Gastropod

gas•tro•pod (noun)
a group of animals, more formally known as Class Gastropoda under the phylum Mollusca, that are characterized by their slimy foot. Gastropods are invertebrate animals and, as the phylum suggests, belong to the larger group known as mollusks. Creatures in this class include snails, slugs, and nudibranchs (OMG SO CUTE! I love nudibrachs <3).
Origin: Greek (gastros = stomach, pod = foot; gastropod = stomach foot; named thusly for the slimy "foot" they use to move across substrate which leaves behind a slimy trail)

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I was trying to look for a good word that would work with my topic today, but this is the closest I could come without using endocytosis, pinocytosis, pr phagocytotsis, which I've already sort of touched on. But first, comments about your last post.

Thanks for agreeing to put the blog and Thread on haitus for the exam season; I really needed to hunker down and concentrate on my studies. This past semester has been really wonky for me. Now that I'm done (and you're finishing in less than a week) I feel like we can start things up again.

Your last post was interesting; I have always found the banjo quite, as you say, twangy, but it can be a very nice sounding instrument. I never played Banjo Kazoie, frankly because the characters looks like rednecks, which really freaked me out as a kid (and to be honest, still freak me out), but the intro was fun. Sufjan Stevens' (which, btw, is quite an interesting name; I wonder from which language does it originate?) song was nice, but I felt that the banjo was a tad too twangy for the song, and I couldn't hear the lyrics. I quite enjoyed the Mumford and Sons song, but I really didn't like the last one. For reasons which will be made apparent over the course of our lives, I really have an aversion to these sorts of songs; another topic to add to the long list of things about which we have to converse over the summer.

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So today, I want to talk about this:

I want to talk about food.

Yes, food.

Being an Asian, food is a very big part of my life. As you know, food is so ingrained into Asian culture that a traditional greeting is to ask not "How are you doing?" but to ask (loosely translated as) "Have you eaten yet?" or "Is your stomach full?" implying that one who is well fed is one whose life is happy/going well.

Food (and tea) is a major part of my life, one of the greatest joys I have in living. The list of (non-living) things that I will never get enough of goes 1) Food 2) Sleep 3) Pokemon 4) Math. Allow me to explain myself.

Food has become the central focus of Asian culture. There are two major reasons for this.

First of all, food was (and still is) a sign of wealth. It makes sense when you consider the historical context: China has one quarter of the world's population yet only about a tenth of the world's arable land, so food has always been relatively expensive. One must be relatively well off to be able to feed one's family well. When it came to the Emperor and the royal family, there are special dishes that are only known to the imperial chefs, passed down in secret from generation to generation. The royal family even ate on special porcelain with special imperial designs that were only allowed to be printed on porcelain used by the royal family; archeologists have found mounds of smashed porcelain in ancient potters' workshops consisting of all the dinnerware painted with imperial designs that developed impurities during the baking/kiln/firing process.

Secondly, and most importantly of all, food is tied to the family.

Asian culture values family very, very highly. In ancient China, one of the only ways for a family to climb the social ladder was to become a government official (such as a judge or a magistrate or a doctor), which was only possible if you were educated and passed government exams. Entire peasant  families would work very hard to pay for a tutor so that one family member could be educated in the hopes that if he passed the government exams, the entire family would rise in status (which is also the reason why Asians value education: in old times - and even not so old times; this was still being done in my grandfather's generation) and the entire family would lead a better life. It interesting to note that the government issued many levels of examination, the highest of which was invigilated in the Forbidden City by the Emperor himself.

I speak for Asian culture when I say that to me, food does not hold value JUST in its taste or JUST in its nutritional value; food is valuable to me not because I find pleasure in gluttony. Food is very important to me because it is the vehicle that brings me happiness; it is the unifying factor that brings me closer to the people I love; it is the thing that facilitates the strengthening of bonds.

Of the fondest memories that I have of my family, easily more than half of them occur in the kitchen, at the dinner table, or just before or just after a meal. Easily the majority of the best conversations I've ever been a part of have taken place over a meal or just following a meal. Food is not just something I prepare or eat: it is something I experience. It is not just the act of eating good food, it is the act of eating good food together, the act of sharing good food. I just find that it is much easier to get along with people and talk to people over a meal. Of course, the fact that food stimulates the release of endorphins (chemicals in the brain that signal happiness) helps. But still, I find myself more relaxed and able to enjoy myself while eating or on a full stomach. Conversely, I can be very irritable when hungry.

