Well, this morning I checked my email and to my horror, the student who got hit by a car in New Jersey from Kenan-flagler business school (the school i'm currently in for an exchange program) has died. This is the 2nd case for this year alone that one of my school mate fall victim to the reckless drivers on the road. The first case was earlier on February where a student from NUS business school (my university). The NUS business school created a memorial website and video in rememberance of this great guy who unfortunately could not fulfill his dreams and destiny. I suggested this idea to the school I'm in to the student body's president to remember Jason Ray, who was a great guy and participated as the Rams mascot of UNC during basketball matches, cheering the team and drawing crowds of supporters to cheer loudly.
It's rather shocking that life is so unpredictable and this reminds me of a Steve Jobs message in which he told college students to live as if there will be no tomorrow. I guess everyone will know that life is very unpredictable, especially being in this post terrorism era. However, with people who are in close proximity to my life dying at such a young age, this notion that life is unpredictable is reinforced in my mind.
Let's keep these 2 young guys, and the rest of the victims to road accidents, in our prayer. And to all drivers: please use your vehicles responsibly...
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Campus Harvest 2007
Had a wonderful time during the last 2 days @ Campus Harvest 2007 in Kings Park Internation Church down at North Carolina! It's a youth conference where Every Nations Campus ministry of colleges and high schools throughout the whole United States gather together in on place, listening the word of God, praising and worshipping together. My key take-aways is that praising God should be so free! I was so amazed seeing the American students grooving and dancing to the beat! While I've seen the setting before in my local church @ Singapore (CHC), the participative audience, who are awesome and brought up the atmosphere of happiness and delight, is something which made me stood in awe!
The messages were awesome too! The senior pastor's wife, Lynette Lewis, shared a brilliant message of sealing and securing your calling. Also, in a seminar entitled "Career Minded, Kingdom Focused", she reminded me that everything is about the people. She inspired me to engage with the people I work with, be really interested in their life (something which is lacking in this "self-centered" world). Also she taught some tips of staying motivated, and also urged us to be excellent in everything we do, even though the work might not be what we expect from the calling.
She defines kingdom focused as 1) royalty: we are all leaders and people are watching us and following our lead; leadership is not a destination but a journey and God will impart skills along the way. 2)People is the bottom-line to everything. She describes how she engage with her fellow collegues in her workplace. It's all about sowing seeds to people, listening them talk their problems, empathising together with them and just be a friend.
Career minded is defined as being excellent, having a strong prayer life and being a producer.
She has an awesome book called "Climbing the ladder in stilettos" which many had recommended for the working ladies out there to grab hold of it.
Another message from Pastor Jim Laffoon was inspiring too! He taught us that while we bring the lost into the Kingdom of God, we ought to be open to them, open up our lives to them so that Jesus can come into their lives. (Matt 21:5-9) This verse shows that the disciples of Jesus took the donkey (a symbol of the lost and broken) and place their cloaks (symbol of opening up of the believers life to the new converts) before Jesus ride on the donkey. Also, he urges us to let Jesus have 100% control of the "reins" of our lives.
The message of prayer and loving the Word of God is echoed thoughout all the seminars from the various speakers. I also learnt interesting and creative ways of how campuses reach out to the lost. There was one initiative done about "Playing it forward" and the best student will get his/her tuition fees paid! Awesome! How it works is putting others first and get them do the same. Issues of life such as pornography and other social issues are raised. A classic example is the person ask a guy is pornography acceptable, then ask would he like his daughter to be a pornstar. This is the website for this initiative: Every Nations Campus Ministry of UT . How did the ministry have the funding is that a rich tycoon's daughter got touched by the ministry and the dad simply gave them a yacht, which they sold it and used it to do such creative things to preach the gospel to the students in UT.
The messages were awesome too! The senior pastor's wife, Lynette Lewis, shared a brilliant message of sealing and securing your calling. Also, in a seminar entitled "Career Minded, Kingdom Focused", she reminded me that everything is about the people. She inspired me to engage with the people I work with, be really interested in their life (something which is lacking in this "self-centered" world). Also she taught some tips of staying motivated, and also urged us to be excellent in everything we do, even though the work might not be what we expect from the calling.
She defines kingdom focused as 1) royalty: we are all leaders and people are watching us and following our lead; leadership is not a destination but a journey and God will impart skills along the way. 2)People is the bottom-line to everything. She describes how she engage with her fellow collegues in her workplace. It's all about sowing seeds to people, listening them talk their problems, empathising together with them and just be a friend.
Career minded is defined as being excellent, having a strong prayer life and being a producer.
She has an awesome book called "Climbing the ladder in stilettos" which many had recommended for the working ladies out there to grab hold of it.
