Ben Tshin

Paris. The city should evoke some romantic thoughts of Europe. But I’m stuck in the airport. It’s not quite as spectacular as I had hoped. The airport here is massively huge (more sprawl than good) with almost NOTHING to do but sit in a pseudo-parisian caf�. There’s nothing like sipping caf� cr�me and eating a tasty pavot, except that it’s at riDEEEEculous prices. Well, I’m hungry.

My 6:55pm flight from Toronto Pearson Int’l (YYZ) left 30 minutes late. What else can be expected from Canadian expertise and efficiency?? But we arrived on schedule in Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport at about 8:15am, so no complaints.

Breakfast at 7am before we landed, and now nowhere else to eat. I miss the smokelessness of Canada. Everyone smokes here!

Everything is expensive here, but that’s also counting French wine and French cheese. That’s the traveller’s dilemma, how good? How expensive? What about budget?!? Too bad I don’t understand enough about wine to appreciate them like they do here.

Coming here raises a bunch of questions: the world is smaller, but why not better (maybe it’s just Paris)? Who else is being cheated out of a good meal because there is no other option? Where are all these people going? And (very pensively in a style apparently signatory of me): where am I going in life?

At least the country ham in the pavot was tasty.

The beginning of my journey begins in a first class lounge for a simple “economy-class” traveller. I was fortunate to receive a coupon to lounge with the rich people in Air Canada’s Maple Leaf Lounge in Terminal 1. Unfortunately the New Terminal 1 at Pearson is still being built so I wasn’t able to enjoy its luxuries just yet. So I sip my last ounces of Keith’s good Nova Scotian brew for the next 4 months (I’m sure they don’t export to Singapore) all while listening to a bizarrely unentertaining biography of Tom Cruise.

The airfield is dark but abuzz with tiny moving lights. It could almost be like me: I look all calm on the outside but really I’m brimming with excitement about the next 4 months. Seems that I can be very pensive when travelling.

An weird yet interesting similarity between the first-class lounge and life in Canada. The first-class world/lounge is what I’m experience now just before I set out into the real world that is “economy class”. Everyone wants to live in upper-crust luxury, but 90% of the world is stuck in tiny seats trying to grab some shuteye that doesn’t happen.

I’m back at it. Trying to kick the cycle of spiritual life and spiritual death. From the logical standpoint, I still cannot pinpoint the cause and effect of this process. The best hypothesis is human frailty coupled with self-dependence. There is no wrong in human frailty and weakness, but perhaps the answer (to Life, the Universe, Everything) is my self-reliance, my sense of do-it-yourself (D-I-Y). My capacity for achievement is undoubtedly a blessing, a huge gift from God. But it curses me in a strange and illogical way: “I am Superman; I can do everything on my own.”

And now I want to get inline with God. “I“, “ME“. Where is God in this desire? What’s His role? Will I continue to fight independently? No!? I may always represent the “godly role model” to others, but inside I know that I need God’s help, God’s push, more than anyone could ever tell. I am a spiritual dunce and that’s a tough pill to swallow.

But life isn’t always so depressing and negative. Life moves onwards and sometimes upwards. Reading Matthew, I see all these prophecies and promises fulfilled. I’m reminded that God has promised me life. He came to give me a life of abundance not dread. I’m still remembering the promise: “You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart.” -Jeremiah 29:13

God,
I’m haven’t been caught up in you. I’m caught up in all the temporary things of today. I’ve lost sight of eternity and your plan. I’m not sure if I’ve just lost focus of you or perhaps I’ve been distracted. But I know that I need to be reminded of the abundance of love, joy and peace that you promise. Maybe I need to see evidence of your greatness and power. Also, I need to see evidence again of your personal connection to me. Life seems fine on my own: so show me how much better life is with you.

We finished! Unbelievably, 9 hours and 20 minutes after we had started the ARC Haliburton Enduro we crossed the finish line. Almost as amazing was the fact that we didn’t get disqualified and we didn’t finish last. Actually, we finished second last.

The race started pleasantly in nice weather but it almost ended in a death trap. We began with a short 2km jog to the first checkpoint where we picked up our canoes. (Funny note: our team name should have been “Team Keepafloat” after our identical life jackets) The next 2.5 hours were canoeing 7km and portaging 1km. Everything seemed fine until we jumped onto our bikes.

The bike section was supposed to be our strongest suit, but we encountered too many obstacles, mud pits, misplaced checkpoints and broken chains. We lost 30 minutes repairing a broken chain twice and 1 hour looking for a checkpoint that was moved the night before by race officials. Too bad they didn’t tell us.

In the middle of the bike section we had to do a bit of orienteering (ie: bushwacking). Evidence of this is my battered legs as can be seen if you ask me. We were good for the first beaver pond checkpoint (which required my graceful swimming skills) but we got a bit lost finding the next one. As we got back to our bikes we barely made it out under the cut-off time of 6.5 hours (around 4:30).

The next 4 checkpoints took us the remaining 3 hours as members of the team began to cramp up, forcing us to walk instead of bike. It didn’t help that we were also out of water, getting extremely tired and encountering more mud than we had ever seen in our lives — combined.

The three members of Team Fatboyslim (Gordon, Ani and myself) would like to especially thank our two water saviours at checkpoints 12 and 13 who saved our lives with “living water”. We wouldn’t have finished without their help.

After effects? Muscles so sore we couldn’t move. Mosquito bites counting upto 100 (on myself only). Memories of one of the worst physical days of our lives. Determination for next time.

Memories of being lost in the rocks and trees.

Ready, Set, GO!
(or more like: Ready, Set, DIE!)

Putting my thoughts to digital paper feels like a resurrection for my mind and soul. Here is the correlation: there isn’t anything to reflect on so I don’t blog. OR I don’t have time to blog so I don’t reflect on life.

No self reparations nor any self analyses. Something just doesn’t jive. I’ll figure it out sooner or later. I have time, right? I hope I do. It feels that I’m caught doing everything BUT spending time and thinking and reflecting on the big picture. Gear down, big trucker!!

Since I’ve been spending so much time on the bike I might as well do some personal psycho-analysis. I’ll be my own psychiatrist.

Food for chewing: “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16

AHH!!!! Well I played a big joke and it WAS really funny too. In preparation for my upcoming update of OpenBSD 3.0 to 3.3 I decided to clean out the source tree. Bad decision. I ended up wiping out my /usr/bin directory…. OUCH!

Happy April Fool’s Day, Ben

Hey, it’s April Fools Day. And of course God’s allowed to take part too! Well this morning we woke up to 3cm of snow. A slightly sick joke but God always did have a sly sense of humour. Just look at the platypus!

“I hate this”? Sounds close enough to “hiatus”. I don’t think there is necessarily a correlation between those words in my situation though. I have returned to writing my thoughts in the hopes of evoking more thoughts and more action in my at times thought-less and action-less existence.

There will be more thoughts coming… this is just stirring the pot.