Lent and other thoughts

At work I sit between two Catholics, who both have given something up for Lent. The other one gave up dessert and is suffering for it amidst a birthday season, and the other one after long speculation and some prodding gave up snacks between meals which is also proving very difficult. It's fascinating to observe something like first hand - so far Lent has been familiar to me only because of that episode of Father Ted where Ted, Jack and Dougal decide to give up smoking, drinking and roller-blading respectively ("What? Priests? Don't tell me I'm still on that feckin' island!" - Father Jack after being sober for the first time in years).

That's one of the things I love about Vancouver (I know, I keep going on about it, but I really do) - diversity. It's funny to think of Catholicism as "exotic" but I've never really known any religious people before, and although these people are good Catholics they never impose their views on anyone (I've never even heard them mention God, I don't think). In fact, I'm pretty exotic just because I'm from Europe - we have surprisingly few Europeans at my company: there's me and Timo from Finland, one guy who's from Macedonia and one from Serbia and few Brits but that's about it. There are plenty of people that identify as Europeans who might even carry European passports, but since they've been born in Canada very few Europeans would classify them as such.

This evening I've spent with tuning my wig while Dragon has started work with WonderFlex, the wondrous plastic-like material that when heated can be shaped into anything - in his case headgear, hand protectors and shoulder pads.