in 4 hours I’m departing for one of the 7 wonders of the world: The Grand Canyon. With 3 other friends crazy enough to join me, we’re driving over 1400 miles in 2 days (over 21 hours one-way), and will drive about 3000 miles in 1 week. Yeah, that’s a lot more than the 13 miles I ran 2 weeks ago. Gas prices are crazy, but this is the time to do it.
What am I seeking? I’m not quite sure. I’d say some time away from the craziness of the ‘real world.’ This last week has been nice not working in an office, but I’ve still been really busy with lots of side projects and errands. Part of the inspiration for this trip was Don Miller’s book Through Painted Deserts where he documents a road trip from Houston to the Pacific Northwest (yeah, kinda like me but I didn’t do it all at once in an old Volkswagon van) and has a stopover in the Grand Canyon.
I trust that God will allow us to have a good time, but also that he would speak into my heart and maybe give me a glimpse of all the ridiculously crazy stuff he has for me in the future.
I opened my inbox this morning and saw an e-mail entitled “Donations for Myanmar Victims.” Blah blah cyclone this, death toll that. I didn’t want to hear about or read another e-mail from the many non-profit e-mail lists I’m subscribed to.
But looking closer I realized it’s not from an organization, but from my friend Dana from college. We were both RAs and we both love social dance. So I read the email below and was moved to donate the meager amount I can afford in my soon to be college-studentesque budget.
Often the damage can be overwhelming, as my rockstar friend George points out. But the little things matter to those who receive the help, and they matter to God.
Over the last year and a half, I have been working with a non-profit organization, IDE (International Development Enterprises - http://www.ideorg.org/ ) on developing a deep lift water pump for villages in the dry areas of Myanmar. I have traveled to their Myanmar office twice and have had a chance to work with these amazing people. They have an incredible team of people working on development for the rural poor.
However, with Cyclone Nargis, the lack of food and shelter, and difficulty in getting aid through the Myanmar military government, IDE Myanmar finds themselves in a unique position to leverage their resources to help. They have operations in almost all of the hard hit areas and they have government permission to work in these areas.
I recently received an email from Jim and Debbie Taylor, the directors of IDE Myanmar and two very close friends: “The current situation in Yangon is quite grim. We have no electricity, water, or phones… the fuel supplies are running short and food may become scarce soon. There are many people who are in desperate conditions.” However, they are doing what they can to help.
I am writing to ask for donations (of any amount) to help them in their efforts. Donations designated for “Myanmar” will go directly to IDE Myanmar, from which they will be able to offer aid to needy families.
I know it may not seem like as one person we can do much on our own, but if you feel moved by this story and the photo below, I would encourage you to follow the link above and donate what you can.
Note: If you donate, be sure to specify the “Other” option and make the donation “On behalf of: Myanmar Relief”.
I know I haven’t left Microsoft until the end of today, but it’s never to soon to make a difference. It’s too easy for me to grow apathetic to these things but slowly I’m learning to care about more than just myself.
Today is my second to last day at Microsoft. This may come as a surprise to many of you who I haven’t talked to in awhile. Why am I leaving? Well, the answer to that question is complex, but I’ll attempt to explain. Up front, I want to say that I really respect Microsoft as a company and overall I have had a really good experience there. I learned a lot and I met so many awesome people. That’s what I’m going to miss the most, the people (like my officemate Gary). It’s kind of like breaking up with a girlfriend. No really Microsoft, it’s not you, it’s me. That being said - clearly everything wasn’t fine and dandy at work, or I wouldn’t have left.
A big part of the reason I’m leaving is the fact that I’ve had 6 different managers at Microsoft. Some of them I really liked and some could have been better. There are a lot of re-org’s where management and group structure changes at Microsoft, but my experience isn’t typical. I’ve bounced around on a lot of different projects, but never really found one I was deeply passionate about. While I could have asked for a new project, or just changed teams within Microsoft, I didn’t feel like I could truly follow my heart at such a big company, and I’ve been yearning for more.
While this book wasn’t the only thing that made me want to leave, it did have a pretty significant impact on how I think about the world and what’s important. I may have to write a more detailed post another time, but basically, I didn’t know what the point of me working at Microsoft for 2, 5 or even 10 years would be. [Note: I am in no way trying to bash Microsofties or other people in the tech industry, the following is simply my personal opinion] Yes, I would be creating cool software and making lots of money, but to what end would all my work be towards? Right now I work for Live Search Mobile which creates software for mobile phones - particularly those phones that have mobile internet. The target audience for our products are power-users, early-adopter and business professionals - basically rich Americans. And the U.S. is still one of the richest countries in the world. The way I see it, the work I do ultimately is targeted to make life easier for the richest of the rich.
