Chan's Personal Blog

So I was volunteering at Royal Family Kids Camp as a camp counselor for a week, and I've made it out alive. To bring everyone up to speed, it's a camp for neglected and abused children. From the training sessions, I was seriously preparing for the worse, but I actually ended up with pretty well behaved kids. I had two boys, both of them were ten years old. We shared a cabin with two other boys and two other counselors. Our group got along really well together. Compared to other kids camps geared towards troubled kids that I've done in Canada, this one was way easier.

My kids were pretty easy going. None of them decided to go running off, so I didn't have to chance any of them down. Lights out was at 9pm, and they were sound asleep by 9:30pm which was shocking. It helped that the older folks like the camp director shared a wall with our cabin. We told the kids that they'd be in a lot of trouble if they woke up the director. My kids also took showers every day which was great, because that's something I religiously enforce. In years past, I had kids who refused to shower even if they smelled horrible. My cabin was also always on time to events which is great, because that's how I operate. Hands down, I had the best cabin.

On the other hand, the girls at the camp were pretty crazy. There were a couple alpha females who were constantly fighting over popularity, who was prettier, or something. I personally witnessed a couple shouting matches between those campers. Based on that, I conclude that boys are way easier to deal with, women are complicated, lol.

I have to say, the nurses at the camp were a God-send. We had a number of kids come to camp with unresolved health care needs, and the nurse's station was fully stocked with everything they needed. One of my kids had a severe cough which wasn't treated properly, another had an infection due to improper hydration. We took them to the nurses every day for treatment, and by the end of it, they were patched up pretty good.

Each day consisted of the following (roughly):

• Wake up @ 7am, shower
• Breakfast
• Morning chapel
• Crafts
• Lunch
• Swimming
• Archery
• Rest Time
• Wood working
• Recreation Time
• Dinner
• Night time service w/ Camp Fire
• Prepare for bed at 8pm
• Lights out at 9pm

Wednesday was one of the highlights because they did a big birthday party for all the kids because some kids never have a proper birthday party. We had a pretty good BBQ lunch, with plenty of bacon. Dinner time they had cake and balloons for everyone. There was a bottleneck during the cake serving portion, so I stepped up and went into kitchen stadium mode and got everyone served in under 10 mins. That operations management course I took finally pays off. When the kids got back to their cabin, they had a bunch of birthday loot waiting for them. I have to say, it was some pretty good stuff they got Walkmans, CDs, DVDs, etc.

Thursday we took all the boys fishing at a lake near the Santa Cruz mountains. This one kid had an amazing time, he was this super shy kid who came to camp super sleepy because his parents never went to bed at reasonable times. The first time I met him at woodworking, he was falling asleep. We're out at this lake for about two hours, and no ones getting any fish, and I'm constantly dealing with kids and their tangled fishing lines. Ten minutes before we leave, the shy kid gets this little fish and reels it in. He was the happiest kid in the world. That was definitely a highlight of the week.

I did like how each cabin was assigned a dedicated photographer for some of the days. They took photos of the kids and assembled a photo album for each of them. Counselors then wrote notes of encouragement for the kids. I thought this was pretty special, and a great idea. Unfortunately personal cameras were banned as a precaution to protect the kids, so I have no photos of the camp to post on Flickr

I think the most surreal moment was on the last day, when we put all the kids on a bus to send them home. All the counselors and staff had all their equipment and we were leaving the camp, walking across a bridge, and our job was finished. For some reason it reminded me of the end of the movie, Black Hawk Down, where the tired soldiers had to exit their battle zone by foot after fighting for days.

After I came back, people asked what I missed most while at camp. I have to say I missed having an adult conversation that lasted for more than 2 minutes. When you're hanging around kids 24/7, it's pretty hard to have a serious conversation. Second question I get asked the most was, what was the hardest thing about camp. I have to say needing to be 'on' all the time because you have to be there for the kids even if you're tired or don't feel like it. There's not really alone time, and I'm definitely someone who cherishes 'me' time after being around people for a long time.

In either case, mission accomplished. I'm happy that I did this, and I proved to myself that I'm not getting to old or busy for this kind of thing. It reminded myself, this is why we fight for things we fight for.

Thanks for everyone's prayers and words of encouragement.

This year, I've been striving to try to restore things in my life that I used to do before I moved to California. One of those things I used to do was volunteer for kids camp in the summer. Well, this year, my church had a dire need for male camp counselors for their summer kids camp, Royal Family Kids Camp, which is geared towards foster kids. I answered the call, and now I find myself packing and getting ready to go to camp for a week, starting this Sunday, and coming back on Friday.

