You know you're officially a Stanford alum when...

You get your first call from The Stanford Fund asking for your donation.

I just got mine tonight and was absolutely thrilled. I totally declined the poor, persistent freshman from the women's rugby team, but still enjoyed a great conversation as she tried lowering the donation amount from $100 to $50 to $20 and finally to a bargain basement $10 with corporate matching. They've taught her well.

I remember the fairly recent days when I hand wrote letters to donors, thanking them for their contribution to The Stanford Fund. Thanking them because their generous donation made it possible for students like me to enjoy wonderful and unique opportunities at a world-class institution. And thanking them because whichever student group I represented at the time effectively received a cut of their donation. What was it, $12.50 for each letter that passed QA? Oh, those good ol' days of hand cramps, misspelled names, ink smudges, tears of frustration at 3am, and parchment-colored correction fluid.

Someday I will make a large donation to TSF just so that I can receive my very own perfectly handwritten thank you letter, the nearly-unique content of which will be seen by only seven other donors in the world. And only then shall I complete my part in the money laundering circle of fun.

Choir Nerd

Today is Easter, a celebration of the most significant person and event in the history of the Christian church, and I gotta say, Mars Hill Church sure knows how to celebrate.

This weekend was also the culmination of two months of rehearsals with the Mars Hill choir. On Good Friday, we sang "Lacrimosa" from the Mozart Requiem. It's a great piece that isn't hard for a classically-trained choir (most of us have sung the piece at some point in the past). So our singing on Good Friday went by without a hitch. Well, with just one exception. That was when a fog machine started generating smoke a little earlier than any of us expected, blowing the stuff right into our singing faces. It's a good thing we were behind an opaque scrim, or else people would've seen me trying painfully not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation. All this, while we sang about a day of weeping. But, anyway, Friday was Good.

Then there was our repertoire for Easter Sunday. We got asked to sing gospel-style backup for Mars Hill's resident funk band, The Brothers of the Empty Tomb. Now that was interesting. You must understand, there is not a single black person in our choir. In an earlier rehearsal, our director even did an impression of Kip Dynamite (brother of Napoleon) singing "I love technology"...as her impression of us. Sad. But, thank God for blessing The BET with an awesome lead singer and a world class guitarist (you can read about them on pages 6 and 19 here). With their energy and skill, it wasn't hard to get into the music today and actually move with it! It was awesome and fun.

So, yeah, Mars Hill is still working on diversity. In fact, look here:

Behold the diversity at Mars Hill.

Three of the basses got together for a picture today. Together we account for almost half the population of Asian-Americans at Mars.