The Weekend -- The Reminder

Aaah.. it's Monday. I had a blast in the weekend. Though I had to leave work (secretly..) at 2 pm, but it was all worth it. I didn't need to drive, thanks to Ko Adi and Kristin for that. I got hungry though, that I decided to force myself to sleep in the car. I guess it was the AC that drove my stomach crazy.
I arrived, it was 6.30 pm. Well, had a quick rice-and-bbq-chicken dinner, plus another slice of the bread I brought from home. Wasn't too bad huh. Within two hours, Patty and Linda got home. Took shower in turn, then guess what. When three young ladies gathered, what do you think they do? Ah hah, no, we played 'Pancasila' :D. It's my idea, and yeah we played that too when we were in elementary school, but what else would take our mind off work and study, and just chilled out for the night? Twelve pm was just my time to go to bed. I was tired, but really eager for the next day.

The house was filled with - five people: Patty, Lisa, Linda, Fanny, and me. Just one bathroom though. Luckily we didn't all leave at the same time, and while waiting for my turn, I flipped this Kungfu Boy comic book just next to my bed (oh, Linda's bed, to be exact :p). Man! I have loved this comic for.. probably ten years, since the first time I read it. If I could have a collection of comic book, this would be my first choice.
We went to church, around 9 am. The service didn't begin until 10, but I expected to meet some people early, and get hugs, and welcomes, and smiles, and just to catch up with others. The day went on and on, and I was still high up in energy, till it reached lunch time and still.. waiting for my sister to pick me up :(. Wake up earlier sis!

Oh, city grill buffet, why does the sound of KFC interest me more than you :S. It wasn't too bad for a $5.5 buffet though. After that packed lunch, my wisdom told me to walk around, not just sitting or even sleeping. We stopped best buy, checking on all kinds of stuffs: vacuum cleaner, digital piano, firewire, digicam. I still felt it's no time to go home, so our next drop was Barnes and Noble. Geez.. if only.. IF only I followed my gut, didn't turn my way to those aisles, I wouldn't have met him. The moment I entered the bookstore, I felt him there. At least we went there couple times before, and I know how much he loved looking at comics or those sorts. I was just trying to find a seat! Half of me wanted to see him, half of me not. I knew if I did.. all those creepy feelings would haunt me that day, the next day, the next week,.. And that's exactly what happened. Oh geez, just leave me alone.

Eating lots of food left my stomach with little space for lots of drink, so I got really thirsty. It's almost 6 pm too, so my sister drove us to Silver Dipper, and had a big (I think) three-scoop ice cream of various flavors. I was thirsty and she bought ice cream, yeah, not a very good choice.
After that we just kinda rushed to clean up and prepare ourselves for our corec night :D. Haven't been there for some time. I was really glad to have some friends along: Patty, Imelda, Linda, Helen, Kong. The only one I can play is badminton, so that's what we did :D. I drank at least half gallon of water in two hours. Kept sweating, kept drinking. I was totally energized, more because I miss playing it so much, and miss playing it with my friends so much. A good friend of mine went to play regularly, but wouldn't ask me to come along, though I explicitly said I wanted to play so badly but have no one available to play with :'(.

I guess the night just passed by like that. Very soon, it was Sunday morning. Countless blessing was poured down to me, but God still has more, the most important one. I can certainly say that everyone, EVERY one, was blessed with the preaching we heard in the prayer meeting. It's been said, and heard, over and over again, that we should spend time for our prayer, not rushing, not talking all the time, but letting God speaks to us. Hey it's not easy to sit for half or an hour and just stay calm. I've tried many times, and either I get sleepy, or my mind wanders somewhere else. I need a new technique, Lord. I miss having quiet times with you. I hardly ever hear your voice, if more than something that just pops up in my mind. I feel burdened every day, and at the end of day I feel like I have done nothing. Nothing that fulfills your will for me. I am running on my own, with my own target and pace and ways. It's bad to feel like doing useless things. And I feel it almost everyday.
Why do I study GRE? Why do I learn Java? Why did I apply to Google? Why do I volunteer? Why do I work at Motorola? Why do I eat and drink, and keep myself healthy, if it wasn't to do what God wants me to? I rarely ask these questions to Him. Even if I do, I won't get the answer. Not with how I've lived my life so far.

