AMEN: The only part of a prayer that everyone knows.

BULLETIN: Your receipt for attending Mass.

CHOIR: A group of people whose singing allows the rest of the Parish to lip-sync.

HOLY WATER: A liquid whose chemical formula is H2OLY.

HYMN: A song of praise usually sung in a key three octaves higher than that of the congregation’s range.

RECESSIONAL HYMN: The last song at Mass often sung a little more quietly, since most of the people have already left.

INCENSE: Holy Smoke!

JESUITS: An order of priests known for their ability to find colleges with good basketball teams.

JONAH: The original “Jaws” story.

JUSTICE: When kids have kids of their own.

KYRIE ELEISON: The only Greek words that most Catholics can recognize besides gyros and baklava. (it means Lord have mercy)

MAGI: The most famous trio to attend a baby shower.

MANGER: Where Mary gave birth to Jesus because Joseph wasn’t covered by an HMO. (The Bible’s way of showing us that holiday travel has always been rough.)

PEW: A medieval torture device still found in Catholic churches.

PROCESSION: The ceremonial formation at the beginning of Mass consisting of altar servers, the celebrant, and late parishioners looking for seats.

RECESSIONAL: The ceremonial procession at the conclusio n of Mass led by parishioners trying to beat the crowd to the parking lot.

RELICS: People who have been going to Mass for so long, they actually know when to sit, kneel, and stand.

TEN COMMANDMENTS: The most important Top Ten list not given by David Letterman.

USHERS: The only people in the parish who don’t know the seating capacity of a pew.

Little known facts about the Catholic Church in Las Vegas:

There are more churches in Las Vegas than casinos. During Sunday services at the offertory, some worshippers contribute casino chips as opposed to cash. Some are sharing their winnings – some are hoping to win. Since they get chips from so many different casinos, and they are worth money, the Catholic churches are required to send all the chips into the diocese for sorting. Once sorted into the respective casino chips, one junior priest takes the chips and makes the rounds to the casinos turning chips into cash. And he, of course, is known as The Chip Monk.

Announcements in church are a part and parcel of the church experience. Not to mention people clamouring outside the church bulletin board to read the too long ones. But, when you have bloopers like these…

1. The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
2. The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.’ The sermon tonight: ‘Searching for Jesus.’
3. Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands..
4. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.
5. Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help.
6. Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
7. For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
8. Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
9. Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
10. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
11. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice
12. Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
13. Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
14. Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
15. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
16. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.
17. The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
18. This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
19. Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.. S. Is done.
20. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
21. Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
22. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM.. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
23. Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
24. The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday: ‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours’.

AMEN: The only part of a prayer that everyone knows.

BULLETIN: Your receipt for attending Mass.

CHOIR: A group of people whose singing allows the rest of the Parish to lip-sync.

HOLY WATER: A liquid whose chemical formula is H2OLY.

HYMN: A song of praise usually sung in a key three octaves higher than that of the congregation’s range.

RECESSIONAL HYMN: The last song at Mass often sung a little more quietly, since most of the people have already left.

INCENSE: Holy Smoke!

JESUITS: An order of priests known for their ability to find colleges with good basketball teams.

JONAH: The original “Jaws” story.

JUSTICE: When kids have kids of their own.

KYRIE ELEISON: The only Greek words that most Catholics can recognize besides gyros and baklava. (it means Lord have mercy)

MAGI: The most famous trio to attend a baby shower.

MANGER: Where Mary gave birth to Jesus because Joseph wasn’t covered by an HMO. (The Bible’s way of showing us that holiday travel has always been rough.)

PEW: A medieval torture device still found in Catholic churches.

PROCESSION: The ceremonial formation at the beginning of Mass consisting of altar servers, the celebrant, and late parishioners looking for seats.

RECESSIONAL: The ceremonial procession at the conclusio n of Mass led by parishioners trying to beat the crowd to the parking lot.

RELICS: People who have been going to Mass for so long, they actually know when to sit, kneel, and stand.

