What can I say really? It indeed was a journey of happiness, being able to see old friends and make new friends during the four-day, three-night camp while getting away from the stresses of daily life and work.

This was my second time at WCCCLC and the happiness and peace that filled my soul during my first camp came back once again, except in a greater capacity. I guess part of it was me wanting to make myself a more outgoing person, so I ended up meeting and talking to a lot more people. Also, helping out with the camp helped quite a bit too. Being part of this year’s Promotion team let me meet various new faces and get to know them better as well. As well, assisting with the bus on the Hospitality team over at my home parish, SFX, which was used as a bus stop, got me to meet people and talk to them out of necessity.

Being a normally shy and quiet person, I never thought that I would have been able to be so outgoing. It really is nice to be able to meet new people and all that fun stuff and I found myself smiling and laughing all weekend. I guess I was just really really happy.

One of the quirks I had was the fact that the Taizé prayer was in the morning as opposed to evening. For those not familiar with Taizé, it is a form of prayer that focuses on reflection and reconciliation with God through music that highlights certain verses in scripture. I guess you can say that the atmosphere just was not there. But oh well, it’s something for the Core team to note for next year.

The theme this year was “Journey of Happiness: Attitude or Gratitude?” with Father Lucas Chan, a newly ordained Jesuit priest with interests in moral theology and scripture. Through the talks, he led us to discover happiness all around us. The first talk focused on finding happiness in suffering, or simply, finding happiness in anything, and slightly touched on what Christian happiness is. The second talk was focused on giving thanks and praising God in happy times and sad times. The final talk touched on the virtue of happiness, which basically has us being happy and sharing that with those around us.

It is interesting to have a second take on finding happiness in God. There are some overlapping things, such as the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but most of it is quite new in these respects. However, Fr. Chan’s talks were more scripture-based, given his interest in scripture, so we found ourselves flipping through our Bibles often.

For those who hear about camp from the promotion team: did you guys have fun? Would you come again next year? (if so, we in promotion have done our job well \o/ )

For those there at SFU, come join the SFU Chinese Catso group! (you know, the one Joseph Kwok talked about)

Back to work tomorrow, both at SFU for co-op and part-time contracting. Hopefully these experiences can help me develop myself so I would not be so afraid of speaking to groups of people, since I’ll be visiting high schools quite a bit for work to recruit for the SFU Computing Science program starting mid-September.

Not blogging is the obvious thing.

I have been given temporarily a Nintendo DS Lite from Benton, who tells me to hold onto it so he cannot play and study/do homework better. Thanksfully, since I have kind of given up on giving up games for Lent (well, changed it to reduce playing games for Lent – see later), it actually has been beneficial to have as it helps put me back on track (surprisingly enough) instead of drag me deeper into lack of focus.

I went to Games night last Friday. That wasn’t bad, although I wish I could have stayed longer. I could not do so because there was a church retreat the next day.

The retreat was pretty nice, with the English group speaker being no one other than the recently ordained (one year ago) Fr. Justin Huang, who also went with the SFX/Corpus Christi joint group to World Youth Day 2005 in Germany.

The topic that Fr. Justin talked about can be summed up into how to find happiness in God. It was done in three sessions. The first talk was on things we need to have to be happy, which he called fruits of the Holy Spirit and consist of the following: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chasity.

The next session analyzed why we turn away from God. There are two reasons. The first is obviously sin, which we can resolve by doing a complete and integral confession, which requires one to confess all their mortal sins, along with the number of times the mortal sin was committed. The other cause is disorders in our lives, with the orders being the Four Levels of Happiness. Disorder occurs when either one of the levels are missing or they are sorted in the wrong order.
The final session was one focused on how to turn back to God and, hence, become happy in Christ. Unfortunately, I did not last that long (it was a pretty long day after all) and somewhat dozed off while listening.

After most of the retreat was over, I decided to go to confession. Some things troubled me, such as the burnout stage that happened a while back and my gaming Lenten promise which is in tatters.

It was one of the better confessions I’ve had. It kind of put things back on track, such as how to deal with stress that leads to the eventual burnout and resolving the guilt from breaking the gaming Lenten promise. With some internal searching during confession when Father asked me questions, I realize that I am quite a perfectionist, always wanting to get something exact, which in turn leads to my procrastination, which causes a good chunk of my stress.

To deal with it the stress, Father suggested I go and do something else like go for a walk. He also suggested I take part more in church things. As well, when I asked about how to keep the promise to give up games, it turns out that I only thought too short-sighted and failed to fill in something to the time freed up from giving up games. He, therefore, recommended that I just reduce my gaming time instead of outright outlawing it for Lent, giving my own nature to game.

It’s strange how the better confessions are the ones where I’ve done an examination of conscience with the list of questions to ask myself in front of me and where there was no screen, but a face-to-face one.

But yeah, I certainly feel better now after that and quite refreshed, to say the least. I’ve managed to clear off my JAPN homework stuff this week and actually found time to study for the classes. I guess I could do better with the other classes though, especially CMPT 307. I really should go and talk to Binay, but I’m not really all that sure what part to ask for help with. My problem is that when I look at it, it makes sense for the most part, but when confronted with it in an exam situation, it just does not come out, although I could probably use some help with that recurrence relation stuff.

I’ll see.

It’s almost a week into Lent, the 40 days before Easter. I guess it has been tradition or something in which we as Roman Catholics would give up something for these days of repentance that lead to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I remember having to do it as a kid, but it is not something I really took seriously. I mean, nobody really ever told us just why we do it and such. I guess something that happened last year explains just why.

Last year during Lent, I attended an Ash Wednesday Mass up at SFU said by Fr. James Hughes. The thing from his homily that stood out is that just like how professional athletes train in order to do well, the Lenten seasons is special training for us Catholics such that we may be better people who can live more in the likeness of Christ. Well, it’s something like that; it is one year ago after all. It is quite an interesting analogy though, and it is quite true.

So this year during Lent, I decided to give up two things during these forty days: games (with the exception of the CSSS Games Night happening sometime in the middle of March) and alcohol (which I enjoy but refuse to over-indulge in).

Christmas. What’s it all about?

Personally, thinking about this very question irritates me. Simply because of how our society works these days, Christmas is an extremely materialistic event that seems extremely forced. Honestly, it all seems quite fake.

Why do I think that? To answer that question, I ask you to answer this question: Why do people need to be all nice and happy and cheerful and generous during ONE time of the year? Why can’t they be like that throughout the entire year?

And when we all try to go out and be extremely generous with the gifts and stuff, the businesses make big bucks; hence the “extremely materialistic event” bit.

However, when you think back to the real reason why Christmas is celebrated (if you don’t know, the answer’s below), we all do have a reason to be happy.

But back to the main question. What’s Christmas all about? Is it about giving and receiving gifts? Is it about Santa Claus? Is it all about family get-togethers? Is it all about being able to make a crapload of money?

No. Why Christmas exists is is because it celebrates the birth of Jesus, who came down and died on the Cross for our sins.

Now I’m not exactly saying that we should all be just not having fun or not giving gifts not do all that other Christmas-y stuff (besides celebrating the birth of Christ), but rather, remember within us why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Unfortunately, most people (myself included) forget the true meaning of Christmas. Let me share an email I got from my mom. I believe it nails the point home, especially if you are Christian like myself.

Something to think about? Definitely.

Especially if you’re Christian.

So yes, I repeat myself from my last post. Merry Christmas! And don’t forget the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate it!