I cannot really keep up an accurate daily blog anymore. I suppose one semester of it really was enough. To recap what I’ve done for the past 3 weeks or so, I made aabout 130 bucks off books I bought last semester, spent another 200 bucks on books, bought a television, set up cable tv (we bribed the guy that set it up for us so we pay 12 dollars for a 50 dollar service. If we just get free cable, they would know, but they don’t check if we have better cable than we should be getting), wrote letters, sent packages, saw a chiropractor 4 times, had a massive room cleanup before the Berkeley people got here, signed up for Cal Rec Club so I can play IM Softball (50 dollars for me for a year), set up some financial aid so that I can earn some grants that I didn’t receive for last semester and for some more scholarships this semester, went to Merrill Lynch again and then quit recently (actually I will probably email her about it tomorrow, the internship’s not getting anywhere), played a lot of games, read a lot, watched a few movies, filed my tax return (state is gonna be done tomorrow), worked out some on my free time, failed the PT test, tabled for ROTC, ate out with my small groups, attended ficb and KCPC, along with some other things I just can’t remember.
I’ve come to some realization lately. First off, I am financially better off than anyone else that I know of except Michael Borroto. And I am possibly one of the luckiest bastards on earth. Everything is going the way I hoped it would, even the things I couldn’t even imagine of are coming together. I am possibly one of the most pessimistic persons out there, and I believe that God is truly behind every good thing that has happened to me. And I still demand more out of everything. It’s gonna be long 4 years to be sure, but hell, name anyone else that has 5 digits saved in their freshman year and I’ll consent.
I think coming to Berkeley was possibly one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. I know few others that would like to argue otherwise, but I would have to disagree with them. Berkeley is the real world. Berkeley is the bottom 50 percent of the population. Berkeley is not Cerritos. Berkeley is not too far from home but not too close. And Berkeley offers more pain for gain than any other campus that I could think of. Girls? Academics? Weather? Rent? Food? The extreme or the lack thereof, all part of the pain. UCLA was too close home for me and so was UCI (my father always passes by Westwood. I didn’t want to be in the position where I could say hey dad, can you do me a favor and drop off something I forgot from home along with some food? Where else would I get the chance to engage in Christian fellowship as intricate as what Berkeley has to offer? Where could I see all sides of politics and watch demonstrations against it on campus? Where else do I get to live in a dump and go to college at the same time? Where else can I bike for 30 minutes to get to a Marina and watch the Bay in action? Would I be in as good shape as I am right now if I was to spend my time in UCI? How else would I be able to attend military drills? The thrill of biking 6 miles at 5:30 in the morning chill with drizzle and 15 mph wind? The ability to pay for my own rent, food, transportation and anything else that I could dream of? All that put together, for me, is Berkeley. It consists of a great combination of cultural, social, political, religious and academical experience that Cerritos lacks, that UCI and UCLA lacked for me.
My brother is leaving on the 12th of March. That’s only about a month and a week away. I am growing increasingly frustrated at my own inability to treat him better, to spend more time with him. I probably won’t see him for a year, maybe even 2 years, after he leaves. For me, this is pain that may be one of the harder trials of my life. I dreaded my life alone throughout high school, and I loved his company with me here in Berkeley. I want to wish him the best at Engineers OBC, as well as his first duty station at South Korea. He already knows where my thoughts lie.
One of the things that bothered me recently about church is communion. KCPC had it one week, and First Presbyterian Church had it the week after. It so happened that I was there for both of them. While KCPC specifically said if you are not baptised, we do not want you to participate in the communion, First Pres’ pastor Mark Labberton said if you believe that God may be calling for you, or that your heart tells you that there is a God, then we invite you to this table and participate in this communion. My argument is this. Sure Jesus broke bread for his disciples and told them to go and spread his word. But he also said that he didn’t come to preach to the religious but to the poor, the sick, the homeless, the non-believers. Now church calls itself a family. You hear it all the time. If a person is to be invited to this ‘family,’ and it so happens we were to have communion, shall we then leave them out of a ceremony? Should we turn our head and tell them ‘sorry bud, you’re not part of the family, so you can’t’. I’ve been invited to many different family occasions where the guests were to be treated equally or even better than the family members. Is there anything wrong with participating in something as simple as a communion? Could that truly hurt our ‘family?’ that because we let someone that is ‘not saved’ partake in that activity we have unholied ourselves? Since when did Jesus say that since you are not saved, I will not let you participate in anything? But that is to be debated of course…
Columbia died the other day. The next day, I happened to be staffing the office for First Presbyterian Church, and over the intercom, I can always hear what is going on in the sanctuary. The associate pastor was praying, and she says ‘lord, we want to pray for the Challenger crew.’ Yeah, a real devoted space activist that’s been praying for the dead crew for decades. Anyway, I felt compelled by the disaster. I was stunned because I always thought of NASA being the invincible entity, that no more human beings would die in such a disaster. I do not agree with the conception that this brings the nation together. What do people mean by that anyway? That we’re all divided? Obviously we’re not talking about states, color, religion, culture, amongst many other things. I think this nation has always been together, and that is one of the more ignorant things to say. Psychologically, you can argue that through this disaster, you know that you, along with the vast majority of the population in America, feels saddened by it, so therefore that sorrow has a deeper meaning, a sense of belonging, amongst other similar emotions that arise from it. People then argue that the manned space flight should be eliminated, that we should continue to conduct things with robots. Great idea, genius. Let’s stay on earth as long as we can and not explore the vast possibilities that lie past our horizons. What you think all they do in space is push buttons? Do you truly believe that our military might would be as strong without us having put humans in space? Let’s talk about medicine, not for animals, but for humans. You think we are so much like every other animal that a robot with animals can figure out how to treat cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis amongst other things? What then should we do once we start to explore the outer space once engineering obstacles have been surpassed? Yeah… sure makes you want to think back to all those manned space flights that could have happened but didn’t. NASA is possibly the nation’s most devoted, most loyal agency that does not ask for too much money, but usually delievers and asks for only dignity in return. And now you want to rid them of that dignity by stopping manned space flight. What seperates Americans from other nations for 2 scores? Our economy, our military might? Lyndon B Johnson during Vietnam crisis: “Thank God I’ve still got my astronauts.” Nixon: Just think,” he said in that interview, “how miserable it would have been had we not had the space success when we were in the midst of Vietnam, then Watergate and all that.” Reagan: “The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them…” And we must continue to follow them, our hopes and dreams that make us human beings.