Chess.com

 When I was young, I enjoyed playing chess. The game has a very clear objective, very clear rules and each player must choose a piece to play among many possibilities. I am quite sure that chess helped me to take decisions when pressed. However, as time passed by, I considered it a waste of time. I installed some software applications in my computer such as gnuchess, but generally for very short periods because it somehow boring to play with computer because it has no emotion, it rarely makes mistakes and it doesn't feel the pain of loosing. Recently I began to play with chess.com. It enables humans to play with humans as in a championship. Each player receives a score. I began to think why on earth, I became addicted again on chess. I think that the main motivation is to look the score going up and down after each game. 

I know that I am wasting my time. There are so much more on life than chess. The question is: "what is important in life?". Certainly is not chess, and even less significant is the score on chess.com. So, why do I strive for higher score? It is number that helps to measure some kind of intelligence among the chess.com addicts. Thus, if one of my students say he has such score, I rapidly tag him as "intelligent" or "dumb". 

Youtube suggested me a video about Bob Fisher who had a very high IQ. If I heard correctly, it was higher than Einstein, but obviously Einstein made much more than Bob Fisher who died as crazy guy in Iceland.  Kasparov is the great genius of chess, but he lost to the IBM computer, deep blue. Is any advantage for a human being to train hardly to improve some chess score? I don´t think so; but as said it must be useful for improving some decision making, although it in a limited way. For instance: a chess player must restrain himself when in a great advantage over his opponent because he may commit a big mistake leaving some holes in his defense; and a chess player must be patient when loosing by some margin in hope that his opponent make a mistake. This behavior is very similar when investing money in stock market. Chess is a school that teaches, transfers some learning, a proper behavior in other games. However this transference is limited. The proper way to became a better investor is to apply the time, studying companies, and not playing chess.  

We all need to rest

 Today is Sunday. Let me rest today, rest from trying to earn more money by buying and selling stocks, rest from reading the book "Value Investing" from Bruce Greenwald, rest from watching youtube videos about countries, companies, health, bikes, and even where to stay in Ubatuba (a brazilian beach city). Let me rest from worrying about the new students that I am going to receive this week for the Operating System course, or even, let me rest from worrying about how vulnerable my computer or how easy it is to rob my password. 

There is a book titled  "The top five regrets of the dying" from Bronnie Ware. I haven't read it yet, but I know that a lot of people regret from not spending more time with their families or friends, from over working, from worrying too much about little things, etc.

It means that a lot of people regret from not resting in their Sabbaths because they regret from things that they should be doing in the resting day.

I am about to retire, I am almost 60 years old (In Brazil, the normal retiring age for men is turning to 65 years old, but I got some transitory phase). I expect to rest in my retirement, at least, I expect to enjoy life more. My wife would say that in order to retire, I should have already begun working. Frankly, I don't see that I have done anything grandiose, but I really feel that I didn't enjoy life as I should have enjoyed. 

Today is a Sabbath. Let me enjoy this day. Let me thank the Lord for so many things He has done in my life. The Lord has been following me, taking care of me; nothing has lacked to me. He is the provider of all the things I need to live. He is the author of life. He is my Creator. 

Today is the day to "feel" the Lord taking care of me, to contemplate his beauty, to contemplate his creation. I hope that today is the day that I won't regret living before dying. 

a new church

 We decided to leave the nikkei church because we (my family) seemed to be wasting time there. I was there because I felt it was some kind of my obligation to the congregation to present a message more biblical. I was preaching once a month. As soon as I decided to leave the pulpit, I decided to leave the church too. We stayed there longer than other families and we saw the declining in number of people. In fact, there is just one family there, although there are more senior people that attend alone. With covid-19 and the closure of face to face activities, I was preaching online; however it seemed to me that I was, somehow, wasting my time preparing the sermons with no support of the new pastor (because the older pastor that I was used to got some kind of dementia). 

We decided to attend a Presbyterian church that began with koreans. We came to know them by a Taiwanese family that we knew in the nikkei church. It is widely known that Koreans and Japanese don't get along very well due to the second war, but my ancestors came to Brazil before second war (I have nothing with war related problems). Anyway, we are the only nikkei family there and we hope to be accepted by the congregation.

A very great difference from our nikkei church and this new church is in the sermon. We appreciate very much the word being preached. The pastor (a young fellow) got master degree in Canada and Phd in England, besides he is a professor in a seminary. It is very different to listen to a sermon from someone who knows to read the Bible from end to end in a harmonic way. He is wise in applying the Word in our day lives.

We pray to the Lord that He leads us (my family) to a church where we may grow in faith and love.

Celebration

 My dad bought a house in 1980 in order to save money (because our brazilian currency was very unstable). This house was invaded some years ago as I told in this blog by a lot of people (perhaps 20 guys) with the clear purpose of taking dad's house to them. The house is located in a dangerous place here in Sao Paulo city. It is an absurd but depending on how it is done, our municipal law would grant them the property. We ended up in the police station. I noticed that half of the police was corrupt (or complacent) and they seemed to be supporting the invaders. Anyway, we felt that we couldn't rely on the police force. After the police restored our property, some guys came back and retaliated by burning our car that was parked there.  We didn't call the police because we didn't trust them.

After 2 months, Bob (let us call him so), decided to rent this house from dad. I thought that even in case of him not paying anything, at least, he would prevent the house from being taken over. However Bob didn't move there, didn't pay anything and sub rented the property to others. This bad situation was going on for some years and we really didn't know what to do. Bob pretended to be a friend to dad. He had the audacity to say to my brother in law that his children abandoned him and that he treated dad as his own dad. Despite this ridiculous situation, dad trusted him (I think now that he was already in the beginning of his dementia, but dad has being a controlling person for all his life and he wouldn't listen to any of his children; so this ridiculous "rent deal" continued). 

However, dad was not receiving any money from this rent deal, so he went there some times charging some money from the sub tenants. In one occasion, he was injured. Not so severely to end up in a hospital, but enough to stop going there. In his dementia, he told us (children) that the house was sold.

I thought that the house was in fact stolen by Bob, although he seemed friendly. I thought that it would be very hard to sell the house and all confrontation (with Bob sub tenants) wouldn't pay. However, my family were still paying taxes. I was convinced that a good solution would be renounce the property and began to study how it could be done (because the prefecture still wants to collect taxes and the process is not so easy). As I was asking about how it could be done, a friend envisioned a solution: he would take the property, sell it and return some money to us. We agreed. Two weeks ago he managed to make it with the help of a real estate agent that knew how to deal with invaded houses. 

Yesterday, we commemorate that this house was sold with some wine and italian food.

Let us celebrate freedom, specially the freedom that the Lord has provided by our Lord Jesus.

Resting

 Today is Sunday.

Jesus taught me to call the Lord, the Creator, as my father who takes care of me. Sunday is the day to rest trusting that is Him, the Lord who really takes care of me.

I ate today because the Lord provided me food and a stomach, I am breathing today because the Lord is providing me air and lungs. I even pee today because the Lord provided me water and kidneys.

Today is the day to think about how great is my Lord, my Father and surrender to his mercy because I am always thinking that I am in charge of working to make things happen. In my madness I have been searching glory and richness to myself, but today is the day to praise Him and humble myself before Him.

Let the glory be given to Him alone. Let my soul rest in Him.