What a lovely Saturday, alone...

I love having me alone time. Reminding me of years ago when I used to study abroad. I'd usually had myself walk to study room on every weekend to read and write (school books apparently), practicing and preparing materials for upcoming exam. I would have chit chat during break time with some mainland students who went there with very little basic knowledge of English, at the same time practicing my unpolished Chinese language, acquired for just a year before heading there.

At night time, I'd usually brought my laptop to computer room. Those days Wi-fi wasn't available yet. We had to plug the Internet cable into our laptop. But at least, at that point of time, in 1998, I had a fate to own my first laptop compulsory requested by the school that introduced me with people out there that I never knew or meet before. Chatting online had become one of my daily leisure encounter after a long day studying at school. When it was time the room had to be closed, that was the time I should return back to my dormitory room.  Oh, such a lovely memory.

However, after a while I had a very good friend of mine, who pitied me on my life style.  Hahaha... He was the one who introduced me to many real people, to be exactly schoolmates, by inviting me along to many short term school vacation. He was also the one who invited me to his home party and bar-hoping parties afterward across the mountain and we would return back to our dormitory using the only availabile limousine Taxi in the mountain. Hahaha... I miss it so much!!!

Alright, let's go back to present time. I'm home now, alone.  My son will only come back from his vacation to my hometown tonight.  My hubby and sis-in-law are working. My mother-in-law went to her usual daily marketing and gathering with her old friends.

I plan to go nowhere. Just cope myself at home accompanied by the two books that I just bought last week. One of them had just been published not long time ago. I'll make sure I'll have a quiet and enjoyable time with them.  Oh so loving it! 

Rain had just stopped and left a cool breeze air flowing into my bedroom. And I just had a pack of fried beehoon noodle bought by hubby after he had his coffee time this morning before he headed to work and a full glass of mixed carrot and orange juice.

Remember to love yourself more as one of the ingredients to a fulfilled and happy life :) Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!!

Chenrezig Empowerment by 70th Je Khenpo Trulku Jigme Chhoeda

Yesterday I happened seeing my Bhutanese friend’s posting on his Facebook that there would be Chenrezig Empowerment brought by 70th Je Khenpo Trulku Jigme Chhoeda at Ngee Ann Auditorium, Teochew Building, starting from 7.30pm. He came together with His Eminence Trizin Tsering Rinpoche and other monks from Bhutan.

Je Khenpo is the Chief Abbot of the Central Monastic Body of Bhutan. I read from Wikipedia.org that the 70th Je Khenpo, is believed to be the reincarnation of Maitreya, as well as the Mahasiddha Saraha, Hungchen Kara, Kheuchung Lotsawa, and Pema Tsering.

Since I had no plan to go anywhere after work, I called and asked my colleague if she was interested to attend it too. I told her, it would be my first time attending this. I also told her, to be honest, I had no idea who he was and why we should go there. But since he is a Chief Abbot from Bhutan, it must be not easy for us to meet him in this life unless we really had a good fate and good karma. Also, since he was going to bless us with Chenrezig (Avalokitesvara or Goddess of Compassion)’s empowerment, it must be a good thing in life too right? So, there was no reason on why we shouldn’t go. Well, maybe there was.. It was either haze or heavy rain. But we both were really fated to go there. The weather was good and the sunset was beautiful.  After worked, we had a quick dinner and we both strolled to the destination, which was not very far from our working place.

Again, good karma! We were very lucky being able to get seats inside the hall (mainly for invitation guests), although it was at the last row and most left side. But it was fine for us. Je Khenpo started it with prayers. Then we listened to the Dharma teaching about happiness, samsara, and how to get out of it. He also talked about the Chenrezig Empowerment. After that he said prayers on Chenrezig Empowerment and we started to line up to get the blessing from him.

In the same line, after getting the blessing from 70th Je Khenpo, we were offered water from bumpa into our hands (to drink and spread the rest on our head from front to the back), we were also given pills which they said good for our body, then they gave us yellow or red string and cards, books, relating to them.

