Hero’s Assurance

9 Jan 2019 (Full Moon)

My first penmanship gift from Sharonne in 2020.

I’ve been using blue ink to teach penmanship to younger students since 2014. Blue is easier to clean and more forgiving on kids’ clothes. And I’ve used blue so regularly that I’ve forgotten about black.

But ever since this new year when I started writing OM, my interest in black ink has returned.

OM in blue.

So the day before yesterday, I went to West Coast Plaza specifically to collect my shoes at the cobbler’s, and to look for black ink at the stationery supplies store there.

First Tutee shows Ollie pictures of themselves taken when he was in primary 1. He’s in primary 3 this year. 😊

I was in a bit of a rush to return home where First Tutee, now in Primary 3, was dropping by for his first lesson of 2020.

When I got home I realised I had forgotten to check out the bottle of HERO black ink at the cashier’s. It was still sitting on the shelf where I had placed it for safe keeping when I left.

As I couldn’t justify taking a cab back to the store just to pick up a bottle of ink, I decided to let the matter rest.

Yesterday, over lunch at Fortune Centre, my friend, Sharonne, whom I’ve known for 37 years gave me a present.

It was a HERO penmanship gift set made up of a fountain pen and a bottle of ink. She had bought it at Sisyphus Book Store in Hangzhou, China, where she spent many happy hours.

And the colour of the ink?

It had to be black of course. 😊

It feels humbling & assuring that the black ink has made its way to me despite my inability to purchase it on my own.

So I wish for my friends and all sentient beings the same assurance and the same ease that have been experienced by me, as they go about heroically creating better lives for themselves & for others.

Happy Full Moon! ♥️🌈🐾

Timeless Appeal of Joy

8 Jan 2019

Sharonne’s CNY shopping achievements today.

Sharonne and I met in our late teens in the early 80s.

In our early 20s.

Between the two of us we must have eaten hundreds of plates of fried kuay teow at the NUS Arts Canteen during our student days.

When we became teachers, it was with her that I took my first flight on Air Romania to Holland to visit our friend, Mee Geok Liau. That summer while on a day trip to Belgium, we stumbled upon a a little restaurant on a medieval street and celebrated Sharonne’s birthday there. The name of the street was Zandstraat.

Sharonne got me a Hero fountain pen & a bottle of black ink. We took this pic at Guam Imm temple with the apsaras behind us.

Now in our 50s, having a vegetarian meal at Fortune Centre, making a temple visit and buying loud Chinese New Year decorations evoke the same giddy happiness we felt when we were just girls 37 years ago.

It is wonderful to know that joy remains or may even become more intense with the passing years.

Staying Sweet for 2020

6 Jan 2020

First Parcel in 2020 for a friend whom I hardly see but is always supportive of my animal work since 2007.

School & work started on the 2nd day of 2020 for most in Singapore.

Since primary school days the ending of the old year and the beginning of the new one carry great significance for me.

As I age, I find myself more selective and making more efforts in the simplest of activities that I partake in around this season. (This would be the main reason why I need to operate alone. 😄)

Ollie poses with a Street Dog Care calendar from Nepal. This was the first gift I mailed out in 2020.

So on the 2nd day of 2020, I decided that leaving my house to make a trip to the post office to mail a calendar to a friend was top priority.

Now the taxi fare to & fro would easily cost me at least $14, and if I were pragmatic, I should have waited a few more days to gather up more errands and mail her the calendar while I was running them. But this friend definitely deserves more, and shall not be part of my errands.

My sore throat was also healing. Although I didn’t think it auspicious to begin the new year with one, it had the benefit of making me stay home to write OM and drink honey water.

After the Westgate Post Office, I stopped by a costume jewelry counter on my way to the supermarket.

The counter was just on the walkway of the mall so it wasn’t even in a proper shop.

Ollie, like Planet Jupiter, wears my choker of 12 moons.

But the salesgirl on duty that day was dressed as if she was working for Cartier.

She showed the low priced trinkets respectfully to customers who were mostly in carefree and casual clothes.