I know that indirectly this can help people, and I realize that if there isn’t anybody innovating then no progress will be made. But for me, I like making direct, visible and tangible impact on the things I am truly passionate about. While I’ve always had a heart for the poor and wanted to help people, I think the moment I realized that I want to dedicate the next season of my life to fight global poverty was when I read the my pastor’s first blog post on fighting poverty. The Sarah McLachlan video in that post had me in tears. 6 months ago I realized I wanted to start making a difference in this world. I didn’t know where to start yet, so I did lots of internet research, read lots of books and talked to as many people as I could about this. Microsoft often has speakers visit to give lectures, and one that caught my eye was when Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and basically the founder of Microfinance, came to speak. His talk on social business (how for-profit companies can help eliminate poverty) really inspired me, but I still didn’t know where to start.
It wasn’t until I was separately approached by two different people in Seattle to gauge my interest in helping to starting two distinct ventures to fight global poverty. One would be a non-profit foundation and the other would be a for-profit business with a focus to empower people in developing nations. While discussions about both opportunities are still in the early stages and no offers or committments have been made yet, this opened my eyes to the possibility of doing work outside of Microsoft. Even if I don’t end up with either of these ventures, I know I will eventually find something similar to dedicate my life to, and I wasn’t finding it at Microsoft. I realized that the only thing that was keeping me at Microsoft was the security it offers. Money.
Now I am extremely blessed to be in the position I’m in. Having a Stanford Computer Science degree and experience at Microsoft gives me the job security that I could likely find some kind of job to pay the bills if I ever run out of money. I have been saving some money since I started working, and I figure that if I’m frugal I can probably last the summer without completely draining my savings paying for rent, car insurance, my car loan, healthcare, food and my beloved student loans. Most people wouldn’t do this - leave one job intentionally without another job already lined up. But, looking at this quote I wrote on my Facebook profile back in college, I realized I’ve totally been a hypocrite.
For me, nothing is worth doing half-hearted. For anything important to me, I will put my heart and soul into it. I have a “go all the way, balls to the wall, never give up” attitude that originates from my old soccer coach, but I apply it to all the things that I truly care about. Live life passionately, or it’s not worth living.
I’m a different person than the person I was back in March 2006 when I interviewed for this job. Back then my older brother Oliver was still alive and I was more passionate about technology and making money. After his passing, I changed the way I look at the world. Luckily, my parents have a new perspective as well. As I’ve shared before, Oliver chose to be a teacher despite his Chemical Engineering degree (and my parents weren’t that thrilled). But he made the right choice to follow his heart since he only had 3 years to work before he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Now my parents understand the importance of doing something your passionate about, and they fully support me in my decision. What a blessing.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point I stopped being passionate about the work I do at Microsoft. It wasn’t my co-workers or my environment, but when I wasn’t able to be excited about going to work everyday (and I know you can’t really do it everyday), I should have realized I shouldn’t be doing it anymore. Perhaps I’m an idealist, because I know that the majority of people would say they aren’t passionate about their jobs and work is just work - it pays the bills. But at least for now I will maintain my idealism, my belief that God created me unique with particular passions and abilities. I believe there is a place for me to find the intersection of my passions and my talents, and now I’m on a quest to find it.
I already have contacts with various social start-ups, foundations and non-profits and a few informational interviews scheduled. I’m always looking for more, so if you have contacts to pass on, do let me know! I plan to intentionally take some time off to reflect, discern, research and really think about what I should do next with my life. I want to cast a wide net and consider all possibilities. My first choice is to stay in Seattle, though many people predict I will end up back in the Bay Area. I don’t even know if I’ll stay in the United States. My friend Adam is trying to get me to move to Japan with him in the fall, and I’m open to working for NGOs or Microfinance Institutes in Asia, Africa, Latin America or South America.
There are a lot of places out there…
I feel like I’m at a unique point in my life. God has blessed me with youth, health, education and freedom. I’m not responsible for anyone else besides myself. I hope to one day get married and have a family, and when that time comes I probably won’t be able to travel around the world to different third world countries (unless my future wife also wants to do that, which would be sweet!). So that leaves no time like the present. One of my colleagues at M$ told me how he lived in Honduras for a year when he was 24 working at a Microfinance Institute and he said it was one of the best experiences of his life.
For the short term, I’m just taking some time to relax, reflect and research. As for travel my first stop is going to be the Grand Canyon. Other places I plan to go are: Bay Area, Houston, New York City / Boston, etc, Hawaii, and hopefully some other countries eventually. If you have suggestions, do let me know :).
It’s a scary and exciting time for me, but I trust that God will guide me to the right place.
