Her

All it takes is her handwriting,
and it makes me giddy.

All it takes is her smile,
and it gives me goosebumps.

All it takes is her kiss,
and it makes my legs weak.

All it takes is her happiness,
and my heart swells with glee.

All it takes is
Her.

Paging Doctors Pham and Sun

Hello all,

For those who have been following my blog faithfully, I give many thanks.  You guys motivate me and encourage me to continue writing for the sake of writing, than just to appease the academic needs of courses.  If you haven't seen Pham's blog yet, it is thephamtommenace.wordpress.com.  Hopefully you guys will give him the same support that you showed me, and support a young and new blogger.

With the two of us going off to medical school this coming fall, we decided to collaborate on a blogging project.  This project will encompass the two of our experiences in different medical schools, and an account of how faith has played into our application processes.  Hopefully, this will help guide the rising Christian (and non-Christian) Pre-Meds get a sense of this mysterious, tedious, and daunting application process.

We will each be bringing in our own experiences, as well as our own writing styles, culminated into a reading that will be not only informative but also enjoyable.  Cheers!

You can find the blog at: phamsunanddelilah.wordpress.com

Post-Graduation...Post

Graduation was precisely how I envisioned it.  When I expect nice weather, it rains; therefore, when I brought a poncho to commencement so as to prepare for the rain, it is 80 degrees with bright sun the entire commencement ceremony.  As I sat next to close friends, fellow seniors and lifelong companions, I watch as people left and right take off their thick, stifling, hot robes in order to get even the slightest bit of cool breeze in the air.  So much for formality and ceremony.  But, at the end of the day, all that is just pomp and circumstance.

Pardon the pun.

One of the purest and most touching moments for me during the graduation, was the talk of Elie Wiesel.  Aside from being amazed at his number of honorary degrees (apparently over 100), one line stood out to me.  "We should celebrate, not denigrate our fellow man."  Is this not what Jesus called us to do in the first place?  We're called, by Jesus, to "Love thy neighbors as thy love thyself."  And believe me, we love ourselves, alright.  I guess what this showed me, is that under the tightest of scrutiny, and philosophy or ethics in the raw, humanity is yearning for an elusive concept trifecta: conciliation, collaboration, and celebration.  It has only reinforced my drive to follow in Jesus' footsteps, and do my best to spread the ministry that has changed my life for the better.

I don't view graduation as a door closing on a era of my life that has now past, but rather, a series of multiple doors that have now opened.  I find myself at an important stage of my life, not because my future career has been determined, but rather, I have realized a little more of how God plans to use me to spread His Word, and be a sign for His Kingdom.

It is an exciting time for us, seniors, now alumni.  We will be travelling into the "real world", with a very real opportunity to spread the effect we've had from God bringing us all to WashU when we were but wee high school seniors.  Let us conciliate with those who may have wronged us in the past, collaborate with those who have gone through the last four years with us, and celebrate the new opportunities that now stand in front of us.

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Psalm 119:105
[Father God], Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

The Big Triple Digits

Hello all!  It's been a blessing, really, blogging and sharing the crazy things that are floating inside my head.  Some of you have been following me since I first started, others, joining as my blogging has progressed and grown with me.  There have been ups and downs, periods where I would blog pretty much every day, and periods of where months would go by, and I wouldn't even know what to write.

I feel obliged to give a longer, more thought out post, when it comes to my 100th post, so it was fitting that it came during a time when my other obligations have been taken care of already.  So enjoy, this one took quite a bit of time of revising and revisiting, so hopefully it turned out okay.  Cheers.

Angels and Demons

It’s sometimes lonely thinking about what I am, or rather, what I’ve become.  Perhaps I’ve been like this for a while.  It was a weird realization of who I am, but when I got a chance to actually look at a true mirror, I saw what I most feared.  My name?  Stromnikos.  They say my name came from the word for electricity, for the violent nature of my temper, the power of my anger and wrath.  But isn’t that how they name all demons?  The very nature that dictates why people who wrong me, well, people tend to avoid that.  But I digress.

It’s not hard to see why people find it difficult to get close to me; fear of being shocked and hurt would deter even the bravest and most stubborn of souls.  But, I find comfort in the few people that I value, for them, it seems like the thunderclouds only make life that much more exciting…like some sick version of Stormchasers.  At any rate, my life is at a more or less standstill.  I hang out with the people who enjoy my company, I don’t go out of my way to mess with people, and we’re all good.  Living the demon life.  Until, that is, I met her.

It’s been said hundreds and thousands of times that Love makes people do stupid things.  But that’s “people”.  Not demons.  Others say that Love is, in actuality, a demon that corrupts and overwhelms a person’s otherwise rational judgment.  That couldn’t be true, since demons don’t mess with other demons; whose side is Love on anyway?  She’s beautiful, I tell myself.  The way she talks makes even this icy heart of mine melt just a little.  The way she smiles warms up everyone else in the room.  The way she cares, well, almost raises a sense of guilt when I turn around and mess with a helpless soul.  But only people do stupid things, right?

