A Himalayan Christmas Blessing

29 Dec 2019

I was all set to leave my flat for a post-christmas gathering at a friend’s place when a clear voice rose in my head and went, “Bring something from Nepal.”

I tried to ignore the voice because I had already wrapped up a present for gift exchange and saw no reason to bring another.

But reluctantly I went back to my room and selected a notebook made of Lokta paper from among the gifts from Nepal to take with me.

I’m fond of buying handmade gifts, compelled by a vague logic to honour the makers and the belief that they will bring blessings to the recipients.

As I didn’t know who I would be meeting at the gathering except “a few close friends and family members,” I wasn’t sure if the Lokta notebook would be appreciated.

When I arrived at her home, my friend had the Nepali greeting, “Namaste,” on her door.

So my first word upon my arrival was a “Namaste!” to the guests who were already inside the flat.

A tall and lanky netball player with gorgeous curly hair came to hug me. She knew me from sports school days.

A quick sweep across the living room confirmed that I was The Oldest person in a meet up of supple youth from the sports and art fraternity.

After the gift exchange and a couple of group shots, a young man came to sit with me and asked if I was a teacher in SJI before. He had been a student there and recognised me the moment he saw me at the door even though I didn’t teach him.

Our conversation drifted to school days and the convergence of circumstances that set him on a path in film & animation.

Young Man laughed at my attempts during teaching days to interest his SJI mates in “Dreams” by Akira Kurosawa when all they mostly cared about was having a lesson in the air-conditioned comfort of the AVA studio!

But years later, one of those boys would become a partner in a law firm and write to say that whenever the sun shines on a rainy day, he would remember the foxes’ wedding in “Dreams,” and think of me.

I mused that perhaps Kurosawa’s films were too stark and too abstract for teenage boys. They might have responded better to “Totoro,” or “Spirited Away,” although Hayao Miyazaki’s animations are as profound, if not more, than Kurosawa’s films.

Young Man’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of Hayao Miyazaki, the 70plus year old Japanese animation guru. This creator of fantasies is renown for his meticulous hand drawn details and his ability to convey difficult themes such as death, abandonment and loss through his tales.

Young Man then shared that even though these days lots of animation work has gone digital, he is still very “old school” at heart. He really enjoys drawing every detail by hand and still does so with his projects.

I knew by then for whom I had been told to “bring something from Nepal.”

I showed him the last minute gift that I had brought from home.

He was stunned and told me he didn’t know what to say.

And thus it was in the living room of a flat by the Kallang River in Singapore, that a young animation artist came into contact with handmade paper made from trees growing at 3000m in the Himalayas.

I invited him to use the notebook to incubate his ideas for films and animation so that the many blessings from Nepal on survival, gratitude and beauty will bring him assignments that not only pay the bills but also be of great benefit & service to others too.

Young Man accepted the Himalayan blessings reverently. I was very grateful to have obeyed the prompting to bring a gift even when I thought it wasn’t necessary.

My Brother’s Gift on Christmas Eve

25 Dec 2019

My brothers, Terence & Andrew under the willow branches in the Chinese Gardens during the 70s.

Late afternoon on Christmas Eve, my brother came to help me clean the ceiling fans and windows.

Standing on the ladder, he removed the layers of dust that had accumulated over this year. I stood by to pass him wet wipes and cleaning cloth that had been rinsed.

This is the only picture with our Kinmen Grandma taken in the 70s in our first flat at Prince Charles Square.

Bit by bit as the dirt came off we shared thoughts about our childhood, our parents and what we were grateful for and what we could have done better with our own lives and our family.

On a day trip to Batam Island to visit our younger brother, Andrew, where he operated a car workshop.

In between cleaning he stopped for cigarettes and to play with the cats.

Shoya greets Terence in my old flat before 2012.

By dinner time, the blades of the ceiling fans were gleaming and the glass panels of doors and windows in my home were sparkling, with bits of touch ups which I can do easily on my own. (He came mainly to clean the parts that I couldn’t reach.)

After that, we had dinner with our mother at the coffee shop down my block.

Christmas Eve marks the incarnation of God becoming Man. In our attempts to attain godliness through cleanliness, we might have a tendency to treat the less attractive and dirtier aspects of our humanness with disgust, instead of compassion like the way my brother cleared the dust in my home with light-hearted patience on Christmas Eve.