Update: I heard the video in my pastor’s blog doesn’t work anymore, so I added it below. Watch it. Trust me. You will be moved.
What a day. I woke up at 5am so we could get to the starting line by 6:15am and make sure we were ready when the race started at 7:00am. We had a really late dinner and didn’t get home till midnight. And I couldn’t really go to sleep right away anyway because I was up till 3am the night before. Note to self: be sure to get more sleep and have a better sleep schedule before your next race.
Kenneth and I are really lucky we even got to run in the race. I thought I had signed up online, but I realized I never got a confirmation email, nor was my card ever charged, so I think the web form broke when I signed up back in February (but silly me I never double checked that). So Kenneth and I are basically begging the registration people to let us run even though they were sold out (How you get 7,000 people signed up to run 13.1 miles is beyond me). But Kenneth worked his magic and we got two spots from these two girls who dropped out. Kenneth would be “Heather” and I would be “Cyndi.” Sweet. Luckily, they whited out the girls’ names on our bibs and we got our timing chips reassigned to our names.
Derek, me and Kenneth. If you look closely you can see how I wrote my name over the whited out ‘Cyndi’ while Kenneth’s name ‘Heather’ is still slightly visible.
The course was awesome - going through downtown Vancouver and then all the way around Stanley Park with some absolutely gorgeous scenery. Thank God that the weather was nice - about 40 or 50 degrees with some sunshine most of the way. Man 13 miles was a lot longer than I thought, though. The other guys kept me going and we had a pretty brisk pace for the first 6 miles or so, we were running about 8 and a half minute miles, on pace to finish under 2 hours. But around the 7 mile marker I started to hit a wall. Both ankles were already getting sore, and now the ’stitches’ in my right side were pretty painful and I couldn’t really take even moderately deep breaths. I had to slow my pace down pretty dramatically and I’m thankful Derek and Kenneth stayed with me and kept motivating me to keep going.
To get an idea of what it was like to run in the race, here’s a photo I found on flickr of the Full Marathon start.
Here’s an overhead view of some half-marathon runners. [last 2 photos courtesy: thelastminute]
Honestly though - there were times when I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Like I said before - it’s more of a mental and psychological challenge. I just couldn’t let failure be an option. And when I didn’t think I could keep going, I used a couple different tactics to stay motivated. I would play songs in my head to keep me upbeat and psyched up. Good thing I was singing Eye of the Tiger at karaoke on Friday, so it was still fresh in my mind. Another great song was the Star Wars main theme. It was the same song I would blast in my dorm room right before I left to go take an final exam. That worked pretty well. Of course thinking of all the encouragement given to me by friends and family was great (so thanks for the kind words, guys!) made it easier.
The three of us exhausted after the race.
But overall, there were times when I really wanted to give up and none of the above tactics worked. Besides praying to Jesus for strength (which definitely helped, too), it was thinking of Oliver that helped me go on. I thought about all the pain he endured through his surgeries, treatments and chemotherapy. Any minor pains in my feet, legs or side was really nothing compared to that. I was inspired how he persevered through all that and that helped put things in perspective. Lots of people had friends or family standing beside the roads cheering them on. I pictured Oliver standing on the sidelines cheering me on, making fun of me, or just smiling as he watched me go by. I would imagine him being right around the next corner and when I would see him I felt like I could keep going. During the last mile I saw him at the finish line, just waiting for me to meet him there and give him a big sweaty hug.
Although I know these visions were all in my imagination, doesn’t make them less real to me. I had two great friends I consider as brothers run with me today and we finished together at 2:08:31 (much faster than I thought I would do). But in the race of life, I’ve had a lot of people help keep me going and inspire me. No single person has had more of an impact on me than Oliver. I’m still running this race of life, and I believe he’ll be waiting there for me at the finish line.
I’m about to take off and drive the wonderful 2+ hours to the glorious land of Vancouver, British Columbia. This magical place has amazing Asian food (esp. in Richmond), beautiful architecture downtown, is home to my favorite places of Stanley Park and Granville Island. But I won’t be enjoying all of that this weekend. I’m on a mission. The goal is to run 21.097494 kilometers.
Remember when I was talking about training for the Vancouver Half Marathon back in February? Well, the time has finally come. My training has been streaky: it started off well, and then I got sick and the weather in Seattle is not quite conducive to outdoor running (at least not for a Texas boy). I loathe running on treadmills. While they’re easy on the feet, I just get absolutely bored, and I feel trapped or like a hamster in a wheel. Unfortunately, the Microsoft gym doesn’t have as beautiful scenery as the Stanford gym Green Lake does. So it wasn’t until the beginning of April that I started slowly training again. I was a little worried, but last weekend I was able to power through a 10-mile run through the wonderful Seattle rain.
