Technology Ministry

Most, if not all, of you know that I like to play video games. And since I’m CS, why not use those skills to create a game, right? Well, that’s been a dream of mine for a while. You know, work for Blizzard, Bioware, Valve, or some other gaming company. It’s a very tough industry to get into.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience in making games. Most people would develop a game on their free time and have that in their portfolio when going to interviews. But in my case, most of my time outside work and class has been spent on church and AACF. So I have no creative works to show off and no experience in those coding competitions (as well as no participation in the engineering clubs/societies on campus). I have nothing under my belt that stands out to the gaming industry.

During the CCAC retreat, Rob introduced me to one father, James, who is a senior director at the US headquarters for Konami. Konami is a Japanese gaming company that has made such titles like Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania. James is looking for new employees that can focus in web gaming. Based on his list of wants in an employee, I fulfill about 50-75% of it already. So he offered to try to get me a job there if I so desired after my yearlong (hopefully) Master’s Degree.

There’s a catch. Working in the gaming industry isn’t actually all that great. I knew this before the retreat since I’ve read articles on the industry. In general, employees tend to do a lot of overtime, especially when the deadlines are set by the publishers. Your coworkers will probably be non-Christian. Plus they’ll like to party and drink a lot (especially the CS majors). Trying to serve at home and church may be difficult. Yet James still recommended that I consider the offer since he’d like to have another Christian coworker influencing the workplace.

I guess I have a lot of soul searching in the next year… And those lessons on being a Christian in the workplace just got all the more important.

PS: My brother Timothy at UCI is a Computer Game Science major (or something like that). Maybe he’d like this kind of offer?

During CCAC retreat, my roommate was Everest, a young adult that I didn’t know very well. So that first night, we spent over an hour talking to each other. It’s parts of his testimony that I want to share now. He is living one humbling life.

Everest attended The Master’s Seminary for a year. During that period, he was living on a very tight budget. You wanna know how tight? Tight enough that his friends offered to buy groceries for him. Imagine how humbling it is to be in that kind of situation. I bet most of us would believe that it would be beneath us to accept the aid for such basic needs like food. Everest threw away his pride and accepted his situation with humility.

Notice how I said he was there for only a year. He had to drop out because he couldn’t pay for tuition, but now he has a job with Liferay, a website framework company run by Christians that’s based in Walnut/Diamond Bar. As some kind of physics major (with a focus in fiber optics, I think), he had no programming experience, so when he got the job as a consultant, he had to learn Java in 1-2 weeks. It was God’s grace that he even got the job, as you might have realized that he learned programming after he got in.

His current plan is to first marry his girlfriend, who is currently attending UCI. Apparently he visits UCI most weekends, and he goes to the Berean church there, so maybe my brother can meet him. After marriage, he wants to go back to The Master’s Seminary. He has a huge passion for the Bible, as I could tell from his excitement when he described one professor teaching Hebrew and breaking out in exegesis of a passage.

It was great to really meet Everest for the first time. Too bad he won’t be at CCAC much longer since he’ll be working and living so far away.

PS: For you readers who attend EFCW, I found out that Everest is actually Pastor Chan and Auntie Barbara’s nephew. What a small world…

We just got back from a CCAC church retreat (and 3 day weekend is almost over now). And I must say, this would have to be my favorite church retreat in recent memory. It was held at Loyola Marymount University, which is in the direction of LAX. What a beautiful campus it is! Lots of space and greenery, as opposed to the density of UCLA.

Our speaker was Pastor Nam Park of Immanuel Bible Church. The theme was “The Road of Reconciliation,” which went back to the fundamentals of the Christian faith with salvation, redemption, and grace. Through five sessions, we went over different aspects of redemption: aim, power, value, heart, and resolve. He’s a very easy person to talk to (had breakfast with him twice) as well as having interesting stories to share (like Sizzler’s cheese toast and playing pranks on people in high school). But most importantly, he was faithful to the Gospel.

Another time of learning was in small groups. I actually led one of the small groups (a little unexpectedly, as I was only emailed like a day before retreat). It was a little intimidating at first because of who was in my small group. There’s Sammie and Elissa who are UCLA freshmen, and then there’s two sets of parents. I’ve taught their kids at various occasions during Awana and VBS last year, so it was a little scary to have the parents in my small group. In the end, it turned out to be a really good small group though! The parents gave us a lot of insight on raising children to follow Christ. Everyone was very responsive in answering questions too! Unfortunately (?) I feel that we were one of the loudest small groups as there was a lot of laughter coming from our group (and serious talk too!).