The 3 of us on Batam Island. In our childhood, Terence used to be taunted by his classmates because of my limp. I think siblings of handicapped kids are often overlooked and left on their own to manage their emotions.

Cold Man

23 Dec 2019

Tribhuvan Airport on 7 Dec 2017

This December was our 8th year at the Tribuhvan Airport to catch our flight from Nepal to Singapore.

After a long day of queuing & waiting, we finally made it to the gate where we would be bussed to our plane.

It was evening. It had been drizzling all day. I was looking forward to the comfort of a SilkAir seat when a young woman from the ground staff appeared in our transit area.

She announced nervously that our flight was cancelled. The incoming flight crew had exceeded the stipulated flight time. For safety reasons, the flight had to be rescheduled to the next day, and the timing was still unknown.

Like a movie on rewind, we plodded out of the transit room and trudged back to the counters to have our pass ports stamped “Flight Cancelled” and dragged ourselves to the dreaded check-in counters to return our boarding passes.

Passengers with connecting flights from Singapore were understandably more vocal in expressing their anxieties, but most of us were able to contain our frustrations.

More standing followed as we waited for clearance and further instructions. Some staff were on the phones, some staring at computer screens, and all trying their best to avoid eye contact with irate passengers, and clearly no one was in charge.

In the midst of all the above, a young man, maybe in his late twenties, left the counter where all his colleagues seemed to be milling about and walked among us.

Handsome Ben Ben from Zen Teahouse, Boudha. He is an aloof looking cuddle bug.

He was a good looking man, but he had an arrogant air about him as he looked at people as if through his nose. But he seemed the only one who was actively managing the queues. When he saw me, he pointed to the chairs & said softly, “You can sit. Sit down.”

For a moment I couldn’t match the kind tone to the cold face. On hindsight, I think appearing detached could just be a defence mechanism when facing a bunch of tired & tense people.

Some time later he came to ask me to sit down again.

When the buses to take us to the Crowne Plaza Hotel where we would spend the night arrived, they were quickly filled up.

A group of us had to wait for the next one.

By now, night had deepened, we hadn’t taken dinner and the winter drizzle seemed to be gathering power.

The light in me greets the light in you.

As I was wondering just how long more we had to stand in the open cold, I saw Cold Man speaking animatedly to his suited superior standing by a hotel van, presumably to ferry business class passengers.

In the stone cold silence I still had no idea what was going on except that Cold Man kept gesticulating at me as he spoke to his mustachioed boss. When his expressions got more earnest, it dawned on my frozen brain that he was trying to get me on the hotel van so that I need not wait a minute longer for the bus!

Thanks to Cold Man’s persistence, some of us had a pleasant ride in comfort to our destination where hot showers and dinner awaited.

I never learnt Cold Man’s name, don’t know his position except that he broke ranks to make things a little easier for someone in need. And I’ll always remember how passionately he persuaded his boss on a cold rainy winter night to care.

Namaste. Indeed.

Undoing the Past

22 Dec 2019 (Winter Solstice)

Among ethnic Chinese, the Winter Solstice or ” 冬至” (tong zhi) is a time for reflection, thanksgiving and fulfilling one’s spiritual duties.

A simple but significant food to mark this season is the glutinous rice flour balls or dumplings. It is called “汤圆”（tang yuan), deriving its name from the spherical shapes that connote concepts of auspiciousness such as roundness, smoothness and completion.

The preparation of this dish enables family members to gather at a table as they bond over flour kneading and the shaping of dough sticks into balls. The carefully shaped balls are then boiled in sweetened water and offered to deities, ancestors and the living.

In my childhood, tension among adult family members caused me to dread the yearly affair of rice ball making.

Stuck in the kitchen I picked up my mom’s mood swings & mean remarks as I quietly rolled the flour into little balls.

When we switched to buying ready made rice balls from the supermarket instead of making them, I was glad but sad at the same time.

So this year, on Solstice morning, well into my 50s, I decided to go back in time and undo the misery of the little girl trapped in the kitchen of my childhood.

I gave thanks for the glutinous rice flour that I bought. As I gently rubbed the dough between my palms and marvelled at the comfort of its powdery smoothness, my heart was lifted.

And there and then, happiness returned!

I boiled the rice balls in ginger and brown sugar syrup which my mother bought from Taiwan.

And after offering 5 rice balls to the sky, earth, water, ancestors and all sentient beings, and 9 to Wisdom and Compassion, there were still 7 left for me to enjoy.

