Ash Wednesday and the 40 Days to come...

Dear Diary,

Had a nice evening today; all I did was to eat a simple home-cooked dinner and watched the Korean drama “Sassy Girl Chun-Hyang” on TV. Heee... I am a little burnt out with all the recent increase in workload in office. There is this sense of pessimism permeating my office and “cutting cost” is like the slogan for the next couple of months at least. I prefer to go out of the office to meet up with customers these days, rather than sit at my desk. I am employed to do business development but what sort of business can I develop in the middle of a recession? Will give some talks at polyclinics to create awareness of certain of our products and wait for some tender results which I hope will be in my favour. That’s life; basically chasing the wind! Oops. Hitting the road most part of the day can be a very tiring affair... even more tiring than just facing the computer monitor at one’s desk, haha... Strangely, as much as I prefer to drive around these days, I am beginning to discover that my job is not fulfilling. I love my job for the good salary and the good working hours. Some of the colleagues are very nice too. Other than those pros, I feel a little stifled by the bureaucracy in there. Sorry, maybe I am not a good “sales person” but I also find sales-talk and slow-moving meetings a total waste of time... and even occasionally exasperating.

By the way, yesterday was Ash Wednesday. So we are now into the Lenten season. 40 days of commination, penance, fasting... and all those stuff along this line. 40 days leading to Easter Sunday... I am trying to be disciplined and good. To be an “Amen” man. ;-) In fact, I drank a small cup of coffee and ate 6 small pieces of biscuit for breakfast yesterday morning at 7.15am. I skipped lunch. I only ate solid food at about 8pm last night. It was struggle to fast, especially so when I happened to be at NUS and the cheap prices of food “tormented” me so much. I was so tempted to eat at the cafe which is near the Department of Medicine but I overcame that. Then next on the stop was Bugis Junction and I had to resort to chatting with a pharmacist at Watsons just to while away my lunch hour, so that I would not eat. Quite extreme, isn’t it? It was just a one-day fast for Ash Wednesday! Attended Ash Wednesday Holy Communion service for the first time last night at 6pm. It was an interesting service with litanies and antiphonals. Then at the communion rail before we received the sacrament, the officiating priest drew a sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes and said, “You are dust and unto dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

The congregation wasn’t that big and many of them were pretty old. They seemed like the good old traditional Christians who recited the liturgy from memory. Noticed two young ladies behind me, always frantically flipping the order-of-service books and looking lost. I helped them as much as possible by telling them the page number every time. Then I noticed they genuflected very often. Hmmm... must have been Catholics who “misadventure” into an Anglican church and getting a shock that the “Roman Missal” had suddenly looked so alien. Did Vatican III just conclude and got implemented? Haha... I was really wondering what was running in the mind of those two girls. Anyway, it was basically a nice little service except for an eye-rolling moment when the preacher told us that if we do not read the bible, we will surely fall. I agree with him on the importance of the bible but then... what about the illiterates? Will they surely fall away from the faith? Of course not! Ate dinner at McDonald’s (Funan Centre) after the service and the fries tasted heavenly that moment! Keke... Yummy! Had a long chat with two friends over that dinner till past 9.30pm.

I was supposed to attend a preview talk for a Masters degree tonight but I gave it a miss eventually as I am too tired. I am going to observe the season of Lent properly. A sidetrack... It does bother me now that finding my other half in life can be so elusive. Surely, I am not such a bad catch, am I? This is just the second month of the year and I am suddenly not confident if I can fulfil this year’s resolution.

Okay, that’s about all the whining and rants. Goodnight! =)

God Bless,

Andrew