Never give up

Came across this clip recently of Heather Kampf (formerly Dorniden) running a collegiate race in 2008. It is a really good portrayal of never giving up:

In her interview after the race, she said this:

"I try to tell myself before the start of every race that all things are possible through Christ, and first and foremost I have to send the credit his way, because I certainly didn't feel like I did that all by myself. Immediately after the fall, I told myself, you have to get up to at least get a time that will score-- the team points were very close and I know everyone was counting on some points in that event."

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me - Philippians 4:13. Hallelujah!

What also struck me was what she said about scoring for the team. She saw that her finishing the race was more important for the team than for herself, and that was possibly one of the things that helped keep her going. She ran for something bigger than herself. In the end she not only scored one for the team, she also scored a big one for herself.

Time and again I find myself falling off in my walk with God. Sometimes its hard to pick myself up and keep going. When I am down, I sometimes feel dejected and ashamed of myself; I become inward looking and even to the extent that I feel like giving up. Fortunately the Holy Spirit rebukes me and reminds me of what Christ has done for me, that there is no condemnation in Him (Rom 8:1), that I already have the victory through Him and He has already overcome the world (John 16:33). It also helps to have fellow brothers and sisters-in-Christ who encourages me, keeps me in check, and gently nudging me forward in their different ways. So when the going gets tough, it is really God and the body of Christ that keeps me going and not give up.

Adjusting

The weather is starting to get cold in Melbourne, winter is coming. This also means the sun rises a little bit later in the morning and sets much earlier in the evening which leaves less time for 'day-time' activities. Just the past week when I went canoeing, I started at 5pm and by 545pm there wasn't much light left and I had to hurry back to the boathouse, otherwise it gets a bit creepy paddling in the dark and I can't see what animal is moving on the river. But back to the weather being colder. It has made a casual everyday action much harder to do or should I say requiring more time for 'adjustments'. This very simple everyday action is none other than getting in and out of bed. At night when I climb into bed, I find that the bed is colder than the room. Even when I am under the down blanket and huddled next to the wife, it still takes a couple of minutes before I feel comfortable enough and fall asleep. During that couple of minutes, my body is frantically generating more heat to fight the coldness of the bed and to warm up my immediate surroundings - which is the small amount of air between me and the down blanket. In the morning, getting out of the bed and blanket requires my body to go through a bigger adjustment, this is done with the aid of: washing my face with warm water, blowing the hair dryer on my head even though my hair is not wet then having a warm mug of milo. Yes, I am starting to do this almost everyday.

On a bigger scale, we have to adjust to changes everyday, every week, every month and every year. New job, new project or assignment at work, or new responsibilities in general; new boss, new colleagues, new neighbours, or forming new relationships in general; new policies at work, new legislations or standards, or simply new rules of how things should be done; new tools, new equipment, new programs, new gadgets that are supposed to make your life 'easier. With every new 'thing' comes a period of getting used to, a period of adjusting.

I think getting in and out of bed when it gets colder should be probably one of the easier adjustments I need to go through this year. The other slightly tougher one would be getting papers piled higher and deeper. I have no idea how I am going to get through that but somehow I have been 'highly recommended' to do it. Then there is an even more challenging adjustment which I (and the wife) have to go through in a couple of months. It has been highly professed that nothing in this world can prepare a person (or couple) to go through this change - having your first bub. How comforting. Although I must say it does make life more exciting.

Nevertheless, with all the changes that will be happening for me this year, I take comfort in knowing that God never changes - He is always the same yesterday, today and tomorrow; His word never changes and He is always faithful. Amen!

