Gratitude

I'm eating a haddock and broccoli woolies microwave meal for dinner. Yummy.

I was thinking yesterday/this morning how I have lots of things to be grateful for. I am grateful to be at Rhodes, to have learned fourier transforms via flipping-and-shifting methods. I am grateful for two great supervisors, tons of resources at my disposal, a great lab of people, a great staff in the department. I an really grateful that I have had the chance to travel and see other universities, and go to a few conferences. I'm grateful for having gone through an undergrad programme which developed lots of practical skills I use now. I'm grateful for people who believe in me and encourage me.

I often get discouraged academically, but the truth of the matter is that the Lord had put me is such a favoured place, in terms of the background I have, and the place I'm in now. And I am very grateful to him. I commit it all to Him.

Great quote

I just found a great quote:

"How easy it would have been in South Africa for the natural feelings of resentment at white domination to have been turned into feelings of hatred and a desire for revenge against the white community. Here, where every day in every aspect of life, every non-white comes up against the ubiquitous sign, "Europeans Only," and the equally ubiquitous policeman to enforce it - here it could well be expected that a racialism equal to that of their oppressors would flourish to counter the white arrogance towards blacks. That it has not done so is no accident. It is because, deliberately and advisedly, African leadership for the past 50 years, with the inspiration of the African National Congress which I had the honour to lead for the last decade or so until it was banned, had set itself steadfastly against racial vain-gloriousness."
- Albert Luthuli

A week in Cape Town

I've been in Cape Town for a week now. So far, I:

• Have given 5 lectures. Its hard.
• Went to the inaugural lecture of Prof Ian Scott, entitled "Equity, Merit and Development: Critical Tensions in Higher Education in South Africa and Abroad." Very interesting - "equity related educational strategies are a central component of development."
• Have hung out with Taryn, Emma, Linda, Roshni.
  
• Went to Busisiwe's 7th birthday party! There was a jumping castle! Woot.
• Went to a lunch time lecture organised by the UCT YCL (young communist league), where the SA minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, spoke about the conflict in Palestein. Very interesting.
• Went to Taryn's cell group - great bunch of girls. We did a Bible study on a passage from Romans.

It has been quite an eventful week!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Choosing a picture to represent a preson is a significant thing. A few months ago there was some scandal in the news involving Bill Cosby, and the article in the Daily Dispatch that covered it included the most horrible picture of him - he looked... smarmy. He looked like the kind of person who could have done what he was being accused of. And I thought: "Now, is that fair?" They must have tons of happy Bill Cosby pictures on file, but they chose the one that made him look like a creep." Because they wanted people to think "hey, we thought this oke was a nice guy, but actually, maybe he is creepy..." I suppose. So the picture we choose to represent someone says alot about how we view them and how we want others to view them, even if our choice may not be deliberate.

So anyway, I saw these two pictures of the new Rhodes VC in the "this Week at Rhodes." These pictures are definately saying something! Something good.

UCT: Pro's and cons

Pros:

• great coffee
• great food - so much choice!
• its beautiful
• the smell of the sea

Cons:

• expensive coffee!!!
• no drosty lawns
• you can't really walk safely through middle to upper campus at night
  

A post

Minoshni poined out that it has been a while since I have blogged. I have been saving up all my blogging thoughts for next week when I will be in Cape Town, probably with a fair amount of free time and not all that much access to work. So I will be free to spend my life blogging.

Nonetheless, let me post here to break the blogging silence before I go.

Thought for today is a quote from the book Dune:
"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration."

When I actually allow myself to realise it, I see that I am afraid of alot of things. And fear often motivates what I do. Unacceptable! Perfect love (God's perfect love) drives out all fear, and humility (or correct identity) drives out fear too. The two are strongly linked I guess :)

To security!