My feelings about leadership in general and spiritual leadership specifically is that it is an elusive quality. When I'm talking about characteristics of leaderships I compare it to "chemistry" in a relationship. Reason being in my life I haven't had much care or put that much thought into becoming a leader. If you're interested there are a giganormous number of books out there that will help on this topic.
A good example of someone in my life who has been a great leader is my high school badminton coach. Miss Buzdeiker — we used to call her "Buzz" — was a tough, disciplined, morally upright, warm, humorous, a genuinely caring person.
She saw in me what most people don't see at that lanky age of 14. She took me under her tutelage and pushed me hard to train, to not giving up believing in me, and to encourage me when the chips are down.
Lately a lot of friends I know are gearing up to do a half marathon or a marathon. There is the Nike Women's Half Marathon that is coming up that a few of my friends are running, curiously mostly girls. Then someone mentioned the other night the Silicon Valley Marathon to me.
I just had a meeting with my project manager to go over the next "lite" version of our software and its redesign. The meetings lasted about 2 hours. For the first hour we talked about his vacation in Greece...so beautiful with islands like Tinos, Santorini, Napflo (I happen to know cause I jotted them down on my notepads during our meeting). He also went through like four folders worth of pitures taken on each of those islands. It was a really great meeting. 
He also started telling stories of these islands and where his great great grandmother is from, and how his great great grandfather came to the island of Tinos from Venetia. There was a church on the island that traced his family back to 350 years or so...and there's a tree this ancestral grandfather planted that now sits in the "main" streets of Tinos.
There's a song on Coldplay's X&Y album called What If that got me to think back to what appropriately was approximately over a half year ago.
About half year ago, on January 2nd I got a called from an ex-coworker reminding me to visit GrX.
Every step that you take
could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
Thats the risk that you take
What if I never went through a difficult break up with my ex? Would I ever admit to God that I need help to get my life back on track?
What if my ex-coworker never called me and I never made the decision to go to GrX and I continued to attend the church in Foster City?
What did I learn given that we only have 1.5 hours to unpack and deconstruct this topic? Here are what I got from the class.
1. Methods
Two ways to approach breaking down a passage:
A. study the heck out of it. (Dave took 6 hours to come up with two study questions for the passages in Luke 23:26-49)
B. rely on commentaries and experts (G. Fee/D.Stuart)
Sunday: Church service and end of "Authenticity" Series. Lunch at Myung Dong. If you're looking for Korean food, you can't go wrong with Myung Dong. Their tofu dishes are really good and that's what I ordered — Soon Tofu with beef. Make sure to get the regular as the spicy is "super spicy." After lunch rested a bit than had a bike ride with Frank on Page Mill going towards Foothill Expressway. Swam and dinner at Drew with Jen, Sharline, Hank, and Eugene. A very awesome (and active) weekend as that's what weekends are for.
My niece Lauren (who will turn 2 next month) always says this when she sees a scrape on my leg. "Owie."
Owie is right as I went indoor rock-climbing yesterday with people in S.G. and scraped and banged myself to overcome some 5.9-5.10D. I don't know...there's something about climbing and reaching at the top that can be very satisfying. Reversing that, when you're stuck at some little "knub", hangin' on for dear-life, you're exhausted AND exasperated, you are at the mercy of Newton's 2nd law of motion &mdash gravity &mdash what comes up must come down. Dang that sucks...
Anyone interested in doing a triathlon with me? It doesn't have to be something that hard but just to do a baby one.
Swim + Bike + Run
Swim: got it covered
Bike: got it covered
Run: needs improvement... 
Saw Fantastic Four Sat night and some comments:
Since MIT is a private school, does that mean whenever MIT is mentioned in the script that they will get a royalty? (If I was the dean at CalTech, I would revitalize the CalTech brand to compete with MIT and push for screenwriters to use CalTech as the top engineering school.)
Jessica Alba's Sue Storm is younger looking than Chris Evan's Johnny Storm. Also why can't they find someone at least resembling each other to play siblings.
Jessica Alba went to MIT and became the top researcher for Victor Von Doom. Believable? LET'S not!
Stan Lee must be loving it, appearing as a mailman in one scene. Does anyone know if every Marvel films so far has Stan Lee as a cameo? Now that's paying respect to the Godfather of comic books.
Last night I got outbluffed by a girl in Texas Hold 'Em. The buy in was $1 and there were 10 of us and the game lasted 3 hours or so. So with that low of a stake there's no bluffing involved. You pretty much "see your call" and play the hands.
I got outbluffed by the girl on a pair of Jacks with another pair on the flops (the calls being showned on the table). I think they were a pair of 10s. I had all these chips, pretty much double her amount so I decided to do an "all in", essentially buying her out since she had 1/2 my chips. It was a classic bully strategy and I thought she'll fold. Come on now how can she beat my hands? I was rolling in the chips and gotten a little confident...thus the bully tactics. Everyone around the table had already folded so it came down to me and her and I have been on a good run. She was playing me though, being indecisive and kept looking at her cards and at the cards on the table. I was laughing.
I have been feeling like an island at work, not really sharing on spending time with my co-workers. Specifically Thurs. at work used to be Hoop thursday. It's a chance to play hoops and bond with the guys here at work.
Until pride got in the way.
** Disclaimer ** It's okay. I'm not gossiping per se as I've prayed to God about it as well as to spoken to my Christian friends about it. Still I can't help thinking how my feelings and pride got in the way of reconciliation and forgiveness. Or rather is seems much easier to come to terms with "bridge building" when both parties are on the "same page".
According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Bush has been outperforming President Clinton on donations to help reduce poverty in Africa. Apparently even Bono of U2 and Bob Geldof has been acknowledging that the US "has hardly been stingy".
Also in the same article the US contributes to a Global Fund that fights AIDS and other diseases in the developing world. With the fund capped at 33% for the US, $88 million was retained. The article didn't mention what it was being retained for. Since I'm currently reading God's Politics, I'm wondering if George Bush is doing anything for poor people here in America.
Spent most of Sunday in the City &mdash Stern Grove — better than expected. We (Andrea, Louise, Sharline, me) arrived to an overcast-foggy outer Sunset, somewhere between Sloat and 19th Ave.
Sandwiches on a slope hill listening to Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 From The New World. Thanks Andrea! I swore it sounded like Star War's Phantom Menace Duel of The Fates. It was fun being outdoor and listening to classical. Reminded of Disney's Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 and his idea also of a concert film shown in the outdoor.