My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Psalm 62:1-2

  

The correct technique

I went paddling last week and as I was launching my kayak, another guy joined me. We launched out from the platform at the same time and when we were out in the water, he started chatting with me. We were initially going at around the same speed, and after a while, I realised that I had to put in more effort to keep up with him. The only reason I did that (keep up with him) was I was trying to be polite and carry on the conversation he started. But once the conversation ended, I simply slowed down naturally. I couldn't keep up with him. As I looked at him slowly pulling ahead of me, I couldn't help but notice that he wasn't executing the proper technique (at least not the way I was taught). He was not punching high enough, not having proper torso or shoulder rotation. One of the best display of the correct technique was shown by a Norwegian canoeist called Knut Holmann - three olympic gold medals, four times world champs in k1-1000m. Here's a very short clip of his paddling technique which I got from kayaksport.net:

and here you would find videos of some races he was in. I think the best one is the Sydney Olympics k1-1000 final where he was not leading at the start, then he took lead after 500m and subsequently powered ahead to win by more than a boat length. That was truly impressive. If you have a look at that clip, past the finishing line, Petar Merkov the Bulgarian guy who came in second seemed to be staring at Knut Holmann with amazement. Unfortunately he lost to Knut Holmann again the next day, coming in second in the k1-500 finals. But I digressed.

Back to the guy who was paddling ahead of me. I guess my point is that even though he was not having the best technique and in my opinion I was doing it (more) correctly (or at least trying to), he was going faster. The reason is simple: he has much better fitness and conditioning. He probably goes to the river much more regularly than I do. So even though I have been trained with good paddling technique and I still attempt to execute it, the end result is still lacklustre because I don't do it regularly and my body is not conditioned well for it.

This reminded me of my walk with God. I know that having an intimate walk with God is usually a result of communing with Him regularly; praying, reading and meditating on His word, and living by His word (Psalm 1). But knowing it is simply not enough. Knowing it and not doing it is pointless, and I will never have a closer walk with God simply by knowing it. So I need to actually do it and do it regularly; only then can I be an effective salt and light (Matthew 5:13-15).

Extreme fanaticism

I watched this clip during church service today and I was quite blown away. There is such an uncanny similarity between the two things that were compared that its freaky. It also made me realise how easy one could become like that and not be aware of it.

Anyway, here is the video:

I think that there is essentially nothing bad about playing sports or watching sports. For me, I learned a fair bit about discipline from doing sports - through the physical and mental training, the controlling of my diet, management of my time so that I can do all the things that are important.. etc. I also learned about humility and camaraderie among other things. So yes, there is value in sports, but I guess the problem comes when we give more importance to sports than to God our creator (Exodus 20:1-3; Matt 4:10).

Moving to the next step

Recently we attended church camp which was held at a wonderful campsite called Lyrebird Park. The facilities are fantastic, the food was great and the hosts of the campsite are just a lovely bunch of people. I also found out that the Lyrebird is an Australian native bird that has the amazing ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds in its environment. This made me wonder if the moo-ing sounds I heard every morning were from real cows or a Lyrebird.

Church camps are good because they are a time when we get away from our usual routine to focus on God and wait upon Him and let Him realign things in our life. I know we should be doing this everyday but I admit that I get distracted easily by a billion things that happen everyday. Somehow, driving to somewhere further and more rural reduces the distractions to just two - drinking and eating. I believe it is biblical because people in the bible used to climb up mountains or go to deserts or get away from the crowd and to somewhere secluded to pray and commune with God. This often results in God giving them a word or a revelation.

For me, I felt that God spoke to me about one or two things during the camp. One of it was during the group activities when we did rock climbing. Rock climbing was never one of my strengths, I am usually better at coming down than climbing up. Also, my natural talent for procrastinating makes rock climbing even harder because I'd be stuck in the middle of the wall and I would be looking up, indecisive of which hold to go for and by the time I want to go for it, my arms are worn out from gripping the holds for too long. Anyway, after 2 failed attempts at reaching the top (which actually isn't very high but that's not the point), I was feeling quite exhausted and rather perplexed as to why I couldn't get past the last two meters. Then after a while, someone came and told me this: you can't rely on your hand holds, you should use your legs to step up even if you don't have a very firm hold on your hand, you can't wait for your hand to get a 100% secure grip, otherwise you won't move up. How true that is. My procrastinating, or lack of faith or focusing on plan-Bs keeps me from moving forward in God's plan for my life. By gripping and hanging on to the holds I am on and wondering if the next 'hold' would be secure, I'm just waiting for the inevitable to happen - my strength and confidence to be fully zapped and me falling off the wall.