Meals were good too. Not quite UCLA standards, but good nevertheless. Although I did like the set-up of the dining hall more than UCLA’s. Besides sitting with the college folks, I had two meals with the kids and one meal with the Fong family. It was great to have the opportunity to sit and talk with the Fong’s and other adults. Lucy even asked Rita how she met John…

In terms of free time, it was fun and tiring at the same time. Some of it was spent helping Rob with the youth games (which were great). A couple of hours was spent on board games. And many other hours was spent working on my CS projects… booo… (Let me just say that getting MPI to work on Windows is frustrating enough that I finally gave up and remote connected to the UCLA Linux servers through VPN, SSH, and SCP.)

But ya, retreat was great!

PS: I ended retreat by teasing Joseph, CJ, and Daniel Joe with a pool noodle and wacking them in the butt. And then Stephanie Joe started calling me a menace to children =P

I got so caught up with going home to chaperone my sister that I forgot to mention that Awana ended last Friday (at least until it starts up again in October). I’ll miss seeing you guys every week, Joseph, Brandon, David, and Luke (my energetic 1st graders). And I’ll miss leading the Red Team during games.

The main thing that Awana has taught me for the last year is just how to love the church. Before, attending CCAC was just a Sunday thing. And on Sundays, we’d only hang out with the other college kids because our Sunday School was specifically for college students, and we all sat together even during the main service. It wasn’t until I joined Awana that I got to know the families, from parents to children. This interaction with the rest of the church fuels a love for them that previously wasn’t there.

Still unsure if I’ll do Awana again next year. I definitely want to, but things may come up between now and then.

PS: The last day of Awana was a fiesta party. There was even a pinata! One of the pinatas didn’t break after 20 kids had a go at it (with 3 hits per kid), so they asked me to go beat it up. And I must say, it’s very satisfying to hit something with a bat as hard as you can without any repercussions. And yes, I did break the pinata. I let in the horde of children to consume the fallen candy.

Just reflecting a little on the names you call people.

During the trip with my 7th grade sister, all the kids just called me Silas. Maybe it’s because they felt I was cool and whatever since I was the youngest chaperone. So perhaps calling me by my first name was kinda to include me in their shenanigans, like a member of their team or an orchestra buddy.

At Awana at CCAC, some of the kids also call me Silas, probably for the same reasons as listed above. And then other kids call me Uncle Silas. You realize that in churches, most of the older men are “Uncle” and the older women are “Auntie”? So I always call Brian/Caleb’s parents Uncle Eric and Auntie Ewina (as opposed to Mr. and Mrs. Lau). So to those kids, I fit into the older guy figure. I’ve also gotten Mr. Silas a couple of times, but it’s not too common.

But once people (and I mean people in general, not just kids) start calling me Mr. Lam, then I know I’ve gotten (too?) old. Either that or I’ve started working in the business world.

Many times (especially the last 3 years), the adequate phrase to describe myself is “physically tired.” Kids have too much energy, and I never have enough. Doesn’t help that I slept at 4 AM on Wednesday night, 3 AM the previous night, and 2 AM last night (with an average of 5 hours of sleep a night). And then there’s all the walking and screaming we did at Knott’s. And it’s too hard to fall asleep on a moving bus with 60-70 middle schoolers.

As previously mentioned, I was a chaperone for an orchestra event for my sister. I was specifically in charge of 8 kids (out of like 200). We first went to the Cypress Community Center for the judging festival. Chaparral took 2 orchestras, the Prelude and the Philharmonic (basically beginner 6-7th graders and intermediate 6-7th graders, respectively). Both won superior ratings (the highest rank) with 97.5/100.

Then off to Knott’s Berry Farm! So on the bus ride to places, I sat in the very back (as kids who choose to sit in the back tend to be the rowdy ones), and it just so happened that some of my kids were also in the back. In the previous weeks, the kids had already decided on their own groups for Knott’s. Chaperones could do whatever they wanted, as the kids were on their own (chaperone assignments were only for roll-call/attendance purposes). My original plan was to just hang out with my sister’s group, but the kids in the back asked me to join their group since they had an odd number.