I was immediately impressed by her regal air even though her retail space was tiny & cluttered, and even though she only had a plastic stool to sit on, despite looking like a million dollars.

When she saw me, she was very interested in the rudraksha beads on my wrist and tried to recall their Mandarin name.

“Boudhi Seeds (菩提子),” I offered.

The young Queen smiled.

After she realised I understood Mandarin, she started telling me how she liked the way my choker looked against black.

This 12-moon choker of buffalo horn reminds me of Jupiter and has accompanied to many places. Its bovine presence often allows total strangers to relax and smile at me.

I returned the Queen’s kindness by complimenting her on her youth and dress sense, and she replied, “我只是年轻罢了。而你的时尚是打从骨子里来的.” (Rough Transl: I’m just young, but your style is bone deep).

As I watched Her Grace greeting customers who didn’t even bother to look at her, I felt I needed to give her something to remind her of her sweetness.

So before I left the mall, I bought an extra bottle of honey from GNC and went back to the costume jewellery counter to give it to her.

“May your life be sweet no matter who you meet.”

At first she looked a little puzzled. Then she held up the bottle of honey and revealed excitedly that this was her first gift from Singapore! She had only been working here for a month plus. And for her to receive honey at the start of the new year was auspicious, she gushed.

And standing tall on her fine stockinged legs, the Queen bent low to ask if I could give her a hug!

As I did, I wished her a happy and youthful 2020 and may the honey gift remind her of her own sweetness, and to remain sweet no matter what kind of customers she meets.

First Word of 2020

3 Jan 2019

There are several understandings of “OM”. My favourites are “OM” is the first sound of creation and has the ability to neutralise pride,the cause of fear and jealousy.

I spent the 1st day of 2020 in relative silence while practising to write OM in the Tibetan Uchen style for the first time.

“Start writing OM,” has been on my mind the past few years but I never got round to it because I was waiting for the “perfect” timing, “perfect” video and “perfect” calligraphy book to get started.

In Nepal, the book sellers in Thamel & Boudha that I checked with didn’t seem to sell the practise book that will show me the sequence of the strokes that I needed to see before I could write the character. Did such a practise book even exist? I only started to do online searches for it after my failed attempts in Nepal.

And during the search I indulged in almonds. So over the last few days leading to this new year I developed a sore throat.

That was how Silence descended. Seclusion followed quickly as the need to rest my voice caused me to abstain from all social gatherings. Together, they created the space I needed to pursue the long awaited OM.

“Please let me just know how to write OM, everything else will be a bonus,” I thought to myself as I viewed the video of Tashi Mannox writing the mantra of Great Compassion (OM MANI PADME HUM).

I’m a slow learner. I need to see the strokes in slow-mo if possible, run them through my head & be allowed to copy stroke for stroke before I can do it on my own. Many videos were too fast for me.

But Tashi Mannox’s video did it with his calm voice and deliberately unhurried movements.

So that was how I learnt to write my first word on the first day of 2020.

Balinese Hindus celebrate their New Year called Nyepi by going into self imposed silence and seclusion, so that they can retreat, reflect and be renewed.

As I lack the cultural practice nor the lineage to create such a ritual on my own, the Universe has kindly turned a sore throat into an opportunity to start the year with an ancient and sacred word, “OM”.

So I wish for all my friends and all sentient beings the same benevolence that has been bestowed on me to create a positive outcome from a negative situation.

May you be kind. May you be auspicious. May you be full of grace.

Tashi Delek.

The strokes that made up OM had intrigued me for as long as I remember. They resemble a person dancing. While practising OM, memories of my secondary school bio lessons on bones came back. In those days I had a compulsion to study the bone samples from angles that were not required by the syllabus. I started seeing the bones as pillars, trees and balconies and drew them the way I saw them. My very unscientific renderings drove my Bio teacher insane, but I kept at it even when I knew my diagrams would be rejected and I would fail in that component. Perhaps those bone sketches were my early attempts to write OM which I didn’t know exist.

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.