I have been quite busy lately both at work and at thinking about redesigning the backstage blogging site (see below). After several attempts at originality both in design and CSS code I have decided to put the re-design idea on the backburner. Work, church, and community service as well as interest in doing all things outdoor has taken up most of my time.

A (Very) Brief History of (My) Time

Well, for starters I have been participating in a couple of ministries at GrX: buidling balconies for three affordable houses for the Peninsula Habitat for Humanity (PHfH). The other was my every other-monthly BBQ for CityTeam Ministries

God has placed these opportunities for me to serve and to give back to the community. At PHfH within the span of six hours I learned how difficult it was to build/construct a house. Not only because of the heavy liftings involved but also because of the logistics with equipments, crews, safeties, and so many other issues.

To give you an idea of the needs for affordable housing, in the US 36 million people live below the poverty line (or roughly 12% of the US population).** From these figures 14 million families have critical housing needs.** A typical family who is qualified for housing from PHfH has a combined income of $45,000-$60,000 for a family of 5 people! That's a combined income to provide for basic items like food, transportation, health care, and of course rent/mortgage. In the Bay Area, with housing price going up all the time, affordable housing is quickly disappearing.

I really encourage anyone interested in helping out with any Habitat for Humanity organization to just do it. For my part it's been great to know that what little effort I did that one day does go a long way to provide affordable housing for some family. I even daydream that perhaps what I did provided a safe environment and support for these families to go on to be "self-sufficient," and not be dependent on subsidies. If the goal is to help provide for low-income families and reduce poverty that's one of the most honest and noblest thing I have ever done.

But I also live in Silicon Valley where the educated elites and well-to-do are clearly not doing enough to help out. I pray to God that with time we can all contribute in anyway to lend a helping hand.

Note: As I'm writing this I wondered what the final houses that we helped with will look like. I wish for anything to be able for our GrX team to be there to see the looks on the families' faces as they unlock the doors to their new homes. Also to see so many other group of volunteers—from Georgia Tech Alumni, Young Filipino Americans, to even attorneys from a San Francisco law firm—came and participated was very encouraging and uplifting. So things are looking up. To quote Bob Dylan "The Times They Are A-Changin". If you have the bandwidth and are interested in the work involved & how much fun we had, visit smugsmug to view some photos taken at the Daly City construction site.

By The Numbers

+ 500: number of "Sweat Equity" hours partner families who qualified for housing from PHfH invest in working or in construction on their houses.

+ 144: number of patties served at CityTeam Ministry. A conservative estimate of homeless served that afternoon: 80+.

+ 21: years in prison as told to me by one of the homeless person, behind his gap-toothed smiles.

+ 13: million of America's children who are poor, that is, one of every six children in America are poor!

+ 87%: percentage of people living in the Bay Area not attending church.

All apologies aside I am glad to finally be blogging again. Many thanks to those of you who are tuning in still. Please be patient and to keep reading and commenting. For those of you with blogging sites, keep blogging! You know I love to read your blogs. Again I'll leave today's blog with a little Scripture:

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. (Psalm 127:1)

** Addendum & Notes **
The astounding statistics above are from God's Politics (which I highly recommend.)

A cleaner site where the content is structured with a grid layout. The layout is done using Photoshop and with any luck and due diligence I may be able to make it into an actual blogging site. Goal and elements of design is simplicity both in functionality of codes and graphical elements.

I'd love to implement something like a placeholder where I post links or stories that I find interesting. With this strategy at least I won't worry about absentitist.

Please let me know what you think by providing any feedback. You can also use the comment section, too. All feedbacks are welcomed.