Speeding Up

I'm three weeks into work now, and I've really been noticing how fast and busy the pace of life is here in America. I've been thinking back to this post that I wrote early on while I was in Kolkata. All the lessons that Kolkata taught me about slowing down are quickly slipping away. Last week in particular was really frantic and busy for me. I did get to do a lot of things that I needed and/or wanted to do, but in general I don't think that pace of life is worth it. I will be able to enjoy life a lot more by just slowing down and being where I'm at.

On a related note, I have a lot I'd like to write about. Over the next few days I'll probably write a few posts relating some of the major (or at least interesting) events of the past week.

Travel

I found out yesterday that I am likely to make my first ever business trip sometime in mid-August. We are currently working out the date with the client (located in Fort Worth, Texas). I will probably reach a point where these trips will just be part of my job, but for now I'm pretty excited that I get to travel for business.

I Really Should Have Been More Careful...

I went to the DMV today to apply for a California driver's license. I didn't have an appointment, but was pleasantly surprised that I reached the front of the line before I was even done filling out the forms. I took the test, and as always there were a handful that I wasn't quite sure about. Fortunately I still passed and they have me a California temporary license. What I didn't realize until later was that they had somehow mis-entered one piece of information for me:

Sex: F

From now on I'm triple-checking that whenever someone tells me to verify that my information is correct. I did check my name and address, but I guess they expect you to check those, so they hide the errors elsewhere.

The primary result is that I have to go back to the DMV again tomorrow. Hopefully it will be even quicker tomorrow than it was today.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere, here's one possibility: It doesn't take an operation to legally change your gender?

The Letter of the Law

This weekend I read through the California Driver's Manual so I can make sure to pass the written test and get a California license. Overall it was pretty boring, however I did learn something about the appropriate use of firearms while driving.

It is illegal to shoot firearms on a highway or at traffic signs.

This leaves me with several questions:

1. Is it legal to use firearms in all other circumstances while driving?
2. When it says "at a sign" does that mean you can't shoot at the sign itself, or you can't shoot at anything while you are located at a sign?

Although the manual doesn't mention firearms again, I think there are other laws that may come into play.

Don't litter the roadside with bottles, cans, paper or anything else. The law says you may be fined up to $1000 and you may be forced to pick up what you threw away. Littering convictions are shown in your driving record. (Emphasis mine)

So your real incentive not to shoot off your firearms the rest of the time is that you will be penalized for littering the roadside with bullets. I certainly don't want my driving record to show that.

I Love My Home Group!

I wanted to post this right away after our home group session on Thursday night, but at the time sleep seemed more important. Then I just sort of put it off for a few days. Anyway, Home Group was wonderful this week. It was a bit smaller than usual because of people who were out of town and one person that just wasn't feeling well. I'm not sure if the smaller size helped to improve our usual dynamic, or if it was just an amazing night on it's own.

This month we have been meeting for dinner before Home Group each Thursday. It's been really great since it gives us more time to talk and find out what's going on in each other's lives. While we were waiting for dinner to be ready, the topic of vulnerability in community came up. We talked about how critical this is to communities, both how it helps to grow communities, and how the lack of it hurts communities. It is one of those things that I know is true, but recently I've had a lot more trouble living that out.

After dinner we had set aside some time for me to tell the group about a bit about my experiences in India. We did eventually make it to the study, but it was much later than we usually start, so we kept the study fairly short. After our study we just took some time for people to share struggles and pray for each other. We probably spent more time on that than we had on our study, and I'm glad we did. Some people are going through some really hard stuff right now, and it gave them a chance to really share about it. After we were done praying, I really just had that wonderful feeling that only comes from knowing that you are in a group of people that really cares about and loves each other.

Is That Really a Feature?

I'm reading through microcontroller documentation at work right now. In a section on its flash memory I found the following:

Features of the flash memory include: ... Segments A and B are also called information memory.

Now maybe it's just me, but an alternative name for something doesn't seem like it should count as a feature. If this new definition catches on, new cars will have the "feature" that seats are also called butt holders.

Cleaning Out My Closet

I intend a bit of a double meaning with that title. First of all, when I arrived in Santa Barbara my closet was full of paper from my apartment-mate's unpacking. In the three weeks he was there prior to my arrival he hadn't gotten it cleaned out. When I arrived, we discovered that the recycling bins for our apartment can fill up pretty quickly, so it has taken us a few cycles to get it all out there. Fortunately, this afternoon I finally took the last of it out. Now I have a wonderful, empty, half closet!