TEN COMMANDMENTS: The most important Top Ten list not given by David Letterman.

USHERS: The only people in the parish who don’t know the seating capacity of a pew.

Little known facts about the Catholic Church in Las Vegas :
There are more churches in Las Vegas than casinos. During Sunday services at the offertory, some worshippers contribute casino chips as opposed to cash. Some are sharing their winnings – some are hoping to win. Since they get chips from so many different casinos, and they are worth money, the Catholic churches are required to send all the chips into the diocese for sorting. Once sorted into the respective casino chips, one junior priest takes the chips and makes the rounds to the casinos turning chips into cash. And he, of course, is known as The Chip Monk.

Finally got down to studying at full shot. Have completed the entire Maths portion. Computers is easy so what remains of that will be last.

Went for choir practice yesterday after quite sometime. Picnic plans are being made for June 3, but by then I will be in Pune.

Received the email today with detailed reporting structure. I’m planning on reporting on 1st June. I hope I don’t have to do 31st May.

As part of the Foundation Course, I need to interview a CxO and an entrepreneur. I completed the entrepreneur interview on Friday itself. Had forgotten to blog about it.

Went today for the CxO interview. Had to travel to town and so set off around 10.30am for that. Landed up at the station in time, but spent 20 minutes standing in line to buy a ticket from a pathetically slow ticket counter. They’ve introduced computers to speed up things, but so far it has just been a major bottleneck.

Took a super-slow fast train to Churchgate and found the place easily. Finished the interview, picked up some coffee at Churchgate station to fill the empty station and caught a train back to Andheri. Found a bus standing outside so was home before 3pm itself.

Ordered pizzas from Pizza Way which has a 3pm to 6pm offer and has really economical and decent pizzas.

Have also got my brother to start teaching me basics of Accounts which I shall need for SCMHRD.

The last week has just flown by with most of my time was spent not studying.

Wednesday – Party 1

On Wednesday, we were singing for a Silver Wedding mass. The mass was held at Atma Darshan and the reception was at Le Royal Meridien, for which the entire choir was invited.

Had just dorned my normal formals for the mass, so went home to pickup my blazer as well as drop off the bike (Never drink and drive my mama said )

U. Conrad picked me up and we were among the first to reach the reception. Ate, drank, danced and feasted on food and desert.

Got dropped home a little after 1.30am and came home and crashed into bed.

Thursday – Dinner 1

Spent the entire day at Melody‘s house working on her blog. Convinced her to add adsense (which is performing really bad overall for me currently). Also added some internal pages and top CSS navigation bar (I’m getting good at this).

We went out for dinner to 5 which is near Yoko’s in Santacruz. The place is posh and the food is good, however the service is simply pathetic. It took us 10 minutes to find someone to take our order and then it took another half hour to get served. In addition he messed up the bill, by not informing us for an extra charge. At the end of it we were pissed off.
Expensive places!

Friday – Party

Saakshi threw a “Welcome Home” party for Melody and invited a good amount of the junta from the Indian Bloggers’ scene and their friends. Met a few of them for the first time, while others for the second… well I’m not a regular.

My phone came handy to click a few photos, though the quality wasn’t too great. Anyway, here are a few: Knocked off on request.

Saturday – Lunch and Dinner 2

Met up with Krupa, my ex-office colleague for lunch and a movie. We went off to watch Life in a Metro which tells the tale of several people in Mumbai. The movie was rather slow. Can’t say it was great, can’t say it was bad.

Watched the movie at Chandan in Juhu. It has been several years since I have been to Chandan. The theatre remains the same, but the area surrounding it has developed a lot!
We went to Pizza Hut in Juhu for the late lunch and got a drink free because the guy forgot to put it on the bill.

Lil white mouse came over after work and she stayed for mass. After mass, the two of us went to Lucky’s for dinner. It has been a while since I visited Lucky’s. Tried some different dishes this time which were yummy.