One day I found myself talking to this angel.  She smiles sweetly at me, staring straight to my core, through the spiky exterior, through the intimidating glares, and through the defensive thunderclouds that used to be so reliable.  My name’s Castella, what’s yours?  As if the Earth stood still and Father Time decided to take a lunch break, I found myself, surprisingly, at a loss for words. 

I prided myself in demonic wit, in biting satire (literally), and in silly parody humor that would probably offend anyone who wasn’t in on the actual joke.  So why can’t I seem to talk back?  Stro…m…niiikosss.  It literally took forever to get those words out of my mouth.

Stromneeekos?  Cute! Maybe we can spend more time together later?  Bye!  And just like that, she blew open my world.

As the time went on, we spent more time together, my demonic friends gave me grief that I was totally losing my reputation, that I wasn’t worthy of my name anymore…but strangely, I didn’t care.  If Castella thought I was fine the way I was, then I was fine the way I was.  I found myself caring.  I found myself being nice, I found myself restraining every urge to using those thunderclouds.  It was as if…dare I say, trying to impress this angel?  What have I become?

Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.  I mean, angels and demons are about as different as black and white.  There couldn’t have been a closer match of polar opposites.  But somewhere deep inside me, I don’t feel like a demon, but rather…a person.

Is it worth pursuing?  Humanity, that is.  I feel like a frog on the bottom off a well, looking upward at the possibilities above, unable to reach it on my own power, unwilling to leave the comforts of the depths.  It’s been an incredible journey…and now that I’ve gotten a taste, I can never truly go back.

Stargazing...in my room.

A little known fact is that I really enjoy stargazing, especially in nice warm nighttime weather.  There is nothing more comforting, than sitting outside or lying on a hammock, staring at the stars, taking in the often-seen-rarely-appreciated scenery.

It's hard enough to find time outside of the hectic life of a college student to slow everything down, and just breathe in the night air.  On top of that, living in Saint Louis, it's tough with all the light pollution here and there.  It's hard to find a spot that is truly dark enough that you can just be one with the darkness so that the stars can shine through.

However, I received a gift from my darling that couldn't have been more appropriate for me.  It was a lighted globe with pokable holes that were aligned in the shape of the constellations.  At first, I didn't really have high expectations, since it didn't look that impressive, and the idea seemed too simplistic to work.  Of course, I appreciated the thought and not really the actual tangible thing.

After the two of us finish assembling the globe (it was actually reasonably challenging), we turned off all the lights and closed the blinds.  When we put in the batteries and turned on the light inside the globe, my mind was, simply put, blown.  My room's ceiling was turned into the night sky that I only knew so well.  Placing the globe propped up in the center of my desk, it was relaxing just staring at the constellations suddenly appear on an otherwise bland ceiling.

It's amazing.  The globe has re-ignited my desire to go out and re-establish that old rendezvous that I had with the stars at night.  It'll be good to see them all again.  It's like seeing old friends I haven't seen or talked to in a long time.

DST

Since this blog is named for this, I figured writing a post for today was near-obligatory.

Daylight Savings Time this time around (heh, interesting word choice) wasn't all too bad.  In fact, it just naturally happened for me.  Somewhere in the middle of the night, an hour is lost, only to be found again in October.  As I got  up late (or early, depending on persepctive) to make sure the clocks were changed right, I hardly noticed any real changes in the night.

It seems funny that we'd practice such a thing, since time is usually viewed as continuous and ever flowing, and yet we make two disjointed hiccups, in efforts to save daylight.  Funny, we didn't save daylight, certainly if the clocks are changing at 2 in the morning (at any local time).

But this phenomenon isn't without repercussions.  It is one less hour of sleep (actually, if you woke up like me, it was probably a bit more than that), it was one less hour to get ready in the morning, and it was a lot more than just one more person missing from morning Sunday service.

If we lost the hour 2AM to 3AM here, what transforms this hour to an extra hour of sunlight when we get it back?  Is it like compounded interest?  Is it that good things come to people that wait [half a year]?

For me, life goes on as usual; reminiscing on the late night hours that we miss out on now.

Truths and Lies

I'd like to think of myself as a truthful person, where my lies usually come in forms of blatant jokes or blatant exaggerations in jest.

However, I've found that I have one blaring lie that I seemingly tell very often.  It's usually in response to a question that people hear all the time.

"How are you?"

I've found myself perpetually lying to this question, because frankly, not everything is okay.  No, my day isn't always great.  No, my days don't always go perfectly.  No, I am not well rested.  No, I'm not feeling well.  No, my classes aren't going great.  No, I could definitely use time away.  No, I'm not surrounded by people who love me for who I am.  No, I don't always feel included.

But when you think about it, how many people can you say, would actually listen to you, if you said that?  It's so much easier to say "Yeah, I'm fine.  How about you?"

I can lie all I want (it's just frowned upon) to other people, but I cannot lie to myself, when I look in the mirror.

I am NOT okay.  (Thanks for asking, though.)