It’s not going to be easy, and honestly it’s more of a mental and psychological challenge than a physical challenge if you ask me. But I believe God will give me strength to get through. I was telling myself last weekend as my fee, ankles and knees were in pain: this pain is really nothing compared to the pain that Oliver went through. I guess he’s still inspiring me in new ways.
Since 13 miles didn’t motivate me to get a regular training schedule, I might have to raise the bar. Depending on how I feel after tomorrow’s run, I’m considering signing up for the Seattle Full Marathon. I’ll have more time this summer, and Seattle weather is absolutely gorgeous in the summer and perfect for running. If I do that, I’ll probably try to raise money for Oliver’s memorial fund which supports colon cancer research at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. More details to come if i decide to actually go through with this.
Luckily I’m running the half marathon with my two friends Derek and Kenneth. I’m excited to hang out with these guys and go through the pain together. May the Force be with us.
30 years old? I thought I just turned 24 back in February?
It’s not me. My older brother Oliver’s 30th birthday is today. 30 is a big year. Something tells me that Oliver wouldn’t make a big deal about it though. He’d be casual about it, probably still playing Nintendo with his friends or working on his lesson plans. Yet, birthdays always make me reflect. I wonder what life would be like if he never got sick. But ideas like that are pretty silly. Besides, I’m afraid of where I might be because through his cancer and death, my family grew so much closer together, and more importantly, closer to God. I might be able to call him up and wish him a happy birthday, but it wouldn’t mean that much, I would probably still take him for granted along with the rest of my family. But those 3 years after he got sick, our relationship deepened in a way that might never have happened even if he lived to be 80. So it’s with a bittersweet joy that I celebrate his 30th birthday, even if he’s not here to celebrate it with me.
A photo from Christmas 2005 with my hair at its longest.
Reading over the speech I gave at his funeral, it makes me think about who I was back then and how I’ve changed. I sound very detached and matter-of-fact in it. I was still in shock back then and not really connecting with my emotions: the pain and sadness. I was hiding behind a facade of strength and Christian aphorisms about how everything is okay because God’s in control. He has a plan.
While I believe these things to be true, I still struggle with my humanness. I am still sad today. I broke down in tears on the way home yesterday (and yes the 520 traffic did want to make me cry, but it was more than the traffic). I miss my brother. I feel cheated out of having a friend, mentor, role-model and someone I could always count on. Oliver was a high school teacher despite having a Chemical Engineering degree. He loved teaching High School science. He was always teaching me. It was tough being 6 years younger though. We were never really in the same stage of life.
I had one week together with my brother when we were both college graduates before he passed away. By then he was very skinny and weak. We didn’t talk too much. There weren’t really any words left to be said. He said he was glad I made it home (after going on a post-graduation retreat with Intervarsity). Though he was at the end of his life and doctors said he could go any day, he promised me he’d wait till after my retreat because he wanted me to go to it. He kept his promise. I gave him a hug when I saw him and I was afraid I might break him. My older brother who once towered over me and would beat me up as a kid, who I feared and respected, I was stronger than him.
My sister Adrienne, Oliver and I at the hospital in April 2005.
Physically I was stronger, but inside I felt so weak and helpless. It was Oliver who exuded a quiet strength stemming from an inner peace. He knew that it was soon time for God to take him home. He was ready. I wasn’t. I wanted to cling on to his life as long as possible. I was holding out for a miracle. He believed in miracles, and that God could save him. But he just didn’t think it was God’s plan. He accepted that and was okay. I have no idea how he did that. I cannot even begin to fathom how he must have felt. Yet I take solace from his example even today. He was facing death, yet he faced it confidently, peacefully, in a way. And I look at myself panicking over such silly things like girls or jobs or money today. He’s still teaching me.
I guess it’s hard for me to celebrate his life without reliving some of the intense last memories with him. Though I know they are fading and will only fade more as years go on, those are just the details. The important stuff will stay with me until the day I hope to see him again. His voice. His smile. His laugh. They are all mine. Often my parents would confuse us on the phone, or his friends would think I was him. When they watch my face, hear me laugh, they tell me how I have his facial expressions and his laugh as well. But more than these physical things, I hope to always carry with me the love he had for others and the love he had for God. All because he’s no longer on earth with us doesn’t mean he stops being my mentor, my role model, my friend, my brother.
Before the 2005 Rose Bowl where Texas beat Michigan.
Happy 30th Birthday Oliver! I miss you and I love you.
P.S. I hope the Rockets beat the stupid Jazz this year!
