Singapore, April 2018

We arrived from Hanoi yesterday and spent the whole day resting. Yes, a couple of 68 years old retirees needing R&R after holidaying around Vietnam in the past 30 days.

It is our first overseas trip as retirees. We planned to do it slowly – the old people way since there is no longer any pressure to get back to work on a certain date. Since my retirement, every day is a holiday, and I no longer need to keep track of what day it is. Every day is for me a Sunday. Life is simply wonderful.

We are going to spend a few days here in Singapore before heading back home to Australia. My wife picked a hotel at Rochor, located in walking distance between Bugis Street and Little India. In the late 1970s early 1980s, I used to visit Singapore regularly.

In those days you have not been to Singapore until you visit Bugis Street. It was renowned internationally for its nightly gathering of transgenders, a phenomenon which made it one of Singapore’s top tourist destinations during that period. Wikipedia

Nowadays Bugis Street Market is one of the biggest, cheapest and probably the hottest places to come shopping in the whole of Singapore.
My wife used to live in Singapore in the mid-1980s and shopping in Bugis Street and Little India, is a nostalgic remembrance for her since we have never been back to visit ever since.

Singapore has changed very much in the past 30 years. The old Singapore is hardly recognisable. However, the thousands of new high-rise apartment buildings never attracted our interest. Singapore is so small, and it is becoming smaller every day, but how they managed their limited space is highly admirable. Singaporeans are known to be hard workers and very efficient. We used to say that most Singaporeans have a Rolex, but no one has got time. Under Lee Kuan Yew they managed to reach the highest living standard in South East Asia. The multiculturalism seems to be working harmoniously between the 75% Chinese, 15% Malays, 8% Indians and 2% other population, reflecting our future world in miniature. All important signs are written in the four official languages; English, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay and Tamil.

Nowadays every Singaporean seems to be environmentally conscious. They are now trying to change their slogan of Singapore from “A Garden City” to “A City in the Garden”. Hence this drew us to stop by in Singapore this time is to see “The Gardens by the Bay”, especially the Cloud Forest Dome and of course the nostalgic shopping in Bugis Street and Little India.

This morning, we head down to the hotel’s restaurant to have breakfast, but to our surprise, we can’t even have simple toast bread for my wife. They only serve Singaporean buffet breakfast with a choice of fried rice, noodles and vegetables, rice porridge and everything else Asian, but no bread. So, her Aussie survival kit aka Vegemite that my wife always has with her is also useless without the bread. The hotel Concierge also doesn’t know of any cafe around the hotel that serves continental or simple American breakfast as in toasted bread and fried eggs. He suggested that the food court at the basement of Sim Lim Square nearby may have it. Later, a taxi driver told us that we are in the wrong part of town looking for that kind of breakfast. Yeah, Singapore is no longer as we knew it. Probably also because we have changed as we grew older. Our comfort zone has shrunk and our adventurous drive to adapt and to try new things foreign seems to have diminished too.

So, off we go to Sim Lim Square looking for breakfast. Yes, they seem to have sandwiches with Nutella, and my wife ordered just the sliced bread toasted with butter. And here they come, two slices of tiny brown bread less than 3 by 3 inches with a bit of butter but not toasted. Her mood just went down the drain this morning.

And as for myself, there has been no better breakfast for a long time. It’s a feast, and I have difficulties to choose because everything they sell reminds me of my childhood foods that I haven’t had for ages. I wished I could have everything, but the space in my stomach is limited. Finally, I choose to have rice porridge with preserved eggs and lean pork meat instead of pig’s liver, kidney or other intestines to prevent my wife from throwing up when I eat it in front of her. Or she won’t let me kiss her for the rest of our life. On top of it, I also have two pieces of Chinese bread-sticks, which I used to call ‘Cakwe’. And yes, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Regretfully I have to leave half of the yummy ‘Cakwe’ behind.

After breakfast, we walked down the laneway towards Bugis Street, and as soon as we reached the Waterloo St. crossing our attention was attracted by so many umbrella stalls of fortune tellers, palm readers, Feng Shui consultants, Chinese Astrologers and whatever you name it. It looks like a New Age exhibition is going on. As we turn and go further down Waterloo St, the umbrella stalls start to be occupied by flower sellers, and we realised that we are heading towards the very famous temple in Singapore, the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho or the temple of Kwan Yin – The Goddess of Mercy.

It is quite a busy temple and crowded. The temple is of significance especially to the Chinese in Singapore and is believed to bring worshippers good luck after praying to Kwan Yin. A lot of their wishes also came true; hence people come from faraway places with their wishes to pray. It is also most well-known for its divination/fortune telling activities.