 Food does this in two ways: in both its preparation and its consumption.

The preparation of food is in many ways just as important as the consumption of  food, especially for the large dinner events throughout the year. As they say, cooking is a labor of love.

For normal, daily dinners, in my family, cooking is usually done by one, maybe two, seldomly three people. It is usually a quiet affair, but having the house smell like good food puts everyone in a good mood. Cooking for large family events is a whole different story.

When we do family dinners, and we are cooking, we go all out. This year, we celebrated Chinese New Year's on a Saturday. My father began cooking for it on the Wednesday. The day before Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, he begins cooking at about 9/10 pm, cooks until the wee hours of the morning, sleeps for maybe five hours, gets up, and starts cooking again until dinnertime, and even when we have started to eat, he is still in the kitchen cooking for a good 20 minutes, finishing off some of the other dishes while we start on what's already finished.

But cooking is not a solitary activity. At these large dinners and parties, the host will be cooking in the kitchen, and as the other families, arrive, everyone bee-lines into the kitchen: those who can cook (usually the Aunties and myself) begin helping with the preparations, and those who cannot, linger around. There is always a crowd in the kitchen, and there is always a conversation to join. Whether it is because you are preparing the same dish together, or using the same facilities (sink, stove, counter, etc.) there is always someone to converse with, and people who are not cooking usually join these conversations. While white people may quilt together, asian people cook together. It is a great time to catch up with people's lives or discuss recent events. It gives us something to do with our hands while we chat. I find that cooking brings us closer together as a family.

The other factor, of course, is the meal itself.

In the context of normal dinner with my parents and sister, it is a quiet affair. We all sit together and eat and talk about our day/lives. It is a chance for us to bond as a family, to laugh together and be happy together. It is so easy to be home as a family, but not interact with each other that dinner becomes a time when we are together as a family, which is increasingly rare as we get older. I remember that growing up, it was an unspoken rule that the family eat together, and that it was very disrespectful to leave the table in the middle of a meal (the ONLY exception was to get up to get condiments from the cooking area). It was also an unspoken rule that we sat together at the table until the everyone was finished eating. Of course, as I said earlier, the consumption of the food makes it that much easier to get along.

In the context of large dinners with extended families, food, be it lunch or dinner (breakfast is a smaller affair because we, being Asians, are night people and usually not everyone is awake until it is near lunch time) is an extravagant pageant. One the food is served and Grace said, we eat. We cook not only good tasting, food, but very large amounts of food. We will sit down and eat one serving, then two, all the while talking and laughing, sharing stories, our lives, connecting, bonding. The initial meal portion lasts about an hour, followed by about an hour of nibbling at the food, followed by about another hour of just sitting at the table with our empty plates and leftovers on the table in front of us, still chatting, still laughing. Then, after clean up, if we just ate dinner, about an hour later, we get together for dessert, which is just as extravagant as the dinner itself. We usually like making fruit and gelatinous "cake" (for the lack of a better term; they are more like pudding than anything else) dishes. Usually there are three, four, maybe five dessert dishes in all. Sometimes there will be actual cake. And then we all gather and sit for another hour or so to eat dessert.

Family meals are a long, drawn out spectacle. As you can see, easily four hours or more of our gathering is spent revolving around food. Like I said, it is the mode that brings us together; it is the thing over which our family becomes a family, not just a bunch of people who share genetics.

This is something that I've tried to bring to our group of friends. I want to share this kind of experience with you - the wonder and the sheer joy that comes out of cooking and eating together, of working together to create something that we can then all enjoy and experience together. This is why I love food, and why I will never get enough of it. It is not the taste or flavour that I crave - it is the feeling of belonging and the joy of being together with people I love that comes with food: that is what I will never be able to get enough of.

I'm tired and it's midnight, so my writing may not be superb, but it'll do for a blog post. Good luck with the rest of your exams, Clay! I can't wait to see you again (I'm almost going into withdrawal XD).

Chat soon,
Tim

PS - I find it funny that you came back from Trinity for Easter and I left Ladner to spend Easter with my extended family in Chiliwak =P

Chordophone

chor•do•phone (noun)

a stringed instrument

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OK, I do want to share my thoughts and hear some more of yours on what you talked about in your last post, but I'd prefer to do that face-to-face, which won't be so long seeing as school is almost over. I liked hearing all of your insightful thoughts on the subject and I'd love to talk to you about it in person.

For now, I'm just going to put in some filler material about something I have recently developed an attachment to:



BANJOS!!!