Another message from Pastor Jim Laffoon was inspiring too! He taught us that while we bring the lost into the Kingdom of God, we ought to be open to them, open up our lives to them so that Jesus can come into their lives. (Matt 21:5-9) This verse shows that the disciples of Jesus took the donkey (a symbol of the lost and broken) and place their cloaks (symbol of opening up of the believers life to the new converts) before Jesus ride on the donkey. Also, he urges us to let Jesus have 100% control of the "reins" of our lives.
The message of prayer and loving the Word of God is echoed thoughout all the seminars from the various speakers. I also learnt interesting and creative ways of how campuses reach out to the lost. There was one initiative done about "Playing it forward" and the best student will get his/her tuition fees paid! Awesome! How it works is putting others first and get them do the same. Issues of life such as pornography and other social issues are raised. A classic example is the person ask a guy is pornography acceptable, then ask would he like his daughter to be a pornstar. This is the website for this initiative: Every Nations Campus Ministry of UT . How did the ministry have the funding is that a rich tycoon's daughter got touched by the ministry and the dad simply gave them a yacht, which they sold it and used it to do such creative things to preach the gospel to the students in UT.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Books and decisions
Never blog yesterday cos I was preparing for my Consumer Behavior (CB) exam which ended in the morning today. Yesterday, my indoor soccer team finally registered our first win in the intermural indoor soccer tournament, but without playing.. We walked over. It was bad as I could not practise my goalkeeping before the actual knock-out tournament begins next week...
The exam today was pretty tough as I didn't memorise those theories.. But who knows. The other time I never remember the definitions of key concepts and yet I scored 95%. I think the lecturers here are quite lenient and love insights rather than pure memorisation and reiteration of the text book...
Well, today I've had 4 classes (as all tues and thurs). Started my day @ 8am and ended @ 3:15pm. I'm considering to drop a class which I recently added though: Mergers and Acquisition. I love the class and the lecture, but it just had too much workload for me to enjoy carrying on with it. Well, I've taken similar classes back in NUS but only touched the surface, while this class really goes deep into the core of M&A. However after seeking advice from my friend Alvin, I decided to drop it, but will sit in for the class just to listen to the professor talk about the latest news of M&A.
Well, I've learnt a lot about Immunization for Investments class. Passive strategy of equating the duration of the portfolio with the time left to maturity of the investment horizon will allow one to be immunized from interest rates fluctuation. Well, the class of Investments is getting interesting as I learn new things. The previous classes were so repetitive as I learnt the concepts taught in my other module I've taken back in NUS. Well, guess this class is getting challenging as it goes deeper into serious issues of investments.
Global marketing by Prof Didow always allow me to take home a lot of new insights. It was amazing to find out that Nike's policies on their subcontracted manufacturers who uses sweatshops were results of a class in the school which I am currently in, Kenan Flagler business school, UNC! Mr Knight actually came into the class, sat in the lecture whilst ordinary students gave recommendations to Nike in this "Nike Class" which was taught by Prof Didow! Amazing! I never see or heard Jackson Tai sit in one of NUS Business School classes before... (or perhaps there were other big shot CEO who came into the class to listen to students' work presentation.)
Well, going for dinner at the dining hall in where else but Rams Head. I hope I won't gain too much weight here in the states!
The exam today was pretty tough as I didn't memorise those theories.. But who knows. The other time I never remember the definitions of key concepts and yet I scored 95%. I think the lecturers here are quite lenient and love insights rather than pure memorisation and reiteration of the text book...
Well, today I've had 4 classes (as all tues and thurs). Started my day @ 8am and ended @ 3:15pm. I'm considering to drop a class which I recently added though: Mergers and Acquisition. I love the class and the lecture, but it just had too much workload for me to enjoy carrying on with it. Well, I've taken similar classes back in NUS but only touched the surface, while this class really goes deep into the core of M&A. However after seeking advice from my friend Alvin, I decided to drop it, but will sit in for the class just to listen to the professor talk about the latest news of M&A.
Well, I've learnt a lot about Immunization for Investments class. Passive strategy of equating the duration of the portfolio with the time left to maturity of the investment horizon will allow one to be immunized from interest rates fluctuation. Well, the class of Investments is getting interesting as I learn new things. The previous classes were so repetitive as I learnt the concepts taught in my other module I've taken back in NUS. Well, guess this class is getting challenging as it goes deeper into serious issues of investments.