Before attending the camp, I kinda have a feeling where God is leading me next in my life, and I have roughly decided what I would do; but at the same time, I can't help but keep thinking of the 'what ifs', and either consciously or sub-consciously, I create back-up plans for the different 'what if' possibilities, which wears me out. So this camp has reminded me once again that I have to stop doubting (it will be a struggle) and just move forward in faith.

By the way, I did climb to the top of the wall on my third try (by the grace of God of course). :)

How do you get people on your team?

Just some randoms thoughts I had recently...

When I was in the canoeing team in university, we had a recruitment drive every year to get new 'blood'. We usually try to get experienced people who has paddled competitively and especially those who were really good and have the medals to show for it. But for various reasons (maybe kayaking is not as glamorous or interesting as other activities) so it's difficult to attract good talent. The problem or risk of getting people who had no experience is that if they have absolutely no talent or perseverance (the latter is more important) and give up trying halfway, a lot of time and resources are wasted training them in the first place. So I would rather have a small team of good and dedicated athletes than a big team of people who may not stay on.

I think it is somewhat similar at work. A company wants to hire the right (or most suitable) person for the job - a person with the necessary skills, attitude and even personality so that everyone in the team could connect and work well together. A recruitment ad is put out listing out the requirements, and assuming it's a well known company with great career prospects, there will be tonnes of applications and the hiring manager will have to sift through them and pick out a few good ones to interview and determine if one of them is the right fit.

I reckon that should be common in well known industries and companies with well established career progressions. But what about new and specialised fields with unknown career progressions? Something like sports engineering. When I first got interested in sports engineering back in 2003/4, there weren't much information available about it and the only thing I found was this book: High Tech Hot Shots: Careers in Sports Engineering. It gives a great introduction to sports engineering and the opportunities available, which actually isn't  much and they are mostly in US. I consider myself very blessed to have the opportunity to do a Masters by research in this field and even had the chance to attend a biennial sports engineering conference organised by ISEA last year. From my observation, there were approximately 150 people who participated in this particular conference and I would say more than 80% of the people were in academia and less than 20% were from the industry. Even though this may not be an accurate representation of the sports engineering field, I think it still reflects how small is the group of people involved in sports engineering in the world.

As a result of going to the conference I was made a member of the association. However the membership only lasted a year and when it was time to renew the membership, there was actually a special deal - if you recommend someone new to join the association, both you and the new member could get a membership fee discount. The way I see it, this is their way of getting more people to join the 'club'.

It's odd because I assumed that sports engineering/technology is an extremely interesting subject and lots of people would be interested in it, so it shouldn't be necessary to use gimmicks to draw people in. But the truth is far from it. Having been doing research in this field for the past 2 years, I have seen my supervisor having problems recruiting post-grad research students to do sports engineering projects even though he has got funding; and I have seen days when not a single student turn up for his "Design of Sports Technology" class which is unbelievable. Maybe it hasn't gained enough popularity in the traditional science and engineering field?

So how do you form a (good) team of sports engineers? I guess first of all you have to find people who are interested in sports engineering with useful and relevant technical and analytical skills. Then they have to be passionate enough about sports engineering and be willing to find their own funding, because there aren't many companies that will pay you to do it. I know this sports technology guy who is self employed and he does a lot of work with cyclists and rowers and optimising their equipment and other stuff; he said it's always interesting to test out the latest technology and gadgets and how they could be applied to sports but the bottom line is you have to put food on the table; so he has to do work that pays, not just work that is interesting. So basically being a sports engineer can involve hard (and possibly not profitable) work which makes forming a team of sports engineers even harder.

