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Dear darlingest Annelies Marie,

Since I decided to abstain from meat - pork, beef and chicken - till Easter, I have from Ash Wednesday been more or less a vegetarian. I have also been fasting as much as I could by eating less and avoiding rich food as much as I could though not as strictly as I do my abstinence.

It is now that I am having these strange withdrawal like symptoms from meat that I also realize the difficulty of people with special diets to find themselves a place in our local food service industry that caters to the majority taste. Now, you know how I always joke around with you and with my other friends about "kosher" being for cats or "halal" for that matter in the wider Abrahamic sense of the whole, being for "us". Well, I realize now how difficult it must be for Jews or Muslims to practice their dietary preferences in cities where they are a minority. It must not be the case in any Republic or any responsible state that wills to calls itself "one" - for that "one" must stand for something - and we all know what it is, my love. For that "one" is a safeguard to sacred life as a whole and more than a name, it is a manifest reality in the heart of the people - and not just the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, mind you, but all honorable religion - Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, the devotees of Shinto, Confucianism etc. - that enrich the cultural heritage of every nation and engaged together in the labor of hope in the building up of the peace which is the life of every Country - that "one" also belongs to them all. For We, of the Abrahamic faiths, are the vanguard of this hope, a hope that must arrive in this midnight dark to turn the hearts of our nations toward each other in peace and lead this one Covenant family of Mankind away from the rage of the beast of war towards the dawn and the promise of a new age.

The elections here in my native Philippines is coming up next year. It is a very, very crucial elections - a crossroads, if you will, my love - a defining moment in the life of this one Republic.

We Filipinos must do this right: The act of voting itself is important, my love. It must be remembered by all democratic societies that there is a three-fold significance in the act itself. For contained in the act of voting itself without the name on the ballot is the consent of the governed to be governed; the act of choosing the name itself symbolic of that citizen's choice to participate in the democratic life of the one Republic and the choice itself of who to represent that individual in the Republic, a peaceful exercise of force against tyranny. Because who we vote proceeds from the act of the vote, it is vital that the hearts of our citizens understand the three-fold significance of these things that happen in the space of one choice, one very important choice. We shall post an entry on this on our main blog as well sometime soon, my love.

I just got back from work, my love. Feeling a little spent now so I'll go for now.

I love you.

Always to always,

Pusing