the physicist's witness

And the Reubenites and the Gadites gave the altar this name: A Witness Between Us that the LORD is God. -- Joshua 22: 34 (read here)


this was my poster during the recently concluded 24th Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas (SPP) conference held in Davao, Philippines. it is a testament to how blessed i am, research-wise :)

• the artistic and oh-so-appropriate background came from Mr. GB, who gave it for my MS Physics thesis defense last summer. lots of information propagation in action!
  
• i saw this cool font (Japanese brush) while borrowing a school laptop. the personal handwritten-like style is again appropriate.
• i already had an existing presentation last week, so i already had the cute colorful pictures as well as the organization of what i'll discuss.
• the results were just a more organized, cleaner version of my thesis. i have been working hard to submit a paper to SPP for the past two years, and i was more frustrated because i kept thinking...well, God, i have You in my life *now*, so how come i can't even do the things i *used* to do? shouldn't i be doing *more* than i used to?...come third year of being a Christian in graduate school, and everything suddenly became effortless. lesson 1: it's not about me. lesson 2: it's about God's sovereignty (He is in control); it's NOT a formula or ritual that i'll do to twist His arm to make Him do something for me. lesson 3: the cliche "He has a reason and a purpose for all of this" is a cliche because many people have found this out to be true. my past mental blocks and fruitless research work led me to stop relying on myself (putting in effort does not necessarily lead to results) and enabled me to hear Him clearly when He finally said, "Write for Me." :)
  
• i was able to rush doing this (ok, i shouldn't cram, but thankfully God enables me to do so) and have it printed in less than 24 hours before my flight to Davao (though i later found out i could also have it printed there, hehe, but see next two items)
• because i wanted to have this printed last Tuesday, a national holiday (Ramadan or Eidl Fitr for our Muslim brothers and sisters), the low-cost shops were closed. (i later found out someone was able to convince said low-cost shop to print her poster, and spent only half of what i did.) so i went to expectedly-expensive mall and everyone was pointing me to a store whose rates were twice to thrice what i had in my pocket (no more money in my atm either). and so, i ended up calling out to God in my thoughts...help!...someone directed me to a store i've never heard before, (seemingly) small, tucked among the bowling alleys and arcades in the mall annex. surprise 1: the store was large and turned out to be "decent"/respectable. surprise 2: their rates were double the low-cost shops' (which were closed anyway), but as low as one-fifth the cost of the expensive shop. surprise 3: i could get it after they had lunch --- oh sure sirs, take your time, i wanted to have lunch too! (hey, i still have money to actually eat lunch!) praise God!
• everybody in physics said i should print on tarpaulin, it was the cheapest and it lasts longer. but in the expectedly-expensive mall they needed one week to print on tarp. (that means i could get my poster three days from today as i write this. cross out that option.) so i opted for the (slightly) more expensive photo paper, since i plan on keeping the poster and i might as well get the best quality (for my pocket). guess what: during the poster session yesterday, it caught the most attention! :D since everybody did print on tarp or paper. once again, when the choice was out of my hands, God is reminding me that He is always in control, and that His ways are best, and that He wants to bless me (if only i let Him more often!).

counting our blessings is very comforting...but also time-consuming! :D i mean, where will we stop right? i'll stop here, but really, we know there are so much more blessings than this poster can attest to :)