After a long and gruesome flight, I am now in Shanghai. First impression? A slum on steroid. High-rises and Skyscrapers are going up everywhere, butting up against old two to three stories houses and housing compounds. Streets don’t follow a grid system, or even a pattern for that matter. The airport is about an hour away, connected through a network of highways. As we get closer to the city, we see massive new constructions underway. One development I saw was like a few stadium-sized space-framed spaceships landed randomly on the plain field. To be fair, all we did yesterday was just landing in Shanghai and drove to the airport. Perhaps my first impression will change after all. I look forward to getting out of the city today and see some organic old villages and towns in Suzhou. Oh, by the way, connecting to facebook and twitter is next to impossible (perhaps illegal as well). It took some maneuvering to even be on tumblr.
Nine days into 2012 and a day before entering into a new age group is an opportune time to nail down some New Year's resolutions. 2011 was a good year, one that filled with transitions and norming -- be it moving from California to Charlotte, from being a student back to an architect, or starting fresh in a new territory to establishing roots and relationships. My new running and swimming communities had made the transition easy and welcoming, and partly because of that, much of my attention in the past year was on either sports, like running my first 50k and participating in my first swim meet. Having just graduated from seminary was probably the other half of the reason why I had been keeping a distance from structured studies / reading in 2011. With that said, my 2012 focus will be on balanced growth. While I still have a long list of goals in swimming and running, I need to make sure I allocate enough time and attention to spiritual and intellectual grow...
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