Global marketing by Prof Didow always allow me to take home a lot of new insights. It was amazing to find out that Nike's policies on their subcontracted manufacturers who uses sweatshops were results of a class in the school which I am currently in, Kenan Flagler business school, UNC! Mr Knight actually came into the class, sat in the lecture whilst ordinary students gave recommendations to Nike in this "Nike Class" which was taught by Prof Didow! Amazing! I never see or heard Jackson Tai sit in one of NUS Business School classes before... (or perhaps there were other big shot CEO who came into the class to listen to students' work presentation.)
Well, going for dinner at the dining hall in where else but Rams Head. I hope I won't gain too much weight here in the states!
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
First Post
My very first post! Well, I tried blogging last time, but my interest was short-lived. Why did I come back blogging? well, my good friend Alvin Lai has told me, urged me and persuaded me to blog. So now I'll try blogging, recording the daily events in my life...
A brief summary of my current life situation. I am now in the States, studying @ Kenan-Flagler Business School UNC Chapel Hill for a semester of exchange studies. It's been 2 days after I've arrived from my spring break trip in Florida, but I'm still very tired after an approx. 12hrs ride on the amtrak... Think I have some "train lag" here...
Maybe I'll first do a brief account on my 10-days Florida Spring Break getaway trip. It was so fun! I went along with a party of 19 other international students, 4 of which is a smaller group, while I am in the big group of 15. It was literally an international outing... 5 Singaporeans (that includes me), 3 Thais, 7 South Koreans (1 of which is a US citizen), 1 Czech Republic, 1 Argentinian, 1 Australian and 1 Turkish. I did the main coordination, reserving accomodation from Best Western during the nights in Miami, and in hostels.com for the subsequent nights in Orlando. The trip started on 8 March 2007 (Thu) and I reached back to Chapel Hill on 19 March 2007 (Mon). I'll try to post daily events I've been through for the subsequent posts.
8 Mar 2007:
My dearest buddy, Felicia, was so kind to bring the 4 of us to the Raleigh Amtrak Station! RGH is such a difficult place to find, especially during the night time. We spent almost half an hour driving around downtown Raleigh, and nearly got lost. Went to many gas stations to ask for directions, before finally deciding to backtrack, and seek help from another guy, Erik, another of my dearest friend in UNC, who has brought a group of 4 safely to the Amtrak Station. Finally we reached the station to know that the train is delayed for an hour! Gosh..... I was half frustrated, and half relieved. Well, for once I no need to rush for trains as I did during the pre-semester trip to NYC. But to wait for an hour means to waste a solid hour... Worse: I left my ipod in my dorm, cos i never bring my laptop, as I ain't wanna bring it around the beach... and I had no good books to read. So I just used my handy camera and took plenty of shots, which in the end, accumulated to around 1,300 photos for this Spring Break! Look at my Spring Break Album for the photos I've taken @ Miami and Orlando.
A brief summary of my current life situation. I am now in the States, studying @ Kenan-Flagler Business School UNC Chapel Hill for a semester of exchange studies. It's been 2 days after I've arrived from my spring break trip in Florida, but I'm still very tired after an approx. 12hrs ride on the amtrak... Think I have some "train lag" here...
Maybe I'll first do a brief account on my 10-days Florida Spring Break getaway trip. It was so fun! I went along with a party of 19 other international students, 4 of which is a smaller group, while I am in the big group of 15. It was literally an international outing... 5 Singaporeans (that includes me), 3 Thais, 7 South Koreans (1 of which is a US citizen), 1 Czech Republic, 1 Argentinian, 1 Australian and 1 Turkish. I did the main coordination, reserving accomodation from Best Western during the nights in Miami, and in hostels.com for the subsequent nights in Orlando. The trip started on 8 March 2007 (Thu) and I reached back to Chapel Hill on 19 March 2007 (Mon). I'll try to post daily events I've been through for the subsequent posts.
8 Mar 2007:
My dearest buddy, Felicia, was so kind to bring the 4 of us to the Raleigh Amtrak Station! RGH is such a difficult place to find, especially during the night time. We spent almost half an hour driving around downtown Raleigh, and nearly got lost. Went to many gas stations to ask for directions, before finally deciding to backtrack, and seek help from another guy, Erik, another of my dearest friend in UNC, who has brought a group of 4 safely to the Amtrak Station. Finally we reached the station to know that the train is delayed for an hour! Gosh..... I was half frustrated, and half relieved. Well, for once I no need to rush for trains as I did during the pre-semester trip to NYC. But to wait for an hour means to waste a solid hour... Worse: I left my ipod in my dorm, cos i never bring my laptop, as I ain't wanna bring it around the beach... and I had no good books to read. So I just used my handy camera and took plenty of shots, which in the end, accumulated to around 1,300 photos for this Spring Break! Look at my Spring Break Album for the photos I've taken @ Miami and Orlando.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)