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Trying to solve the greatest puzzle... LIFE...	My daily attempts at solving the puzzle

sjsicat
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

30 special experiences to celebrate 30 fantastic years

Right this blog is to officially announce what I am doing for my 30th birthday. OK here's the background bit... yes I am turning 30... go on, you can comment as much as you like and joke about how old I am!

In December I will celebrate the fact that I have been blessed with 30 fantastic years of life. And they have been 30 great years! I have matured in so many different ways: attitude, mentality, outlook in life, emotionally, personal desires and spiritually. If I could visit myself in the past when I was 16, my younger self would definitely not believe how I would develop. Looking back on my life there really isn't very much I would change because I am happy with who I am right now. I can honestly say I am pleased with the choices and sacrifices I have made to be the person who I am today. So what can I impart to the younger, or even older, people out there? The two significant areas in your life that you should really invest in are, experiences and family/friends.

This now leads me to how I am celebrating my 30th birthday. I am going to have 30 special experiences with family/friends to celebrate every year of my life that I have been blessed by God with. This is my way to reaffirm that experiences and family/friends are the most important things to me. It is also my chance to say thank you to my family/friends who care enough about me that they want to celebrate my birthday. Finally it's my chance to thank God for the wonderful life He gave me, the experiences He used to mould me into the person I am today and for the awesome people He brought into my life!

Between now and Saturday 19 December (yes I know my birthday is on 15 December, I'm just try to give myself more time!) you can book me for one of the special experiences. FYI, I'm going to do something big (highly unlikely on a student budget) for my 30th its going to be on 19th December. I have already told loads of people about this idea and frankly some of them are thinking far too big, I can enjoy something as simple as a coffee with a friend. I do appreciate people wanting to organise something amazing but spending time with friends and family is all I really need. OK if you are still scratching your head here are some suggestions of things I would like to experience/receive (either with just an individual or in groups):

DINNER in a place I have never been to before

GIFTS - OK this is not an experience but I'm not going to say no to gifts on my birthday... especially monetary ones since I'm a student!)

Taking me to DINNER at a place I've never been before and giving me a GIFT for my birthday - that's a great combination!

FINE DINING (people know how I love dressing formally!)

COOKING CLASSES - anything that will help my terrible cooking skills

CONCERT/GIG - I've only been to one in my whole life... but that one doesn't really count, you can ask me why when you see me

HONOURING - briefly for those who are not part of the Christian community that I assist in, it is a chance to say positive things about the individual. I very rarely get honoured as my birthday is in December so everyone is busy with Christmas preparations. Poor me!!!

GUY FAWKES NIGHT - for my friends abroad this is a historical celebration with fireworks that traditionally happens on 5th November. This is nice and simple as I haven't done this in a while

LETTERS - there is nothing I appreciate more than someone taking the effort to put pen to paper and write me a letter (e-mails or brief messages do not count... I think I should have a minimum word or page count!)

THE SCOOP - try the Scoop at More London (http://www.morelondon.co.uk/scoop.html). They sometimes have interesting, free stuff going on there

GAMES NIGHTS - I love Games Nights... I love winning even more!

TEA TIME - having a tea with proper tea cups, cakes and stuff

THEMED MURDER MYSTERY EVENING

MARKETS - I haven't been to any of the famous markets like Portabello Road

HOME COOKED DINNER/MEAL

TRANSFORMERS 2 - on a big TV with surround sound because I missed it at the cinema

A SCARY MOVIE

SPA - I've never been to one before so I wouldn't mind trying one out

ART CLASS - pottery, sculpting, drawing, etc... my creativity was always the talent that I never got to use

PUB/BAR/CLUB that I've never been to before

SPENDING TIME WITH MY GODCHILDREN - I take my responsibilities as a godparent very seriously so I would love just to spend a few hours with my godchildren

Right, now I've shared over 20 possible ideas with what you could do with me to celebrate my big 3 0. Remember the experiences should be specifically for me and my birthday, I shouldn't be tagged along to something else (hey its my party and I can cry if I want to!). First thing to do is think of something to do. Next, take a look at my calender on my Multiply blog site (http://sjsicat.multiply.com/calendar) to see when you can fit me into your busy schedule and a time that I am free. Finally, text or call me to finalise things. That's it! Now its all up to you guys, are there enough of you out there to help me have 30 special experiences to celebrate 30 fantastic years?

10:12 PM - 4 views - 2 eprops - 1 comment - email it

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Realisation that I'm Leaving

Oh dear I haven't updated this for a while. Well suffice to say that these past few weeks have been great but busy. I have been enjoying the last few fantastic days of summer... we have had quite a few good weekends. Unfortunately the weather seems to be getting a whole lot colder due to Autumn setting in.

So why have I been so busy that I can't update Xanga. The main thing is work... its a countdown before I finish! My last day being this Friday. So I'm busy trying to finish off all my own work and doing some hand-over to my replacement.

It has only recently hit me that I am leaving. Ofcourse I knew I would be leaving a couple of months ago when I got accepted onto the Master Programme. But the realisation only came to me recently. I'm leaving an awesome job: something I can do fairly well, its a brilliant learning experience, there are some fantastic people at my workplace and it's paid employment! What am I leaving this for? Full time education (I'm not an academic at heart!) and a student budget for two years! Arrggghhhh!!!!!

