Motivational Monday | If It’s Broke, Fix It

{ Image via Healing World Network }

At church the other day, the speaker dished us a really interesting food for thought.

He reminded us that we have now come to live in a society where when something is broken, it’s cheaper to buy a new one than to get the old one fixed. I marinated on that.

It’s true, who wears their clothes until it’s completely hole-ridden and torn up anymore? I remember sometimes walking past homeless people and observing with wonder how worn out their clothes are. It’s a novelty. Most of our laptops, our phones, and our other electronic devices get tossed out way before they’ve reached the end of their lifeline. We buy so many things in so many shades and colors and styles that we don’t really hold anything dearly anymore.

And that mentality may have crossed over to our relationships.

Best friends come and go in our lives. People toss the shoddy excuse: “Oh sorry, I don’t keep in touch with people very well” once they move away. If you find several things incompatible with your partner, time to pass along — there are other fishes in the sea.

The trouble with this is that there are certain strengths and virtues that you develop if you stick around to fix something.

I can be a pretty flaky person sometimes. I over-commit and then back out when I realize that I don’t always have enough time for everything I say yes to. Most of my friends have let me go on that. “Oh that Janice,” they’d say, “She’s a flake but what can you do?” However, one year, one friend did not. When I missed her birthday dinner, she sat me down the next time we met up and explained to me how my absence affected her. She told me that for her, spending time with someone is very important and she feels appreciated and loved when people make that time for her. She also told me that it’s because she values our friendship so much that she would have this awkward talk with me. Because she doesn’t want me to just be that distant friend who shows up at things on my own whim and fancy. She wants me to be that close friend she can count on.

I was very touched and moved by this grown up way we handled our friendship. We talked through our misunderstandings and worked to improve because we valued each other as people that much. I tried harder to become a more responsible friend and I’m still working on that to this day (sorry to all the people I flaked out on recently :X)

Think of it like playing a video game. You’re playing and playing and you can’t get to the next level. If you give up, you will never see what the next level will bring you. But if you keep trying — even if you die, you play again and again and one day, you just may get to that next level and it might bring you an entire room full of lollipops and cotton candy! Wouldn’t that be nice? (As you can see, I do not play video games at all)

Game on.

 

Shanghai Street Studio

It’s funny what a difference one floor can make. Though I landed at the wrong floor of a building (and nearly went into a brothel!), I finally ended up on the right floor where my intended destination, Shanghai Street Studio, is located.

My friend Carmen was shooting the creative space and profiling the founders of the studio along with JJ from The Wanderlister and I got to tag along.

The space was seriously cool! So much random mish-mash of stuff to photograph! I played amateur photog.

I’m really amazed by how God put people in our lives at certain times. Who would have known that I would be able to spend so much quality time with this girl I met with a group of friends at Disneyland that one time a long long time ago. Funny how through God, we are put on this path to guide and love on one another.

Love you, girl!

{ The first time Carmen and I met. Teehee }

 

Why Jeremy Lin Would Make A Great Boyfriend

Everybody and their mama has something to say about Jeremy Lin so it was tough to come up with an post for Audrey Magazine other than OHMYGOSHHOWAWESOMEISTHISGUYANDHE’SASIANANDHELOVESGODANDHEWENT
TOHARVARDANDHEMADEMEBELIEVEDREAMSCANCOMETRUEAGAIN

I went along with it and thought I should share the blog post here.

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In the span of less than two weeks, Jeremy Lin has gone from being an NBA benchwarmer to Asian America’s heartthrob. When he’s not making record-breaking points, career-high assists, or leading his team to victory at the last 0.5 seconds, he’s garnering praise from Spike Lee, Steve Nash, President Obama, pretty much every sportswriter in the universe, and all my friends on Facebook and Twitter. It’s pretty clear we’ve all caught #Linsanity. Rumor has it that Kim Kardashian is even trying to get lin on the action.

And who can blame Kim? Here, we share with you several very, very valid reasons why Jeremy Lin would make a great boyfriend (sprinkled in with hilarious memes from the “Hey Girl, It’s Jeremy Lin” tumblr. Swoonworthy):

1) He’s tall

At 6’3″, Jeremy’s long muscular arms are perfect to wrap around your shoulders on a cold, windy day. And if you got a broken lightbulb that needs fixing, Jeremy can tackle that without the aide of a ladder.

2) He’s humble

We know girls tend to fall for bad boys but after the recent bouts of slutty athletes airing their dirty marital laundry all over the place (we’re talking about you, Kobe and Tiger), and overloaded cockiness being the accepted norm of professional sportstars, it’s nice to finally have someone feel grateful for their success and credit others as opposed to themselves.

3) He’s dorky
I could not stop watching Jeremy and teammate Landry Fields exchange what may be the nerdiest handshake in the universe. Watch here:

But it’s that adorkableness that makes us like Jeremy even more. He’s not afraid to own up to the fact that he’s smart and geeky. After all, the guy did go to Harvard. Speaking of which…

4) He went to Harvard
Okay, who doesn’t want a boyfriend that went to the esteemed Ivy League?