Just a couple of weeks ago during our trip to the Ban Gioc Waterfall at the northern border of Vietnam to China, our travel companion, a Singaporean mother and her teenage daughter just told us about her experience of having divination at the temple twice, and both were pretty accurate and she recommended us to pay a visit. And now, here we are standing just in front of it without any planning or intention to visit. It’s synchronicity! My wife said it’s just meant to happen and suggested that I go in and have a little prayer.

I took nine joss sticks, lit them up and started with the procession. First I stood close to the gate with the temple behind me and looked up to the sky, greeted The Creator, thanked Him/Her for the occasion and asked for His/Her blessing. Then I turned around and put three joss sticks in the big incense bowl. Now facing the temple, I greet The Company of Heaven and ask for their blessings. Then I put another three joss sticks in the bowl. I still have three joss sticks left intended for praying inside the temple, to be put on the altar as is usually done in other Chinese temples. But here I don’t see anyone bringing joss stick into the temple. So I did a ‘long distance’ greeting and put the remaining three joss sticks in the big bowl outside the temple instead of on the altar.

I proceeded to the altar to pray, but then I realised that I have no wishes and the only thing I can do is to express my thanks and gratitude to The Company of Heaven that I have reached the new phase of my life as a retiree in a happy, healthy and modestly wealthy condition. That’s all one can need. Also, I thank and express gratitude for my wife who takes care of and very well looks after me.

But suddenly I started to cry. Unlike others around me bringing beautiful flowers or fruits for offering, I have nothing but myself to offer. I started crying because I feel that my offering is inadequate. I felt like a little boy wanting to give my mother a nice birthday present, but unfortunately, as a little boy, I am not skilled enough to create something beautiful. My ability is so limited, and I cried for not able to do more.

As we saw a couple of weeks ago in a Buddhist Pagoda in Vietnam, where Kwan Yin is depicted as a lady with a thousand eyes and a thousand helping hands, she is seeing every human suffering and trying to help everyone who asks with her thousand hands. The legend says that she has vowed not to enter Nirvana until every single human being is relieved from suffering.

My mind went back to a few days ago, Friday, 13^th of April 2018 when President Trump ordered to strike Syria. Millions of people including women and children have been killed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and many more millions are displaced, roaming around as refugees. I can’t stop crying. I feel so small and so inadequate that there is nothing I can do about it. O Mother Goddess! Please guide me and show me what I can do, even just a little tiny bit to help.

I came out of the temple with my eyes are still wet. And I saw my wife waving at me.

+ “So, did you have your prayer”, she asked.

– “Yes, I did thank you”.

I smile but couldn’t tell her more. If only she knew what’s in my mind and heart at that moment. It is not the first time for me to cry compassionately for humanity, so I am starting to get used to it and able to manage my feelings easily.

The first time it happened to me in September 1997 on my way back from Yogyakarta to Jakarta after having made a pilgrimage to Mendut, Pawon and Borobudur temples and a channelling[1] session the day before. I have cried unstoppably the minute I left my hotel, the whole way in the taxi to the airport, in the airport waiting room and all the way in the aeroplane till it touched down in Jakarta.

I cried unstoppably because of people’s suffering. I grew up in a developing country, and I knew poverty and how people struggle to live. But it is not only that kind of suffering. It is much deeper than we can easily understand.

The second time I cried for the same reason was during a Life Between Lives Hypnotic Regression session I had in January 2007. Firstly I was regressed to a previous life, where I remembered myself living as a modest rice farmer. Then I was progressed to the day I died at 72 in 1932.

I remembered leaving my body slowly, and the moment I was out of my body I was overwhelmed with beautiful energy full of love that I can hardly describe in words. But suddenly I was engulfed by a very sad feeling because people are suffering. I could feel the sadness experienced by Mother Kwan Yin when she vowed not to enter Nirvana until every single human being was released from suffering. At that time I know that that overwhelming compassionate energy was pulling me back to incarnate this time around[2].

The big question is WHY? And WHY me? There are many other beings much greater than myself who have tried. One of the big examples is Siddhartha Gautama – The Buddha.

The above two questions have tantalised my mind the whole time. But due to other duties and commitments, including working and earning my life, I often put them on the back burner. However, my experience at the Kuan Yin Temple is a reminder that it is now the perfect time to go back and reflect what I have achieved so far and eventually to complete the task which seems to be the main purpose of my incarnation this time around.

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[1] See Chapter 7: Master Liu – My Guide and Chapter 10: The Assignment.

[2] See Chapter 14: From beyond the Veil.

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