This morning, when it's time to get to work, I feel like staying and chit-chatting with God, for a little while. The last time I had this was probably 2-3 months ago. So I told God, how disappointed I am that I never heard His voice, at least assuredly. People can tell for exact that they heard God's voice, but I can't. If not just myself telling me something, probably the Holy Spirit whispers from deep within me. I told God I wanted to hear from Him - closely. I wanted to feel His presence and glory, until I can forget about my whereabout, the time, and other pains. Just feel the magic of being with my Father. I asked that He would help me with time and heart. Of course I hear no answer yet, as expected.
I opened my bible. I've been reading contiguous chapters for several months, and the day before I read Titus. So this morning I read Philemon. It was very short, one chapter, 25 verses. I read halfway, and there you go, I was in deep terrible feeling. This book of Philemon was a letter from Paul to Philemon. Paul humbly requested Philemon to accept Onesimus, as both a brother and a child of God. Paul reminded Philemon that whatever Onesimus did wrong, or hurt him before, Onesimis was back, and Philemon should be glad for him.
It was AS IF, God spoke to me. Throughout the whole chapter, Paul talked to Philemon, just as if God was admonishing me. I've been resentful to a friend for several months now. Not that I didn't realize it, but it was tremendously hard to let go. I feel survived when my mom came, but wasn't healed. I've been making excuses to justify my act, and do only halfway good by not calling, not thinking about him. But this is not good enough in God's eyes. I've been praying to let go -- if possible to forget -- but didn't really work, I guess. Ok, so I run out of ideas. I give up.
God reminded me that to get close to Him, I need a clean heart. I don't have it yet. I know. I wish I had a heart like Jesus'. I really do, so I pray again, to be encouraged and strenghtened. Please pray for me, just for this one. Cause I can't go on with other things, if I can't connect with God. And I can't connect with God, if I can't let this resentment go, or more like heal the resentment.

Google

I had this interview with Google yesterday. Nothing too difficult. Just this one - strange - question.. from a Chinese interviewer.
"Say you have a program, to do something. You write it, compile it, build it, and passes all those. When you run it however, something is wrong. Either the output is wrong, or the program crashes, doesn't matter. You go back to your code, check the formulas, the logic, whatever you can think of, you check it. Nothing seems to be wrong. You debug your code, line by line, it seems good. What do you think is going on? How do you handle this?"

"Oh man, the hell I know," I said in my heart. But I had to think and came up with something.

"Umm, maybe there is memory allocation problem. Like if you deallocate a memory that doesn't exist, that stuff."

"In that case, your program should crash and tell you that it segfaults. You CAN tell the problem from there. So what if it wasn't memory problem? What if the program IS good, clean, and correct, but run badly anyway?"

My eyes rolled left and right. I looked as if I thought hard, but actually I was rather clueless.
"Maybe.. try to rewrite a similar program, that does similar but more simplistic calculations, and then keep enhancing the program from there; see if the error happens at some point, which scope the problematic area smaller."

"Well.. not really. As I told you, the calculations are fine, the logic is correct. Besides, would you want to write another program? Though it is simpler, it will take time, right."

"Yeah.." I agree hopelessly.

After some time, I felt no good for not finding anything to answer it. So.. "Do you have any hint?"

"Wouldn't you think it's a compiler problem? What would you do in that case?"

Oh, so yeah, that can be a compiler problem :O. Thanks for the hint :S. But what would I do huh.
"Maybe.. I can try to build and run the program on another compiler. For example, building Unix C++ program on Visual C++, or .NET, or the like."
"It might be very time consuming though," I added the disadvantage immediately, "Because the syntax or the whole language might be different, in which cases it's like writing the program from scratch."

"Can you do it in hours, a day?"

"Probably longer than that."

"That's true. You don't have time for that. How about, rewriting some parts of your code?"

Nah, that's what I thought! "I thought that was what I said in my first point, but yeah, in much smaller scope. So probably rewrite some structures, like the for loop, or the bit operations, parentheses, .. Maybe the compiler didn't know certain structural syntax that the program was written with, and it compiles it wrongly."

"Yes, but it was different from what you said earlier. But sure.. that actually works. And compiler problem does exist. We had that," the guy smiled lightly.
"And that takes us to the answer of the question."

Pheewww.. okay, what a question. Thanks to God I passed. I really want to interview with Google, if possible get into it. Let's see how the onsite interview will go.