禁食：灵魂的力量

Today I am very grateful for the ability I have to endure and persist in doing things until they are finished, even when I'm tired and don't feel like making an effort.  I have so many things on my plate in the next few weeks: my piano literature binder, my Prokofiev paper, my piano major listening and book report, my 490 report and presentation, and my paper for Dr. Jaccard's class, among other things.  And yet, even with all these things to do, I feel a quiet optimism and know that I will be able to accomplish everything on my list. I know this is a gift that not everyone possesses, and I'm very thankful that it has been given to me.  So, even though I will be very busy over the next few weeks, I won't be overwhelmed.

English title: Fasting: spiritual strength

表演

My recital is over!  I feel like a part of me has died, or maybe been preserved in petrified wood, to be glanced at later when I pull my recital CD off my shelf.

Today I am grateful for the blessings of self-confidence and humility.  For various reasons, I've never considered myself a very good piano performance major.  Despite how well I do in my classes and my abilities as a performer and accompanist, I have always doubted myself.  Over the past few months, however, these feelings have come to me much less frequently.  After my sophomore and junior recitals, I felt that I hadn't met up to my own expectations and wasn't on par with other piano majors.  However, although I know I made plenty of mistakes tonight, I am satisfied with my performance and know that it was solid, musical, and even excellent.  I'm grateful for the gift of being able to evaluate my abilities objectively.  This, oddly enough, shows humility and self-confidence at the same time, both gifts from God that I did not possess naturally.

I am also grateful again for a wonderful family and network of friends.  My uncle Paul estimated that my family had traveled about 40,000 miles in total to attend my recital.  I have the best family in the world!

English title: Performance

感恩：来自天堂的祝福

I haven't written an entry for a good seven months now, but better late than never, right?

My roommate Jaren has been keeping a gratitude journal in the form of a blog since December; I read a few of the posts previously, but just now I went through and read each one, contemplating what changes might occur in my life if I do likewise.  I felt such a sense of peace as I read, and that, along with many other promptings over the past few weeks, have led me back to my blog.  This will continue to serve as an ordinary journal, but more importantly it will be my gratitude journal, a tangible reminder of the Spirit working in my life as I recognize the Lord's hand in small things.

To start, I've had a few things to write about over the past little while, so let me get those out.  In no particular order, the first happened last Thursday, Saint Patrick's Day.  I was running late, and as I rushed out the door, I knew there was no way I would make it to my Piano Literature class on time.  This disappointed me, as there are only eight students in the class and I invest more of myself into it than other classes I have taken.  However, as I hurried up 700 East, a car pulled over on the right and the guy inside beckoned me over.  I don't know if it was because I was wearing all green in honor of the holiday, or if he just felt particularly charitable.  We talked for about two minutes; I discovered that his name is Steven and he's from Colorado.  He dropped me off at the Sinclair gas station, and the four or so minutes saved allowed me to be on time for class.  I was very grateful for his kindness; just today I discovered a similar entry in Jaren's blog, so obviously Steven has performed this service more than once.  What a wonderful way to start off someone else's day!

My senior recital is tomorrow afternoon.  As it approaches, I am reminded of the many incredible gifts I have been given.  Above all, I have an amazingly supportive family and group of friends.  I have several relatives flying in, and they show me by their love the Christlike way to act towards others.  My bishop turned my recital into a ward activity(!), so he and others will be helping my sister Hannah out with the refreshments afterward.  He is so eager for the ward to come together and serve each other, and I'm grateful for his support.  I'm thankful for my talents.  I still don't know if I'll ever use my musical talents in a professional capacity, but I know I have been given them to bless the lives of others, whether through playing the piano in church or performing beautiful music inspired by the Spirit in other venues.

There are so many other things I could mention, but these are what I am grateful for today.  I'm thankful to have started my blog anew, and I hope it will have a meaningful impact on my life.

English title: Thankfulness: A blessing from heaven

泰國？ 能吃辣的！

It's been a while, but that tends to happen during times of transition.  Once again, I have made the yearly migration back to my ancestral home, Asia.  It is an arduously long journey, with pitfalls and dangers lurking on every hand, but the McKinley will admit no defeat as he makes his way home.  Just as the wild salmon valiantly hurls itself up the roaring flood, so does the McKinley battle every obstacle with fierce determination, until finally he rests.

So it wasn't quite that dramatic, but I got up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a 6 am flight (delayed to 7) to Chicago, followed by a five hour layover, a fourteen hour flight to Hong Kong, a four hour layover, and a three and a half hour flight to Phuket, where I arrived around midnight on the following day.  Blearrggh!  I'm back in Kuala Lumpur with the family right now, but this post will be strictly about Phuket.  The picture above is Hong Kong as we landed.

