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.

Fourth semester at SCMHRD is one of the most relaxed semesters. We have Neev just around the corner and so I am relatively free. Decided to go to church today. Maria was pleased since she has been after me to do so for a long long time! Am sure my Mom too was pleased.

Today was the feast of Christ the King as well as it happens to be my brother’s birthday. The feast of Christ the King marks the end of the liturgical year. This is usually a big event in my church back in Mumbai. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. I can finally start playing some Christmas carols

We took the 5.05pm bus to Atur Center and then went to the Food Bazaar at Pune Central to pick up some eatables and other essentials.

Mass at St. Anthony’s in Model Colony was over an hour. However, it was filled with singing, something that I haven’t indulged in a long time.

Met quite a few other Catholics of SCMHRD of both the juniors and senior batch who landed up for mass today.

Caught the 8pm bus back to the campus and grabbed a simple dinner of double full fried eggs in the cafeteria.

We have a company on campus tomorrow morning. Have to attend the pre-placement talks before I decide if I should signup with them or not.

Wish me the best of luck. Will provide details tomorrow or day after. I plan on going home on Tuesday since the rest of the week is relatively free. Also have to pickup my final installment demand draft.

This last week (since Saturday) has been rather painful in some aspects. For some strange reason my head started throbbing Saturday evening. I assumed it to be lack of sleep and so headed off home from Lil white mouse‘s place.

Went for mass at the Sacred Heart Church in Worli on Lil white mouse’s invitation. She wanted me to do the reading there, so did just that. Didn’t realize I had a singing session coming as well!

Tried to get rid of the headache with enough sleep and water, but neither worked.

Had to go to R’s place as she had invited all of us over to her place. The ride the Thane was fun, big empty roads. The two crocins before helped for a few hours. Had plans to go to Worli but wasn’t in a position to do so and headed back home.

Two crocins in the evening and a ton of water did end the headache, with just lingering splits all through Monday.

Was perfectly fine on Tuesday. Also completed the project I was working on and have been assigned another.

We received our cheque for our stipend yesterday. Money finally

And today yours truly managed to get a catch in my neck. It sure has been a pain in the neck.
I’m hoping it is good tomorrow.

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.

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!

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…

Anniversaries always skip my mind! On 23rd I completed six years in my choir. Well, it sure has been a long long time.

I never ever expected me to ever end up singing. But, it has been an enjoyable journey, which I plan on continuing as long as I can!

Monday to Sunday has been a long week.

Monday began with me rushing home after work to make it in time for choir practice. We were singing for Maundy Thursday and needed the practice.

Tuesday was the C&A Annual Party in celebration of us reaching (if not crossing) our sales target. This time it was held at The Residency in Powai. Gorged on the amazing food there. My size definitely doesn’t show my ability to eat
And so was the desert …

The party went on till past 10.30pm and we had to get back to work the next day on time!

Add to that I worked till 8.30pm on Wednesday! Was a really long exhausting day indeed!

Thursday was equally bad. I had to leave early cause of Maundy Thursday and so had to do more in less time. Unfortunately, things went bad at the last moment and I was forced to go to work on Saturday. Had a relatively shorter day, but my Monday is going to be very very packed and I am expecting to work late on that day.

Like I said, we were singing for Maundy Thursday. The mass was good. Our singing was good inspite of not having enough practice.

Both Good Friday and Easter
I’m going to be a little critical about all the three masses this time.

Firstly, the hymn sheets. When making hymn sheets most people forget that usually the “He”, “Him” and the “You” refer to God and the initial letter has to be captitalized. One mistype is still OK. However, when all instances are missed then it shows you are not paying any attention or you jsut don’t know! I made the Maundy Thursday sheet and besides the look and the layout, I make sure that I don’t make this mistake!

Next, the singing. Though we always take new hymns, we usually make sure we teach them to the people. Unfortunately we didn’t have the opportunity to teach all of them this time, but I think we should have. Otherwise it just results in the congregation sitting quiet.

Now for Good Friday. The singing was moderate and could have been better. One thing that really irritated me was the version of “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”.
Those of you are familiar with the hymn will know it to be serious in nature. However, the choir turned it into a jive number, with the choir master literally dancing to it :O

Will commend them with their “performance” of Old Rugged Cross. The combination of the violin, guitar and the organ was excellent. However, in the end, it was just a performance.

Easter night mass was long, very long, almost three hours. Once again the singing needed more. The Glory was totally messed up. I’m not sure if the playing was wrong or the singing was but they definitely didn’t match!

Well, I can say more, but I don’t awant to be so critical

Went out with Anjali for dinner after mass to Zodiac which happens to be the only place open at that time in our area. Had a schezwan bangda which was simply delicious. We ran into Stephanie and Jason over there.

Have spent all of this morning watching TV There is the Gospel Rock concert in the evening followed by a birthday party. Am going to make the most of this afternoon and sleep extremely well!

I read a card the other day that said Happy Birthday today, Happy Hangover Tomorrow!.

Well, I don’t drink, so that wouldn’t apply to me, but yes if I had gone to work, it would definitely have felt like one!

Took 26th off from work and I realized this was much needed. Was only able to sleep around 6am on 26th morning after the great Christmas Dance.

Madam C woke me around 10am to tell me she was already on her way to my place. Was really really zonked the whole morning. She has straightened her hair and was looking really gorgeous!
She had to leave around 1pm and I just wasn’t able to ride to Bandra and back
Went to bed once again and woke up at 5.30pm. Sleep complete.

Had to go to church in the evening to sing for a mini-fest that happens every year. Was really shocked to see how low scale it was this year. I guess this was probably because we had other major church activities this year.

The choir wasn’t at full strength, many had sore voices, but I think we came out quite well. Just that we were singing to an almost empty audience!

Dropped Anjali off to a friends place after the singing before heading back home. Had planned on visiting a doctor but I think I’m doing fine.

Have to go to work now. The last week of this year. It better go well!

Monday and Tuesday were pretty much evenings with choir.

The past three days at work have been pretty exhausting so both Monday and Tuesday were welcome breaks.

Monday was choir practice, which I finally attended after a long time. Tuesday being St. Cecilia‘s – the Patron Saint of music and choirs – feast, U. Conrad decided to have a special mass followed by dinner at McDonalds at the Hub in Jogeswari.

Our Parish allowed us to celebrate mass at 8pm so that us working folks could make it. So yesterday, we had a small mass with 18 of us choir members plus our Sacristan Allwyn. Mass was celebrated by Fr. Biju.

Managed to take pics of us around the altar and of the altar itself.

After this we headed off to the hub. Took Anjali with me out there. Forgot to mention that I picked her up on my way home from work. She seems to be finally warming up to the concept of bike rides !

Dinner at McDonalds was good (though Anjali disagrees that dinner and McDonalds go together).
Being a weekday, we didn’t have a problem finding parking place.

Was home only by 10.30pm. Dropped Alwynn back at church before going back home.