Good Friday

It's been a rainy Good Friday. Good Friday's a holiday over here, so the faithful typically flock to church in the morning, followed by fasting and penance for some. In the US, religious holidays aren't allowed, so Good Friday isn't a holiday. And cos it isn't a holiday, many of my Christian friends over there don't go to church, and it becomes just another day. Easter Sunday is the big deal, they say (cos of the easter eggs?). Many of my Christian friends over here however, are extremely appalled when they hear of Christians not going to church on Good Friday! How could they not remember Christ died for us? I tend to agree with the latter. The fundamental belief of Christianity is that Christ died for us that we may have eternal life, then followed by He rose from the dead 3 days later. So it makes sense that Good Friday (and of course Christmas) is the one day that all Christians go to church.

Well of course the convenience plays a part in Christian behavior here in Singapore. My church has 4 services today, 1 in Chinese too, and it's a public holiday too. Back at Newman Hall in Berkeley, there's only 1 service at 7pm, it's not a holiday, and you probably can't get a seat anyway. But as my Cathechism teacher once taught me, can't you sacrifice a teeny bit of inconvenience to worship the Lord? Another big turn off in Berkeley was that the veneration of the Cross takes so long! The priest brings out this huge Cross, and some old folks even take up to 5 mins praying while there's a long line behind! You can imagine how long the service would last huh?

In other completely unrelated news, 6 HK women lost their breasts because they injected some breast enlargement gel which caused complications and cant be removed after injection. What a bummer huh?

Not too recently I learned something new about corruption. Why are corrupted officials in government always so eager to push for more and more pork barrel construction projects, even projects that do not benefit anyone? Examples include roads to nowhere, bridges that don't increase capacity, replacing buildings that are perfectly fine, etc. I mean, it seems counter-intuitive because by building these useless things they are not exactly benefiting anybody, not even their supporters or themselves huh? Well, the simple reason is that in many developing countries a huge portion of government expenditure goes to construction, and typically one single developer/contractor executes the project. So by pushing for a large redundant construction project and giving it to ONE crony developer/contractor, you can actually receive huge bribes and only have to deal with ONE (or a few) person! Think about it, for a typical airport terminal costing say $500million, I'm sure the developer can spare you AT LEAST a $10 million bribe? $10 million in the pocket without having to do anything at all huh? Compare this to receiving bribes from businesses: small money, many businessmen (and companies) you have to deal with to earn the same amount, which increases your risk of exposure. Interestingly, by accepting bribes from businesses you will have monopolies and cronyism, but the citizens may not actually suffer as much as having to pay huge taxes for completely redundant public construction projects.