{ Watch Jeremy Lin explain how he got into Harvard }It’s straight up bragging points for you and your parents. Speaking of which…

5) Your parents would like him

For us Asian girls, parental approval is pretty important when it comes to the love life. So it would be a relief to bring Jeremy Lin home. The guy’s a good Chinese Christian boy who went to Harvard and is close to his family. You know he’ll pass the parental test! My dad’s always wished I was a boy who could play basketball with him. Landing Jeremy Lin would probably make him burst into tears of joy. My own mom and aunt are already crazy for the boy. They actually watch basketball games now and keep showing me newspaper clippings of Jeremy and saying, “you need to find a boy like Lin!” Okay mom, it’s just that easy to find a good Christian NBA player who went to Harvard and in ten days, made himself a beloved sports star. Okay.

6) You would be the envy of every Asian girl and boy in the world.
Just judging from my Facebook feed, every Asian person I know has a big fat crush on Jeremy Lin. Boys and girls, old and young, straight and gay. It’s hard to not admire his virtues — and how he just lin, lin, lins all the time. It’ll be even harder to stop yourself from bragging to all your friends once you bag him as a boyfriend.

7) He’s ballin’ in more ways than one.

Lin is set to make around $613,000 this season but it’s most likely he’ll be collecting a paycheck of millions by next year. You ain’t a girl digger, girl, but it’s nice when a man can provide.

8 ) You are guaranteed good seats to basketball games.

Being the basketball superstar that he is now, dating Jeremy will guarantee you the best courtside seats during basketball season as you watch your hunny demolish the other teams. Talk about a good date, huh?

9) It’s linteresting thinking up puns for JLin.

Linsanity, Falling Lin Love, A Linderella Story, The Most Linteresting Man in the World, I could keep going on and on about all the fun puns about Lin but let’s not add any more linsult to linjury, eh? It’s all Lin my head anyway.

I think the most important reason why Jeremy Lin would make a great boyfriend is because he practices what he preaches, works hard, looks like he’s genuinely enjoying himself, and never gives us the impression that he feels entitled. The fact that he has broken racial barriers, made the most of out of his moments in the spotlight, heroically saved a tragically low performing sports team, and has reinvigorated the belief in us regular folks that anything can happen and dreams do come true is just fortuitous timing. But what we do sense in this sports wunderkind is someone who seems to be a solid individual that is making the most out of what he’s been given. And that’s someone we can all use in our lives.

 

Christmas Thoughts

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is such a fabulous time for me. It’s wonderful because as a Christian, I can celebrate and revel in the peace of knowing that Christ had been born to save us. It’s wonderful because as a workaholic, I can take a little time to relax. It’s wonderful because as a human, I use the holidays as an reason to spend time with my family and loved ones.

I really do love spending good quality time with my family. It makes me remember how kind God was to create other people in our lives so that we won’t have to spend our time on earth alone.

“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
~ Genesis 2:18

Perhaps this is a naive way of thinking but I’m curious — when did life start to develop this whole “me against them” way of thinking? When did everyone start to feel the need to protect their assets, protect their gains as though there are not enough to go around in the world? When did the privileged just want to keep what they have just to themselves and not share? When did pushing others down to make your way to the top become an envied trait? When did caring about other people become not cool? When did sharing get lost, people? We learned this in kindergarten so I know some people somewhere still felt it was important but somehow on the road to growing up, we lost some of it. When did material goods become replacements for quality relationships? When did quantity replace quality?

I don’t really care to know when any of these happen but I do wish to know why it happened. I may be lost on a lot of other things but I am not lost on this and it’s that we were made on this earth to love. Christ showed us that during his time here. When we love, miracles happens. I know this because when I heard of Christ’s love, when I felt His love around my arms, my world turned upside down but suddenly made sense. This here is a man who loved those who betrayed Him, who loved us before we loved Him. By all this world’s standards, he’s a fool. But to me, it’s someone finally worthy enough to worship.

This article on how some of our country’s richest think about the Occupy movement really irritated me when I first read it. And these details of the Sandusky case literally made me sick to my stomach. I just couldn’t believe the nerves of some people, how they can be so trapped in their own world and produce this really twisted view of life. And then I realized I am no better if I just put them off that way because the truth is, I have never been in their world so I have no idea what it’s really like. I can just guess and say things like, “oh, if I were in there position, I would NEVER think this way, I would never act that way.”

But would I really?

It just comes down to me living my life and the things I’ve seen and the things I know and the people and actions that have touched my heart. With all those things I have come to know that:

• *Happiness does not equal joy.
• *Money does not equal happiness.
• *There are so many things I can’t change in my life already so with the things I’m granted free will to change, I need to make wise decisions on.
• *I can’t change other people so I can only change myself.
• *I may only be one person and I may not be able to make all the difference in the world but I can make a difference and that in it of itself makes all the difference in the world.
• *Each person does not have the same path set for them.
• *All things are possible through Christ.

