Nokia, old friend, you will be sorely missed.

Normally I won't have much things to share, but today is not any normal day. It is death of once unrivalled king, how the mighty has fallen.

Many people will simply roll their eyes when I express my melancholy, and I don't really want to explain to those who are uninterested. But I will explain it here for who want to know and for my own future reference.

I grew up with Nokia. My first phone, humble Nokia 3100 with its glow-in-the-dark chassis, 4096 colour screen, polyphonic ringtone. It is the phone I used the least, with basically no feature other than making a call and SMS. Yet, now, 10 years later, it is still usable as a backup phone. How many phone can boast the ability of making call and SMS 10 years later?

My second phone, Nokia 5500, is the most short-lived in my history of phones, with its 2 years lifespan. Short as it is, it lived gloriously. I still remember spending my free time snuggling in bed, squinting my eyes to read tiny, tiny text on 2 inch screen. Oh, it was annoying to use, so full of weaknesses and compromise. The rubber that made the keypad fall off after not even 1 year of use. But yet, it is the phone that teach me the wonder of technology. The one who make me fall in love with my second love, technology. A phone that shape a big part of me. It is the most short-lived phone, the one with most problem, the most unreliable one, the ugliest one even. But yet, the one who has greatest impact of my life.

My 3rd phone, Nokia E63. The one I am still using 4 years later, which is now. It is so severely outdated and I question myself everyday as tech enthusiast, why I still use this phone that is barely usable even as feature phone? But yet, I love this thing, this baby, this power horse. I will probably going to change my phone soon and very soon, yet every time I use it, it is still bring a sense of joy, of wonder. How can this baby works so well even after 4 years of (ab)use is a mystery that may never be solved. In recent light of thing, I guess this will be my last Nokia smartphone, or even my last Nokia.

 

Nokia as smartphone maker is dead. Anybody who followed technology closely enough will mourn. Websites beginning to pour the stories in droves, Twitter is crowded with all grieving, speculation and questions. It is so befitting I guess; a tribute to the once King, to the one we all still loved despite everything.

Me, I feel that I lost an old and dear friend. I believe not only me feel that. Nokia, you truly change the life of millions and billions people in the world. I will never forget your motto: "Connecting people.". You did, to the rich and the poor.  You make technology affordable, reachable even to those unprivileged.

You will be sorely missed.

Prayer

God, help me to remember.  Your love, Your goodness, Your mighty hands. Remember that when I have You, I have more than I could ever needed. If Your grace is a minuscule droplet of water, I will have been drowned.

Teach me to be humble. So I may remember I am but dust; here today, gone tomorrow.  A flicker of flash (and not even a bright one at that) in the short history of humanity, not even a tiny dot in an unimaginably vast universe.

And as I look up to You, You are always there. Carry me as I soar with You, be joyful beside me as I run, hold my hands as I struggle to walk and not faint.

Imitate is such a Lost Art

If there is one wisdom I have acquired by learning programming with the mixture of self-taught and asking help, it is this: The fastest and probably easiest way to learn is to copy. And what I mean by copy is: to blatantly and shamelessly rip-off anybody, doesn’t matter whoever he is, as long as there is learning. And when you learn enough, go forth and shamelessly copy from someone better, so on and so forth, failing and rising, mixing and matching until you can have style you can call as your own. That is where true innovation begins, as there is nothing new to innovate anymore: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

And it suddenly hit me this is what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 11:1 when he says: Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. That if you want a fast growth in being Christ-like, please imitate him. Do the things he do, pick up the habit he shows, think the way he think. Or at least that’s what I interpret from a sentence written by someone dead over two thousand years ago, with a completely different education and cultural background.

What does this mean? I am not sure. Don’t be afraid to imitate anything that is good. Continue to learn from anybody you can learn from. With Bible as the foundation and Spirit as the guide, we won’t stray off so much, right? At least I think so.

May we grow to be more and more Christ-like. Amen.

The Falls. The Rises.

Hey, yo. It’s been a long time; and though I promise myself no more sentimental post, I can feel the gate is opening and wave rushing in. There are two options: to ignore or to ride the wave for what it worth. And since I’ve decided to ignore for so long—far too damn long, so what the heck. Here I am, whether you (or me) like it or not.

Christian journey of faith is not always fun. I haven’t really been able to come to term to when people said ‘I have faith this would happen.’ When it did happen, it is taken as miracle; but when it didn’t, they give the equivalent mental shrug of ‘Well, God does thing in His mysterious way.’ It is almost painful (and envious I guess) to see blind faith at the finest.

And there are times—too many times—that we will fall. There are not many things that is more painful than seeing the careful effort you put being erased in that glorious fall. The slowdowns is annoying.

But falling is just another reminder how human we can be. And it’s alright, we are human afterall: made of flesh, made of blood. And while sitting on the proverbial ground waiting for the pain to subside, things can look much clearer in different perspective. Not necessarily brighter, just clearer.

Getting up is another interesting process. As comfy the ground is for a while, there will be time to move on. And the process will remind us again why it is worth it to spend effort to stand up and walk.

And fall that we may, we will rise up stronger. For if God is for us, it doesn’t matter who is against us.

N.B.
Feel free to change the ‘we’ to ‘I’ if you disagree. I always hate to write in first-person. So that’s what you got. Heh.