New Year

Reunion dinner

 The Year of the Tiger crept in silently amidst lockdowns and social restrictions. There certainly wasn't a big celebration here as many chinese living here are isolated because of being infected or fear of being infected. We had a simple Mass on the last day of the Year of the Ox at the IHM convent. A special altar and lectern was made for the convent ... and since the chapel was too small to fit all of us, we celebrated the Mass in the living room. Only 6 of us - 3 sisters and 2 priests and an arab neighbour. After that we had a lovely Reunion dinner cooked by the sisters. They spent 10 hours preparing and cooking it because they had only one stove ... nevertheless high class restaurant standard food and presentation! 

On the 1st day of the New Year, I organised a lunch for over 10 asian religios living in Jerusalem. That included Vietnamese, Thai, Filipio, Indonesian, Hong Kong citizens. However all but 3 decided to come as many had come into contact with someone infected with the virus, and knowing that I'm not vaccinated they did not want to risk infecting me. So in the end only 4 of us were at lunch at the Mandarin restaurant. Ah Ling the owner cooked up a great lunch for us and we enjoyed it very much ... not least because we were the only people there. The restaurant is under renovation and therefore closed to the public. But Ah Ling opened up a private room just for us to use. Very kind of her.

Altar and lectern for Mass

And the rest of the 1st day was spent at work. The weather has warmed up a little ... 7 degrees maximum. And the sky continued to be gray and cloudy. The weekend will see heavy rains again ... and probably Chap Gho Meh (Yuan Xiao) will be cold and wet.

I'm getting much better though I had a couple of days bleeding. My memory is still not very good and once in a while people need to remind me what I am doing, where I am going etc. And the body is not as nimble as before ... reflexes are much slower. I realised that I cannot even type this blog without making mistakes ... not typos but I type a word when I intended another. The mind and the fingers are not coordinating.