Chan's Personal Blog

Last night, I had the privilege of attending an advanced screening of Amazing Grace. It is a story about a British Parliamentary named William Wilberforce, who found Christ and decided to lead the campaign to end the slave trade in the British Empire. He went against popular opinion, and fought to abolish slavery. Every year he would table a bill to abolish slavery, and every year it failed.

The movie is named Amazing Grace because Wilberforce was heavily influenced by John Newton, a clergyman. John Newton was a slave ship captain for 15 years until he found Christ and saw the evil that he had done; consequently he wrote the famous hymn, Amazing Grace.

Although a lot of the story does surround politics, one would suspect this to be a boring movie, but I thought they did an excellent job of presenting it. They combine a good mix of humour, devious plots, and romance which kept the movie interesting. One of my friends normally doesn't enjoy this genre of movie, but he liked this film a lot.

It was actually quite fascinating seeing politicians debate in the House of Commons because it's really noisy as politicians are booing and shouting, and making witty comebacks in their speeches. If you've ever wondered why the Canadian House of Commons is so noisy, and why some politicians are outright rude, it's because we get that influence from the British system.

The history that this movie covers is interesting because there are many parallels that we can draw from today's world. For example, the Western powers were getting rich because they were using slaves to produce wealth. One highly prized commodity was refined sugar. The British had sugar plantations in the Caribbean, which was run by slaves. As people back in London began learning about how human life was being exploited for sugar, some people stopped using sugar altogether. Others would only purchase slave-free sugar. Politicians at the time argued that ending the slave trade would cause too much financial damage to the empire, and other empires who kept using slaves would become more powerful than Britain.

Today, slavery is technically abolished, but we continue to exploit people for the sake of cheap commodities. We do this by purchasing blood diamonds, oil from shady regimes, sneakers produced in sweatshops, coffee from wage slaves, etc. In defence of these activities, we argue that there would be too much financial damage to our economies if we stopped exploiting others. In some ways, things never change.

On the positive side though, the film does show us the transformational power that can be achieved by one righteous man. It also illustrates the power of democracy, as one man used the political system to end a great injustice. One man was able to end the slave trade without firing a single bullet or resorting to violence; this is a testament of the power of democracy. I can only imagine the good that can be done today if we had politicians who have clean consciences, clean hands, and righteousness.

One thing that could have improved the movie would be more scenes of how the slaves were actually being treated during this era. They vividly describe them with words, but I think it would have made a bigger impact if they showed it. However, the film is rated PG, and if they want to keep it family friendly, then there's probably no way they could do this.

Overall, a very good film, and an amazing story about a very dark era of humanity. I encourage everyone to go see the film. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie shows up in history classes around the world.

March 25, 2007 markes the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade brought to you by William Wilberforce.

The #1 most frequently asked question that I get these days is: "Chan, now that you've finished your master's degree, what are you going to do now?"

To end any speculation, I'm declaring that I will not be pursuing further education or a doctor's degree in the near future. I've been in university for over six years non-stop without any sort of breaks or vacations. I blitzed through graduate school in two years when the average master's student takes about three years. It's time to convert some of that sacrifice to reward. Basically, I'm very ready for the real world, and I'm looking for a job with a career path.

What kind of work am I looking for? I'm looking for web development jobs, since my passion is in building useful applications for people. Last time I checked, the web is pretty darn useful . What does a web developer do? We build websites and web applications. It takes web developers to build things like MySpace or YouTube for example. I do the behind-the-scenes stuff for a website, like making sure a webpage loads fast, or writing code to load information from a database and push it out to a webpage. I also do the front-end stuff, like making a webpage look clean and pretty.

So, I'm in a transitionary phase right now. I finished my Master's in mid-February, and I finished working at my job early this month. I've been at my last job for almost 5 years, so this is quite the transition. I collected my last paycheque today, and now we sail into uncharted waters.

Another comment that I get a lot these days is, "Chan, it must be so relaxing now that you have so much time." Not quite. Although it's nice not having to work 7 hours in the office, go to classes, and come home to do homework, I am keeping myself busy. I've got two websites that I'm building for non-profit organizations, so these projects are keeping me sharp and busy during this down time.

Also, I've been working on my portfolio which is used to show employers what I've been doing for the last few years in my academic and professional life. The old resume has been updated. I haven't touched it for a few years considering I haven't been job hunting for a long time.

Today, I fired off the opening volley of job applications to prospective employers. My goal is to apply to three jobs per week. They say 90% of students who went through the co-operative education program finds permanent work within 6 months of graduation. Lets hope I'm not part of that special 10%.

One of my friends, Pablo is currently also seeking work, so we have a little competition going. I will be keeping score of the number of applications and interviews that we get each week. The prize is to be determined.

Here's to greener pastures!