Sacrifices typically can come in all ways, mostly people opt to fast and abstain from meat or food. For me, what I’m doing for lent is quite simple ; I am going to plan to say the Rosary on my knees for the next 40 days.  This exercise will not only help build up my spiritual stamina, but it will also give me that much needed time of prayer. I am also planning to go for daily mass, at least once or twice a week.  This is actually the first time I am making a conscious effort to do something during lent. Usually, lent for me basically means more activity in Church - i.e Way of the Cross. 

So far it has been rewarding. The fact that I make it an effort to say the rosary on my knees helps me focus more on God, and less on earthly things. The pain I get from my legs help me in a small way offer up my sacrifice to Christ. Like I said, this is the first time I am perfoming any sort of mortification  (Don’t get hung up by  THAT word, even a simple fast or abstaining from sugar in your coffee is also considered mortification!) and it has been really good.

Anyway I just hope and pray I can continue this on until Easter

Alright alright, I spent the entire morning trying to figure out how to properly instal this game. I had downloaded the whole 1.13 GB file last night, so today morning, upon installing, I got a rude awakening from the system saying that I needed to enter the Activation key!

And if you notice, there is no activation key in the folder of the 1.13 GB file. Therefore you would need to download the patch. Now, if you’re a nut like me and you don’t know exactly which patch to download, just follow my steps below:

1. Download Sins of the Solar Empire Trinity (It covers the full game, the Diplomacy Upgrade and the Entrenchment upgrade - hence Trinity )

You can download it off from here:

http://torrentz.com/dadf68e89ea0551bf95d35a049707ddc7800d62c

(There is another file you need to download, refer to step 4).

2. Once the download has finished, go ahead and mount the game (the file is an ISO file, so you need to either mount of burn) . Just search for some ISO mount software on google. There are plenty free ones out there.

3. Once you’ve mounted the game, then just run the ISO file. The installation process should start. Just install it to your hard drive.

4. Once the installation process is completed, then you need to download another file. This file is the patch which allows you to bypass the stupid activation key.

http://torrentz.com/7e7678e66f94576cfaedf51f2f0980ec72d0b0f1

5. Once you’ve gotten both the files, just extract the 2nd file and proceed with the installation. Make sure you install the patch file into the same directory…otherwise it won’t work! The file contains two folders, one for the game itself the other for the Entrenchment update. I’ve only tried for the one with the game only. I didn’t try the other one yet cuz I am halfway through a session and installing the upgrade will wipe out my existing save game files, but I’m sure it will work as well.

Anyway this is all…it’s an amazing game, if you’re into those sci-fi shows

Today, being the auspicious festive season for the chinese, it has made me realize how beautiful this country is. If you’ve gone to other countries, festivals are usually concentrated to a specific ethnic group.  It’s not a cause for a national holiday or major celebration.  However, I am impressed and somewhat taken up by how my country celebrates these holidays. Be it whether it’s the chinese who are celebrating the Lunar new year, or the Malays with their Hari Raya or even the Hindus and the Christians with their Diwalis and Christmases, there is always a sense of unity when the holidays come around. Everyone is in a cheerful mood, even though they are not celebrating the holidays… and I think this is what makes Malaysia truly a beautiful and wonderful country.

Now if we can only do something about the heat…

I’m tempted to write about my November and December experiences…but I think I shall not. New stories for new posts I guess

Anyway January was so far quite an interesting month. I finally got to go to Sarawak, but this was no cuti-cuti Malaysia. Actually had some work to do there, but it was definitely a pleasant experience.  Didn’t get to see much of Bintulu, but from my little personal experience there, it’s definitely another chinaman town! Reminded me of Penang in that sense!

But I guess the highlight for January would be having my buddy from Canada actually come down and visit me.  It was actually a highly anticipated event for me, but I gotta admit, was a little tired toward the end. Maybe because with the whole travelling thing (I had just returned from Sarawak the previous week) and catching up with work during the weak…yeah i guess at the end of the 3rd day, I was just exhausted. But it was nevertheless still wonderful to see my friend after nearly 4 years!