The more important meaning was that last night I got together with the McCulloughs (members of my home group at Church), and started talking and praying through some of the pains that I brought back with me from Kolkata. The short version is I had a lot of struggles with community (i.e. my team) while in Kolkata. I never talked about it much on my blog because I didn't want to put those things up in a public place. The major upshot of my struggles is that I have had a much harder time trusting and giving myself fully to community. After a month of being back, I was overdue to finally start dealing with this. Things are getting better because God is faithful. I am so grateful to God for giving me the love and support of the McCulloughs.

I don't want to put any more details up here. I just wanted to say enough to let people know a little about what has been going on for me and how you can be praying for me.

Weekend in LA

As I mentioned on Friday, I went down to LA last weekend. The primary motivator to get me down there was a LAUP (Los Angeles Urban Project) alumni luncheon. I also took the opportunity to visit a few other people and stop by IKEA on my way back. It was generally a wonderful weekend, although I had forgotten how bad LA traffic could get. Multiple times I was stuck in traffic that I almost wondered if I would ever get out of.

The LAUP gathering was wonderful. Four of the six people from my team last summer were there. The two that missed have large bodies of water separating them from California, so I guess that's excusable. I don't think I've seen more than one of them at a time since last summer. Even just having four of us together sure brought back some great memories.

I had never been to an IKEA before, but I'd heard a lot of good things about them, and my room seemed a little low on furniture. I was quite impressed with their selection and prices. The furniture generally isn't fancy, but it seems quite sturdy and is very functional. Not everything was cheap, but enough of it was that I didn't have any trouble finding what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay. Another benefit of IKEA (depending on your viewpoint) is that you get to assemble the furniture yourself. For me, that's kind of a fun thing to do. I stayed up until 2-something in the morning putting it together. I didn't quite finish, but only because Mr. Cook (my apartment-mate) pointed out that the other people in our building may not appreciate the sound of hammering in the middle of the night. I finally have a room that is almost set up.

Too Little Time

It's amazing how much faster my life moves now that I'm back in a job. My lack of posts over the past few days hasn't been a lack of things to post about, but rather that I just haven't gotten around to writing the posts. Anyway, I'll give a quick highlights list for this week:

• I met with Mike Willbanks, the college pastor at my Church. I want to get involved with the college ministry, so we talked about possibilities for that. It sounds like I'll be co-leading a dorm Bible study with him at UCSB once the school year starts back up. I'm pretty excited about that. In the mean time we'll keep meeting once a week over lunch to talk and pray about it.
• At home group last night I was able to catch up a bit with people as well as meet a few new faces. It was Drew's last time at home group for a while, so we sent him off with prayer. He will be spending the next six months in New Zealand at a Bible college. It is so amazing to see what God is doing with his life.
• This weekend I'm heading down to LA for a LAUP alumni gathering. Four of the six people from my team last summer will be there, so I'm excited to see them.

Second First Day of Work

Today is once again my first day of work at Toyon. If you have been a long time reader (or just aware of my life in general), then you know that I worked here as an intern for four months prior to traveling to India. Well, now I'm back as a full time employee. That means that I'll probably work just about as hard as before, but that I get paid a lot more and get benefits. Oh, and now I'll be able to do jobs that last more than four months.

It was good to get back. A lot of people seemed happy to see me. I filled out a bunch of paperwork, set up my computer (a brand new Dell workstation), and did some background reading on one of the projects I'll be working on. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'll actually be working with computer hardware on this project. Everything I did as an intern was software, and although I do like software, I missed not doing any work with computer hardware.

I also met a new (relative to when I was an intern) employee who was born in India and came to the US for grad school and decided he preferred living here. His wife is even from Kolkata (although I suppose it was still Calcutta when she last lived there)! It was fun getting to talk to him and knowing that there's another person here at Toyon that has walked some of the same roads I walked.

Oh Boy...

In case you forgot, I am now living with a roommate also named Philip. The rest of this post depends heavily on remembering this fact. (Although now that you know the dependence of this post on that fact, you probably could write the rest of the post yourself...)

Within the first six hours or so of arriving at my new apartment, I found something I didn't recognize, but that had my name on it, and assumed it was for me. It seemed a little weird to me that those things were there for me, but it took a little while for it to click with me that those things were not actually for me. In particular, when I found a packaged tape measure in my room, with a note on it from Uncle Jim (I have no Uncles named Jim) to Philip, I thought it was really nice of my roommate's Uncle Jim to give me a tape measure. It wasn't until at least an hour later that I realized it was a gift to my roommate, and he had left it in my room.

Hopefully I'm getting better. Since that first night it hasn't happened again... yet.

