Valentine's Day

Spoke too soon about "The sun is back" in yesterday's blog. After a couple of hours, it started to rain again - tempest! Howling, gusty winds with bits of hail as well! And I had to go out to the New City as well!

That's because Fr Niccacci kept asking when I'd invite him for a chinese meal to celebrate the Chinese New Year, as did some other students. So I decided to do some home-cooking with the stuff you guys gave me so as to save on money. Mind you the non-kosher stuff was expensive but certainly not as much as eating out in a Chinese restaurent! One kilo of pork cost 65 shekels (HK$130) but the guy reduced it to 45 shekels (HK$90). Anyway got what I needed, and rushed home in the storm to start cooking dinner.

Matthew my classmate helped in the cooking. Massimo Carlino laid the table and washing up and Cyriac (another Indian 2 yr student) just slept on the couch. He's help-less. Jobi (another 2nd yr Indian student) and fr Niccacci came later to eat. We had Tom Yam soup (burnt their stomachs right through!), Persian rice, Sweet/sour porkribs, tomato/garlic prawns, fried noodles and sago/tapioca/longan in coconut milk for dessert. And the rain slammed down throughout that time. After the meal at 9.30pm we had to clean up the entire students' kitchen - was warned by the dean that we had to keep it spotless a couple of hours before starting dinner.

This morning at Mass, I had a nice surprise. Being the first one down, I had to open the church doors and monastery gates, and wow - there was Darko at the gate! Darko is a doctoral student who's completed his thesis and is now waiting to defend it. He returned to Croatia last year and I didn't know he was coming back today. It was good to see him. I knew him some 8 years back when he was a seminarian here in Jerusalem but never spoke to him. Thought he was a little stuck-up back then (well he's very tall and it would hurt my neck to always look up when speaking to him!!!!). Then one day when I was bringing a group to Bethany 4 years ago, he was also there with a Croatian grp. And he started speaking perfect english to me - I thought he only spoke italian and croatian. So then we became good friends (found out he also thought I was a little stuck-up that's why he never spoke to me back then... hmmm but how wrong he was!!!!!) Anyway Darko is back for a couple of weeks so we can catch up with each other - hmmm just remembered he likes curry kalamari and prawns. Maybe we'll go out one evening for that. OK so lesson to learn - don't judge by first impressions: we both thought each other stuck-up at the beginning but now we're real good friends when we got to know each other.

And yesterday was Valentine's Day. While out in the storm yesterday, I saw lots of young guys huddling in the rain just outside New Gate waiting for their girlfriends. It's funny. It's usually one guy who wants to give a red rose or a present to the girl, but he always needs a couple of friends to stand by and give him moral support (I guess). So you see groups of 3-4 guys (only one actually holding a rose or present) chatting aimless words because their eyes are scouring the streets to see if the girl is coming (and panicking when she doesn't show up because he looks "uncool" holding a rose at New Gate). And of course the girls will come in 3s or 4s, giggling as usual. And only one actually gets the rose or present. I wonder if any of them ever thought who St Valentine was. Well for one, we're not sure as there're several saints/persons by that name. "Valentinus" comes from "valens" meaning "worthy" and our Catholic hagiography (big word? check out the dictionary!) mentions a priest, bishop and martyr all by that name. I think it's more "worth"while to reflect on being "worthy" of Christ's redemption that climaxes our Lenten observance. Are you worthy to be a Christian? Want to be a true "Valentine"?