Another major highlight would be my ministry retreat which we had at the end of January. It was really a wonderful and blessed retreat I should say. I guess the one thing I really learnt from the retreat was that God doesn’t need heroes. Too often we are so caught up with our ownselves and running things according to OUR own abilities, strategies and capabilities till we forget the Lord completely. And the irony is we’re doing it for Him! Anyway more thoughts on that on my new blog : http://thecatholiclife.wordpress.com. Yeap finally decided to start a seperate blog for my catholic writings.

Well that’s all for now… time for prayer and sleep.

Oh and a big shutout to my buddy who joined the Franciscan order earlier this week. You can read his chronicles here

That’s a long time ago, roughly 100 days or more ago. Yes I am still very much alive and I’ve been tied up with work and..well other things.  In my absence, lots of things have happened,  and so, in order to do justice to my readers, and most importantly to myself, I thought I would highlight the events that have happened over the last 3-4 months

We begin in October 2009….

- My church group had organized a trip to KK, Sabah! Yeahhhh I finally had the chance to go to Sabah for the first time in my life! KK is a nice place, albeit the heat that one has to endure. Reminded me of my boyhood days in Penang, where the sun would just beat down on any pedestrian.

- Work resumed following my short vacation. I had 2 more training sessions to conduct. Thank God the training session for one of them was rescheduled to another date. At least the trainer had some breathing room! Both training sessions went well…. oh wait I think there were 3 training sessions that happened in October. 3 sessions is alot but I guess I managed to pull it off! For one of the training sessions I had to travel up to Kedah ; it was a good experience as I got to eat kampung food by the padi fields.

- October was also the time when I got the news that I would be heading the Sound in the Word Minsitry, a Ministry that is focused in providing content for my church youth group, Lifeline.  It was a welcoming change and something, though I didnt expect to get, was nevertheless a pleasent surprise. I could finally have a stronger say on the curriculum and content development of my youth group.

November 2009

- Work started pilling up. There was yet another training session for November 2009 and this would be the last one for YEAR.  So far all of my training sessions had gone smoothly except for one or two that I had done in Kerteh, oh well can’t blame me,  cuz it was the participants that didn’t show up for the session.  Thank god my project team had decided to revert all training sessions in KL hence forth. Yes, it did mean less travelling allowance for me, but it would also mean that I would not be held responsible should the trainees fail to show up… it was up to them after all!

- I also got involved in my first Company event, thanks to a friend in chruch who decided to rope me in. Though I groaned and at times got fed up with the work (I was in charge of communications so all the emails had to come from me), it was nevertheless an experience.  Luckily my supervisor had given me enough exposure in preparing communications materials for the project. Having that experience definitely allowed me to cope much better for this community day project activity.   It was also fun to coordinate and see backstage what are the components required to do a proper community day.  At the end of it, it was a job well done I should say

More in Part II on what happened in December and January

But in the midst of all the admiration and accolades that were being lauded to the last of the Keneddy brothers,  it got me thinking…’jeez wouldn’t it have been nice if the old man got to hear all this when he still was alive?’

And that got me to think about Michael Jackson as well. At one time, he was nick-named ‘Wacko Jacko’ and who can forget his infamous baby-on-the-balcony-apartment antics, or his ‘pedophilia escapades’ or the ludicrus claim that he used to sleep in a special oxygen gas chamber?

When MJ died, suddenly millions were crying, millions more were saying what an amazing guy he was, how big was his heart, how much he cared for the underprivlleaged, how he revolutinized the music world, how his music made a difference in everyone’s lives, and how he will be missed.

Gee, if only Michael was alive to hear this…

So why is that do we only say nice things about people only once they’ve died? Is it because we’re just not used to flattering people? Is it because when people are alive, we only look at their faults, and when they’re dead, there’s no point looking at their faults, because these faults cannot be undo, therefore we rather say nice things about them?

Or is it maybe because death is the one thing we fear, and perhaps saying nice things about a person is one way of us coping with that inevitable nature of life?

