Mister At Misis

An exhibit of some sort caught my attention as I passed through the Shin-Maru Building on my way home from work the other day. I decided to look closer and found out that it was an exhibition of children’s enikki or illustrated diaries. What’s more interesting is that it featured works of children from Asian countries including the Philippines.

Whenever our Christian community in Tokyo holds special events for sharing our faith to friends and other guests, we usually have socials afterwards wherein food and beverages prepared voluntarily by community members are served.

"The growth of the Iglesia has not only led to an improvement of the quality of life of its millions of members. As a social institution, it has proven its commitment to national development, unity, and spiritual growth. The Iglesia ni Cristo has become an integral part of the history and progress of the country."

When something like the recent earthquake in Japan inflicts destruction and suffering on unsuspecting people, perhaps the most immediate question that comes to our mind is “Why?”

Why did so many people have to suffer?

For theists or those who believe in an all-powerful and all-loving God, the more disturbing question is, “Why did God allow this to happen?”  A favorite among atheists and skeptics, this question can be converted to form a philosophical argument called the Problem of Evil.  That is, it seems unbelievable that if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, He would permit evil and suffering to exist in this world.  As one  famous philosopher puts it:

"Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Our Filipino community here in Tokyo used to hold bowling tournaments at Ikebukuro Hata Bowling Center so it was a little bit sad to hear that it closed last April 20 after 48 years of operation.  I wonder if the recent earthquake had something to do with its closing.

Our Church (Iglesia Ni Cristo) here in Tokyo and in other parts of Japan's Kanto area will be having a bible study meeting on April 17, 2011.  Everyone is invited so if you are in Tokyo and would like to join us in our study, please drop us a note so that we may accompany you to the study meeting.  

A few inches more and I would have to use both hands.  A smaller size would hardly be a delight to my not so perfect eyesight.  7-inch then, for many people, is just the right size for a portable e-book device, even if Apple's CEO Steve Jobs thinks that "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad".

It's been a year now since the Windows Azure Platform, the cloud platform offered by Microsoft, became commercially available.  If you develop software and you still don't know how to build an application for Windows Azure, perhaps it's the right time to learn how to do it.  In this article, I will show you how to create a simple ASP.NET application that will run on Azure.

Here's a parallel list of holidays in Japan and the Philippines for this year:

Yesterday was a busy yet memorable day for me and Cerg and many other Iglesia ni Cristo members, especially those in congregations and locales that took part in the special worship service for the ordination of new church ministers.