Kiev, Ukraine - 16 May
Stockholm, Sweden - 18 May
Sao Paolo, Brazil - 23-24 May
Kampala, Uganda - 30-31 May
Paris, France - 3 June
London, England - 5 June
Manila, Philippines - 1 August
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - 3 August
Jakarta, Indonesia - 5 August
Johannesburg, South Africa - 9 August
Cape Town, South Africa - 13 August
Mexico City, Mexico - 3-4 October
Vancouver, Canada - 6 October
Seoul, Korea - 10-11 October
Tokyo, Japan - 13 October
Hong Kong - 16 October
Sydney, Australia - 21 October

Tickets are available July 1 for the Vancouver location at $20 a pop; this covers sessions and conference materials.

PASSION VANCOUVER is a gathering for UNIVERSITY-AGED young people throughout Canada.  Believing in the university movement, and what God longs to do in this strategic window of time, the entire event will focus on the bigness of God, calling students to PRAYER, WORSHIP, and ACTION, and a Story so much bigger than their own

The heartbeat of PASSION VANCOUVER is to:

ENCOURAGE the CHURCH

Foster UNITY among those who love JESUS

Spark VISION for the UNIVERSITIES of VANCOUVER and the nation

Tell the STORY of REDEMPTION in compelling ways

INSPIRE students to EMBRACE their part in God’s global plan for the NATIONS

Source: 268generation

A heads up to everyone of you guys that are out there.  Save the date.

I’m pages away from the end but I think I have enough to make this review–and besides, I feel a need to exercise my brain muscle because it’s in a state of demi-atrophy.

I picked up This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of A Human Obsession because I love music.  Actually, I don’t think it’s the music so much that I love, I love what comes as a result of music.  Music is a means to an end.  Music is important because it’s often that it isn’t so much the end that defines the trip, but the route through which you get there.

Daniel Levitin is known for working with small-time acts such as Blue Öyster Cult, Stevie Wonder, Santana and The Grateful Dead.  Before endeavoring to become a person in academia, Levitin was a producer, consultant and sound engineer working the studios of California.  Now, a distinguished researcher working in Montreal’s McGill University, he studies cognitive psychology specializing in why music is the way it is.

Music is a means to an end.  It’s the gamut of ends that make music so colourful, so vibrant.  There are songs that when you close your eyes, you can find yourself in somewhere completely different.  Someone (thanks Maureen-I can’t link to your blog because you don’t have one ;p) introduced me to Jason Mraz’s latest album, for example.  When I close my eyes to the music in this album, I’m in a classic convertible driving, slowly, down the PCH, sun beaming down and I’m going nowhere.  Listening to Incubus’ Morning View, eyes closed, time regresses to when I was 16 and the biggest care I had was where I was going to skateboard (yes, I skated back then, not that well) next.  David Crowder*Band’s A Collision brings not something tangible that I can see, but puts me in a potpourri of emotions.  I love it when I hear some old school 80s song and am suddenly transported into a 1986 GM van, driving on a clear winter day to Stanley Park on a day out.

Levitin gives the basis for why this happens.  He lays out in a way that’s easy to understand why we are so drawn to music even though it presents no explicit benefit.  The book also explores why some people are gifted with musical ability and why some of us can’t hold a beat in a bucket or can’t distinguish why we can’t hum a tune if our life depended on it.

It reads like a conversation with a close friend about something that you both enjoy very much.  It condenses years and years of study and scholarly journal articles in a way that’s digestible and enjoyable.  It has deepend my appreciation for music, sharpening my ear to savour the pleasure underneath the superficial that music has to give.  For example, he goes over Jazz and the science and art behind it.  There are a lot of times where I’d be listening to some jazz but get lost; I didn’t know about standards.  Yeah, standards.  Also, as a result of his section on music theory and keys, I have a commentary on Brook Fraser’s Hosanna, which I’ll write about later.  It’s a beautiful song.  (Note: write commentary on this song.)

To close, what gives the book its effect is that you can tell where the author’s heart lies.  He eats, breathes and drinks music, and it comes across in his writing.  He passionately wants people to understand what he understands and bring to light the little nuances that make music move.

If you want some good light-reading, give Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession a try.

Okay.

I’ll divulge a secret to you; it’s kind of embarassing but here goes.

I watched three straight episodes of Jon and Kate Plus Eight.

What are some of your guilty pleasures?

Good afternoon everyone.  Starfield, Bethany Dillon, Shane and Shane, and David Nasser will be returning to Metro Vancouver on June 6.  The venue is still the same.

Tickets will be honored there.  If you can’t make the date refunds will also be honored.

Ticket holders should be receiving an email with the details.

I am flabbergasted.

Thanks to Katie and Felicia for commenting and for all the others that have swung by and haven’t commented but have taken away something.  We all have stories and let’s use them to give the glory to God.

There’s one thing last night that I saw but didn’t mention last time around.  While the paramedics and fire fighters were attending to those injured on scene, Tim Neufeld came around and made sure that everyone was alright, making himself available to whoever needed it.  He asked my friend Rebecca if she was alright, and she was her usual self despite the chaos around her.  She bit her lip in pain, winced, smiled and said she was perfectly fine.  Gabe and I were by Rebecca looking after her.  We both looked into his face and could see a brokeness that leaked through.  Gabe asked if he was alright.  His eyes were red, and he bit his lip and it looked like he fought hard to fight back the tears.  One of his family members came around and took him away in a loving embrace.