And the 7 rice balls tasted just like the ones in my childhood, only this time they are so much smoother! 😊

Rice ball offering to bless sky, earth, water, ancestors and all sentient beings.

May efforts of undoing what has gone wrong in the past be blessed.

Honouring Ancestor

21 Dec 2019

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice. Today is my grandma’s 28th death anniversary.

She was born on Kinmen Island in 1914. This year I visited her birthplace twice and walked the streets in the old city she would have walked in when she was a kid.

28 years after my grandma’s passing I finally understood the beauty of her birthplace and where my fascination with roofs, doors and windows originated. (Picture courtesy of Wang Ling of Local Teahouse 后浦泡茶间）

This June as I was wondering what item of importance that belonged to her could I still find to take with me on my trip, a much cherished silver belt that she wore all her life emerged.

And a few days ago, while buying coffee powder at Sheng Shiong, I came across her favourite fruit known as Salak or Snake Fruit. As far as I can remember the Salak is the only fruit my grandma cared about.

Yesterday a friend invited me to hang out with him at Boon Lay Shopping Centre. We had lunch, foot massage and bought flowers at the Indian grocery shop.

My grandma also loved having flowers in her hair.

So today instead of travelling to the columbarium to stand a few minutes in front of my grandma’s niche, I decided to take my time & quietly dedicate a mandala made up of her favourite things.

And I hope as we find our own ways of acknowledging our forefathers & foremothers, what’s broken can be mended and what’s good can become even better, for our own benefit and the benefit of all sentient beings. ♥️🌈🐾

After I had assembled the mandala, the sun peeped through the storm clouds and sent streams of light on the belt, fruits and flowers, as if to say, the mandala has been accepted. A few minutes after this picture was taken, the sky opened and the rain came.

Becoming Special

20 Dec 2019

On our second day in Nepal (6 Dec) , a little vase on our table at the Third Eye Restaurant in Thamel caught our eye with its simplicity. It stood humbly among all the grander looking cuisine serving utensils.

Holding a single stalk of marigold, the brass vase reminded me of the Velveteen Rabbit which held a sprig of holly between its paws on christmas morning.

As it looked very ordinary we thought we should be able to find it at any of the shops in Thamel or Boudha.

We were wrong.

We also forgot to take a picture of it.

And in the midst of all our activities, we soon stopped looking or asking.

On our final day day in Nepal, it drizzled. After checking out of the hotel, we went back to the Third Eye Restaurant for lunch.

This time we asked a member of the staff where we could get the vase. The young lady was very happy with our interest and quickly gave us the details to the location where we could buy it.

So two hours before we were taken to Tribhuvan Airport for our flight back to Singapore, Ron & El rushed to Ason Market where the locals get their homewares. There they bought 2 pairs of the exact vases like the ones from the restaurant.

It was still drizzling when they returned from the market. I received my pair as if they were archaeological discoveries.

I know there are hundreds of such vases around. But ours will always be special because it took some effort to get them. Furthermore our enquiries had made a Nepali girl happy, seeing that her country’s traditional wares could still be so charming.

Order and Chaos; Clean and Unclean.

19 Dec 2019

With its chaotic traffic, massive swirls of wires hanging above ground, crumbling buildings and air pollution, Kathmandu is not a place that readily comes to mind when one is thinking of retreat and rest.

On my way to the washroom I looked up and saw this. El took this picture for me.
Framed by the temple door, I felt balanced and secure. (Golden Temple, Patan. Dec 2019)

Yet, in the midst of the valley’s madness, intricately carved and perfectly symmetrical woodworks & stoneworks adorned doorways and windows, creating an air of unmatched serenity and inspiring me to seek alignment from within.

From this valley of unpredictability, where power cuts happen regularly unannounced, craftsmen go about calmly setting semi precious stones against impossibly detailed & highly decorative silver works of filigree.

Perhaps this constant practice of melting, cutting, shaping and welding metals to minerals to create objects of beauty has alchemised in these workers a high tolerance for the ugliness of difficult customers, exploitative employers and other hardships.

Then there are the buddhist arts (tangka) drawn free hand in such breathtaking precision and with such a pleasing balance of colours that the seller has to keep reminding us with great pride, “this not machine made…this MADE BY MAN,” as we stared in mute wonder, at the scroll he unveiled before us while cars honked impatiently behind us.

