Stress and Strain

I generally consider myself a lazy person, but lately I've been doubting myself. When I am extremely tired or just tired of work, I am a lot less effective at doing my homework, especially writing and complex math. I'm pretty sure it takes twice the time on a Saturday to do a math assignment for me. Rather than waste my time, I'd rather relax, sleep, read, play video games, or talk with friends, releasing that residual strain in me so I can be more effective when I start to do homework. My motivation seems to be more frustration than lazinessGranted, this philosophy has gotten me into trouble, like when due dates are coming and I have to force my pampered self to work when I don't want to and am very inefficient. Right now is one of those frustrating times, when my work is obviously not up to par and I should leave it for tomorrow, but I have to finish it. I guess it's just a sign that the end of the semester is here and I need a vacation...

Smash

Camaraderie is often associated with a common interest, something that binds two friends together that isn't necessarily essential to there friendship, but often the primer. Surprisingly, something as mundane as video games can be that common interest. In high school, I hung out with a wide variety of people, we had intellectual conversations, did interesting things together, etc. When I came to BYU I socially regressed drastically. All I did was hang out with a bunch of dudes and play video games, I rarely left campus:not exactly a recipe for social fulfillment. But, we got tired of video games (eventually), started to talk, got to be friends, and we can't get rid of each other to this very day. I live with some of these friends now, and needless to say our relationship has deepened considerably since our Halo matches, but when we gather in numbers the venue is rarely in question. It way the same way last winter semester with my roommates, Keith and Adam. Adam loves sports with a passion, I don't; common ground didn't exactly just sprout up. Keith is a masters student in English literature and rather reserved; we tried talking philosophy, music, literature and politics, but succeeded only in having good conversations. When I discovered Keith owned a Gamecube and a Wii, suddenly things changed. Suddenly we four (Mike, a roommate at the time, my MTC companion formerly, and a good friend currently, was the fourth) had a common interest, Super Smash Brothers (first Melee, then Brawl), a way to pit our egos against each other and oh, what chaos ensued! Friendly competition and a love of the game proved effective catalysts in our friendship, speeding up a process that might not have happened before we all moved out. To this day I still talk about books with Keith, life in general with Adam and we're still friends (though we don't see each other too often), but last Saturday we got together and Smashed, and it was awesome. So here's to you video game makers of the world, may we never grow to old to play!

Psst...there's a whole in your ethics, your character is showing!

I feel my true self is exposed whenever powerful influences in my life become misaligned and turned against each other. Often times the pressures (which I believe are all inherently internal; even if they are direct reactions to external factors, the nature of the pressure always depends on our internal character) that influence our decisions are themselves neutral, capable of both good and bad, just as fire can sustain or destroy life. C.S. Lewis uses the examples of maternal love, patriotism, and sexual desire to illustrate his point. Patriotism and maternal love are often times lumped in the "good" category of instincts (well, patriotism used to be, now it has fallen somewhat out of favor), but should either lead to unfair discrimination they could accomplish much evil. How many jingoist attempted genocides has the world seen in only the last few decades? How often do we see maternal love unduly protect a child from the consequences of his actions or unfairly side with its own, even when in the wrong? Sexual desire is similarly dichotomous in nature, it is the driving pressure behind both rape and of the family. The more I consider all of these moral considerations, the more I think of it all as a kind of vector analysis, each of these "pressures" representing very different force fields. Thus our true natures are complicated indeed. Let's say the ideal is for our decisions, represented by a particle being bounced around by all these conflicting forces, to remain within certain bounds, higher moral norms we establish for ourselves. We have no direct control over the particle, only over the fields that govern it, and only gradually. Sometimes we set unrealistic and contradictory bounds, and we find it impossible to remain within them, simply because such a combination of fields does not exist. Sometimes we find our particle does more damage and less good by staying within what we think is acceptable. In these cases our moral boundaries need to change, which can occur suddenly (like conversion to a new faith) or slowly (like desensitization). More often the not, however, the problem lies simply with the fact that our nature, or rather something less intrinsic, like let's say our disposition, contradicts our morals in some cases. I recently experienced this, my particle flew out of its cozy little circle. I discovered that my tendency to stick with my friends, support them and allow myself to be influenced by them can sometimes crush some of my morals I thought we absolute. Well, crush is the wrong word, again I'll resort to higher math to try to explain myself: they set me going so fast that my decisions escape the restoring force that would have kept me in the safe zone. Pulling back to the safe zone will be hard enough, but more importantly I need to change so it doesn't happen again. However, this safety will influence my decisions in non-divergent systems as well. A part of me tells me these changes must be pure good and a part of me tells me it is a sacrifice for the greater good. My relationships with others, with friends and family, will be the source of my greatest happiness, but if I allow them to be the hear-all-end-all of my life, I will find myself careening off to infinity, ultimately losing them because I valued the means too much and my friends too little.