Back in Santa Barbara

I've spent the past few days in a U-Haul heading south, but the upshot is that I arrived back in Santa Barbara. I'm excited to be back and see people again. I was lucky enough to have someone else find an apartment for me, so now all I have to do is setup my room. The big question about the apartment that was looming in my mind was answered, would I get good cell phone reception in my apartment... I do! Just to complete the list of blessings, I even have a car that some people at Church were generous enough to lend me for a few weeks until I can find my own to buy. God is good.

Kolkata Wrap Up Letter

Well, I finally wrote a wrap up letter and I'm posting it up here. It took me a while
since I had no idea what I really wanted to write. I still wasn't sure what I wanted to say, but if I didn't get it out now, I never would. Here it is:

Hello again everyone,

I'm back from my four months in India. I arrived back in America a bit over three weeks ago. This is a wrap-up letter summarizing some of my final thoughts from the trip. I wanted to write this sooner, but for a variety of reasons it has taken me a while to actually sit down and write it.

First of all, I want to thank all of you for the support you have shown me through all of this. Thank you for your prayers, your emails, and eagerness to hear about everything I have experienced over the past four months. Your loving support was a great help in sustaining me during my time overseas.

Much of my difficulty in writing this was that I wanted to have a nicely finished experience from which I'd figured everything out. I was waiting until things clicked together for me so that I would have clear and complete thoughts to write about. So far that hasn't happened. Certainly some things have become clearer as I've taken the time to reflect, but I doubt that everything will ever be entirely clear to me.

The lack of simple, clear answers was actually a huge lesson for me. I really like things that can be "solved." I like tackling a problem and being able to create a final solution so that I can move on to the next problem. The issues of poverty and injustice in the world just aren't simple enough for that. I didn't expect to erase poverty from Kolkata, but it was a shock just how complex many of the issues are. In fact, I doubt I ever saw the full depth of complexity for any problem there, but what I did see was still overwhelming. A big lesson for me was that it I couldn't do anything more than the small things. It is not in God's plan for me to singlehandedly solve the problems of the poor. Rather, God's plan is for me, and for every follower of Christ to grow in obedience. Through us God does do amazing things, but He can only work through us when we are obedient to doing the small and simple things.

Prior to going on this trip I had some experience with poverty in America and some knowledge of poverty elsewhere. My knowledge of international poverty, however, was limited to an intellectual understanding. Although I knew in my mind some of what goes on in Kolkata, it was only intellectual, which meant that I was still very distant from it emotionally. It seemed more like a fictional story than a reality. This trip certainly changed that for me. Although there was very little over there that actually surprised me intellectually, it was still a great shock to experience it firsthand. The poor, the forgotten, and the oppressed are no longer just ideas to me. They are people that I have met. I have talked to them. I have heard their stories. Now they have names and faces. I know that I have changed the ways I deal with the realities of poverty, although I cannot say exactly how.

Going into this trip, I was seriously asking God about my future and the possibility of long term missions overseas. Right now I do not know if I will ever end up overseas again. This trip showed me that I can handle the environment, but I never had a great sense that God was either opening or closing this door for me. For the time being I plan to stay in the United States. I will keep myself open to the possibility of a future overseas, and I will keep praying for discernment on what God has in store for my future.

Thank you again for all of your support.
In Christ's Love,
Philip

My 4th of July

I was lucky enough to spend the 4th of July up in the Seattle area with an aunt, uncle, and two cousins. Apparently a lot of that area bans fireworks all together. In fact, they are just down the street from one of the boundary lines. This year and next year fireworks are ok, but it is likely that in 2007 fireworks will be off limits for them too.

In just got me thinking about what makes sense for firework laws. I probably don't want to know how many Americans loose fingers, eyes, and other body parts from fireworks accidents this time of year. I guess a lot of that is personal risk though. I'm sure that every year there is a lot of property damage as well, and often it isn't the property of those shooting off the fireworks. How many homes burn down from fireworks each year? Is it worth for the fun of having personal fireworks? I certainly don't have a perfect answer.

I was also reminded of last year, when I spent my 4th of July at LAUP. We were always left wondering if what we were hearing was just the bangs of fireworks, or if there were gun shots mixed in too. It was until sometime after the 4th that we were relatively confident that the bangs we heard were in fact gun shots. Since I spent my time exclusively in middle class neighborhoods this year, I really didn't wonder about that too much.

Back From Pittsburgh

We got back from Pittsburgh yesterday morning. It was a nice trip. I got to see and learn a lot of my family's past. In particular the parts relating to my parents meeting, the early years of their marriage, and the first two years of my life. I also got to meet a bunch of my parents friends from way back when. Now I'm working on getting myself together to get down to Santa Barbara in time to start work on the 11th.