Giving by Faith

Psalm 145:15 - The eyes of all look expectantly to You, and You give them their food in due season.
[adapted from offering message for Urban Life...courtesy of God, who revealed this to me during devotion...during a particularly difficult time a few weeks ago]

...But of course there are times when things get tough.

[Think of a time when expenses disproportionately outweigh our income.]

I mean, in the natural sense, sometimes circumstances make us reluctant to give, yeah?

Sometimes we become ultra-sensitive to every cent that we spend.

[Now think of times when we did not expect providence/favour/blessings to come... and it came.]

Really, we can look at it from a whole lot of different perspectives. Because, sometimes, someone who doesn't believe in God still looks like s/he gets all the favours in the world. Sometimes we feel like not giving.

But I believe God desires us to grow in faith in Him. What was His message to the rich young man? What's the motive of Jesus asking that?
We can perhaps learn various lessons from this, but I wanna focus on this today: to depend on God for providence. Imagine someone in severe financial difficulty.

No money. But it doesn't mean there's no God. Money is not God!

So, why do we give? Because God first gave. And because despite circumstances, we live still by faith. The just shall live by faith.

Because He will give us our food in due season.

Picture credit: OneYearBibleImages.com

Why we simplify

Simplifying (oversimplifying) is good for teaching, not-so-good for learning.

While walking back home from Safeway just now, a guitar bag in one hand and shopping bags on the other, plus a bag of lecture notes on my back, this new thought came upon me.

This morning, a friend of mine sent me an SMS: Hey. Tell me, which enzyme is involved in glycogenolysis again? Starts from p. The answer is glycogen phosphorylase.
Now, I can perhaps tell any person - who does not yet know - the correct answer, in one or two words (teaching), but it wouldn't necessarily be something meaningful to him/her (learning). Like, come on, how much time does it take to say out the name of the enzyme? It's only 4-7 syllables.

Teaching looks at the transmitting end. For high school leavers, a lecture covering glycogenolysis and its counterpart glycogenesis, plus some glycolysis and gluconeogenesis could probably be done in 1 hour. One hour.

Learning focuses on the learning end. "You only really understand the material when you can teach it to someone else," so goes the saying. Learning glycogenolysis from a Biochemistry textbook can take hours or days, depending on the purpose of learning it and the level of detail required.

And honestly, to me - as I'm learning this stuff now, for this semester - I think memorizing isolated bits of knowledge is not very useful. It's good for the initial bit of learning, but not when we have hundreds and thousands of facts to deal with in our heads. Once we form more links between yesterday's new knowledge and today's new knowledge, what we learn eventually makes more sense. It no longer comes through (futile) rote memorisation (although it may initially did), but through solid understanding of the matter being discussed.

For example, I think the knowledge of "glucagon increases blood glucose" bears more meaning if the question of "How?" is addressed - at least for students studying some Biochemistry. I can easily mention that the hormone glucagon triggers a cascade of reactions that eventually activates the enzyme glycogen phosphorylase (and deactivates glycogen synthase), but it is only because I've looked and re-looked at the diagram in Lehninger too many times. And because I've learned in high school about chemical equations, enzymes and hormones. It involves the use of a 7-helix G-protein coupled (membrane) receptor, adenylyl cyclase, cytosolic cAMP, PKA, and phosphorylase kinase.
But for a moment, imagine a world without simplification... That would be unimaginable! The way that humans learn is by spending time doing/reading/writing/thinking about something. We don't learn to speak a language in perfect grammar in one day! It's like churning time into something that's learned.

And in any case, if a biochemist read this post, I reckon s/he'd say that I myself am simplifying stuff by referring to glycogen phosphorylase as if it's one, single distinct thing. (I am aware that there's the inactive phosphorylase b and active phosphorylase a, but that's all I know about it...and then of course there's much more detail about the active site, affinity, inhibition, etc.)

So simplification has its place in teaching (especially for teachers, because time here in this world is limited). But for the purpose of solid understanding (on the learner's part), let's not just take it at face value. Ask questions, especially the assumptions made in making the simplified statement.

And how I wish everyone in our study group could really grasp the essence of this semester: Nutrition, Digestion and Metabolism. It really is a well-crafted academic programme. Now time for exam preparation.

Picture credit:mcb.web.psi.ch

School and Reliance

I sent a message to one of my cousins last night, wishing her the best result for her first public exam. Which reminds me of the time when I myself sat for the UPSR.

BM was my worst - or most-feared - subject. Pemahaman (comprehension) was slightly better than Penulisan (composition). Looking back, I think it was partly due to this tinge of perfectionism within me that slowed me down so much in writing. It was more so for Malay than for English...but I'm not sure why...perhaps because we always spoke proper/grammatical English - but my school friends and I have always spoken little English to start with - and there's the spoken/written divide for Malay.

My best was definitely Math. The handful of us in the class would compete for full marks in Math, and for whatever highest score was possible for the other subjects. My "moment of glory" peaked in the final school exam just before the real-deal, publicly-set UPSR, with running marks: one hundred, two ninety-sixes, ninety-four, and ninety-two, with an average of ninety-five point six (glory to God!). And I questioned: Why didn't I get all full marks like I did back in Primary 1? And why don't my older friends and family members report of full marks in higher schooling?
To start with, I guess full marks are desirable because they indicate that we're doing/thinking about the right thing in the right way, according to accepted standards. Where exactly is that standard?

Ahah! That's where things get tricky. That's why essays tend not be graded 100%. The big word is subjectivity. And even objective questions require a greater differentiating ability, by providing options that are unbelievably similar. Heck, if I went back in time and told my 12-year-old self about my marks for last semester, he'd probably not believe that I am him.

As for me right now, I feel that I should start conditioning myself with exam questions, because the next one's coming in about 3-4 weeks, and I've set a high target. The easy ones would give me relief and confidence, while the hard ones point to me where I need to put in more work. We've got to move on to hard stuff eventually. Now I no longer have Penulisan, but I've got 3 40-minute essays for HP2! That's pretty dense stuff; absolutely no fooling around with big words without a message. But blogging's different...

And again my request to God is the same as it was ages ago: "Unto You I rely."

Spending breaths

What can I do in life? A question to ask where my breaths have been spent this week.

• Helping to check two essays for a friend
• Getting back the assignment written a month ago
• Working out
• Being examined in a physical exam

• Playing guitar for practice
• Studying in a group
• Practising patient-interviewing
• Doing calculations in inverse square and exponential equations
• Chilling, meaning thinking, talking about, and doing nothing

Sometimes - actually sometimes it's many times - I ask what's worthwhile doing.

I'm not going to be alive forever. What's worth spending my breath on?

So many things are a waste of time. So what's not a waste?
(In case you're shading this to find an answer, haven't got a definite one, but I'm still thinking about it.)

Eye of the Beholder

Little graphics.

Between Law building and the rest of Melbourne Uni

"Breast is best" (title of an HP lecture)

Spring is here

This guitar knows how to pose
*Secret black text message found*