Patrick's Diary - 9/21/2015

As the first working day of the week, you can imagine it was pretty busy. As I shared that I was pretty tired through the weekend, so even hadn't got up until almost 7:00am. The traffic was pretty congested and I arrived at office around 9:00am. 

It's already 8:00pm after I had dinner, I came back to my bedroom to watch on CNN. As I had learned earlier, Scott Walker dropped out of GOP Presidential Nomination and Ben Carson made religions related political comments. They need to reshuffle because it is not clear for Americans what their political agenda is as a party. Too many cooks are in the kitchen, it might have been eye-popping but it's the time for the clarification. My impression at this stage is that every candidate is trying to get nominated no matter what her/his true belief is. 

Pope would be coming, actually he is already in US today, religions become a hot topic again nationwide. Because I read so many books associated with religions when I was a teenager, I was even told that one of my mom's ancestors might be a missionary, I have been interested in religions since childhood. However, I view them from my own perspective.

When I was in middle school, I lived in an apartment building, which faced Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception right across the old Second Ring Road, It was the only symbolic Christian church in Beijing in my mind. However, 1/4 of the residents in our apartment building were Muslim who were Uyghur working for The Bureau of Minority Translations, most of them were very good friends of our family, which was pretty odd because Han families in that building were friendly but not very close to them. Their kids came to our apartment to play almost everyday. When they celebrated their holidays, we were the only family invited to their parties out of their own circle. 

When I lived in Nassau, Bahamas in 1988, I often stopped by a very small church on the street paralleling to Bay Street. I seemed getting sort of comfort while living in a new place. This is the only photo I could find, I lost so many photos. 

I learned Church of Sweden more comprehensively than other denominations when I was there in 90s. Actually, I have been updating my knowledge through various websites from time to time in the last several years. According to my new knowledge, it has been significantly changed after January 1st, 2000. However, when I came back there in July, I was still very impressed by all the cathedrals, definitely, Uppsala Cathedral is always the best. 

In my view, the mission of all religions is to save the world from poverty and disaster. The stories in Arabian Nights I read when I was 13 are all very fascinating and beautiful as well.