Yes, this is another musical post, but this time it's specifically geared towards an instrument that I believe is widely underrated. I was inspired by the Sufjan video I posted last time and realized I wanted to focus on this instrument. It's the kind that usually doesn't fit into a group ensemble, but on those strange occasions when banjo playing is appropriate, it's amazing! While the banjo is usually associated with hillbillies, rednecks, yokels, hicks, bumpkins, and all manner of country-dwellin' folk, the banjo can also be used in some fairly creative and unique genres.

For starters, there's one of my favorite video-game intros of all time. I wish all video-games started out this way, especially the more violent ones we play on Xbox and Fatty and Sissy's house.



It's so cute!!!
It reminds me of much simpler time of video-games when you collected puzzle pieces instead of other people's guns and instead of a flame-thrower tank on your back, all you had was a giant bird that pecked people who got in your way. Not that I think about it, this isn't really any less violent . . .

Anyway, I mentioned Sufjan Stevens above and it would be an absolute desecration to write post about the banjo without mentioning him. For me, Sufjan opened up the possibilities of the banjo and what it could be used for. He is able to perform such melodiously beautiful songs with a rather twangy instrument, which to me is amazing.
This song is called "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti".



He plays other instruments as well, but I whenever I think of Sufjan, I always picture him with a banjo, just because of the skill and heart he puts into that one instrument.

Another band that I have recently become attached to is Mumford and Sons, a folk-rock band from England. The also have so much heart and soul in their music, and they deal with some fairly difficult spiritual issues in their music. This song is my favorite of theirs. but unfortunately, the language is a little strong. I felt I should just warn you so it doesn't take you off guard.



If it doesn't let you watch it here, there should be a direct link to Youtube there. The song is called "Little Lion Man" if you want to look it up yourself.

This last one is by David Crowder*Band. They took an old southern revival song by a guy called Hank Williams and adapted it with a few modern changes. The song is a good ol' fashioned hoedown song about being born again in Christ. What I appreciate about the song is that whenever David Crowder plays it anywhere but the south, he always asks if it would be "socially acceptable" for them to break out in a hoedown. It's a fun song and they always get the audience into it. It's so much fun to be a part of a giant group of people all singing and worshipping in the most ridiculous way possible, which is probably why this is my favorite banjo song. Despite the diversity of the instrument, it's always best when used in a classic hootenanny style.




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So you may have noticed that most of the songs were either about God, or with some sort of religious issue. I'm not sure why that is to be honest, but I think it's so interesting that the banjo is so closely related to worship and spiritual experience.

Anyway, wish you bonne chance and buena suerte on your next exams and hope all the best for you in the last few days of school! This summer, I'll be more available because I'll probably be working more for my Dad. That means we can have more group parties, late night movie-watching, and even later night discussions. And I'll talk to you about pastoral stuff very soon, don't worry.

Have a great night Tim!
See you soon!

Attachment

attachment (noun)
(virology) the event/process of the viral infection cycle where the virus particles adheres to the host cell. This process is mediated by the anti-receptor that binds to the corresponding receptor on the host cell.

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Hey Clay! Sorry I haven't posted for a while; exams are coming up and last week I came down with a sore throat (possibly caused by streptococcus?) so I didn't have the time or energy to do so.

I enjoyed listening to the music you posted; it gave me an insight to the kind of music you like to listen to, and none of it was sibilant. The songs were nice; I didn't dislike any of them, but I didn't love any of them either. I guess ils ne sont pas de mon gout (I think I totally phrased that incorrectly >_> that doesn't bode well for my French exam next wednesday), which is (theoretically) the French way of saying that they don't suit my tastes. In Hokkien, we would say that I don't know how to listen to that kind of music. The only one that I could easily get used to is the Lakes of Canada one; that was quite nice.

So as you can see by today's Vonerdword, I'm currently really, really into Virology right now. It's really interesting and relevant and its just a really fun thing to study. My virology prof is WAYYYYY better than my Bacteriology prof, and the material is much more coherent, so I really like it. Also: I've sort of developed a bit of a liking for Agusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, commonly referred to as Ada Lovelace, who is credited by popular science as the first computer programmer (this accreditation is widely contested among the academic historians, mathematicians, and computer scientists because 1. her program was designed for a machine, not an electronic device, 2. the machine that the algorithm was written for was never completely built in her lifetime and thus never actually performed in her lifetime and 3. there are ambiguities pertaining to how much of the algorithm she herself wrote; some people believe that she was aided by mathematician Charles Babbage, some believe that she amended and improved upon an algorithm originally written by Babbage, and some believe it is entirely of her own doing).