It was a very interesting experience. I’m surprised that they basically me into their group despite just meeting them and the 8-9 year age difference. I guess they asked me since I was the youngest chaperone. A lot of the parents thought I was one of the middle schoolers, or even a high school helper… But we had a blast going around the park during our allotted 8 hours. (Just a pity that there were so many people so the lines were long on almost all the rides, so we didn’t get to some of the more popular ones). At times, I was basically another classmate (that didn’t know their inside jokes). At other times, I was like an older brother (giving advice and all that). And the oddest parts were the times I felt like I was the dad (taking care of them).

An instance of feeling like a dad was with Joshua, otherwise known as Mr. Chen to the kids. He’s getting his teaching credentials at APU, and he’s been working with Mr. Rochford (the orchestra director) for the last 2 years, so all the kids treat him similar to a college TA. (Interestingly enough, I found out he was part of AACF at UCR, his undergrad school). Our group of like 12-ish people had dinner at Johnny Rockets, and it was obvious the kids never ate at a restaurant by themselves before (like how they thought the bill worked and how to order), so Josh and I helped with that. While we dealt with the bill, all the kids went off to nearby locations to have fun while they waited for us, so they asked us to watch their stuff for a few minutes (as they thought they’d be quick enough). With the bill taken care of, it was just Josh and I with a ton of stuff (leftovers, drinks, backpacks, jackets, cell phones they didn’t wanna get wet, etc), and we both felt like we were dads taking care of 5 kids each. Never quite had that feeling before, despite working with kids for so long.

To conclude, most, if not all, the kids liked me. A lot of my sister’s friends apparently told her that I was “cool” (a little surprising to me). The kids I were in charge of told me that I was a really chill chaperone since I sympathized with them and let them get away with some small stuff (but I’d put my foot down on major stuff). And my Knott’s group really wants me to be a chaperone on future trips. I’ll see what I can do… 

PS: I’m amazed at how much middle schoolers obsess over who likes whom. I personally wouldn’t let a middle schooler date… And to top it off, I saw a guy in one of the lines wearing a shirt that said “DADD - Dad Against Daughter Dating.”

PSS: You guys will probably never read this (unless Sarah shows you), but thanks to my Knott’s group for making the trip memorable and enjoyable: Gwenith (sp?), Stephanie, Rachel, Travis, Darryl (sp?), and Benjamin.

PSSS: For those of you who know Ara, the viola teacher, she’s pregnant now~

PSSSS: I just found out that Mr. Rochford divorced awhile back. And now he’s dating Ms/Mrs (?) Carr, the old DBL (Design Based Learning) teacher (but she teaches at Suzanne now).

Today, I will be doing something significant with Sarah, my youngest sister (there’s a 9 year difference). I don’t think I’ve really done anything for her since I went to college… But today’s the day!

She asked me months ago if I could be a chaparone for a middle school orchestra trip. And I told her I’d do it. Today’s the day! The 6th and 7th graders of the Chaparral Middle School Orchestra (the same school and orchestra I attended many years ago) are going to a festival where they will be judged on their performances. And then there’s a field trip to Knott’s Berry Farm for the rest of the day. Instead of working on projects or studying, I’ll be hanging out with my little sister~

PS: Got a haircut from my mom when I went home. It’s been like 11 weeks…

Onto the more serious stuff about Men’s Retreat. My small group leader was JT, and we also had Chris and Mark. We were bonding fairly well, but I just wish we had more time for small group stuff. (I feel that’s my wish every time, haha.)

Our speaker was Don Harada, and elder from CCAC. A pharmacist by trade, his perspective was very unique. His wife Kathy was Christian when they married. He was not Christian at the time, although he did become Christian later. And because of his experience, he does NOT advocate the so called “missionary dating.” It’s the whole unevenly yoked thing.

The first session was mostly about biblical manliness and how to be a Christian in the workplace. And the second session was on a mixture of parenting, marriage, and dating (with dating being the least talked about). I think the most interesting part was all the fatherhood stuff, as that’s not stuff you’d normally get as a college student. It’s more of a marriage counseling topic, but I guess we do need some idea now, as you should be living what you teach your kids. The oddest part was hearing how he taught his four daughters (as well as some funny stories), as some of us know his children (since they’re our age).

But I feel the biggest takeaway for many people was about giving your entire life to God. Sometimes we give everything except one part of our lives. It may be your career, your love life, or something else. It’s like “God, this one part is critical, and I really don’t wanna mess it up, so I’m gonna keep it and work on it myself.” Yet we’re called to surrender everything. No keeping even a single part from God.