Something to think about and ponder…

Now whether the story is written in the sense to deliberately portray a typical alpha-male scenario is guessable, but the fact is, we know that some movies are made to reflect the current culture that we live in. Some movies typify the society that we are in.  And my firend, who watched the movie with me, (and who is a girl) also concurred with this fact. Most women actually DO think that men are just about sex.

I guess the problem herein lies in the skewed way of how women think men view love. To women, a man is said to experience love when it comes to sex. So while the common belief that a woman tends to associate love to an emotion, for  a man, love is equated with sex. Having sex is a man’s way of getting love.

Lust Caution!

Our culture today has blurred this line, so much so that we can’t really tell the difference between the two. We don’t really know which is which and how to spot one from the other.  There’s actually two folds to this and they both relate to one another :

Fold 1 : Absence of Love Leading to Lust

Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s founder once commented that the reason he founded Playboy was simply because he did not experience much love growing up.  This absence of love forced Hefner to look for love elsewhere, which led him to founding Playboy, where he could get all the ‘love’ possible. What was more disturbing and sad in some way was, Hefner’s love was a counterfeit, which was disguised in the form of lust.

Too often times we hear lonely young males who become addicted to pornography. While there are many reasons as to why this destructive habit is becomes an addiction to some, for the most part, it is because of lonliness, which means the absence of love.  People often think that women are the ones that long to be loved and cherished, but they often forget that males, guys also need this. Guys need to hear that they are being loved and that they are being cared, that they are being cherished.

Alas, society does not portray these messages when it comes to defining the man. Man is defined as someone who has dominion over his territory, someone who is designed to lead and control the environment around him, and this includes his woman.  Notice how society does not say that Man needs love, rather Man should control his woman, and that woman should satisfy his needs.

And so with all the sensitivity being given to the woman, Man suddenly is left to be the beast, the animal who only has his instincts, therefore if we reduce man to that level, the phrase ‘think with your pants’ becomes quite apt and therefore we view sex as just another physical need, which again becomes disguised in the form of love for the woman.

Fold 2 :  Lust becomes the new form of Love for man

So now, love becomes twisted in the man’s eye and heart, to man, love equates to lust equates to sex.  And because society points us to that direction, suddenly these equations become hard coded into our brains and male human makeup.

The idea of a male being sensitive and longing for love? - That is termed as gay and softy. And because man was not made to be a softy, we are then forced to be the beast who is in control of his destiny¸ and this  means engaging in sexual activity to fulfil our needs. By fulfilling our needs, we become masters or controllers of our destiny. We are in charge. We can engage in promiscuous sex with who ever we want simply because we are men and that’s what we think only about.

Sadly, sex is now merely reduced to something of an entertainment or mere physical gratification

Blindly Playing Along

Having just read all that, you would probably think that perhaps women would think abit different of men? - Hardly the case.  I once had a discussion with my female colleague on this, and she just phlegmatically commented that “all men are interested in is doing IT”.  So it’s not really just merely an Ugly Truth, it’s THE TRUTH (well according to women at least).

The Minority Group

While the perversity of sex is rampant in our culture today, as a guy (who has had his own fair share of dealing with sexual problems), I’m not here to ostracize all the males out there who think this way. Rather I want people, especially the ladies out there to know that there are actually guys who are not about sex at all. I’ve met such guys like this in my own walk of life, and trust me, these are guys who think with their minds and hearts, rather than with their pants.  We want to love a woman the way she is supposed to be loved. We want to also be loved by them and just as we cherish them, to also be cherished by them. We want to lead them, to protect them and to serve them.

Nice guys somehow…will finish last

I guess no matter how much I try to stress that there such amazing and wonderful guys out there to encourage and give some hope to the women out there, I guess a part of me will always think that ‘Nice Guys will finish Last’. It has nothing to do with one’s self-esteem, rather I think it because women at times don’t know what they really want.  They think they do and so they pass up opportunities when a great guy comes along, not even bothering to give the guy a chance to see if things will ever work out, rather simply admitting that “I don’t think this will work out”… for some reason, women (and also man for that matter) are always looking for something else, when sometimes, the right person is standing right in front of you.

