Journal Entry #13

My Camp Experience…

I went to the ICS high school camp on Tuesday to Thursday (Oct 8-10), and this is my experience.

Being a lover of classical music and a disliker of pop, I didn’t really like worship much. Worship was way too loud and out of my tolerance boundaries, so I just sat in the back for worship. I can tolerate quiet and soothing pop style worship music, but all the screaming and loud guitars annoyed me. However, we went bowling on the second day of camp, which lifted my spirits up. Bowling with my tribe was fun, because I got to bowl with different people rather than the usual group of close friends. Please note that I am organizing this into alternating good and bad thoughts about camp. A bad experience/complain would be that the students got no say about rooms. Before, in middle school camp, we were allowed to choose 2 people we wanted in our rooms, and the teachers tried to fulfill our wishes. In high school camp, though, we were just given rooms with people we aren’t really good friends with, and these rooms never end up being optimal, creating an awkward and obstructed environment. On the good side, water games and house sports were fun and kept us active, filling hours with team spirit and endless fun. However, a problem with water games was the point system. We used cheerios strung around our necks, and if some people strung it tight or had lucky cheerios, even 100 water balloons couldn’t hit them off. I want to end with a good note, so allow me to introduce the zombie apocalypse. Replacing senior hunt, zombie apocalypse was a scary game where everyone except for Joey and Louise started as humans and were quickly infected by being tagged. I had perfect camouflage with a dark umbrella and water gun, but I started getting cramps after crouching safely in my hiding spot for 30 minutes. Though the game could’ve been shorter to make surviving easier, it was one of the best games at camp.

Overall, I would call camp a fun experience, and would look forward to camp next year.

Journal Entry #11

What do you think about the people who camp out for new technology (e.g. iPhone 5s)?

I personally think that it is pointless to camp out for new technology. We always learn about being happy with what we have, and hey, I used an old Nokia for many years before finally getting a old smartphone in Grade 9 (my brother’s old HTC Desire). Besides wanting to be an engineer, technology, and especially Apple technology, does not spark me to camp 15 days to be the first to sweep up tons of new phones to use them and raise their prices in the market (in Chinese we call it “frying prices” (straight translation)).

Driving away from the smartphones for a bit, I feel like trends are a destructive force. Trends seem like those generic “appealing traps created by Satan”. And it is true. Those who follow trends waste tons of money buying things that they won’t even use for more than a few months. I know of someone (no names) who always followed trends and at one time bought the iPhone 4, then the 4s, then the Samsung Galaxy SIII, then the iPhone 5, and now he wants to get the 5s. I don’t want to be offensive, but there are many like him that wasted lots of money on trends and still think they gained.

My second argument against smartphones is striking against the “frying prices”. I see it absolutely horrid that people buy 20 new iPhones and don’t use them, but sell them at a much greater price, hence the frying prices. One of the greatest problems in Hong Kong is the housing issue, which is intertwined with the gap between the rich and the poor. Because the rich people could afford to buy many houses (such as Li Ka Shing), they buy many apartments and raise its price high so they could profit much from just a few houses. When they get more money, they buy more and sell more, and fry more housing prices, and in the end they become very rich. However, these people are viewed as the evils of society. They pay the government so that the government will have more money for its purposes, which mean that the government can’t and won’t do anything about this issue.

The housing issue is much like the smartphone issue (trends and prices), where many people sit and wait for the new phones to come out either to brag about it (not a lot of people do this as a primary purpose) or fry its price to the extreme (many people do this). I think that it is not worth it to wait for new phones, because it only wastes our time, marks us as inconsiderate people, and wastes lots of our money if we fail to “fry” the price well.

If we don’t tackle this issue soon, the world will fall into a chaotic realm of trends and prices, which is just what Satan (the devil) wants for us: The devil wants us to indulge in these trends (fashion, technology, etc.) which makes us more distant from God our Father, and many of us are falling into Satan’s traps today.