Ladies and Gentlemen, John Paul II has left the building...

Well, everyone knows what happened over the weekend. Our beloved pontiff Pope John Paul II has passed away. No words could describe how great he was to us. We will surely miss you, our beloved Commander in Chief...

As I was saying, I was on my little road trip over the weekend to do the GT promotion at Queen's and Ottawa/Montreal. (Mike: GT is the acronym for the chinese for Eastern Canada Chinese Catholic Living Camp, a retreat we hold every Labour Day weekend that I've been a part of since '96.) It was a pretty fun weekend. Was nice to see some friends from Queen's again and had a blast staying up late eating late dinner and then deciding to not go and then to go to bbtea afterwards. lol...

Then Saturday, drove to Ottawa to do the promotion there, and on the 417 highway, I had the dubious honour of nearly tearing off the front of an idiot van that came out into our lane after making the smartass decision of trying to cram into the slow lane and nearly rear-ending the bunch of cars in it... phew.. what a mouthful. Anyways, thank God I insisted I went to Young Drivers (although some of my own stupid driving mistakes might make you wonder... but it's not YD's fault, it's mine =P). Met up w/ Betty for coffee/hot chocolate who I haven't seen since Christmas. Was nice to chat w/ her again after all this time. Too bad the weather was terrible or I wouldn't mind taking a look around Carleton U (where she's attending school right now). Heard the news of the Pope's passing that afternoon. Sunday, did the promotion in front of the chinese mass in Ottawa. Quite interesting as there really weren't any youth in our target age, but a lot of youngin's and the parents of such potential youths that were interested in our presentation. Ah well, I say it was a job well done. Honestly, I felt very unprepared b/c I realized I haven't done any public speaking in a LONG time... but I was fortunate to have the extra time to prepare during mass b/c it was in mandarin (therefore, I didn't understand the sermon and thus I took the time to practice my lines. I'm so bad =P). Cool thing was, the priest was a non-chinese that spoke cantonese and was learning mandarin. Very cool.

Anyways, back home and back to the humbug that is work. The more things change, the more they stay the same... as they say. Damn, I'm sleepy...