Chan's Personal Blog

Royal Family Kids Camp

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.

Summer Mission

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.

Steve Carell Spoofs Lebron

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

Secrets of the Samurai Sword

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.

The Way of The Warrior: Think Not Yourself As Established

A man who thinks he is already established is unwise; a man content with fixed views won through considerable effort has already fallen into a trap. Without a moment of self-content with what little one has found out, one should keep thinking his accomplished results as being still unsatisfactory and not good enough, exploring the right way to the attainment through one's whole life. Truth lies in no place but in this course of pursuit itself.

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

Denmark Pays Foreigners To Leave Country

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."

The Danish Peoples Party (DF) has strengthened its immigration stance by securing an agreement to pay anti-social foreigners 100,000 kroner to leave Denmark.

As part of the on-going budget negotiations, the governments traditional ally DF said it secured the agreement late last night.
Refugees and those who come to Denmark under family reunification schemes currently get 28,256 in repatriation support if they leave, of which 11,000 is a bonus. The bonus is usually paid out a year after the recipient returns home and their right to Danish residency expires.

The new deal would see 100,000 kroner given as a bonus if a foreigner returns home and gives up their residency rights in Denmark.

Neither the government nor DF has yet elaborated on what constitutes an anti-social foreigner, but have said that it would be aimed at those who cant or wont integrate.

According to DF party leader Pia Kjærsgaard, the move will save the state a significant sum in local costs which are administered by local and regional councils.

Society will save a lot on an immense number of charges and problems. We already know that there are problems with nursing homes and have been problems with hospitals and health charges, Kjærsgaard said.

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.

Floor Hockey League

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.

Yahoo! Labs Presents Dr. Lawrence Lessig

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 message was consistently simple and resounding: government and business are corrupted by money. This corruption becomes a roadblock to innovation because regulation is designed not for the social good but to maximize the money to Congress. The only way to fix this is to get money out of the system a system Lessig referred to as the economy of influence.

The three major players in the system are lobbyists, members of Congress, and interests. Lessig compares lobbyists to suppliers, or pushers inside the economy of influence. The boom of lobbying has pushed Congress into a pathological dependency on campaign cash. Money passes from the hands of the interest groups to the lobbyists, from the lobbyists to Congress in the form of campaign donations, and through legislation, money passes from Congress to the interest groups. This vicious cycle of a system has a significant effect legislation gets bent away from the public good because policy gets bent to those who pay.

The vast majority of Americans believes that money buys results, said Lessig. Because of money in the system, Americans have become cynical. Theyve disengaged, and the countrys democracy has become less responsive and more corrupt.

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.

Creme Brulee

A couple months ago, I realized that my culinary skills had a major hole in it. It dawned on me that I didn't know how to make any sort of impressive dessert from scratch. I figure in the event of a special occasion such as a date night, I would have to field a a proper multi-course meal with dessert. After much soul searching, I decided attempted to make Creme Brulee from scratch. I imported some Madagascar vanilla beans, bought a kitchen torch, borrowed some ramekins, and away I went. It wasn't too difficult to make, just time consuming.

Delicious results. I passed this out to my food tasting guinea pigs, and they seemed to respond positively to it.

NATO Secrets Compromised In Polish Plane Crash

I was reading Inside The Ring on the Washington Times. It had a fascinating piece about the Polish plane crash which killed the Polish president and a ton of top officials a couple months back.

NATO code compromise

The recent crash of a Polish military transport that killed most of Warsaw's senior civilian and military leaders was not only a human catastrophe for a key U.S. ally. NATO sources said that, in addition to the loss of nearly 100 pro-U.S. Polish leaders, the crash provided Moscow with a windfall of secrets.

The crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski in western Russia on April 10 and decapitated Poland's military, killing two service chiefs, key military aides and several national security officials, many of whom were carrying computers and pocket memory sticks that contained sensitive NATO data.

Perhaps the most significant compromise, according to a NATO intelligence source, is that the Russians are suspected of obtaining ultrasecret codes used by NATO militaries for secure satellite communications.

The compromise of the codes is considered what electronic spies call a "break" for Moscow code-breakers. New NATO codes almost certainly were issued to allied militaries immediately after the crash.

But if the Russian electronic intelligence service, known as the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, was able to recover and use the communication key code from the wreckage, electronic spies will be able to decode months' or perhaps years' worth of scrambled communications that are routinely gathered electronically for just such an occasion.

The coded communications, if decrypted, would reveal some of NATO's most intimate secrets, such as plans for defenses and even the identities of agents or allied eavesdropping sources.

Other Polish and NATO secrets also were believed to be aboard the jet, and so far Russia's government is refusing to cooperate fully with Poland's government in providing details on the cause of the crash, or even to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.

Very troubling. This makes you wonder if the Russians had anything to do with the plane crash.

Russian Solution To Oil Leaks

With an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico right now, I came across this article entitled, "Nuke That Slick," which describes how the Russians dealt with oil leaks.

As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians the worlds biggest oil producers have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the wells channel.

Yes! Its so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities.

It'd be interesting to see what would have worse consequences; having a nuke go off and dealing with the nuclear hazards, or having the oil continue to leak.

The Best of Chan 2009

I'm a tad late, but better late than never I guess. I just finished putting together a collection of 100 photos from 2009 that highlights the year for me. I noticed an inordinate number of food photos in the collection; I think my friends are right, I've become a foodie.

Please enjoy the pictures and the accompanied music (hit play on both widgets).