Countess Lovelace was the daughter of the renowned poet Lord Byron, and the story of her life is quite fascinating. She is not the feature of this blog post, so I'll try my best to summarize it very briefly: Her mother separated from Lord Byron one month after her birth. She hated Lord Byron because of his poetry and resolved to raise Ada to oppose him and everything that he stood for. This meant that Ada was educated from an early age in the Sciences, Mathematics, Logic, and Music, and it turns out that she was quite the mathematic prodigy. Some believe this comes from her mother, who is rumoured to have been good at science as well. However, as gifted as Ada was in the sciences, she also inherited her father's flair for words; her good friend the mathematician Charles Babbage called her in one of his letters the "Enchantress of Numbers" for both her brilliance in the mathematical arts as well as the mastery of language that enabled her to articulate her ideas and the ideas of others in ways that others could not. Her most notable work was the translation of the lecture memoirs written by the Italian Louis Menebrea on one of Babbage's lectures on the Analytical Machine from French into English, which includes a set of notes written by Ada herself, upon Babbage's request. I find it quite humorous that Ada's notes on the lecture are longer than the translation of the lecture itself.

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In today's post, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind since Saturday night. By the by, it was absolutely phenomenally fantastic seeing and hanging out with everyone on Saturday! It was a much needed breather from UBC life and it was so much fun!

Anyways, on Saturday, you had mentioned that there was a bit of turmoil in your church at the moment pertaining to the pastoral staff, and I had also briefly mentioned that my church has also experienced something of the sort.

I kind of wanted to elaborate on that here, because it's something that I've been sort of coming back to every once in a blue moon since it happened several years ago.

My family attended a chinese church; it is the same church at which my parents first met when they were in university, and they were very active as young adults in the church, so practically everyone there that is about older than 40 knows my family (also because three of my dad's sisters were also very active in the church, so my sister and I are known as being related to four prominent church figures in their day). Being a predominantly assimilated chinese congregation in Canada, our church offers two services every Sunday: an English service and a Mandarin service, and although there is much overlap between the two services, there two different pastoral staffs: one for each service. I'm not completely sure of the political details governing the administration at our church, so I'm likely to be wrong on several points, but the main parts of the story I know are correct, having heard them from several different times from several of my relatives who are (relatively) high ranking members of the church.

Back when we still attended church, I was in elementary school (we sort of stopped attending when I entered high school, the reasons for which are a completely different story for another time) and at that time, there were two members of the English pastoral staff that were exceptionally good. For privacy's sake, I will not be using their names.

Pastor P and Pastor G were my two favourite speakers. Their sermons were very powerful and very well written. I remember as a kid being in awe of their sermons. I still remember the clarity and finesse of Pastor G's sermons; his sermon on anger still resonates with me to this day, almost ten years after. I really, really enjoyed his sermons because, looking back on them now, I realize that they were structured like essays: he's open his sermon on the topic, and then he'd read parts of the Scriptures with us, examine their context and meaning, outline his interpretation of the excerpt, and then explain what God was saying about the topic at hand, and then at the end summarize his interpretation and give suggestions for how to apply them to our own lives. He did it in such a clear, concise manor and his logic, I now realize, is very similar to the logic that I now use to work through my own faith.

Using his sermon on anger as an example, Pastor G wanted to discuss anger and how we as Christians should go about dealing with this emotion. Some people believe that anger is a sin; if I'm not mistaken, is considered one of the so called Seven Deadly Sins under that name of Wrath. Pastor G began by talking about why some people might think this, and then proceeded to look at several parts of the Scriptures that give examples of the Lord's actions. He used several different instances to illustrate that the Lord reprimands people for getting angry, and other instances where the Lord himself gets angry in the Bible; the greatest of them being the time when Jesus visits the temple in one of the major cities (Jerusalem? I think? It's been a while since I looked at that section... >_>) and he finds there are merchants in the courtyard selling animals for sacrifice, and Jesus gets very angry and very upset, to the point where he upturns their tables and basically rages and makes a mess. Using these examples, Pastor G argued that if the Lord, being a perfect being, can get angry, then getting angry is not necessarily a sin. Pastor G then goes on to say that if anger is not inherently a bad thing, then when is it okay to be angry and when is it not okay to be angry, as Christians, and then proceeds to cite several more parts of Scripture (the temple incident being one of the most prominent ones), and then concludes that we should follow God's example, and his interpretation was that it is okay to be angry if something or someone has broken one of God's rules and they have sinned; if you are angry and this is not the reason, they your anger is not justified (in the case of the temple, Jesus' anger was justified because the merchants had defiled the sanctity of the church; they were greedy and had taken advantage of the people there to make money off of their suffering by selling them sacrificial animals in the church's own courtyard).

