Well well, it's been a week since I last put my foot step in the office. The holiday season has ended and it's time to reboot, get my ass up and kick start the "new year" all over again.
The first Sunday of lent is also starting from this week onwards, coincidentally clash with Chinese new year. As we all know Chinese celebrates their Chinese new year with crazy amount of good food flowing, practicing abstinence during this time is absolutely big challenge.
But it is also a good time to explain to people why do we abstain. Commemorating good Friday is an easy explanation for most part of the society. Whether they like it or not, this is how I remember my own religion. However, penance and self discipline is NOT an easy explanation, especially towards protestants. I don't expect them to understand it, but usually it's easier to tell a story of how I use this challenge to break a habit.
Despite of all that, there's things that I do not agree with the Catholics teaching in terms of practicing abstinence during lent, like the linguistics distinction of "Blood" and how fish becomes a loophole as a meat replacement during lent. Watch "Finding Nemo" and feel the "life" in that flesh.
Fun fact for this modern fish loophole, is from McDonald's. In 1962, a franchise owner in a heavily Catholic area of Cincinnati was losing so much money on Fridays that he invented a fish sandwich to stay in business. It was so successful that McDonald's added it to the national menu!
Anyway, fast forward to my usual workout routine. The Chinese new year hasn't been doing too much damage to my body, partly because lent started on the 2nd day of lunar new year. I have been behaving quite well, except that now I know the biggest challenge for myself is caffeine. I should dig deeper into my actual desire and addition, after my cigarettes exodus some 6 years ago.
I would like to add one more challenge to this lent season, to abstain from coffee. Caffeine is one part of the reason that's affecting my heart rate, especially the most reason episode of heartbeat irregularities. I've seen enough crazy deaths to the people surrounding me these few years, majority around my age, some are younger than me.
