Yesterday I wasn’r feeling too good. I almost forgot I was scheduled to leave for an excursion until I received an sms from victor. Mrs BB rushed me to the wharf. We had a puncture. It was a bad omen and both of us thought it was best I not go but I had no choice.
Walked to the old express wharf better known as Pulau Babi to the older generation. Met a lot of my old friends and new. The feeling of excitement slowly began to overcome my feeling of dread.
It was great to see Sibu from the express boat. As you can see, it has a certain charm to it.
We stopped to pick up staff from the medical dept, the dentistry dept and the fire brigade dept.
I was all comfy in the air-conditioned express boat but cheeky Victor challenged me to climb upstairs and soak under the hot sun to take pics. I am not the sort to take challenges like that lying down.
Without any grace I tried clumsily to climb. It wasn’t easy. My sandals weren’t quite up to the task. I left my sandals in the boat and tried to climb up again. After much shoving and pushing, and a few tired friends, I was finally up there luxuriating in the wind though my little hair. The sky was cloudy though and I rather enjoyed being on top.
Today I am in a questioning mood. What am I doing on this earth plodding on in the futile search for meaning in life? Why do I bother to think so much? Perhaps I should stop thinking. Just put my thoughts on safe mode, refuse to hate myself and go through the motions of ‘living’
Buddha: If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
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As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery.
We have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace.
The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as
anger and attachment, fear and suspicion,
while love and compassion, a sense of universal responsibility
are the sources of peace and happiness.
Dalai Lama
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This video link of aliens from the deep from Lifeleak occasionally doesn’t seem to work. Apologies. If it doesn’t work, you can try this link
The Bible : Mathew:
6:25 So I say to you, Take no thought for your life, about food or drink, or about clothing for your body. Is not life more than food, and the body more than its clothing?
6:26 See the birds of heaven; they do not put seeds in the earth, they do not get in grain, or put it in store-houses; and your Father in heaven gives them food. Are you not of much more value than they?
6:27 And which of you by taking thought is able to make himself a cubit taller?
6:28 And why are you troubled about clothing? See the flowers of the field, how they come up; they do no work, they make no thread:
6:29 But I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
This week for my entry I post a microwave oven and a gas stove I bought today.
I had to replace this because my kid boiled some water with a rubber coaster stuck under the kettle. Consequently the rubber melted and fortunately only the gas stove and kettle was spoiled. No fire . Being made of metal helped.
I also bought a simple microwave oven to replace the microwave which he spoiled by simply pressing buttons on the microwave oven. Hence this time I bought a simple microwave which is not digital.
I have learned my lesson.
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Life has been good today. I got my car back today. After days riding my ancient bike and being exposed to the sun and the rain, my rusty old wreck seems like a Mercedez. First thing I did was to bring Mrs BB and Benghui shopping.
Alamak just bought some cheap rice, cooking oil and very basic groceries the bill almost made me pengsan ( faint ). Money seems to be getting smaller nowadays even though the price of petrol has gone down to RM2.00/ liter. The price of goods remain the same if not higher. I must make it a point to tighten my belt even tighter. Hopefully this will help with my diet too.
For your information I bought Benghui some ice-cream, potato chips, bak chang ( meat dumplings ) tonight. He deserves it for being such a good boy this week. I even devised a program where I allocated chores for him daily. This is to teach him the value of money. He is paid an allowance for his daily chores. Previously he was paid only enough to buy food at the school canteen. He is not paid anything when it is not a school day.
The scheme didn’t work. He took my money and gave it to mummy because ‘ mummy loves him and take good care of him.” I hope he thinks like that when he has a girlfriend and is working.
I also had the pleasure of meeting Mich tonight online. Oooh, how young I felt chatting with such a lovely young lady. This uncle Ah Beng is safe lah because i am so far from Kuala Lumpur. What a joy . Mrs BB laughed and asked me if I was suffering from mid-life crisis and contemplating a replacement hahahhahaah.
Go and say hi to Mich. I offered to adopt her but she saw through my ruse. She knew she would soon be able to earn an inome and I had my eyes on that hahahahaahahah.
Hell exists alright. Depressed people, those suffering poverty, injustices, illness, loneliness – anything that makes them wish to be in a better place are all going through hell, albeit on earth. Hell as a concept, is more a mental state rather than physical place.
That got me thinking. What then is Heaven.
Heaven may refer to the physical heavens, the sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the universe beyond. This is the traditional literal meaning of the term in English, however since at least AD 1000, it is typically also used to refer to a plane of existence (sometimes held to exist in our own universe) in various religions and spiritual philosophies, often described as the holiest possible place, accessible by people according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith etc.
Atheists however reject the existence of heaven. I remember my feelings as a young man holding a pic of my mum while the final rites were being read. It was a very hot day and the pit was freshly dug. It reminded me that our existence on Earth is so precarious. I knew it was the final farewell. I wanted to jump in the pit and be buried together with her remembering her sacrifices for us and feeling guilty I had not done enough while she was still alive.
Some body scolded me for crying and being a mummy’s boy. Even then I knew it was no shame. I was half that uncle’s age but I was proud to be grieving for my mum. It was a noble act of recognition for what she had been. Her funeral was a celebration of her life. I knew I could never bridge the gap between Earth and ‘Heaven’ like a Lazarus. It was final.
Back then, I did not believe in the existence of Heaven and Hell. Even today when I am more receptive to the gospel, people are shocked when I say I don’t take the existence of Heaven and Hell literally. The more conservative folks would gasp in horror when i say that . I prefer to speak the truth rather than conform for conformity’s sake.
