My volvo has just became a holy car. Tonight we had dinner with some church friends, including Fr. Ho who is newly ordinated priest. I gave a ride to Fr. Ho from our friend’s new apartment to the resturant. Fr. Ho had just finished blessing our friend’s new place and I joked can he blessed my car as well. To my surprise, there is actually a ritual of car blessing. Fr. Ho took out his ritual book, look up the car blessing prayer and then blessed my car. The ritual finished with spinking holy water to my car that Fr. Ho somehow carry a small bottle of holy water in his pocket. Now my car is holified and it should be much safer. I asked many interesting questions about Fr. Ho’s priesthood life in the dinner. I think being a priest is really a though job. Weekend is the busiest days of the week, he has to host several masses. On weekdays, he has to visit elderly house, hospital, school, and help out church events. Even on his day off, he still have to act like a priest in front of his friends. I can never understand why someone would scrafice so much to live a religious life. However, I am glad that someone actually willing to be one or the church will have no priest.

Our company has bad news after bad news. The morale of the workers just have one blow after another. Last week, we announced a forced vacation at the end of August with only 2 weeks of notice. Today we are informed our stock purchase plan is suspended due to SEC investigation on previous option grands. The company is witholding 10% of my salary in the past 6 months and not paying any interest! We suppose to make at least a 15% gain on the stock purchase plan. We wonder why don’t the managment delivery all the bad news in one shot. Getting all the bad news on one day is better than receiving bad news here and there. We are already speculating when and what will be the next bad news. Another round of layoff and shutting down remote sites are top on the list. I don’t expect anyone, including myself, will be safe if the situation go worse. Sooner or later the axe will hit the headquarter. The only thing I worry about is whether P.Eng application will be done by then.

I recently joined an internet book club. In the book club, there is a support group to help you read a book. We synchronize our reading progress and have interesting discussion on the ideas of the book. The book I am reading is the main reason I am attracted to this book club. It is a book about the moral and social issues on homosexual, with fairly balance arguments on both side of the issue. My book just arrived last firday, so I spent a few hours today catch up the first two chapters and I can join the discussion. I used to read by myself, this is the firs time I am reading with a group of people. I am sure I will learn a lot more from this experience than finish the book in turbo mode by myself. One of the setting up a book club is to find a book you are other people want to work at the same time. The book club I join focus in philosophy and theology books, on topics that I am interested in generally. I hope I can keep up with other members in the book club by reading a serious book every 3-4 months. You can learn more about the book club by following this link

There is an old chinese proverb that “Small sickness is good fortune”. When I am forced to relax at home the past few days, I can fully appreciate the wisdom of these words. I heard many scary stories about removing wisdom teeth from my friends. When it is my turn, I found that other than not able to eat solid food is a bit inconvenient, there is not much suffering. The only trouble is that I have to drink soup many times a day to stop me getting hungry. My mouth is not painful, swelling nor uncomfortable, only a bit sour. I can even talk or sing karaoke like normal. I don’t have the pressure of exam or assignment this week. The two sick days I got away from work for free let me sort out my mind. I thought a lot about the future when I was just sitting at home doing nothing. I can even put aside the bad news that the company is going to shut down for a week at the end of this month to cut cost. A week of unexpected vacation may not always be welcome. I think I could use this time sort out the remaining piece of the puzzle in my mind.

I havn’t sung karaoke for ages. Michael visit Vancouver this weekend and he wanted to sing Karaoke so much that I booked a room speically for him. I asked Verona to come along since we need more female voice other that Pat and I know she like singing Karaoke very much too. Michael, who was my TA when I was back in Waterloo, actually knows more new songs than me, and some of his younger friends. We have to resort to singing Hacken Lee or Jacky Cheung after a few songs, but he can still sing the latest hits that I unheard of. My songs list is not very up-to-date, I can only sing a few new songs form Jan Lam or Justin. Tonight was really fun. I don’t know when will be the next time for me to sing Karaoke. People at our age just stop going to Karaoke. I remember I used to sing Karaoke every weekend when I was in unversity. If I did pratice so much back then, how come my singing skill is still so bad? Anyways, singing is just half of the fun going to Karaoke, the second half is to torture your friends. Other than I feel quite hungry half way during karaoke, the removal of my wisdom teeth didn’t affect my singing at all. I think I am almost back to normal other than I still cannot chew anything.