Short trip to Muay/ Sept 16, an auspicious day?

Went for a short trip to Muay, Malaysia ytd with my family for a short trip to spend time with them and to relax myself after 3 months of "suffering" in Tekong... haha. No shopping involved this trip, compared to the usual trip that I went before with the same agent. But boy, sure I had an interesting experience throughout the trip.

Spend some solitude time with the Lord on the bus while the rest went down to the temple on our first destination. After which we had lunch and some funny incident happened due to a wedding lunch taking place in the restuarant.

After lunch, they went deep into a village for some poker card reading. Not wanting to join them, I equipped myself with my camera and decided to explore around for the 3 hours waiting time. This probably is the most fruitful takeaway from my trip over there. After reading up with what I can do with my camera, I finally understand what my camera is capable of doing and really appreciate it very much.

Ever seen such round mangoes?

Hmmm not sure if its a woodpecker or a humming bird on top of a TV cable pole - artistic shot?

Kids trying to "fish" Jambu fruits from nearby tree

Kids having fun along the village

Another artistic shot?

Testing the capability of my camera - Close-up of a red dragonfly

What about this yellow dragonfly? Any close to National Geographic or Animal Planet standard's?

Miss some old kampung village?

Went for dinner after that and I realized that many couples were getting married ytd. Besides the wedding lunch, saw a bridal car passing by at the village and at the restuarant where we had our dinner, there held 4 wedding dinners simultaneously at different function rooms. We even shared and used 1/4 of the last function room that held a wedding function. Interestingly, we helped to clap our hands to welcome the bride and groom when they suddenly walked into the room. Compared to their wedding dinner, what we have here in SG is so luxurous, bride and groom walking in with fanfare entries in big hotels with many tables of guests. Over there, they just simply play a mandrain love duet song over the KTV system and the bride and groom just walk into the room to their VIP table and everyone just sit down and carry on doing their own stuffs. According to my mum, for them in Muay, to be able to hold their wedding dinner in a restuarant is a luxury for them already. Interesting isn't it? Is 16 of Sept an auspicious day?

Another interesting factor during the trip was that I managed to finish reading a book entitled, Tuesdays with Morrie - An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson. Tuesdays with Morrie is a very interesting colleage final thesis of a US journalist, Mitch Albom with his Professor, Morrie Schwartz in a storybook form, about how to live life and life's greatest lesson when both of them rekindled their relationship in the last month's of Morrie's life. Mitch visits Morrie in his apartment every Tuesday and talked about different topics in life, thus naming this book - Tuesdays with Morrie, which is US No. 1 bestseller.

The content is so good that I've learnt so much lesson about life from it. As the book is coming to an end with Prof Morrie's death. I suddenly felt a surge of sadness growing in me and left me pondering much about the things I had read in the book. I felt there are so many things to be done in life, everything that is written in the book, is so in-line with what we learned in church today. Culture, money, love and etc ...

Here are some snippets from the book to share with you guys:

Morrie's Aphorisms:
- "Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do"
- "Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it"

- "Learn to forgive yourself and forgive others"

- "Don't assume that its too late to get involved"

"Dying ... is only one thing to be sad over ... Living unhappily is something else ... the culture that we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own"

About the world ~

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. ... Let it come in. We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in, we'll become too soft. But a wise man name Levine said it right. He said, 'Love is the only rational act.'"

About feeling sorry for yourself ~
"I ask Morrie if he felt sorry for himself. 'Sometimes in the mornings', he said. 'That's when I mourn. I feel around my body, I move my fingers and hands - whatever I can still move - and I mourn what I've lost. I mourn the slow, insidious way in which I'm dying. But then I stop mourning. 'Just like that?' 'I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things in my life.' '"

"Mitch, I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears and that's all. "

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Adams

"Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning when I wake up, I am reborn." - Mahatma Gandhi