Guess what folks? Lent is here again! God is good, for sure. I mean, after all that binge eating & drinking during the Christmas/New Year season, as well as all the festive goodies during the Lunar New Year season, AND chocolates from Valentine’s Day, God gives us the *PERFECT* reason to control our desires for food and other worldly stuff, and focus on HIM.

Apart from the usual fasting and abstinence routine that I normally follow during Lent, I wanted to do something different. Something *slightly* more significant. Especially since I’m not *that* fond of meat anyway, so abstinence from meat doesn’t really affect me all that much. I was invited to join a Giving up Facebook for Lent group in Facebook. Although I didn’t join it immediate, it did set me thinking. Am I spending *too* much time on Facebook? Looking back, I realized that the answer was a big fat “YES“! I’ve been logging in religiously, processing requests received, checking on the statuses of my many Facebook friends, playing Lexulous (previously known as Scrabulous) and Bejeweled Blitz. I guess it probably will do me some good to give up Facebooking for the next 40+ days. At the very least, I’ll have more time to catch up on my reading required for the next big project at work. So yes, I’ve joined the group and pledged my determination to rid my attachment to Facebook, and do something productive instead. So if you noticed that I’m kinda quiet over at Facebook, you know it’s all for a good cause.

In addition, I’ll be giving up computer games, particularly PopCap games, for Lent too. I’ve currently got 8 PopCap games installed on my notebook, and I’m beginning to feel that I’m spending too much time on them. Less time on games, means more time to read, means more productivity.

Naturally, I considered whether I should give up Twitter and Plurk as well, but since they’re my primary connection(s) to my friends from across the world, I’ll probably maintain status quo on those, though I most likely *will* reduce the time I spend there. Thank goodness for Ping.fm, I can easily update all my social network sites at one go with the click of a button.

So there. That was my update on what I’m planning for Lent. What are your plans for Lent? Is there anything you’re giving up? Is there anything you’re doing extra? Let me know by leaving your comments. It’ll be interesting to “compare notes”

Tags: Announcements, Lent, life, musings, Personal

Are you a Catholic? Do you consider yourself cool? Are you on Twitter? If your answer was “Yes“  for all 3 questions, you might wanna get yourself listed on Father Roderick’s list of Cool Catholics on Twitter! Just leave Father your name, your full Twitter url, and a brief description of yourself in the comments section.

Tags: Announcements, Catholic, SQPN

To all who may be celebrating the occasion, have a prosperous and fulfilling Year of the Ox!

P.S.: The Chinese characters in the picture is not quite appropriate for the occasion, but this is the only background I could find on Meez that’s related to Lunar New Year.

Tags: Announcements, life, musings, Personal

I wasn’t able to get online yesterday, so imagine my surprise when I saw this:

And that was for yesterday’s traffic! Even for today, I managed to hit 65 views! My record so far had only been 40.

I immediately checked the Referrer list, and noticed that the bulk of the new visitors were redirected from Patrick Madrid’s blog. It turned out that Patrick was kind enough to post an entry on his blog, referring his readers to my post on “25 Random Things About Me“. Thanks Patrick! In return, I’m going to ask all of you, my readers to please visit Patrick Madrid’s blog and say “Hi!” for me.

I also noticed that some of the traffic had come in through Google search. Seems that there were many searches for “25 things about me” or “25 random things about me” or something along that gist. It’s always interesting to see what others having been googling, and how they’ve somehow landed on my blog.

To all my readers (old and new), thanks for setting a record in my blog stats and for making history in the life of this wee little blog. I hope you liked what you read and will continue to enjoy reading this blog.

Tags: Announcements, blogs

I realized I’ve slacked in posting, but it IS the festive season, so please forgive my laziness. Meanwhile, for the first post of the new year, here’s a classic which you’ll enjoy.

Tags: Announcements, Personal, videos, youtube