Okay I now it’s not really a disease, but I have this major issue when it comes to organization. For some reason, I just can’t seem to reorganize myself. Even if I do try, it would probably last for a couple of days. I’ve read a couple of self-help books, I’ve tried to adhere to a strict discipline, but oh man… within a week I’m right back where I started.

And I figured the reason for this is simply because I’m just too tired to make a change. Consistency has always been a problem for me. Its not like I can’t do it or I am not capable, on the contrary, that’s what makes it all the worse. I know I AM capable of organizing myself and I guess that’s where the difficult part is - getting up and actually doing it.

My office desk is in a cluttering mess (although I must admit it’s not as bad as some others ), my books at home are all over the place, my wardrobe is chaotic, my new house is still messy, and the list goes on and on and on.

Yes I know I’m just rambling away and just throwing a fit here,  but I’m really looking forward to the coming holidays. Heh the whole office is already in a holiday mood! I’m really gonna use this time to really sort out a couple of things, hopefully by the time the holiday is over, I would have already gotten things in order!

That’s all for now…

I know I was supposed to write about Love in my last entry, but I think I will shelf that for sometime, got other things to write about 

We just recently finished our annual Youth camp over the weekend and there was something that took me by surprise. You see, one of my colleagues had actually joined the camp, and I didn’t really know it. In fact I never did think that this colleague of mine, or any of my colleagues for that matter would be interested in God and spirituality

Afterall, these kinda things were usually meant for hopeless cases, those simple-minded peasants who didn’t know how to control their own destiny

Given, the nature of my company’s employees, I had never expected that she would actually be interested in such things. I guess in part it’s also due to previous experience where I once approached a colleague of mine who was attending RCIA whether he would be interested in joining our youth group and because the response was not so encouraging, I kinda deduced that most working people would not be interested.

Afterall, who in their right mind would blow off their Friday nights and weekends to attend church activities?

And so you could imagine the look in my face when I saw her.

What on….

“Hey Prash, so where do I park and register?” she quipped me

“Umm…what are you doing here?” I asked, with my low-tone voice

“Huh?”

“Yeah you can just park there and there!”  I rapidly replied as I quickly snapped out of my astonishment look and begin pointing around.

And so, as the camp progressed, I kept a close eye on her, and I could see that she was transformed by the end of the whole camp session. She even went up to give her testimony, sharing with the audiance on how this camp has being meaningful to her.

I just sat there and wondered how on earth a person like this, (she was my senior by the way), could be so engrossed and impacted by such a camp. I mean fine, maybe I thought it was just one of those ‘feeling high’ things ; you’re all pumped up to serve God and be as close to him and His people as possible.

5 days have already gone,  and I still get text messages from her saying how impactful the camp has been.  While I’m still trying to grapple with it, I think perhaps what I’m really experiecing is a real-live testimony that God can indeed change hearts.  Ever since attending the camp, it seems like my friend has obtained a new lease of life. It’s as though she can somehow ‘breath’ again ; it’s as though she has found new hope in the midst of this calamity world.

While she’s going through her own discovery, I guess I’m discovering mine, and the discovery is simply this - God can change people, and when he does, you’re never the same. Perhaps God is using my colleague as a real testimony that He can transcend beyond corporate walls and career-minded successful people. Of course I have read such stories of God doing so, but never had I come across something like this. Never had I seen a colleague, or for that matter any colleague be so impacted by God.

To me, this is just a testimony, to show and prove that God’s love can penetrate through hearts. It’s a testimony proving that ‘Our hearts will not rest till it rests in God” . It’s a testimony proving that “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you”.

It may not have happened to me, but through my friend, God has worked another miracle in my life.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” - Ezekil 36:26

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, behold he is of a new creature; the old things have passed away and new things have come” - 2 Cor 5:17

But I might have had a life changing thought… and this life-changing thought, call it an epiphany if you may, has changed me in the way I actually see and observe things around me, especially when it comes to people relationships ; more specifically what I ‘m talking about here is love…

More on my thoughts about love in my next entry…