Pastor P was an elderly pastor; not an old man, but not a young one either; I'd say he was about in his last 50's or early 60's back then, and he MIGHT have also been a part of the Mandarin pastoral staff; I'm not quite sure. Regardless, he was a very conservative, old fashioned asian, with ver conservative, old fashion asian-style views and hopes for the congregation. Pastor G, on the other hand, is my parents age, and he is more modern in his views, more in line with our sort of perspective on Christianity. It is not unreasonable, then, for us to learn that behind the scenes, at the administrative meetings, Pastor P and Pastor G often disagreed on points pertaining to the congregation, the hiring of our Youth Pastors, allocation of funding, etcetera. Many people in the congregation were unaware of this.

Then, after what I believe to be years and years of going head to head, Pastor G decided that it would be better for the congregation if its pastoral staff was not always fighting amongst themselves, so he decided to resign from the administration; he would go back to school, to complete some certificates for a higher degree in real estate, and work in business instead. When this was announced, the entire congregation was, naturally, deeply saddened. Pastor G was very, very popular, and very well loved. In his "official statement" to the congregation, Pastor G cited the need to spend more time with his family as the reason for his leaving his post, but many people began to speculate that the real reason for his departure was due to the internal conflict with Pastor P. It caused so much upset that the church elders decided to hold a public forum with the congregation so that people could talk to Pastor G and the other pastors and get answers, to resolve their issues.

From what I've heard (seeing as this occurred after we had stopped attending church regularly), the public forum began quite well; everyone was civil and considerate. But then, part way through the evening (some say it was near the middle, some say it was near the end), someone yelled out and blamed Pastor P for Pastor G's resignation, and that was the trigger that basically turned the forum into a bloodbath (or so I've heard). There was apparently lots of finger pointing and name calling. By the end of the night, the congregated lashed out emotionally by not only blaming Pastor P for Pastor G's departure, but by demanding Pastor P's own resignation in an attempt to get Pastor G to stay. People were saying things like "Why should Pastor G resign when Pastor P is the one causing all the conflict?"

In the end, due to all of the ruckus, Pastor P gave in to the congregation's pressure resigned. Pastor G, having already announced his resignation, never had any plans to un-resign (it would have also been extremely disrespectful and a very big insult to Pastor P if Pastor G had un-resigned). So, in this way, our church lost two of its best speakers. In the aftermath, one of our older pastors that had been in retirement for almost a decade had to come out of retirement to fill the gaping void while the administration scrambled to find replacements, as the pastoral staff was now two short.

And this, right here, is one of the problems I have with organized religion (I have several, of which this is one). Church is supposed to be a place where Christians gather to rejoice in the glory of God, where we share and learn about God together, as a community, and, as a community, become better people. Usually, the complaint with organized religion like this is criticized for its leadership (for example, the retarded Pastor in Florida who decided to video himself burning a copy of the Qu'ran and put it on the internet, which has sparked huge anti-american riots in the Middle East resulting the death of at least two americans within the first day). But in this case, its not the leadership of the church that is at fault, it was the congregation itself. One would expect that a group of adult Christians would know better than to act like five year olds who've had their favourite toys taken away from them. If this is how we, as a community, act, then I argue that perhaps this whole thing isn't as effective as it should be. Shouldn't we, as adult Christians, be able to handle situations like this with more maturity? Or have these people actually learned nothing from their own religion? Perhaps some people value the church more for its social aspect than its spiritual aspects. I don't know, because I'm only one person; I can't read minds, and I don't know how other people think.

I'm not trying to downplay the benefits of church; I believe that being part of a congregation is an amazing experience and it is a very powerful (and essential) way to become close to God, both personally and as a part of a group. But when things like this happen, it makes me wonder, how many people out there sit in church and actually actively LISTEN and then THINK about what they're being told.

As Ghandi once said, "I do not like your Christians; they are so unlike your Christ."

Anyways, that's my story and some of my thoughts on the issue; I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Chat soon,
~Tim~