Phuket, Thailand's largest island, is an amazing place.  It's located in the Andaman Sea, off the west coast of Thailand, where the water is perpetually warm and azure.  We've been there as a family four or five times now, and I like it a lot better than Bali or Hawaii (the two other comparable places I've been).  The people are extremely nice, and the food is to die for.  Freshest seafood ever, huge prawns (gigantic shrimp, usually anywhere from five to eight inches long), etc etc.  It's similar to Chinese, but a lot fresher and less heavy.  And still very cheap!

My favorite day was coincidentally the one with the best weather.  Unlike last year, most of the days it rained a little, though there was always some sun, but on the day we booked a trip to the Phi Phi Islands the weather was gorgeous!  We took a speed boat for 45 minutes to the smaller island, swam around in a cool little inlet, then boated around the island and went snorkeling/swimming/monkey watching/sightseeing/frolicking.  Lunch was on the large island, then we stopped by another island on the way back for more swimming.  The water on the way there was full of thousands upon thousands of pink jellyfish!  But I only saw a couple of them while swimming.  The coolest fish I saw were the rainbow wrasse, all iridescent purple and blue and green and orange.  Rather than explain any more, here are some pictures:

From the top, this is the first island as we were about to arrive, my favorite picture of the little inlet where we swam first, one of the monkeys we threw fruit to (they were remarkably good at catching, even with the little baby monkeys hanging on their stomachs), and our boat while we were stopped for lunch.  I got a nasty sunburn on my back, but it was worth it!

Some other random pictures from Phuket:

After a week of swimming, surfing, eating great food, snorkeling, biking, and lazing by the pool, I can safely say that Phuket is one of my favorite places on earth!

English title: Thailand?  Can eat spicy!

我的祖先的心可能很感动。。。

Hi there!

So it's been over a week since my last ramblings.  The most exciting thing that happened in that week was our tornado on Saturday night!  Saturday was on the whole pretty normal; the kids went to Maple Grove Days and got lots of free stuff, I slept in and ran a few errands, and we were going to go to the fireworks show at 10 pm.  Around 7:45, however, the tornado alarms started going off.  I had no idea these even existed until that point, but now I'm a believer.  Everyone headed downstairs; I grabbed my computer and a few other things to do and followed suit after a minute of not grasping the seriousness of the situation.

Once downstairs, we turned on our emergency radio only to hear that there were in fact two tornadoes that had been sighted, both within a few miles of us.  The Twins game had just finished, and thousands of people were just leaving the stadium.  That probably worried me more than our situation.  Madison, Chelsey, and I continued with our card game (Spaced Out, a classic that Chelsey found at D.I. for $1.50), Uncle Matt listened to the radio, and we waited.

Thankfully, the storm blew over and the warning lifted after about half an hour.  It was intense while it lasted, though.  Afterwards, Chelsey, Madison, and I went outside and took pictures and splashed in the puddles; huge streaks of lightning were still flashing horizontally across the sky and completely lighting it up.  When we first came up, the sky was a strange dark orange; the sun hadn't set yet.  In the park, we saw amazing oranges and pinks and yellows and blues with the sunset, and the clouds were all kinds of colors.  Bizarre yet beautiful.

Sunday was my last one here; I'll be sad to go.  I've really enjoyed my time here, especially being in a really good ward.  I was corralled into playing a musical number in sacrament meeting, so I played an arrangement of "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go" and "The Army of Helaman" that I started writing last Sunday.  I started it before they asked me to play, but I knew it was coming, so I headed them off at the pass and volunteered instead.

Today I got in the mood for family history, so I researched some of my ancestors and learned things that I had either forgotten or never knew, which was fascinating.  I wish I had my own personal book with a chapter about each of my ancestors; I guess I'll have to make it myself!  One that I read about today was my great-great-great grandfather, Christian Daniel Fjeldsted, who joined the church in Denmark and moved to Utah, returning five times to serve missions for a total of seventeen years, serving as mission president three times.  He was also one of the original Presidents of the Seventy.  I also learned that a great-great-great-great grandfather was a sharpshooter under the Duke of Wellington and fought at Waterloo.  He also played the french horn, violin, and bugle, apparently very well.