I saw this spritely grandma circumambulating the stupa in the midday sun in 2018. This year in 2019, I spotted her among the pilgrims, but she was too fast for me to take a picture with. So I gave up the idea completely. But my wish was fulfilled when we wandered into an alley to look at tibetan fabrics and she walked right into our path!
We took tea at Jamuna’s shop at Chetraparti. This dog named Jammy came to visit when we were looking at dear Kali who is now 15 years old.

Like the mangy fur of a dog that holds a clean heart, Kathmandu has shown me that using observable evidence to appraise someone’s inner world or history may be convenient and even natural, but it’s still not the truth.

Kathmandu forces me to cover my nose, slap on sunblock, drink only boiled water and take other safety precautions, while liberating me from prejudices and insularity at the same time.

I’m deeply honoured to have been allowed to visit Nepal year after year since 2011.

Namaste. Tashi Delek.

🙏🌈🐾

Holding Hands

17 Dec 2019

I was 10 month old learning to walk on my own by holding onto the wall for support when poliomyelitis found me.

3 months of hospitalization later, I got back my life in exchange for a permanent limp. Considering many afflicted peers with paralysis that bound them to wheel chairs for life and some even needing machines to help them breathe, my crippled leg was just a slight dent on the paintwork.

After surviving polio, maintaining balance became a lifelong preoccupation that took up a lot of my energy. It is a bit like someone training to be a world class gymnast, only in my case, this wasn’t the path I would have chosen if given a choice.

I grew up envying those who could walk effortlessly, dance and skip freely, while I had to and still do, think about every step that I make.

Are there things on the ground to trip me? Pine cones? Satay sticks?

Have I missed a spot of alage on the step of a world heritage site that might cause me to slip?

Will the curb after the zebra crossing be too high for me to get onto?

Will there be steps? If yes, how many? How deep are they? Will there be a railing for me to hold onto? Is the railing sturdy enough to bear my weight or is it there for aesthetics purposes only?

Over the years these questions for self-preservation have trained me not to jump to conclusions, and not to make light of other people’s difficulties. They have also prompted me to listen for the unspoken anxieties and to observe the invisible pain of others.

A couple of months back, I was at an outing to the Esplanade with overseas students studying at a private school in Singapore.

As we were walking towards the open stage facing the Singapore River, a 24 year old student from India asked me, “Ma’am would you like me to hold your hand? You’ll feel more balanced and it’s easier to walk.”

He went on to explain that he came from a village that hosts pilgrims two to three times a year. He’s very familiar with aches and pains. So for the rest of the evening India & Singapore held hands and walked all over Esplanade, exchanging looks of amusement with each other when passers by went all judgy over a handsome Indian man holding hands with a woman of his grandma’s age. 🤣

During our Nepal trip this December, whether it was for worldly reasons such as ascending the stairs of hotels & cafes, or to meet spiritual agendas such as circumambulating the Boudha Stupa and carrying medical supplies, El and Ron took turns to hold my hands and walk with me at my pace.

Boudha pilgrims stopped to look at us but usually to smile and make remarks in Tibetan or Nepali in encouraging tones.

For many of us, having a hand to hold onto in this pilgrimage called Life is a pragmatic necessity. It is beyond romantic as popular culture would have us believed.

So I like to wish for all my friends to study and respect your hands and the hands of others, so that at the right time, they may become gateways to the Divine.

Namaste. Tashi Delek. 🙏🌈🐾

Premium Location

11 Dec 2019 (at Boudha Stupa, Nepal)

The Boudha Stupa (11 Dec 2019, Nepal)

For us in a capitalist economy, properties are more than places to shelter from the elements. Property ownership is used to strengthen our survival chances, secure positions in society and acquire power over others.

In Singapore, a property is measured in terms of its age and location, among other criteria, because these qualities impact its resale value.

I could be lacking in business acumen or short on survival skills, but there’s something a little cold and sad about the practice of buying something with the intention of re-selling it.

I think this practice can also undermine our sincerity with people, animals and environment insidiously in the long run.

Do we make friends with people so that we can trade them for other benefits when it suits us?

Do we judge people’s character and potential based on their residential addresses?

At the Boudha Stupa, the snagged tooth dog toasting in the sun as he marinades in mantras offered by thousands of pilgrims on a daily basis adds another layer to our understanding of survival, power and position.