benjaminlow.net/blog

Why? Its actually a presidential candidate who believes in following the Constitution.

Things like the Real ID Act really scares me...

http://www.realnightmare.com

For me being able to accept myself was a journey that took years – and its something which I never realized that I needed to do until I began accepting myself, the person whom God had made. The roots of my inability to accept myself comes from my background – I was born in Singapore, it’s a small country in southeast Asia which is pretty unique. When I was three years old my family came to the United States for the first time, my dad was assigned to the United States from his work. After six months in the States we went back to Singapore for another six months, at the end of which we came to the United States to stay.

» Read More

It still needs to get updated fairly heavily... but I finally have some sort of photography section. Check it out at photography.benjaminlow.net

I bought a Christmas tree...

Something my sister wrote about our family:

"Early Saturday morning (read: I'm more likely to stay up until 5:30am than to wake up then), I took my first road trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Add all of my mother's sisters, assorted wives and brothers, and my cousin and I, and we had a grand total of 15 people caravaning in three vehicles. What can I say—my mom's the seventh of 10 children.

The five hours on the road gave me a chance to accomplish one of my goals for this trip to Singapore: I wanted to have a conversation with my non-English speaking grandmother and find out about her life and the family history. She's 86 years old, so I don't know how many more opportunities I'll have to do this—and she's an incredible woman. Since I don't speak Cantonese—a byproduct of growing up surrounded by Caucasians in the US—I asked the aunt sitting next to me to serve as translator. In the end, I had three translators (i.e. everyone else in the car) and discovered that the family history is rather complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I ended up diagramming the genealogy going three generations on each side (my grandmother, her mother, and her mother's mother, and ditto for my deceased grandfather) just so we wouldn't get confused about which relative we were talking about (though we did at points anyway).

When she was three months old, my grandmother was brought to Singapore to be sold (then, as now, girl babies were not always worth much in China); my great-grandmother intended her to be a daughter for one of her other daughters, but in the end adopted her herself. My great-grandparents were born in China, but moved to Singapore—for what reason, we don't know—and had four natural children, one of whom died at birth. They only had one son, but since my great-grandfather was a lawyer and my great-grandmother had a kind heart, they adopted a staggering 10 daughters and gave them homes.

My grandfather's family was much more convoluted. You'll see why I got out the pen and paper: My great-great-grandfather lived in China and had two wives. The first wife gave birth to my great-grandfather, but he was also adopted by the second wife, who had no children of her own and adopted two daughters as well. She brought my great-grandfather and his wife to Singapore; I believe all four of their children were born here, and my grandfather was the eldest. However, one of his brothers kept getting into trouble in Singapore, so my great-great-grandmother (the second wife) got angry and sent everyone back to China. Everyone, that is, except my grandfather, who was her favorite.

Genealogy aside, hearing stories about these people and how they interacted was fascinating. My grandmother was quite the firebrand in her youth. She had five nicknames, most of which were unflattering: Tigress, Thunder Voice, Shit Bag (because as a baby she would defecate on tables), Urine Bag (similar), and Crybaby. Somehow she managed to raise 10 children on a washerwoman's salary, taught herself how to sew because she wasn't allowed to take lessons and became good enough that she made one of my aunt's wedding gowns, needlework and all, and picked up a substantial amount about herbs and medicine from Chinese doctors because she needed to know how to care for her children when they were sick. And she only had around two years of formal education. She lived through the Japanese occupation of Singapore and her house getting bombed, but today she jokes that she doesn't have one bank, but 10: who needs a retirement fund when you have 10 children who would do anything for you?"

taken from http://dawnxianamoon.com/randomness.shtml

While I was volunteering at the Coalition on Temporary Shelter out in Detroit my car was broken into and the things in it were stolen. After finishing with the clean-up for the night I went out to my car to head home for a Thankgiving meal that my dad specially cooked for the two of us, when I got to my car I saw broken glass all over the place and saw that the passenger side window of my car was smashed out. Normally it wouldn't have been that big of a hit, but I was going back home (home home, not Lansing home) for the weekend and brought some extra things... one thing was the camera my grandparents bought me for a graduation/Christmas/birthday present (which for me has been on of the bigger hits, I was planning on doing some photography work for my dad). On top of it they stole my laptop, PDA, MP3 player, work bag (which had my Bible, a bunch of notes, and a bunch of handouts/fliers), and clothes (I was finally being less of a bum and getting new clothes). While I did make it a point to hide the things under a seat I guess it wasn't enough (oddly enough the one thing that survived was my radio - I had taken off the faceplate to it).

Please be praying - its really frustrating for me right now, especially since it was when I was helping out at a homeless shelter. While I know that God has his hand in everything its difficult to really see it right now.

taffy stuck, and tongue tied...

Well, I know what I'm doing for Thanksgiving (to some degree, I still need to figure out the details). I'm going with Lisa's suggestion of doing some sort of community service thing (which will be defined at a later date)... and I'll be heading back to the Detroit area for it since a high school buddy of mine will be around (he lives/works out in Madison, Wisconsin now) - there's four of us that would hang out on a fairly regular basis (considering we all went to different colleges around the state) from 7th grade until Ryan and I graduated from college (and now we're too spread out).

So three months after we started at Michigan State Matt, Krista, and I finally went and did something fun outside of 'the Compound' (there're three houses in a row with staff living in each) - it was a lot of fun... and we actually cut loose a little. It really does show the need for each of us (or at least me) to really take the time to find a life outside of work (though I do love the work... else I wouldn't be doing it).

I'm excited for Urbana.

I figure I should post something on here since its been quite a while...

Cross Training was a good conference - it was nice actually working with other staff (while at the same time strange to see myself in that role... I was a student for four years and so far only staff for a few months) and seeing students responding to the training. God really does great things through those conferences.

Today was an interesting day - definitely not something I would have seen myself doing at all prior to Urbana '03, but since Urbana really grew me in ways I never imagined its not that surprising - there was a 'China Shareholders' meeting, basically staff from around the region that have been invested in the China Global Projects where we talked about the future of the projects. It was strange being in a meeting with people that on average were 10-15 years older than I was (not to mention people from the NSC) and also being more of a voice for the minorities that go on the GPs and watching out for pitfalls for them. It just makes you think that you really don't know where God'll take you... I went from having a serious case of cultural rejection to working with Asian students and being invested in the work thats going on in China.

Now here's a question - what should I do for Thanksgiving? My mom and my sister'll be out of the country, in Singapore, during that time... and the last I talked to my dad about it he was just thinking about going to someone's house from his church for Thanksgiving. I don't really want to be in that awkward social situation where you're spending a holiday around people you don't really know (heck, I'm enough of an introvert that casual conversation just isn't natural... which is funny when you look at the things that I have to do every day), but I'm not really wanting to spend the holiday in Lansing.

And in other news... X ('07) or Bust! (If you're thinking about going fill out one of those red cards and send it in (or get it from your staff worker if you don't have one) and if you're not thinking about going... pray about it.)