Hong Kong (1/28): Update and Stuff

Just an update of what has been going on this past week. 

1. Work: Every day working past midnight and 3 days of all-nighters, coupled with harrowing deadlines, several meetings and and endless stream of things to do has made this one of the most stressful weeks of work I've had since starting up at AnD a year ago.  Thank goodness not every week is like the past week or I'll have to start brushing up my resume and finding work as a Yak Farmer somewhere.  (I mean. heck.  It's 4:00 a.m. on Sunday night and I'm working in the office ... c'mon.)

2. Moving: I've been too busy to do much packing, but I'm moving in 5 days.  That's right.  5 days and I haven't even packed yet.  That's very stressful for me.  I'm getting kind of sick of moving every year and this move better be the last one for a while because if I have to move one more time 12 months from now I'm going to just get rid of all my earthly posessions and live out of a backpack at the YMCA.

3. Money: Thanks to paying a big chunk of money for my apartment deposit and not being able to collect my current apartment's deposit until after I've moved out, I have been super broke for the past week.  Fortunately a friend loaned me a few bucks to tie me over, but the part of me that hates borrowing money is stressing out, even though the part of me that hates being broke is feeling much better.

4. Health.  As a result of all the lack of sleep and other stuff in #'s 1 - 3 above, I caught a nasty flu this week.  Tuesday - Wednesday was the throat, Thursday - Friday was the Runny Nose and Saturday was a fever.  But since I was able to work from home, I was able to let my body rest on a more natural schedule, and even though I still got in the same 15 hours of work each day, I was able to heal up much faster.  By Sunday I was feeling much better and it was nice to be able to make it to the World Religion Day celebration in TST.

So, as a reward to myself for healing up (more or less) and getting lots of work done this week, I took a few hours off to head over to the Chinese Cultural Center in TST, Kowloon for the World Religion Day celebration that I plugged in an earlier blog.

I got there a little late, but still caught most of the event.  It was pretty packed too.  There was a talk on the environment and global warming by a scientist (talk about harmonizing science and religion!), but it was in Cantonese so I didn't catch most of it.  But after that was the part I really liked.

They had religious leaders from all these different faiths go up and talk about / pray for / share their religion's thoughts on the Environment and the role of religion in helping to keep the Earth a place we can live in for a long time.  A Christian minister led us in prayer.  A Buddhist Monk chanted and discussed nature.  An Islamic Mullah talked about what the Qur'an says about the environment, A Baha'i shared writings on the importance of taking care of the Environment, A Catholic Priest has some really nice things to say about our responsibility towards the planet, and a member of Zorrastrian clergy shared some writings about the environment and said a prayer too.  There was also a great Yiddish song sang by members of the Jewish Youth Choir of Hong Kong and a song by the Taoist orchestra playing traditional Chinese instruments.

After a week of stress, it was just the peaceful and uplifting sort of environment I needed to be in.  All those religions represented together, not to discuss what is different about each one, but to share their common views and shared ideals.  This particular celebration was in relation to the Environment, but the truth is, the World's great relgions really do have more in common at their core than the differences on the surface might lead us to believe. 

Love God.  Love each other.  Love the Universe.  Love Ourselves. 

That's pretty much what it all boils down to.  All the other stuff is mostly academic.

Okay ... back to work .. or maybe I'll just take a nap .. I'm tired.