And then there was Sunday

Lil white mouse came over today for lunch. Mom seemed to outdo herself today. Lil white mouse left in the evening and I got down to getting some work done.
Tomorrow I study.

I mentioned that our singing for Good Friday last week was good and that the compliments were pouring in.

However, I didn’t realize how many compliments actually poured in until we were invited to a special dinner thrown by A. Anita and U. Conrad on Friday

We had choir practice as usual and the dinner was after the choir practice. As you can see we had a good array of dishes, the highlight of which was the turkey, specially imported from the Emirates for the event. Should I mention that I ate well?

Am gonna miss the choir once I go to Pune for my MBA. Well, decisions…

This post just about sums up all of Holy Week.

To begin, we’ve had practice Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for our singing at Good Friday 2007.

Two things that we do and do good besides the singing are the hymn sheets and the dressing. This time I made the hymn sheets. It’s in PDF format for those interested.

Spent all of Wednesday morning with U. Conrad and James in church arranging for the printing work done as well as practice for the part of Pilate in the Passion (we were reading).

Changing from our regular choice of colors, we decided to go all black with white ties this year for the guys and white and black for the ladies.

White ties can be quite a problem and when you want ten of them, it can be next to impossible! So Thursday morning was spent hunting for white ties. We finally found them at a small shop at Andheri East station.

Thursday evening was spent at church with Maundy Thursday mass listening to an extremely chaotic choir singing unknown hymns from an error rigged hymn sheet. Folks making hymn sheets please remember that all pronouns referring to God is with a capital first letter!
As for my hymn sheet, it had two mistakes which I realized after they had gone for printing… can you find them out?

We had a complete run through of our singing on Friday morning.

All the practice helped because as usual the compliments didn’t stop. But for minor microphone glitches, the Passion was perfect and Mom now thinks that I can very much be Pilate.

I didn’t go for Easter Vigil, because except if we are singing, I avoid the night masses. Went for the 8.45am mass today instead which was relatively short and sweet.

My internet problems have cropped up once again which is why I am relatively less online now-a-days. This time it goes on and off automatically!

If there is one thing a geek needs, then it is a good internet connection. Now, that is one thing that has always eluded me and there is no chance of it changing in the near future!

That is one of the reason this blog has seen absolutely no updates for a long long time.

The past week and more can be summed up as follows:

Choir

Practice has been on in full force for Good Friday. We’ve had practice four times in the last week and things are shaping up.

Had to sing for a funeral mass on Thursday at the Oshiwara Cemetery. Few of us from the choir decided to drop in at the “Mega Mall” just across the road. The place is still coming up and the only thing there was the super market. We weren’t out shopping so just moved on to Inorbit food court.

Headed home and back again to choir practice.

Yesterday was Passion Sunday and we were singing for the 6pm mass. Father dropped the bombshell that we had to do the part of the crowd in the liturgy. With no prior practice, I think we carried it out well

Computers

My internet connection sucks. I’ve been calling Exatt up every single day for the past two weeks to ask them to come fix the connection. I dropped in at the office today and waiting for the folks in charge to come. The problem is they have no clue how to fix the frequent switch hanging.

I’ve been considering the MTNL Triband, but my mom is too terrified about “incorrect” billing on their part. I’ve decided to chuck the idea. If my net is down, a cyber cafe shall have to serve as my resort.

On the computer front, my Dad was down last week and he brought me a Kingston U3 DataTraveler.

I am very impressed by the drive. Besides functioning as a normal 2GB memory drive, the U3 Software adds autorun capabilities with easy installation of portable software to run directly from my drive. I’ve got my browser and other software installed on the drive, so no privacy issues at cafes

Dad also got me a 120GB external hard drive. It’s small and portable and a real life saver. This will all be part of my baggage to SCMHRD in June.

College

On the college front, I received the results for XIMB. I’m 101 on the waitlist which is definitely not converting. Besides, I don’t think I will be taking it up anyway. SCMHRD seems a better option after weighing in a lot of factors.

