Understanding Christianity: Before and After

I grew up in quite a traditional Chinese family. My parents were taoists. We worship our ancestors and various othe gods.

To me, religion meant burning incense in the morning and night. And in temples too. We ask for protection and blessing. We are afraid of offending them for fear of tribulation. But in general, it's more of a 'i did my part so you must protect me. But in general I get to live my life the way I want' kind of thing.

And that was how I approached Christianity initially too. It offered a guide of how to live life in a righteous manner, much like confucious and buddlisim. And as long as I live my life in a righteous manner, my God ought to leave me alone.

I was so wrong. There are just too much misconceptions I had to overcome. And I'll just correct what was mentioned above.

First off, God is not going to let us get away so easily. The core of Christianity is about having a relationship with God. God is very interested in us as persons, more than how we live our lives. He wants to transform us into better people, not just on the outside, but in the inside too.

God loves us. Let's think in terms of human love. We do things for the people we love unconditionally, regardless of what we recieve back.

And God is supposed to be above that. Hence, God will bless us and protect us. But where does that leave praying and worshipping? An aspect of that is thanksgiving, appreciating all that He has done, is doing, and will do for us. Another aspect is to have a conversation with Him. Not just talking to God, but listening. For example, He might be trying to protect you by telling you to avoid walking this path. But you just were not listening.

I'm sure that in terms of the practice, Christianity and various other religions are extremely similar. But only in Christianity do I actually come across a God who loves me, and really interested in my well-being as a person. And who wants to have an ongoing relationship with me.

Someone has to own the project

Working on the most recent project was a huge pain.

As mentioned, it was half on-site and half off-site.

The pain was beyond communication. It seems that at every moment, there is always something new to do.

And these are not new or changing requirements. They are hidden in the current code, unimplemented.

The lead on the project love to use a UI driven approach, or top-down as some would call it. Mock up the UI with dummy API calls. Nothing wrong with that.

Except when I was going to start changing some UI to use a new logic/design, I notice that some of the data the UI was displaying were hardcoded dummy data!

Now, you might think that time was saved, since I was going to update it to the new UI. But what was worrying was that when I was going to update this, I asked question on this part, and the lead was unsure if it was displaying data from the backend or otherwise!

It was never clear who owned a module. Sometimes a few of us would be working on the same library. It was never clear to me whose duty end and whose begins. And this might result in unimplemented logic.

And like many project, the requirement is constantly changing. And many of the business logic are still convinently locked in the mind of only a few. There is constant fear that not everything is implemented.

All I need is the confidence that someone has everything under control. He knows what had been done, and what not. And he can decide when something is done. That's what we lack.

Sounds like a good project manager is needed.

Computer Context Profiles

Ever since I started using my laptop for both personal and work, I had been wishing that I was able to use multiple profiles.

Not I the sense of user accounts or profiles. My profiles would all share a single user account, but they would be context aware.

For example, at work, when I login, I would expect all work relate apps to auto launch. Example is my work mail client, IDE, chat client for work, explorer with my work folders open, etc.

At home, when I login, a different set of apps would launch. Personal mail client, RSS reader, web browsers to my favorite sites, chat clients, iTunes and so on.

It could be location aware, but that might be limiting. For example, maybe at home, at times I just want a quick check of my mails. I'll login with a mail context. Other times I might want to login with a full home context.

I'm fairly surprised that this had not been done. It seemed so simple and so useful!

Perfect human in perfect world

Imagine perfect humans, living in a perfect world. There will be no mistakes made, no misplacing of items, no violence, no suffering. Everything is just good and perfect.

But is this really perfect?

Let's imagine again once more. For unknown reason, someone in this perfect world actually makes a mistake. What might happen? Honestly we have no idea, but let's reflect upon the fact that this is the first time a mistake is made in this perfect world. No one could have knew how to response to it.

Could a mistake break a perfect world?Will they cast the person as an outcast, to maintain the perfect community? Or can they forgive him, which is probably as alien a concept as outcasting him. Or will there be two sides, and war might erupt?

Looking back at this scenario. To our current world, a perfect person ought to be forgiving. Generous. Caring. Loving. Compassion. Let's try to apply this onto a perfect world of perfect people. They might or might not have them. To a world of perfect people, there would be no mistakes. No need for forgiving. Everyone has what they need. No need to be generous. Everyone is happy, and no need for caring. I'm not too sure if they need love or compassion.

Now, given that they have no need for them, and neither do they practice them, can it be said that they HAVE these things?

These are of course hypothesis.The perfect world does not exist, at least not yet now. We live in an imperfect world.

But we can still strive to be perfect people. We can learn and use forgiveness, compassion, love, caring. We might not make this into a perfect world that easily, but we can help make this a better world.

Note: The Bible did not say that this is WHY we are living in an imperfect world (that was due to sin), to practice love, compassion, etc. I do not seek to speak on His behalf as I do not know His whole plan. But what we should at least (but not all) do is to be better people, by being more living, more caring, more forgiving.

Reflections on Halloween Night Safari Visit

I made a visit to the Singapore Night Safari during the Halloween event recently, and it has surely given me some thoughts.

First off, the number of people there were astonishing. The queue almost turn me off and away. We queued for almost two hours for our tickets and tram ride, and that included having friends who were there early to queue for us!

Well I was there for the animals. I haven't been to Night Safari before. And a Halloween theme was a good excuse to gather people to go there. Though the people involved and the idea was not from me but my girlfriend. I had to wonder if these people were in for the Halloween scares or the animals.

And scares there were. Night Safari had some of their staff cosplay as many Disney characters in Halloween style. And many of them were really into their character. Well at least the female ones.

I'm probably biased, but I did not like the male characters. Sure they were out to scare people. And the people were likely there to be scared.

But you should not be scaring the kids. Those male characters were running around, scaring even the kids, by moving close up to them and give them a boo! Sure, it's in their job scope, but must they scare kids? Do they feel like almighty MAN doing that?

On the other hand, I wonder about the parents. They knew it was Halloween theme. Well even if they don't, should they not be heading home after discovering the Halloween theme? I saw many kids there crying. And that was before they went into night safari. They were still a long queue away from the ticketing counter!

Worse, there were cases of the parents wanting to take photo with the Halloween characters, along with the kids! Poor kids were crying as their parents held them up beside those characters.

Sure, the parents could have promise the kids about the visit. But if the situation was not right, should the parents not change their decision, even if the kids would cry and complain? I'm not sure which is worse: breaking a promise, or allowing your kids to possibly have nightmares for the next few days or weeks.