I haven't posted my itinerary for the next few weeks yet, so here goes!  This Saturday I leave for Phuket, Thailand.  I leave here at 6 in the morning on Saturday (blecchh...) and finally arrive (after four connecting flights) in Phuket close to midnight on Sunday night.  My family and I will be there for a week, then returning to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  I'll be there for a little over a week, and then Hannah and I are going to Cambodia (2 days), India (Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra, 6 days), and Guilin, China (4 days), followed by a flight to Minneapolis and the drive back to Provo!  If it sounds grueling, it probably will be.  I don't care about that, though; I'm so excited!  I've never been to Cambodia, India, or Guilin, and I can't wait to go to China for the first time in probably ten years.  I saw a Taiwanese family at a restaurant eating lunch yesterday, and talking to them made my day.

I definitely won't spend much time on my blog while I'm gallivanting about, but I'll write at least one post on each place I go.

English title: The hearts of my ancestors may be very moved...

對照教會跟公司

As I headed down to lunch, I had an interesting idea, namely to compare the church (that is, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) with Medtronic (that is, the company I work for this summer).  I have a feeling they're about the same in size, although comparing churches with multinational medical device companies isn't exactly apples to apples.  Thus, I will need to make some interesting assumptions.  Having somewhat intimate information about Medtronic's finances due to working in the treasury, I will rely on the company website and Wikipedia so as not to say anything I shouldn't.

Let's start with size: Medtronic has 41,000 employees.  I wasn't expecting to find employee information for the church, but lo and behold the church has a LinkedIn profile!  It states the 'corporation' has approximately 10,000 employees.  However, the church also has over 28,000 congregations, each with leadership that spends many, many hours each week volunteering to meet the needs of members, along with nearly 52,000 missionaries, so round one goes to the church!  Other estimates of size: Medtronic operates in over 120 countries, while the church operates in 176 nations/territories.  Medtronic has more than 250 manufacturing facilities, sales offices, research centers, education centers, and administration facilities, while the church has 131 operating temples (it seemed the most straightforward comparison between large functional buildings, although the church also has universities, office buildings, and thousands of chapels as well).  In terms of people benefited, Medtronic serves about 7 million patients yearly, while the church has nearly 14 million members.  It could be argued that each family member of a Medtronic patient benefits, however, so it's not clear from the numbers alone which is the larger impact.  However, the church's humanitarian aid programs benefit millions more, so once again this probably goes to the church.

How about in dollar terms?  This one is tricky: Medtronic is a publicly owned company and as such reports on such things, but the church is a bit more closely held.  However, there was an article in Time magazine not too long ago that attempted to grasp the big picture.  So we'll lift some information from it.  As of April 2010, Medtronic reported total assets of slightly more than $28 billion.  The Time article from 1996 estimated the church's assets as over $30 billion, although the church said they were grossly overestimating.  The church had a point - much of that would be in the form of buildings, especially chapels, that likely would never sell on the market for what they cost to build.  Nevertheless, they are comparable, and the church data is nearly 15 years old.  What about revenue?  Time estimated (emphasis on estimated) that the church took in $5.9 billion a year ca 1996, while Medtronic's revenue for 1996 was about $2.5 billion.  Today, Medtronic's revenue is nearly $16 billion, and the church has not tripled in membership since 1996, so Medtronic may have passed it up in revenue.

Well, hmm.  That's a whole lot of useless information.  Interesting, though.

English title: Comparing the church and the company

騎死了！

New Format: For all four of you who read this blog, what do you think of the new format?  Do you like it?  Prefer it to the old one?  I used one of the new templates Blogger provided, although sadly it's not nearly as customizable as I had hoped, especially considering their touting this in the introduction as a big step in personalization.  For example, you have to choose from one of the stock photographs for your background, rather than uploading one of your own.

And now for the engaging, witty tidbits from my life that you have grown to love over the short time we've been together.  Or hate, although I doubt you would still be here if that were the case.  Either way, today's monologue begins last Friday.  It was a drab and dreary day in the office, although bright and cheery without, high in the mid-80's, sunny, breezy, and replete with all the makings of a gorgeous summer day.  The treasury group started the day already down two people, who had previously succumbed to erstwhile fantasies of the Bahamian beach, or possibly just the backyard barbecue.  Another coworker left shortly after lunch for a weekend in Chicago.  Business or pleasure?  Why, pleasure, of course.  By the time 1:00 rolled around, the ravages of a midsummer weekend were all too evident, and I, even I, gave in to temptation.  Actually, I had a meeting at another building at 1:00, and I had a sum total of nothing to do when (if) I got back, so I let my boss (one of the brave few who struggled through the afternoon) know (he was very supportive of my lax ways) (rather a lot of parenthetical asides, eh?) and left for home after the aforementioned meeting.

