New year

It's Chinese/Korean New Year's eve and Pancake day on Tuesday. I've been invited to a dual purpose party. Each year I go through the whole thing of international students pulling faces at me when I try and put lemon and sugar on their pancakes. Still, I will perservere. Perhaps one day I'll be able to get them to put malt vinegar on their chips.

The beginning of Lent and a new year is a good time to try some new resolutions. I've been reading about Buddhism but I've been holding back from getting into it more deeply. I like what little I know about it. It's a good philosophy for living your life as it encourages balance and compassion. If I understand it correctly the Buddha said he wasn't going to comment on life after death and all that because no one can really know. I quite like the idea of a religion that gives you a good approach to life but leaves things like God and the afterlife alone. I don't know if Buddhism answers that description. I need to do some more reading. All the problems in my life are very minor and I know that if I can retrain my mind I can knock them on the head. I'd like to do something for Lent to symbolise a new start. Perhaps show more awareness of the effect that my lifestyle has on the environment. I can't be too extreme because I won't stick to it. I wondered about cutting out fish, only having organic dairy and eggs, avoiding completely useless drains on resources like canned drinks and only having fairtrade sweet goods. One jolly important aspect of Buddhism is meditation and I haven't even tried that yet!

I know I need a life audit. Life is nothing without friends and I need to re establish contact with the ones I've let drift. I need to stop distracting myself with things and be more organised. TV is great, the internet is great but they need to be controlled.