Have I made the right decision? Well I actually think so! I had a great talk with my spiritual director where I was reminded why I was actually getting into Social Work. You can't beat being reminded about your true purpose for doing something... it's an impressive driving force! Well stay tuned for my next blog about my first week at university.

11:13 PM - 1 view - add eprops - add comments - email it

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Trials and Tribulations of my Mobile Phone

OK before I start... I just want to say, why were people so intrigued about my last blog, hoping it was about my love life? Lets get it straight my love life is boring because its non-existent and right now I actually like it that way! Not even a Facebook group can tempt me otherwise... ehmmm... you know who you are!

Right back to my blog. So I had just come back from Malta and a fantastic Youth Conference. As my plane touched down on British soil I was sad that I was back home and away from my YFC family but I was happy that I will be getting a good sleep in my own bed and not worry about sending the YFCs to sleep at 3AM! As the walkway attached to the plane most people got up to get their things from the overhead lockers. I turn my mobile phone on and all I see are a bunch of coloured lines on the screen with some techno babble with various numbers on the front. Ermmm OK, I thought to myself. I switch it off and then on, same screen shows. I press the reset button and same horrible screen is showing! Arrggghhhh! It seems like my mobile phone has had some sort of software crash!

I needed to call my dad to tell him to make his way to the airport to pick me up (I don't live too far from the airport). So I use the a pay phone instead, which is fine... until I realise how expensive it is! I spent £1.20 for two pay phone calls to home, of which the total amount of time I spent talking can't have been more than 2 minutes. I remember we only needed to put a minimum of 10p for a call to your home (now I'm really showing my age!)! I also realised that I had not done a recent back up of my contacts and pictures on my mobile. Oh my gosh, it gets worse and worse as this was all on the mobile phone memory! A mobile without people's numbers is a very difficult thing to have, you're never sure of who is texting or calling you and its hard to get into contact with people because you just don't remember their numbers. Thankfully I have a two year warranty on my mobile so I was covered to get it repaired. I just got my mobile back two days ago. Unfortunately they couldn't fixed the problem so they gave me a new (same one though) mobile phone.

We often take technology for granted, we always assume its going to be around and we really abuse it. I wonder what's going to happen if ever technology fails for some reason... what if the internet crashed? Would we actually start socialising with people face to face or take time to write letters to people. What if mobile phone networks collapsed? Would we actually be on time for our appointments instead of always calling that we will be late (or worse not even call but just turn up late instead!). Don't get me wrong I love my new mobile phone, despite the hassle of no recent backup, especially since I had dropped my last mobile a bunch of times. For me the moral of the story is use technology wisely not depending on it always 100% and BACK UP DATA!

8:12 PM - 1 view - add eprops - add comments - email it

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

It Must Be Love...

I got home today after a long day's work... need to do overtime to finish my workload before I leave. I sat in front of the computer to read my e-mails (I'm a good little boy who doesn't read my e-mails at work... well most of the time anyway!) and I decided to read those Multiply updates of people who had updated their Multiply sites recently. I was inspired by Nadz video entry about why we pray the Rosary, out of love for Mary (http://babynadz.multiply.com/video/item/224/Video_from_Mary_Inside_Out_Workshop_Malta_09) . Yes I could definitely see why we do it out of love. But I want to share another story of love with you guys (no not a "personal" love story before you all get excited! Hahaha).

At Mass last Sunday our Parish Priest shared about visiting his mother recently who has Alzheimer's disease, an aggressive disease that destroys brain cells resulting in memory loss, difficulty in learning and thinking, etc. He went to see his mother and she still remember him but her memory was short, he would be there only five minutes before she would think he just arrived to see her again. Despite her disease she knew who her children were and the priest noticed that his mother would frequently say, 'I love you' to her children whenever she saw them. For his mother's generation, saying, 'I love you', was uncommon in those times and it was more the actions that said the words. The priest was clearly touched by his mother's words as you could see and feel the emotions in his eyes and voice. While we may cherish those rare moments of, 'I love you' from the people around us we seem to forget when God says to us, 'I love you'.

If our actions show our love to one another without even saying it, what more concrete or powerful display of love is there than when Jesus gave his life for us. We are reminded of this act of love every time we take part in the Eucharist, we remember His sacrifice for us and as we receive His body its as if He says to us, 'I love you.' While God shows us His love each and every day more specifically He tells us He loves us each time we receive the Eucharist.

So next time you are at Mass and you are bored from the sermon, wanting to get out of Mass as soon as possible and dragging along in the line to receive communion think about how much God loves you, that He gave His Son for you. As you eat the body of Christ, pause for a moment and deep inside your heart hear the voice of Christ say, 'I love you.'

10:15 PM - 3 views - add eprops - add comments - email it

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Preach Fire People Of God!

Hello guys! I know I haven't blogged here for quite a while now. Right I just thought I would make a start to this blog which will, hopefully, appear here frequently (although my definition of frequent is debatable!). This is going to be my honouring portion of my blog for the people in my life who have changed me for the better... question is, who do you think is going to appear here next time? Or an even better question, will I even post another within the next three months?! ONLY TIME CAN TELL! Hahaha!

10:43 PM - 4 views - add eprops - add comments - email it

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