Tony Chung: Creative Communications

Last weekend I took my family on a trip to visit my friend Caleb who pastors a church in Port Alice, a village in North Vancouver Island. Along the drive up the coast I had a lot of time to think. My kids slept in the back seats, and my wife focused her eyes on the unexpected conditions of the road ahead as we joked about how dark it was. Then the thought hit me to pray for all my single friends, who drive this road alone or with friends, and don’t experience the unspeakable joy that comes with being (in my case) a husband and father.

I prayed for my friends that God would provide for them a suitable help-meet who would offer to water their camels. That picture stuck with me, and now I can’t get the idea out of my head. I shared my prayer with Caleb, who in turn brought the topic up when we went out for coffee with his friends. After explaining the idea to this group of young married couples, Caleb has taken off on the idea and I’m finding comments in his friends’ Facebook sites and everything. This is going viral!

If you’re really daring, please visit Caleb’s blog, The Almost Weekly Report and leave a comment that says that you are excited for the work he’s doing at Ocean View Church in Port Alice and that you prayed for him to find a wife who is willing to water his camels, and he willing to water hers.

Almost Weekly Report: that about sums it up

In my next few posts I plan to expand on this idea in the hopes of eventually writing a book out out of it. I will provide links to different resources on marriage and family relationships that I have found especially helpful.

Continue reading: Water my camels and I’ll water yours

No Comments »

tonychung.ca blog design circa 2007 to 2009

It’s already June. I haven’t redesigned this site yet. At the time of writing it still uses the original theme I installed back in 2007. At the same time, I have also developed ideas for several blog entries that I believe many will find helpful to reconcile issues of life, faith, and vocation. I’ve started 26 draft posts and have a handwritten journal for two more. I’ll be completing these draft posts over time, so bear with me. Right now there is too much life to live to be able to dedicate any time to this blog.

Continue reading: Revelation doesn’t pay the bills

8 Comments »

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.

Continue reading: Internet—forever but not permanent

5 Comments »

The Tony Macchiato ~ AKA the Triple Venti Peppermint Soy Caramel Drizzle Macchiato Style Latte

As the new year rolled around I thought I would stop drinking coffee, or rather, espresso—more specifically, my Triple Venti Peppermint Soy Caramel Drizzle Macchiato-style Latte, which I want to officially label as the Tony Macchiato. I first stumbled onto this drink the morning after my wife and I celebrated Christmas 2007 with the staff from a previous employer at a hotel in downtown Vancouver.

Starting from its humble beginnings as merely a Caramel Macchiato with peppermint syrup instead of vanilla, the drink evolved over the last year and a bit into its current incarnation. I have my barista friends, and even Starbucks itself, to thank for that.

Continue reading: Tony Macchiato from Starbucks FTW!

3 Comments »

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.

Continue reading: Some things death teaches us about life

3 Comments »

I love Joel Stein. In his article that concludes peanut allergies are an issue only in rich, lefty communities, he compares a recent medical report to a short story he wrote years ago about a severe allergy epidemic that crippled the future until it was discovered the symptoms were psychosomatic. Funny that he didn’t show it to anyone, because he usually says the very thing on everyone’s mind that they wouldn’t dare say in public. I myself have often wondered why in recent years it appears that everyone and their dog can be allergic to peanuts.

Continue reading: Don’t make your allergies my problem

2 Comments »

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!

Continue reading: Toy designer for hire

No Comments »