I'm pretty surprised by the ratios that they have at this camp. I'm used to watching five kids from the ages of 7-12 year old while at camp. At this camp, you only have to watch two kids, and you have an assistant with your cabin. It's mostly due to the fact that these kids are abused and neglected children which can be a handful.

I've been checking out the camp facility's activities, and they're going to have

• Swimming
• Rock climbing walls
• Fishing
• Hiking
• Archery
• Zip Line
• Mole Hole Slide
• etc

I'm personally looking forward to rock climbing and archery the most.

I've been joking that this is technically my first overseas missions trip. It's not your run of the mill third world country that tends to dominate missions trip destinations. I guess I could make it sound like one though. The people of California have been devastated by a financial tsunami in 2008, leaving many counties with double digit unemployment. The people have been suffering from a tyrannical socialist dictator who is bent on destroying the country.

This week, pray for me that I have extra extra patience with the kids. I have already prepared a reward for myself at the end of the finish line. I promised myself, since I'll be eating kiddie food for an entire week, when I come back from camp, I'll treat myself to a nice grown-up dinner, where there's no screaming kids around.

See you all in a week. I'm not going to have much computer access. Sorry, there also won't be any photos from camp due to security concerns for the children.

This is my summer mission.

Awesome video of Steve Carell spoofing Lebron's announcement on ESPN.

With The Daily Show on a summer break, I began to search for some other TV content to fill time. Naturally, I wandered over to PBS to see what they had. I came across this fascinating documentary entitled, "Secrets of the Samurai Sword." The documentary does a good job of explaining the cultural, spiritual, and scientific aspects of the Samurai sword. It's quite fascinating that even though 1,000 years ago, the Japanese swordmakers didn't understand the science behind their craft, but were able to create such effective weapons.

If you go to the 33 minute mark of the video, they do a live demonstration of a katana blade in the hands of a grandmaster swordsman. An archer fires an arrow directly at the grandmaster, and the grandmaster is able to defend himself by cutting arrows out of the air. Here's a clip of it:



Another interesting aspect of samurai swords is how they are rated. The more bodies a sword can cut through in one stroke, the higher quality the sword is. There's talk in the video about legendary five body blades which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you jump to the 46 minute mark, they go over the meticulous work required in polishing finished swords. They use whet stones to polish the swords, and the stones can go for thousands of dollars. The sword polisher spends ten days polishing these swords.

I'll end with a passage from the Samurai honour code.


[Update] For Canadians who want to watch this video, you can watch it here.

With the immigration debate raging in the US, I came across this timely article from Denmark entitled, "Foreigners to get 100,000 kroner incentive to leave Denmark."


Go Denmark for making immigrants feel welcome in your country. I wonder what the political reaction would be like in Canada/US if a party were to introduce an idea such as this. It's kind of sad that they view immigrants as a liability on society.

So the latest news with me is that I joined my church's hockey league, and I'm helping teach and organize the league. Its been at least three years since I've last played. I used to do floor hockey at my home church in Victoria as well for a couple years.

The current league plays on a tennis court which one of the families of the church privately owns. We practice twice a week, and we play a game every Saturday. We're one week away from the team captains drafting their teams. I've been busy training noobies in the fundamentals of hockey. I'd like to give a special thanks to Doug and Adam from North Douglas Church, who taught me everything about floor hockey.

Two weeks ago, I picked up all my hockey gear. I've got shin guards, knee pads, elbow pads, and a nice light composite hockey stick. I'm really digging this hockey stick though, it's pretty stiff and responsive. The light weight of the stick allows me to get off shots quicker. I'm also hoping it lasts longer than a wooden stick.


The position I seem to do well right now is the offensive defencemen role. My defense has been described as "squirrly" and "clean". We'll see where the team captain puts me on the team though.

As one of the organizers of the league, I'm putting together an official order of service. Every game will start with the following:

• All players assemble at the center for prayer.
• Singing of the Canadian National Anthem.
• Singing of the American National Anthem.
• League Commissioner will declare the beginning of hostilities. Game begins.

They've put up an American flag on the hockey court, so I'm countering by bringing in a Canadian flag today. It's also cool that there's another Canadian playing in the league as well.

In either case, I'm off to a hockey scrimmage to represent the good folks of Canada.

Couple weeks ago, I had to pleasure of attending Yahoo! Labs' Big Thinkers Series, featuring Dr. Lawrence Lessig. His talk was entitled, "Innovation Corruption," aka what is wrong with Congress.

Here's a short intro to the talk:


His ideas help explain some of the present problems that face America:

• Why is our Internet speeds slower than the rest of the world?
• Why did we bailout Wall Street in the financial crisis?
• Why do we have an obesity epidemic?

And there's much much more. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk.


Enjoy.