 

Point & Shoot

You know that gut feeling you get that something’s not right?

It’s this deep-sitting stone that sits in your stomach and no matter what you do, you can’t shake it out.

That’s what I had all day today.

I thought it was due to the book I was reading, “Th1rteen R3asons Why” by Jay Asher which, though rightfully award-winning-worthy and a page-turner, is by no means an easy read.

I thought it was due to the movie I just caught a screening of this morning. Spellbound, a korean flick which though is an adorable romantic comedy, also happens to be a pretty freaky horror flick.

I thought it was due to traffic ticket I rightfully got this afternoon for texting while driving which SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, is a stupid thing to do while on the road and you should NEVER participate in it. You can text “lol” after you’ve parked.

But nope, I do believe that impending doom of a gut feeling I felt was warning me about what was to happen tonight.

My friend Melly and I stopped by LoveLetter, a Korean pizza and fried chicken joint in Cerritos to catch up. Amidst hearing all about Melly’s new venture, NewMediaRockstar, and what Audrey Magazine has coming up for our Spring issue, this man with a black beanie covering his face strides up to our table waving a gun in the air.

“Go to the back. Go to the kitchen,” he says, poking Melly with the gun. He then turns the gun to me, “You too.”

We head to the back, a million thoughts racing through my heads. I head towards the melodramatic so I was thinking something along the lines of, “oh no, he’s gonna shoot, he’s gonna shoot, hey I’m passing a butcher knife, what if he uses that to slice us all to death, should I take that up and slice him up instead? Why is he herding us to the kitchen, does he want to burn the kitchen down?”

Then prayer settled in.

Because sometimes in life, there is nothing you can do but kneel to God and pray as hard as you can to be at his mercy and grace (which he always gives abundantly and righteously). There’s no right move or wrong move in this situation because you really have no idea how crazy the man is, what his motives are, how fast or slow he is, how many people are helping him, etc etc. All you can do is pray.

At that, a calm settles over when you leave it all to the hands of God.

Praise the Lord for granting not a bullet to sound in that restaurant that night, not a person hurt (except for this poor elderly lady who fainted). Praise the Lord for the robber to only leave with the restaurant’s cash. Our stuff was left untouched, can you believe it? Praise the Lord for this alarm ringing that life is short. It can all change in the blink of an eye. Not a lot of people live with that at the forefront of their attention and they need to.

NOW is the time to tell your dear ones you love them and to love them, actually love them. NOW is the time to ask for forgiveness. NOW is the time to forgive. NOW is the time to be bold and daring. NOW is the time to search. NOW is the time to act. NOW is the time to take a vacation.

Thank you all for your love and support. I didn’t mean to tweet the gunpoint holdup but I wasn’t thinking very clearly and it seemed like something two new media generation kids would do. But I didn’t want to worry you all with such a cursory footnote of what happened so here is a more detailed version of what happened.

My hands are still kind of shaky as I type this and my heart is still flopping around a bit but I thank God for this wake up call.

Let’s start living. <3

 

Oh Happy Day!

One of the best classes I took during my undergrad at UCLA was this Gospel Choir class every Friday morning.

At that time, I had just wanted something fun and the class was fun, indeed.

With a teacher behind the pianos, we went through gospel songs celebrating and appreciating God. At that time, an atheist me just found the songs to be delicious to sing and dance to. Let the hands clap! Let the voices tremor! Gospel Choir easily became the one class I most looked forward to every week, even though it meant I would actually have to wake my butt up and get to campus every Friday.

Now, I can see that I was being drawn to the light and to the Lord because it is inherently right to be praising the Lord for all that He has done for us and for all that He is.

And I know I’m not the only one who thinks so.  WitnessLA posted about Jesus showing up at Oprah’s Legends Ball earlier this summer. Take a look. It’s moving.

Happy Sunday, all!

 

Party Poopers

Have fun this weekend, folks!

 

The Rebirth

So many people feel like they can’t move forward because of their past.  Once a gossip, always a gossip. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Once a slut, always a slut.

 

Thoughts on Japan Disaster

If you asked me which of the seven deadly sins I succumb to, sloth would not be high on the list. Yes, I envy way too much for my own good and I am ever so lustful, but sloth? Not so much. I am a self-professed workaholic who hates spending a day lounging around and I always try to be most efficient with my appointments. (Scheduling them all on the same day, back to back, etc.)

But at Sovereign Grace, the church I’ve been visiting recently, the pastor is covering the seven deadly sins and last week’s message on sloth totally hit home for me.

I am a sloth. A total sloth.

 

Lisa Ling on Faith

 

Got to chat with Lisa Ling awhile ago about her new show, Our America. Some point in our conversation, we started getting deep. I had heard her speak on another show about how her new series deals a lot with faith–mainly her own exploration of it. That fascinated me–a journalist willing to explore something so not factually based, so often-divided, so often taboo to explore. (Though I suppose taboo is Ms. Ling’s favorite type of subjects to explore.)