I just watched the news report from ctv about what happened yesterday and am in complete shock and awe at how big and how good God is.  From where I was, when I saw the lighting and speaker rig come down, I seriously feared that the hulking mass of both rig and speaker would come straight down on someone.  After watching the newscast, I’m convinced that either the conditions were accidentally perfect or something absolutely divine happened last night (I’m leaning more heavily on the latter).  It was the rig that held pews from tumbling into the hole and onto people.  Whenever I retell the story of what I saw, there’s a visceral pining in me that comes out to say that it could have been worse; I couldn’t explain how but I knew it could have.  I thought it was just me pragmatically trying to justify the good of the situation but God comes around, bonks me on the head and says, “hey big guy, I have this on lock.”

Young people testified in front of a camera broadcasting to the whole city that their God was a God that loves people.  They testified that speakers fell perfectly beside them and not on them.  Dominique, one of my friends that fell through the floor, and experienced this too.  A big monitor landed right beside her and that was too perfect not to be divine.  The rig holding the speakers and lights dodged (no… the semantics are wrong, it’s too random, chance-filled) missed the hole that people fell through and as a result, bones were broken instead of lives taken away.  Now, don’t misquote me to say that I’m downplaying the fact that some were severely injured.  My heart breaks for my brothers and sisters are experiencing pain, both physical and emotional right now, especially for them that know that unknown young lady that was in the hospital yesterday who might not be able to walk again.

Katie mentioned that she’s still praying and we shouldn’t stop that.  We are witnesses, like Felicia said, and witnesses testify the truth.  Let’s love on the people that were hurt and meet their need.  Let’s be Christ-like Christians.

Blessings to all of you.

Send us.

My heart and prayers go out to all of those who were injured tonight when the floor gave way.  To those who were seriously hurt, I asked, “why?” but don’t have an answer yet.  When something like this happens it brings us close to the looming reality that we are here on borrowed time.  I believe in a God that is sovereign and is infinitely just but it’s tough to see something like this and say to God, why on earth did you allow this to happen?  But it’s just that, it happens.

Two very close friends of mine were in the middle of the fray when the floor buckled and it wasn’t until I finally gathered myself a minute or two later that I realized they were there.  “It happened so quickly.”  For a second, while the paramedics, fire fighters, and police officers were running around the church. I felt my heart slowly descending into a poisonous despair.  I prayed, hard.  I wanted them to be safe.  We went downstairs and found them.  The emergency personnel did a stellar job of keeping everything together; thank you to all of them.  They whisked one friend off to the hospital in a packed ambulance to get some tests done and the rest of us followed by car.  I saw one gentleman get wheeled on a stretcher face down, no shirt on his back.  His shoulder was dislocated.  While we were there, my heart sunk a little more.  We heard whispers of a young lady and how she might not be able to move again.

I think the greatest tragedy is to scowl and point an angry, frustrated finger at the sky and join in with all the other cynics thinking the world is an unfair place where bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and that some higher being is not out to make it all easy peasy.

I caught myself, though.  I had to remind myself what had happened earlier, so as not to spiral deeper.

Before everything happened, we heard from David Nasser.  I heard him speak years before and was looking forward again to hear his passionate, powerful and moving talks.  He spoke today about needs.  People today have needs, go figure.  They need proper food, clean water, and clothes on their backs.  People (I’m talking to you and me), we need to meet the needs of people.  After what happened today, people are going to need a lot of love and support, and let’s show that to them.  The world is out to tell you that you can’t stop suffering, that you can’t stop hunger, that you can’t stop death.  Of course we can’t, but our God can.  He gave the insane idea to a group of twelve normal people thousands of years ago to love their neighbour as themselves and to love God with everything.  Standing there, with all that was happening around me, I saw people loving people.  The band were the first to help out those that fell through.  They dropped everything and helped out those pinned.  First aiders in the crowd were assessing the situation and making sure that people were looked after.  Those outside were huddled together in small groups crying out to God and praying for safety and well being.

So.  I’ll end this for tonight.  My prayers are with all of you.

Send us out.

I probably will sleep very little tonight tomorning.  I had ANAT 391 (Gross Human Anatomy) this morning and it was long.  I have CPSC 322 (Intro to A.I.) in less than 12 hours and I’m going through topics in Uncertainty right now.  I still have Decision Theory to go through.  It’s going to be a long night morning.  See you on the other side.

Hello everyone.  To my brothers and sisters who have finished another year of school, stellar job folks.  Let’s kick some exam ass and then go off to our summer jobs/school/travels/lack-of-the-formers.  This is a placeholder post because I’ll more likely than not be occupied until the 29th of April when UBC’s exam schedule will release me from its merciless clutches.

Godspeed girls and guys.

Note: there is a video in this post and the video is pretty funny, depending on if you like funny things.

The use of term the net cafe is short-lived.  Nowadays, Internet access is ubiquitous with a great deal of the access coming from coffee shops.  Starbucks has pay-for-play use and many other small neighbourhood cafes (like Soma in its prime and the Waves franchise here in Metro Vancouver) provide free access.  Well not really free because you do have to buy something (gotta love capitalism and how it rewrites definitions).

Notebook computers are also as ubiquitous as internet access.  For example, in my house are five people–my dad, my mom, my sister, my grandpops and myself.  In my house at an average point in time are also five computers.  So, technically, 100 percent of the people in my household have a computer.  Guess how many people know how to use a computer.  Yes, you guessed correctly.  Three people.  So do the math.  5 divided by 3.  There are 1.6 computers for every computer user in my household.  Daunting.  Mind you, only three of the five computers are notebook computers…  ONLY.

<note to self> remember to tell story about how mom wants to use a computer. </note to self>

Some people are less fortunate.  How do you take advantage of free wireless internet access when you don’t have a notebook computer.  Of course!  Why didn’t I think of that.  And so the long-winded segue into this video ends:

This week, no matter what, to spend some time for myself and to give myself a break, I will take a walk, a long walk, to somewhere undetermined beforehand and on that walk I will take photographs.

I will post five photographs to show what is on the inside of me at this point in time.