Tuesday, March 16

temples 

went to settle my phone bills today, finally can use my original line again.

it's an agony being without a handphone, its like being totally cut off from the rest of the world. ha ha, but being uncontactable also means having the bliss of not being disturbed by phone calls and messages at the wrong time like when you are in the toilet or busy blogging on the net like now.

wanted to take a light lunch, so ended up taking mee siam at one of the shops in the arcade in raffles place. the lunch crowd is like an army of hungry ghost, though its almost two o'clock when i took my lunch, there seems to be still many people invading the place for food. don't think i would want to work in that area cause everyone seems to be in a rush, dashing here and there.

went to yue hai qing miao after lunch, the peace and serenity is totally different from what is happening outside the temple's wall. glad that the government preserved the place as a monument but think they need to do some touching up.

on impulse, i went to bedok to see more temples, actually been wanting to visit all the temples since i have some time and freedom now. particularly wanted to find out how fu quan si turned out after shifting to their new premises and also to visit the old tekong temple. its now the area has four main temples - san qing gong under the umbrella of paya lebar cheng huang temple, its built more to raise the image of the toaist community as the temple was very active in promoting the way of the tao in the chinese community, instead of just praying and burning joss paper. but the real reason is to make more money by offering the service of placing ashes and ancestral tablets for your loved ones.

then i went next door to fu quan si, which was in upper thomson in my childhood days. for a period of time, nobody really wanted to carry on with the temple and i am not sure what happened, but seems that someone picked up all the odds and ends and rebuilt it in bedok. i was wondering why the main gate of the temple is towards the left rear end of the main door when i realize that shui mei gong. a toaist temple is by the side facing the other road. simple architecture and practical by isolating both temples on the same grounds as they are from different faith.

i was stuck in shi lin jin shan temple as it rained the moment i stepped into the temple so i had lots of time to drink it the architecture, the idols and couplets of the three temples hao lin gong, shi wu tong, jin ping si and shan liang san gong. the last two were two different temples merged when they shifted to the new premises.

i sat in the temple until the rain stopped and went across the road to the tekong tai yang gong. all the temples on the tekong merged and combined to form this temple. as i served my basic military training in tekong, i am really interested in all the history and such about tekong. although i have read the article son the walls many times in the temple, i never fail to do so whenever i am here so i was in the temple reading and looking at the idols till about their closing time.

i took the only bus 17 back to the interchange and pondered whether to take the mrt or bus as it's peak hours when i realized that there is express service 506 to jurong which will stop by toa payoh. i decided to give it a try cause i never took expresss bus before and it took only 20 mins from bedok to reach toa payoh!

was on the net in the forums the whole evening but just too lazy to blog. so just pretend that you never visit my blog for the whole week till now cause i blog a few words on wednesday but only filled in the rest on saturday.

the wonders of technology.

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andi at 23:16