Forgive this Sibu Ah Pek for having his own foolish opinions. I still look upon the notion of Heaven useful as an “opiate of the masses”—to help people cope with their lives’ misery by promising a reward after death.
It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because we think the Creator of the Universe wants us to do it, or will reward us for doing it, or will punish us for not doing it.
George Orwell used Sugarcandy Mountain in his novel Animal Farm to be a literary expression of this view. The animals were told that after their miserable lives were over they would go to a place in which “it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges”
Hell as a word is often quoted often in anger or as a form of cursing. What is hell and where is hell. It more likely or not depends on the religious background of a person.
In many religious traditions, Hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife, often in the underworld. Religions with a linear divine history often depict Hell as endless whereas religions with a cyclic history often depict Hell as an intermediary period between incarnations
Punishment in Hell typically corresponds to sins committed in life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each wrong committed and sometimes they are general, with sinners being relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or level of suffering. In Islam and Christianity, however, faith and repentance play a larger role than actions in determining a soul’s afterlife destiny.
In contrast to Hell, other types of afterlives are abodes of the dead and paradises. Abodes of the dead are neutral places for all the dead for example sheol rather than prisons of punishment for sinners.
Diyu or Ti-yü; literally “earth prison” is the realm of the dead in Chinese mythology. It is very loosely based upon the Buddhist concept of Naraka combined with traditional Chinese afterlife beliefs and a variety of popular expansions and re-interpretations of these two traditions. Ruled by Yanluo Wang, the King of Hell, Diyu is a maze of underground levels and chambers where souls are taken to atone for their earthly sins.
Incorporating ideas from Taoism and Buddhism as well as traditional Chinese folk religion, Diyu is a kind of purgatory place which serves not only to punish but also to renew spirits ready for their next incarnation. There are many deities associated with the place, whose names and purposes are the subject of much conflicting information.
The exact number of levels in Chinese Hell – and their associated deities – differs according to the Buddhist or Taoist perception. Some speak of three to four ‘Courts’, other as many as ten. The ten judges are also known as the 10 Kings of Yama.
Each Court deals with a different aspect of atonement. For example, murder is punished in one Court, adultery in another. According to some Chinese legends, there are eighteen levels in Hell. Punishment also varies according to belief, but most legends speak of highly imaginative chambers where wrong-doers are sawn in half, beheaded, thrown into pits of filth or forced to climb trees adorned with sharp blades.
However, most legends agree that once a soul (usually referred to as a ‘ghost’) has atoned for their deeds and repented, he or she is given the Drink of Forgetfulness by Meng Po and sent back into the world to be reborn, possibly as an animal or a poor or sick person, for further punishment.
The concept of hell is in my thought today because I received a book today. It is called Journey to the Underworld.
This post is not meant to be controversial but so as to enrich the knowledge of those who don’t understand the Chinese afterlife culture.
I have no car at my disposal now. I am too old to be using my ancient bike which is possibly older than some of my readers. So I decided not to go for work today. I intended to sleep until 10.00 at least.
Benghui unceremoniously woke me up at 8.00. ” I am hungry,” he said. “Mummy said you must take care of me.” ( All my hopes of a lazy day evaporated in the air. I wish I had gone to work instead. )
I cooked these for lunch and dinner. By lunchtime it was obvious I would have to cook again for dinner.
Luckily Benghui didn’t like this lovely sambal dish so I don’t have to share with him.
Mummy said the grass is as high as the fruits. Cut the grass.
Do something about the starfruit tree. Trim it.
Daddy : Mummy said that?
Benghui : Yes, how did you know? ( in big-eyed surprise )
Mummy oso said to remove all the mango branches. ( i had trimmed it some time ago and had been delaying the day for ages and ages. )
He then busied himself for a while.
A few minutes later, when I checked, he was watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
A few minutes later, he was reading and then without a sound or movement, he was asleep.
This is my destiny. To be at the beck and call of my family until I no longer matter. How I wish I could have just a little bit more freedom. Or I could sail off into the sunset like an Omar Sharif look-alike or a dentist in a toothpaste ad at least. Freedom…sigh …sigh.
I did a post on Carly Simon and my brader commented that I am living in the past. Rather than lose the traffic of my brader, i have made up a post out of nowhere just for him He prefers modern and the new. He mentioned among others Beyonce and Jay Chou .
He wrote : aiya beng! don’t dwell in yesteryears, get on with the latest like Beyonce lah,Cold Play lah, Jay Chou lah..hehehe
The past is like a dream. We were once there but those are now just memories getting dimmer by the day. Anyway that is the impression I get after reading Nase’s recent posts.
There will always be new and newer things and stuff. Is there space for the past, for the old? Friends and people of yesteryears? Stuff bought but no longer serving its purpose and cluttering up the home. Do you throw them out as a part of the baggage of yesteryears? How about people when they have outlived their usefulness.
Food for thought, my friends. In life change is inevitable of course.
For this week’s Weekend Snapshot I highlight retail scenes that many of us take for granted. They form a very necessary part of the food chain supplying food to the consumers.
This was taken at the bus stand near the mosque in Kuching. It was almost 1730 and they still had so much left over to sell. I would buy from them if I were not on holiday and therefore not cooking. They expose themselves to the fumes from the buses but it is a strategic location for selling to the bus passengers who are on their way home.
Seasonal durian sellers. They will normally source for durians from the suburban areas and bring it to towns to sell. The price set for the fruits and the success of choosing a good fruit ultimately depends on the bargaining skill and experience of the buyer.
Hot-dog sellers are a welcome sight in any city. Cheap food without the multinational food chain outlet prices.
Blind men being lead to a stall selling food stuff.
Volunteers helping to sell food stuff to raise funds for the blind.
I wish I had gone to work instead. )