The SCMHRD Foundation course which was supposed to start on April 1 has temporarily been postponed. I’ve received the confirmation letter and receipt for the payment.

Also metup with the several SCMHRD folks from Mumbai on Saturday. Will save that for a small post later.

Personal

The mouse dropped in on Wednesday to say hi. Someone should be studying

Accompanied a pal to town on Friday. Have been digging up some stuff about studies in Australia. Maybe in the future. Then again, maybe not.

Have also made plans for a holiday in April. Things are shaping out well. I’m not much of the holiday person with hardly any trips at all.

But, the holiday always makes for some good blog tales…

One of the “benefits” of being in my choir is the regular treats that we get. This time it was cause of Sharon‘s birthday which was on Sunday. She fed us wafers, cake, samosas and cold drinks on Tuesday. I skipped dinner

We had practice on both Monday and Tuesday in preparation for Good Friday. Our line up is good (as usual). There are a few of our legacy hymns as well as some new ones so practice is needed.

This is going to be my last Holy Week in Mumbai, atleast for the next two years so I’m going all goes well.

I also joined the the SCMHRD community at Orkut, so spend a good amount of my time in the forum there. It’s good to get to know some of my future classmates.

And, my laptop arrived today! Atleast the box did. Hopefully, the engineer drops in tomorrow so I can start playing with the baby.

Friday as usual was choir practice. This time in preparation for Saturday’s Silver Jubilee mass and Sunday 8.30am mass.

Managed to cock up “We are here to praise you”. Guess, I’ve got so much running through my mind now a days that certain older stuff just takes a while to recollect

Saturday was a relatively quieter day, atleast till evening.

Picked up James and headed over to Holy Trinity Church in Powai. Heading there wasn’t a problem at all because the roads were perfectly clear. Helped because we left only at 5.20pm for the 6pm mass!

The church is much smaller than our church, but it has an equally bad sound system. Our singing was appreciated, because we got quite a few compliments and even some future requests :O

Since we were at Powai, we decided to drop in at the new Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Powai. My last experience with KFC was nearly eight years back and it wasn’t a very tasty one!

However, with the arrival of KFC in India, one thing that has definitely happened is the additions to the menu. Also, the Hot and Crispy was definitely not bland which was a good thing. The photo to the right shows how much we ate, and that is excluding the sundaes afterwards

Sunday

Sunday was a truly not-good day. Had a moderately decent CET Mock (awaiting results). This is the last one before the Sunday D-Day (are you praying for me?).

As I was ready to get back home, I discovered that the key of the petrol lock of my bike had disappeared. I use the word disappeared because I still can’t figure out how a key can just disappear (damn, I’m repeating myself) of a perfectly intact keychain!

Was able to get a contact of my regular mechanic to open the lock so that I could take the bike home.

Was even more pissed off later in the evening with Hutch customer(I don’t)care. I’ve always complained that Hutch customer care sucks and sucks big time and they never fail to disappoint me. The entire BPO industry is not what it used to be. We’re having more untrained morons handly calls and all they can do is infuriate the customer.
I’ll reserve this experience for a seperate post. Let me trash them in detail!

Monday

Began the day by first getting the bike petrol lock changed. I then headed over to the Hutch shop and got them to cancel the number.

Paid a visit to my stupid internet provider’s office to complain about the crappy connection. I am looking for alternatives…

And finally gave the bike for servicing. Spent the rest of the day at home working on releasing Snap Preview Anywhere 1.2. Choir practice was cancelled so the evening was spent at home, except for a quick visit to pickup my bike.

Tuesday

Tuesday was yet another day in front of the computer. Awoke early, blogged a bit and then hit the bed again as I was really exhausted. Spent a good portion of the evening trying to get the button in the WYSIWYG of WordPress, but finally just gave up and stuck to the button for the quicktag editor. Released Open Picture Window.

It’s just past 3am on Wednesday morning. I sense yet another long day ahead and still more plugin work as well. Should be fun…