife who will end up being in hell. And trust me, it’s not funny at all.
I know I am wrong thinking like this – to be hopeless because of believing in God/Hope. I just don’t know what is wrong.
When I came back to Bozeman for the 2008 Graduation, I promised to Holden that I’d have a break-dance show for the Cultural Night and would record it to show him. Sadly that they didn’t let me do it since it wasn’t really “cultural”, we ended up with another thing that I’ve post previously.
But a promise is a promise, so I still recorded what I had last summer. It was intended to be posted on Holden’s birthday but, well, you know, uhm… so I am going to post it this time.
This was recorded in a gym, soon after that the gym was closed in order to be renovated as a new recreation center in the campus. So I was apparently the last person who danced there, pretty historical isn’t it?
Performer: Anh Tran
Choreographer: Anh Tran
Filmer: Anh Tran (put it auto)
Music list: 1. Moments in love - The art of noise; 2. Cameo - Word Up; 3. Cali Life Style - Freakin (Remix).
Note: it's 12:37 in the morning, so my mind gets messed up. "Non-believer" or "Unbeliever"? I know not anymore... T_T
I recently have realized that many people seem to be confused between “non-believer” and “atheist”. This happens to both Americans and Vietnamese and possibly people from other countries. I believe that the unlikeness of the two should be clarified better, since the notions of “non-believer” and “atheist” are hugely different.
It would take more time, effort, and wisdom to discuss about such thing sufficiently, and I currently don’t have enough incentive to be “devoted” to this topic, so I will just give whatever I have.
I personally feel that in the eyes of many Christian, we tend to consider simply whether a person believes in God or not, and consequently, we tend to treat those who don’t the same way – whatever the way is. However, as a former non-believer myself, I see a big difference here. Non-believers, like I was, don’t usually have much clue about what God is, who Jesus really is, or what He has done. This type of people is somewhat innocent – like a blank paper (and no, I am not praising my old self or whatever). If they get their chance to know God, they tend to be able to receive Him rather easily (although, yeah, not too easily as we all know). To talk about Jesus to these people, a good attitude and an additional level of Christian knowledge should be good. He will do the rest.
Atheist people are a different story. They have knowledge about Christianity either some bit or a great due. Some of them also possess a high level skill of philosophy and rhetoric and usually form their own belief. These include those who are anti-Christians who are really scary for me. (I was really close to be beaten up by some, ask my brother, he may know the story). Regardless of whoever atheists are, discussing with them requires a really good Christian knowledge, conversational skills and also experiences. (I am still way to far from this level and have been trying to improve myself to be a better Christian).
That’s all I have for this time. I feel really sleepy and tired right now (“sleepy” and “tired” are different also, maybe I’ll write about them later), so I stop here. At a glance I know that this post is full of incompleteness, ignorance, and other errors. Please feel free to add and fix stuff, saying “You are wrong, stupid!” or whatever. I love comments and may someday I will marry one. No, I should go to bed now, okay.
I want to see my family in Vietnam again. That’s what partly makes me to screw myself with two-and-a-half jobs since last semester. I also had to give up visiting my other family – the one in the Boze. Yeah, most of you already know, the rest just don’t care. I am simply telling the reason why I had been bugged strongly with the fact that I would not go back to Mt. Consequently, sending cards to my Sukut family should be the very least thing I should have done to… “redeem” my responsibility (I am using words unseriously so please don’t take it serious).
On the 21st, I finally got the mailing address of the Sukuts (no, I am gonna use a lot of the word “finally” so I should just say, “I got the address”). At that night, I found out an astonishing fact: there was not any single Christmas card in my room, and I had to buy some really soon. The only place to get cards that I knew was Walmart, and it was miles away. I didn’t have a car, nor any of my friends around. At that night, I – mysteriously – failed to catch the bus, which was really painful. Next day, things didn’t get any brighter and no car or bus or plane or ship came to my life. So after trying all the possible plans I could possibly make (and failed all), I decided to just walked to Walmart. (Well no, I did think of standing at the crossroads with a piece of cardboard but I preferred not to do it).
So I walked to Walmart. Some times like this makes me want to be smarter (so that I would at least come up with walking early) and to be in wonderful places like Narnia (so the weather would be sunny and warm and nice). Unfortunately none of these happened, and I started walking to Walmart at 10 pm and the temperature was about 5 F. (And no, I am definitely not praising myself or doing anything of that sort. This IS a story of mine, and you should simply read it just like a lame article on a random newspaper). It was not so warm to me and walking right next to cars in the dark was pretty adventurous. Well, finally I got to Walmart and was so thankful. Another “I survive” was said.
So basically I got the cards. The next step was to write them and send them. So on the 23rd, I had to send the cards at any cost in order to get them reach Mt hopefully on time. However, things just got more and more hilariously unfortunate. I somehow finished writing the cards at 4: 40 pm, and the post office would close at 5. When I saw my watch, I realized a terrible thing: it was actually 4:50pm – 10 minutes later. Any second in such situation is critically important, so I didn’t even have time to be stunned but rushed my best to the post office.
One wonderful thing about Warrensburg was that it could get awesomely cold, but still rained like out of nowhere. And when the raindrops got to the earth, it froze to ice. I hadn’t seen anything that slivery in Montana, so even though I tried Holden’s Judo row, I fell on the street. My basketball shoes were totally useless and there was a “curly” bridge for me to go through. So I literarily used both arms and legs to move, and yeah, I got stuck there for at least five minutes. After that, the road didn’t get any less slivery but somehow I could run and jump and row with out falling again. And here we go, the post office!
It was 5:07. I stood in front of the closed door and couldn’t think or do anything. And since crying was still inappropriate for a man, so I ended up shaking my head and laughed.
The next day, the 24th, I went to the post office right after I woke up, and yeah, it was before 5:00pm so the cards were finally sent. “They will reach there on Saturday”, the woman said. Ok, whatever.
So yeah, that’s my story. It is too late now for a Merry Christmas wish, but the whole world is waiting for the new year to come. So this time I’ll say,
When English wasn’t complete, there were two friends hanging out at the field. One of them was self-claimed to be a knowledgeable person who knew a lot of vocabularies. Suddenly his friend pointed toward the sky and asked:
- What is that?
Without any hesitation or even looking back, the so-called wise guy answered:
- It’s the sky.
However, his friend didn’t seem satisfied and said:
-Uhm… really?
- Yeah, the sky. – The smart guy started to be annoyed.
- Well, I don’t really think so… - His friend continued.
Now the smart guy reluctantly looked back.
- Yeah, that’s the sky! The sky, man!
Still pointing upward, the friend said:
- No, not the sky. That.
Really fast the smart guy said,
- Yeah, it’s the sky…
But this time he saw the strange thing that his friend was asking about, flying up high in the sky. So…
- It’s… sky… er…ky… tk…! – He started messing up.
- “Kite”? – His friend asked again, still looking at it amazedly.
- Yeah, it’s a "kite". Nice, eh?
Yup, and that’s how we have the word “kite”. The end.
The story is true, can you believe it? Well, except not, I just make it up. Never mind.
- Basically, popping is one kind of breakdancing - which pretty much defines who I was in Petra. Body waves and moonwalking are examples of it. Besides, "popper" sounds weird and ..."crunchy" to me, so I took it.