Then I read about Jesus and how He got His twelve disciples, and it's really quite fascinating. Most of the disciples were fishermen, one was a tax collector, there was a zealot (or rebel but not sure if that is considered an occupation) and although not much was mentioned about the jobs of the rest, I reckon they should be blue collar workers or maybe jobless. So they don't seem very 'talented' if you ask me. Jesus first met four fishermen and simply told them to follow him (Matthew 4:18-22). Then He met a tax collector and did the same thing (Matthew 9:9). The rest either joined in because they had nothing better to do or maybe they could tell that Jesus would be the next big thing. On the other hand, it wasn't just them who decided that they wanted to follow Jesus; Jesus picked them. He decided that those were the twelve people who would form His core team. I think His requirement was straight forward - the disciples had to be willing to follow Him at all cost - including leaving their previous jobs and their families in order to follow Jesus. A rich man couldn't do that (Matthew 19:20-21). We know that following Jesus was extremely hard work because most of the disciples ended up being martyred. But we know that Jesus picked the right disciples because the message was preached (and without using any gimmicks!) and today we have churches all over the world. Praise God!

Electronics is not my cup of tea

Many years ago when I decided that I wanted to studying engineering in uni, it was by process of elimination. I didn't like business or commerce or accounting, I am not any good at the arts subjects, I didn't take biology or chemistry for my 'A' levels which rules out medicine and many other science faculties, and lastly I did like physics and maths. So naturally I opted for engineering. Then during the first year of engineering studies, I realised that I was always struggling during the electric circuits or electronics lab sessions. What made it worse was the technicians at the electronics lab were quite mean and sarcastic. So after my first year in engineering, given the choice of civil, electrical and mechanical, I picked mechanical engineering.

Fast forward past graduating and working a couple of years as a mechanical engineer in manufacturing, I wanted to explore something more in engineering and I found sports engineering. Sports engineering basically involves using engineering tools and concepts to analyse sports movements, optimise sports equipment so as to improve performance (reduce energy loss) or prevent injuries and design instruments to aid with coaching or to enhance spectators viewing experience of sports. So my exploration of sports engineering led me to do a research program in RMIT which has a research institute focused on sports technology. The main project I am working on requires me to design and develop a wireless sensor for measuring performance of a sports wheelchair. Unfortunately at some point, it required me to work on electronics! With help from several blogs and internet forums, a kind lab technician and research fellow, I managed to come up with a working prototype of a wireless sensor. Although it is kind of working, I am not completely satisfied with it. I thought the electronics design and the custom program I wrote could be better.

A simple circuit that took me ages...

Anyway, I reckon a real electronics design engineer would take half the amount of time I took and could probably do a better job. So electronics is not my cup of tea nor my strength but by God's grace I managed to pull together a simple solution for my problem.

The interesting thing is I got a call from a recruiter several weeks ago who had a position in a sports technology company that made wireless sensors for football players. This got me quite excited because its a sports technology company looking for a manufacturing engineer which I have the right experience. The ironic part was that the position involved troubleshooting electronic problems. Dang. But I went for the job interview anyway, not feeling very confident and I even told the company directors honestly that electronics is not my cup of tea. In the end they found someone else who is more competent in electronics. Oh well, I would have struggled if I got the job plus the timing wasn't good for me anyway; I wasn't done with my research studies.

But it doesn't end here, my supervisor had a discussion with me recently and he wanted me to be involved in this other project working on another wireless sensor that is smaller and has different measurement capabilities. This means more electronics work! The positive part of this is that this being a university project, it would be more forgiving compared to working on a commercial product. Also, it will be a good challenge for me. Maybe after this I might start to like electronics or I might become an expert in wireless sensors.