Haircut in a Chinese Temple

It’s 2am in the night, I wanna write because I don’t wanna forget.

I went to Ubin Pulau (Island) via a boat ferry from Singapore. It’s as the National Gallery says it, represents the ancient, 60 years older version of how Singapore used to be. They kept the island the same intentionally to escape from the busy digitized urban life of Singapore, so you interact with people more than machines. You wanna a rent a bicycle, talk to people, not scan a QR, in hindsight for the little inconvenience it causes, I guess it’s good.

So I rented a bicycle and went along the greenery areas, I did hear sounds but nothing was too dangerous, did hear that there are wild pigs.

I might cycled to some trails twice, it was a little hard to get lost, it’s harder in general to get lost in Singapore. There are no hidden layers, it’s fairly simple and in English, bus stop codes are: BLK is for block, aft is for after, bf for before. (nothing in Malay) It’s too simple, if you are not getting it, it’s because too simple and you are trying to find the hidden meaning which doesn’t exist in Singapore.

On my bike ride, I stopped at a Chinese temple, I parked my bicycle, outside and went up to see, the outside had paintings of famous Chinese emperors (not to be quoted on this), the Jade Emperor, I believe. There were people burning paper money inside a furnace to impress the money gods that will bring them good luck and fortune. Or to connect with their ancestors and provide them with this money so they live a comfortable afterlife.

I asked one of the people if it was okay to do it with them? and they were more than happy to share it with me! and I burned stashes of paper money (they look napkins with a pot of gold glowing in them, and some Chinese text written on them). Then I took their leave and went around bicycling.

Then after traveling a bit, I came back to the Jetty base and was looking around for food or coffee. And I ran into the two older Chinese men and we got in a good conversation, they were really peaceful, fun and laid back people. And they said something that goes like: “if you are childhood buddies, your social status doesn’t matter, coz i will come and help you no matter and vice versa, and people from humble beginnings are more friends for being friends, and people with social status are more transactional friends” that was my interpretation of what they were trying to impart. They treated me to a dessert called Ice Kachang (made from shaved ice, with a topping of crushed corn and base of jelly and beans). It was fullfilling and then I bid them farewell, and I was about to begin my second bicycle trail, when while crossing another Chinese temple on the base for elderly people, one of the persons who was there at the top temple and had seen me before (oh while having kachang, I did receive two bananas as ‘prasad’, the distributed offerings, think it was by the same man), he asked me : “if I would like to get a haircut?” and I said “yes, ofc!” haha : )
Who says no to a haircut in a Chinese temple?

So all the people were standing in a line, and there was sorta a priest, designated for offering the prayers <will add the exact name here> so he was taking out the evil spirits, so they cut a bit of your hair and offer prayers and then there are sorta 2 connected pebbles that are thrown, they should in one facing up and one facing down position, if both face up: gods are laughing at you and you try again, if both are down, it’s again a no and you try again and keep on trying until the pebbles land in one up quark and one down quark.

I got mine in the right orientation in my second attempt, for some people it took about more than 5 attempts, and then the priest had to extra rituals to get it right and we all were awaiting the results heavily for everyone.

I also visited the Art and Science museum on Friday, where we got to interact with sciencey stuff, built the nucleus of a carbon atom with lego blocks. Made animal human body parts connecting origami art? A concept by Patricia Piccinni, an Austrailian artist.

Also saw 5 min bite-sized movies on quantum physics revolving around real-life, one of the beautiful one was: if time would flow backwards, our life would start in the cemetry, I would always know I have had love, the first kiss would be the goodbye, my only regret at the end would be not remembering your face anymore. We would grow young together and then become children and life would slowly return to its primitive age. And universe would become un-bigbanged. I guess it was enough thought provoking for an experiment! I think I really liked it as mind bending, although I did know about the existence of the movie: the curious case of Benjamin Button, I never had the heart to see it myself.

Anyway, will take rest, and sleep now, tomorrow I fly back home.

Cheers, night,
Calra