August 20th, 2008
It was such an usual week. I attended a funeral and a wedding in the same week. Under the traditional Chinese belief, a person should not attend either function within the same month.
Madam Marie Chong passed away peacefully on Aug 12 at the age of 88. She is the mother of Richard, our friend and neighbour. Madam Chong was in the same RCIA class, and baptised this Easter, same time as us. We met on many occasions, she always had light make up with beautiful shiny grey hair, and had a smiley warm face for everyone. She was the most beautiful 88 years old woman I ever met.
At home, I would say almost all funeral services are held in Funeral Parlour. Services are commonly conducted by Taoist’s priests. I always scare of going to a funeral service, and the sound and scenes of how Taoists perform their ritual and prayers are the culprit. Death is such a irreversible sad thing, and to me Taoist’s rituals added more darkness, and sorrow to it.
Madam Chong’s body was placed in a beautiful white coffin. On the top of the coffin, there was a cross decorated with red roses. The casket was placed in Richard’s house for the wake service and moved to the funeral service in church the following day. The mass was emotional but peaceful and I did not have fear. It was a totally different feelings than attending a Taoist’s funeral service. I had a final glance of Auntie Chong and said goodbye. I will see her in Heaven, I am sure.
The ballroom of Mandarin Oriental is huge, however, it just barely made it for 101 tables. It was the biggest wedding dinner in scale I’ve ever attended. There were more than 1000 people for the wedding. A Muslim priest blessed the bride and groom, a minister was led to his seat and gave a speech. Video showing the love story of the couple. The blessing and speech were in Malay, so we shifted our focus on reading the menu (written in English). Surprisingly it was a Chinese menu except no pork was served. 8 dishes including shark fins with abalone soup, fish, chicken and tong sui……though dinner didn’t start till after 9pm. We were already very hungry by then. We must be the only foreigners that night, and for sure Joe is the only white man there. Such a classy thing arranged by the host to have a 5 piece band playing drum, flute, violin and other instruments. Also, 3 tables were reserved for orphans.
It was a memorable week.
Tags: band, baptism, coffin, cross, funeral, funeral parlour, orphans, shark fins, Taoist, wedding
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June 12th, 2008
I stopped consuming red meat for the last 20 years. Last November I decided to try skipping poultry meat. The trial lasted till Christmas and turkey was my reward ; ) The experiment was easy and surprisingly I had no craving at all.
My no-meat-day desire comes strong again, and it has been 40 days since I(we) stopped eating chicken, and duck. Lots of people asked me the reasons, is it for religion, health or ….? My reason is simple. I love our planet, and I believe we should all do a bit to save and treasure the earth we are living.
A bit of fact:
- farm animals consume half of the world’s cereal produce.
- we cut down half of the trees in exchange for vast supply of grains to feed the livestock. Agriculture is the biggest cause of deforestation and our increasing demand for meat is the reason for expansion in agriculture
- more than half of the water use in US goes over livestock production. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of wheat, but takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat. According to Ayres (1999), if we pass up one hamburger, we save water as much as taking 40 showers by a slow-flow nozzle, or save to maintain 1 month water supply for a typical household. (NAVS)
- almost half of the energy used in US agriculture goes into raising livestock. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of protein from beef. To compare, it only takes 2 calories of fossil fuel are needed to produce 1 calorie of protein from soybeans.
- (North American Vegetarian Society. “Vegetarianism: Tipping the Scales for the Environment,” (2/22/00)), (Ayres, Ed. Time, “Will We Still Eat Meat?” Nov. 8, 1999. Vol 154, issue 19, p 06-111.)
I think a lot of us possibly know the above facts, but have you done anything to save our world? Are your willing to change your lifestyle?
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June 12th, 2008
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April 29th, 2008
Our mango tree started flowering and fruiting almost a month now. We planted this tree 9 years ago when we moved to this house. Usually we have 2 harvest a year. This time, I would say I lost counts on the numbers of mangoes. Unfortunately, it has been raining almost every day in the evening for the last two weeks, and every morning when I walked out to garage to pick up the newspaper, I can easily found few baby green mangoes on the floor.
Tags: harvest, Manago tree
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