Nerdy T-Shirts

In my formative years, 6th grade, I think, I purchased a shirt, one of the nerdiest I have ever owned. It's black with the periodic table of elements emblazoned on it in proud neon colors. When I bought it I did so with wisdom beyond my years, realizing this shirt would not be cool to wear until much later in life, and I basically wore the thing three times until college where now it serves as my laundry shirt. Like the strip of red tape at the end of a roll of receipt paper that lets you know when it's about to run out, the shirt means that all of my other shirts are dirty. Usually when people call me on the nerdiness of my shirt I try to pass it off as an obscure indy rock band. "What, you don't like the Elements? You should hear their new album, Combustion!" Lately, however, I've been getting so many comments on the awesomeness I know it to posses, that I've decided to put the shirt into regular circulation. Atomic weight of argon? I can tell you that.

Jó barátok és a magyar vendéglátás

I owe a lot to my friend Rutai Géza. I stayed at his house and he fed me every day, despite the fact I told him I planned on feeding myself. Hungarian hospitality is syonomous with food. Even the word for invite also means to treat someone to food, and the word for resuraunt comes from the word guest. Géza was divorced not to long ago and gets a disability pension for a soccer-related heart condition, so he's recently delved intot he world of cooking. He is an amazing chef and makes good tradional magyar kaja. His chicken soups are full of things Americans don't even feed to their cats anymore and he cuts up all his vegetables from scratch. Starting a dish without a chunk of lard would be unthinkable. He loves distinctly Hungarian ingredients: mák, túró, and paprika. Unlike most Hungarian food, however, he makes everything spicy. From chicken noodle soup, to cucumber salad, everythng tastes better with a little spicy green pepper in it. He is an incredibly patient and humble man, a die-hard soccer fan, and one of the kindest people I've ever met. I consider it a privledge to be his friend.

Softie

You'd think a butcher wouldn't have any trouble slaughtering a pig, and you'd think that someone that mounts bugs for his his part-time job wouldn't bat an eye at dumping some rare specimens in alcohol, but I've found I just can't do it sometimes. I caught an awesome-sized beetle on the side of the road the other day (probably about 3 inches long, I'll post a picture if I ever get around to it) and kept it in my room till I could buy alcohol to kill it. The thing just tried so hard to get out that after a couple days I didn't have the heart to kill it, and let it go after a lot of internal delimna (after all, I came here expecting to catch bugs, didn't I?). Then yesterday I saw the coolest bug I have ever seen alive with my on two eyes, a massive male stag beetle, maybe five inches long, of that at least half a massive set of pincers, we're talking a genuine monster of a bug (my pictures didn't turn out great because I was on the landscape setting) and I didn't even have the heart to catch it. Seriously, this thing was monstrous. Even now, I feel sorry for the cserebogárs I caught today. Maybe I'm not cut out for this job...

-Rugó

Jó utat!

My journey has begun! I don't recommend a 12 hour over-night stay in London's Heathrow Airport, though, the airport closes and they kick you out into the street (well, the lobby place where you normally check your bags). I slept on a nice wooden bench with another guy bound for a 5 o'clock flight. I've found traveling to be much easier if you can sleep on a plane as well, the jet-lag wasn't such a big deal because I got plenty of rest on the plane. I'm staying with friend Kókány Gábor, an awesome church member I taught as a greenie. He has a wife, Mensáros Nóra, and a little one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Dominika, who happens to be adorable. He also has Skype, which makes my girlfriend very happy. I discovered today that my international student ID doesn't work for train tickets; I was trying to go to an old companion's wedding in Szombathely, but because 2nd class was full and I got no discount, it would have cost me 5000 forint, which I can't afford to pay, thanks to the weak dollar (it's about 160 forint per dollar these days). I spent the day instead getting myself a phone, cruising around Margit Sziget with Horváth János and then having paprikás krumpli and palacsintas at his house. I went to a YSA activity and met a ton of youth and missionaries I knew, and a ton I didn't (I've only been gone 6 months and already so many faces I don't know...). I'm excited for tomorrow, I've got tons to do!

-Rugó

U.I. Also, I have run into 2 old investigators since I've been here rather randomly, Sándor János, an Adventist theology student who was more interested in comparison and converting us, and Zeng, a Chinese guy more interested in learning English than hearing what we have to say. It was an interesting confirmation that I'm supposed to be here, a portent that I will yet have such encounters, and leaves me with the question, what does God want me to do with them?