(Update 01-23-13) This morning I talked to my daughter school director about this. He is older and wiser (like my uncle). We talked various topics from teaching kids to the new town incident, and yesterday’s incident. His thought was some people will do anything for fame (name recognition). I agree. The best way is probably just ignore those people, while get prepared by ourselves. Pray a bit for us and for them. Don’t lose cool.
(Original 01-22-13) It was quite eventual day today, as the place I worked has some protest, and at one point, the fire alarm went off (turned out to be false alarm, trigged by the saw cutting the chain of protesters). To be honest, I had a lot emotions today, from the initial surprise, to excitement (as some protesters doing some singing and chanting downstairs), to angry (why did they invade my work place, and disrupt my work, my co-workers and all the other tenants’ work), to more angry as I saw pregnant woman also had to came out in this cold due to false alarm. By the way, she took it better than me as she joked she could use the ambulance on the site if she delivers. I talked to my wife and one of my daughter’s teacher about this (as I was picking up Serenity after work).
Now as I read a bit more on protesters’ background, and our daughter Serenity goes to bed, I do the normal prayer, I think forgiving is the right approach. I was very much blessed with my parents, my siblings and my relatives, friends, teachers, co-workers in my upbringing, from growing up in a rural village in Ningbo (Zhejiang, southeast China), attending Zhenhai Middle School (a top high school in Zhejiang province and in China), doing the farm work while in summer, and seeing the rapid opening and development of China (esp. costal) in 1980s and 1990s. I also was very fortunate attending Huazhong University of Science and Technology, a leading engineering school in China, then University of Missouri at Rolla (a leading engineering school here). Again the people I met in both places are just amazing.
Work-wise I was very fortunate worked for 8 years at Unigraphics Solutions (EDS PLM Solutions, UGS, Siemens PLM Software), and worked with some of the brightest and nicest software developers in the country. Not to mention the change brought on by my wife and my daughter in recent years.
The protesters have quote diverse background, I saw one WV native (I would not give the link here, don’t want to give them free publicity), who has spent some time in Rwanda and Haiti. And I saw one of his comments on today’s protest on facebook, which is quite offensive word in English (again I won’t elaborate).
My thinking is: if I do this “tooth for tooth” thing on my mind, it won’t be good for myself and basically I fell trop into those guys’ scheme. So, I would simply forgive them and pray for them.
http://fox2now.com/2013/01/22/protesters-chain-themselves-together-inside-arch-coal/
http://kplr11.com/2013/01/22/protesters-chain-themselves-together-inside-arch-coal/