Archive for the ‘religion’ Category
Filed under culture, personal, religion
Misa de Gallo or Simbang Gabi is a traditional evening mass in the Philippines, held at the crack of dawn from December 16 to December 24. It’s very much a part of the Christmas celebration of Filipinos that people make it a point to be there everyday for nine days. I’m not Catholic, though, so I never went to one growing up. I only read about it in books and heard about it from friends, and to me it sounded like a fun and colorful tradition.
So when my roommate announced that she was going to the Misa de Gallo this year, I volunteered to go with her. She had a laughing fit when I said that; she thought it was a big joke because I usually wake up at past nine, the earliest. The few times that she tried to wake me up earlier than that (sometimes I ask her to–I usually don’t hear my alarm clocks), she would fail, even if waking me up sometimes becomes a physical feat for her (wrist-grabbing, pinching–those stuff).
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Filed under books, religion
I swear, LDS people are so queer that it is so easy to tell if someone is LDS. When David Archuleta and Brooke White sang their hearts out on American Idol Season 7, people suspected that they were LDS, even though the two did not talk about their beliefs on the show. The people were right.
I had the same wild guess about Stephanie Meyer while I was reading her books in the Twilight saga. Her profile said she got her writing degree from Brigham Young University. When someone goes to BYU, there is 90% probability that that person is LDS.
Second, her beliefs are all over her books. The vampire lover boy in the saga, Edward Cullen, insisted that he and Bella Swan marry before they make love, because, according to him, it is the right thing to do. In all the years that I’ve been reading novels, I haven’t come across a novel where the guy had to insist that.
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Filed under opinion, religion
If bothers me to see that its supporters are defaming our temple in Los Angeles. I was an activist, I know how ugly protests can get. The temple may not be special to them, but it is to us.
Marriage is sacred. I have my beliefs about marriage and how it should be done. But I am also pro-choice. I believe that people who do not share my religious beliefs should have the choice who to marry. We do not have the right to impose our moral standards on everyone. If I were there, I would probably have voted no and respected those who voted yes.
But the people of California have spoken, and majority said yes. They want same-sex marriage to be banned. I respect the will of the majority. That’s how things work in a democracy.
Many people seem to believe that the human right is boundless. It is not. Our rights end where the rights of another person begins. Simply put, we can swing our arms however we like, as long as we don’t hit anybody. Is it so hard to do that?
Filed under religion, technology
I was very sleepy and was about to doze off when a nerdy friend, in his excitement, PMed me just to say that the Large Hadron Collider was switched on for the first time in many years.
Now, I am also a nerd. When he mentioned “physics research” and said yes, he was referring to that elite research center in Switzerland, I got excited, too!
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which made the Large Hadron Collider, has been trying for years to recreate the Big Bang in its quest to uncover the origins of the universe. The institute does this by producing small amounts of antimatter, the most powerful substance in the world, through high-energy machines called particle accelerators. The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful of these.
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