Upon arriving at said domicile, I decided (entirely within the bounds of reason, you would no doubt believe) to make the most of the beautiful July day by going on a bike ride.  There are three lovely lakes a short distance from downtown Minneapolis, and those were my ostensible targets, although I never actually fixed a permanent destination in my mind.  My estimated trip time was approximately three hours, an hour and a half there and back, looping around each of the lakes.  *Spoiler alert: I wouldn't have included the initial estimate if it wasn't far wrong!  More spoilers: I didn't take my wallet (who would need to on a couple hour bike ride?) or a granola bar (I thought of it, though).  I did, however, take a trail map of the Twin Cities and my iPhone (with accompanying GPS and music, of course).  The first hour was pleasant.  I had already biked these trails, and the rousing chords of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto accompanied me for a ways, followed by the violin concerto of the composer of the same name (who also happens to be the same composer).  Following this, I came to new paths that afforded more views of the delightful Minnesota countryside.  One of the side benefits of being here for the summer.  I came to Medicine Lake and followed its shore for a couple miles, and I finally reached Cedar Lake, the first of the three downtown lakes.

Whereupon followed tactical error number one: it had taken me slightly over an hour and a half to reach the first of the lakes, let alone bike around them and head back, and yet after I refilled my water bottle at a drinking fountain I felt poised to achieve yet greater heights.  And thus I reasoned that I could cut down on time by skipping the lakes and going straight downtown (only five more miles), then heading back up home by another route, at the same time biking along the Mississippi and experiencing downtown from a bike!  Brilliant.

The actual ride to downtown was very nice, mostly flat and tree-lined, optimistically designed for the bicycle commuter.  Cynicism aside, I would belong to this privileged class in a heartbeat, circumstances allowing.  Nevertheless, the trail was wide and accommodating, and downtown was mostly positive from a cyclist's perspective.  There were many bike lanes, and cars were respectful of me and the many other bikers out and about.  After muddling around for a little while (and realizing the folly of having left my wallet at home), I made my way to the Mississippi and biked up it, finally ending at my self-styled halfway point, Nicollet Island.  At this point I stopped to lie on the grass and contemplate the situation in which I found myself.  It was 5:30.  I had left home sometime between 2:30 and 2:45.  That meant I had been biking for almost three hours, and home was at least that far away, probably longer as I wasn't as fresh.  And I was starting to get hungry.  A far cry from the three-hour-back-in-time-for-dinner ride with which I began!

In dire straits such as these, however, my perpetual motto remains, "Chin up!"  And so I proceeded to lie there for 15 minutes with my head back and my chin towards the sky.  Following that, I began the long haul home.  About 45 minutes into this ride (approaching Cedar Lake once more), my legs, unaccustomed to such continual heavy use, gave out and I stopped to refill my water bottle and give quarter to my unrelenting legs.  Cramps don't even begin to describe my thighs!  After ten minutes of sitting there and briefly considering asking people at the park for a ride home, I told my legs who was boss and carried on.  Twice more on the return journey I likewise disembarked, but each time I was spurred on, partly by my Jazz History playlist (thank you, Dr. Harker!).  The last time this happened was around 8:00, nearly back to the trails I had traversed before and about an hour from home.  As I lay there faint with hunger (not a bite to eat since lunch around 11:30, remember, and this after over 5 hours of riding) and with aching legs, I wished for the Totoro cat bus (if you've seen the movie) to carry me home.  Nevertheless, I got back on my bike and was determined to remain there until I fell over or arrived home, whichever came first.  There were at least two prayers offered in my heart as well.  The last twenty minutes were actually easier than much of the rest of the ride, possibly because my legs were finally resigned to their fate of forever pumping up and down.  Or because my prayers were answered (they definitely were).  Anyway, I got home around 9:15 and pretty much collapsed in a chair and then decided to eat dinner.  Matt and Chaune were on a date and Madison was at a sleepover, Christian was asleep, and the other two were gone, so it was me and the dogs.  They got back from the date and went to bed, and I sat on the couch in a stupor.  About 12:30 I woke up, having fallen asleep in a most awkward position, and took a shower (not surprisingly I was pretty pungent) then went to bed.  Surprisingly, I wasn't sore the next day, despite being nearly crippled afterwards.

So, a six and a half hour ride on low fuel.  I refilled my large water bottle four times and downed it all (maybe a gallon) without ever using a bathroom, which means I must have sweat out a considerable portion of it.  It wasn't as bad as I've been making it out to be, though; my derriere isn't even sore.  Maybe I'll do it again this Saturday!

English title: Death by biking!