Flying off!!

Today, I fly off to Bangkok!! And then, on Christmas Eve, I head "home" to Colombo, just barely making it before Christmas. . . and probably starting off Christmas Day in a taxi on the way to my parents' place from the airport, if not in the airport itself! This year has certainly been all about new experiences!!

I won't get to blog or read other blogs until after Christmas, so merry Christmas all!! Hope the joy of Christ's birth remains with you throughout the new year!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this." Is 9:6-7 (NIV)

Wednesday allergy

I have made an interesting discovery. . . I am allergic to Wednesday (the cat, not the day -- then again, maybe the day as well).

The past few times I've visited Okia's apartment to see Weds, barely three minutes pass before my eyes start to itch and I develop a fit of sneezing. The first time this happened, I thought it was just a coincidence. But after the second, third time, I'm convinced that it's not.

But how could it be? I lived with the little guy for a year-and-a-half! Sigh. I guess now, my visits will have to be confined to under three minutes -- which would probably suit Weds just fine -- he's going through an anti-human (or maybe it's just an anti-Ini) phase.

Anyway, it's been a while since my last Weds photo, so here's one.

And I thought I was the klutz!

Do you remember this post about the convoluted set-up (cool, but convoluted nonetheless) of my workplace in New York, and my prediction that I would go tumbling down the stairs just when my crush from the video-editing department walked in? Well, looks like I wasn't the one who should have been worried about being a klutz. Behold my former crush at -1:48 (not sure why it's counting backwards)!

I know I'm being a bit mean but it is pretty funny! And I will be the first to admit that I've walked into way more than my share of (visible) walls and doorposts.

The secret signature of my soul

Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop, or the clap clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt, you would say, "Here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

--The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

Have you experienced this? This sense that you were made for something more, a deeper longing for something greater that even you can't define? Does it feel like what C.S. Lewis describes. . .something just beyond your reach, "promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away as they caught your ear?"

Does it always remain beyond our reach? Or do we choose -- because we are too afraid, or too busy, or too comfortable with our lives as they are -- to not reach out and grasp it?

And if so, is this lack what makes us exist instead of LIVE, settle for functionality instead striving for PASSION and practice religion instead of pursuing a RELATIONSHIP with our Creator.

Is it a fruitless endeavor, at least in this life? Will we go to our deathbeds still longing for something we've never been able to reach? How do we find the "echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself?" And what if we lose the desire altogether?