Tony Chung: Creative Communications

I was tagged on Facebook with this meme by at least three people. Fortunately nobody sent it by email because I totally hate spam. Not one to follow the crowd, I chose to ignore it and just let it die. But then I got the inspired to turn this excessive waste of Internet bandwidth into something constructive and inspiring—something that I hope will start a world-changing revolution.

Here is my list of 25 things that you need to know about me, with thanks to Pastor David Koop, who, over ten years ago, first introduced me to “Who I Am”, scripture-based affirmations of our true identity.

The Bible predates me, so I can’t claim any any copyright to this list. Feel free to share this list with anyone, print a copy to read daily, or post it on your own blog. Better still, compile your own list of affirmations based on what God shows you about you. In my introduction I said this list is endless—after all, it’s eternal! For example, here’s a version of Who I Am from Joyce Meyers’ website, with links to confessions, prayers, and additional scripture references “for a sound mind”.

When I saw The Other Coast (image) comic strip in the paper this morning, I had to laugh. So much of today’s communications media: phone, text/SMS/MMS, email, TV, online publishing—are only available as long as there is enough storage to keep them. The Way-Back Machine on the Internet Archive helped me recover my Tablet PC Blogs posts in a jam, but if all the hard drives in the universe were full, what would have happened then?

In contrast to my post about what happens on the Internet living forever, I present the alternative view. My friend Wayne Radford, the self-proclaimed “King of Poco”, put this bug in my ear over lunch one rainy afternoon. The short version is that our online publishing efforts, though wide reaching, are only temporal.

Between new years day and Chinese new year my grandmother, and great-grandmother to my children, passed away at the age of 92. We admitted her into the hospital on new years day because she had stopped eating. She died peacefully in her sleep only one day before we would have celebrated Chinese New Year. We’re going to miss her.

At the “Celebration of Life” service we held in her memory, Rev. Terry Shea opened with a poem by Linda Ellis, to remind us that while our date of birth and date of death appear on our gravestones, it is more important to consider how we spend the years in “the dash” between those dates. I first heard “the dash” several years ago when Wayne Myers, an elderly missionary to Mexico, spoke as a guest at Coastal Church in Vancouver. The message within those 36 lines was appropriate for the occasion; I later spoke about my memories of life with Grandma Rose, packaged as “some things death teaches us about life”.

This is a recap of those thoughts, but not exactly as I presented them.

My younger son doesn’t have as many Transformer toys as his older brother. Because of this, he felt inclined to create his own Transformer model. This toy is so colourful, so powerful, uses every weapon and can transform into any vehicle mode.

Note to Hasbro: I am negotiating contract offers for this five-year-old toy designer, and his seven-year-old technical communicator brother. My contact information is below. Child labour is legal where I come from. LOL!

Wow. Just about all I could say was “Wow.” My seven-year-old son gave me an awesome Christmas present that he packaged himself. Not only did he give me my favourite Transformer, Sunstreaker, who looks a lot like a Lambourghini or Ferrari Testarossa (I don’t know the difference), but he drew packaging to replicate the same logos that store-bought toys have.

Readers of my RSS feed may want to visit my site to see the pictures.

Our home played host to these shape-shifting robots from Cybertron all through 2008. This morning, as my boys battled over whose drawing of the Autobot symbol was most correct, I cooled their overheating servos by sketching my version of an Autobot symbol with a Santa hat. Naturally, I had to quickly fashion a picture to post on the web.

One of my sons’ favourite shows right now is a Land Before Time episode, “The Great Long Neck Migration”. In the movie, the dinosaurs embark on a journey to find a new feeding ground, based on a sleep story (dream), or vision. Along the way, they meet other long neck dinosaurs, one of these being Little Foot’s long-lost father.

My youngest son is especially touched because Little Foot sings a song about how daddies are so great. He always wants me to watch this film with him, cuddled under a blanket. Oh for these days to last forever!