It was such a great experience to both of us. We could feel the blessing already since both of us managed to get seats inside MRT side by side when we boarded. Hehe… Well, it was such a good fate for us able to attend and meet up with them. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for everything. May all sentient beings be happy. Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu.

Married to Bhutan by Linda Leaming

I saw this title in Passu’s blog many months back and once I read the blog, I found out that it was a title of the book written by American lady who got married with Bhutanese man.

I managed to find this book in Bishan’s library last week. I was so exciting, immediately took it out of the shelf, scanned the barcode, and brought it home. I couldn’t wait to read it and was wondering what it was all about.

I went to Bhutan once, in August last year but it feels like it has just happened last month. Wow! Time flies… We were staying in Thimphu for two nights at Hotel Druk, and only later on I found out that the Clock Tower Square was the one of the gathering places for Bhutanese.

During our tour there, we went to several places. As I watched the journey from the bus’s window, the bus took us to almost the same area over and over again, at different timing. I loved to capture the buildings, places and surrounding’s figures into my brain as much as I could since I love the country very much. Oh, how I wish I could go back there again anytime soon…

So, as I read through the book, I recalled back all the memories that I had from Bhutan, especially when she described Kawajangsa. I also tried to connect it with experiences I had during my Kolkata trip, while having dinner with a group Bhutanese students who were studying there when she described her experienced when she visited her prospective mother-in-law’s house for the first time.

“Our conversation was stilted; then he disappeared. He came back after a few minutes with another cup of tea and some biscuits and once again evaporated. To American this is very strange behavior, but any Bhutanese would do the same thing. Bhutanese must give the visitor the best, most comfortable place in the house to sit, and then they must feed the guest the best food they have. Conversation is optional – food is not.“

“After an hour or so, Namgay appeared again with an enormous bowl of red rice and some phak sha pha, or dried, aged pork fat, considered a delicacy in Bhutan. He sat the food in front of me on the floor, smiled, and then left the room again. I waited for several minutes to see if he would return with food for himself. It is typical for guests to eat alone in a traditional Bhutanese household.”

I experienced almost the same thing, especially the part where the Bhutanese must give the visitor the best, the most comfortable place in the house to visit, and feed the guest the best food they have. Wow, I was pampered!!! (That was how I managed to taste Raven vodka in Kolkata!!! :) Hehe…)

From the book I also found out that the word “curry” means anything you put on rice. When my Bhutanese friend told me that he loves to eat with curry, what appeared on my mind was ‘real curry’ like ‘Indian curry’. Hahahaha….. Now I understand that it is not always ‘curry’ like ‘Indian curry’, but any dishes that accompany the rice.  

I took out from the book the sentences above. I would like to learn some of the skills too such as how to cook tasty meal with only a radish, an onion, and a little rice; how to keep your shoes and kira clean when walking through mud; and especially this one: “How to wash your entire body with half a bucket of water.” There must be a special skill to do that! Anyone can teach me??? Hehehe…

And I also found the quote below to be something that fat woman like me would love to hear:

Hahaha… Yea, my Bhutanese friend once told me too that fat represents healthy and prosperous there. And how wonderful it is to tell someone fat and it still makes his/her day :)

Bhutanese believes that “the more distance and difficulty, the more karmic points you accrue.” It reminds me when Gyeltshen, our driver – now friend, told us to walk up to Taktsang Monastery instead of riding horse. Hehehe…. I never heard that before la…

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book. There were many other points I didn’t mention here, but it has definitely equipped me to become a better guest if next time I have a chance to visit Bhutan again. I have never visited Bhutanese house before, so I hope my curiosity and my chatter character will not startle the owner of the house. Hahaha…

Samsung S4 Training

Finally I changed my Blackberry 9900 into Samsung Galaxy S4 beginning of this month. My Blackberry still functioned well. But my handphone’s contract had almost reached the date and I was entitled to purchase the new phone at subsidized rate, at the same time extending a new contract.

It happened that there was PC Fair in Expo and my mobile provider offered free products (free casing, car charger, and charger dock – all original Samsung brand) if I bought S4. Without thinking twice, I bought the handphone that day with my hubby’s help.

After purchased, I transferred all the data (contact, photos, and songs) from Blackberry to S4. S4 is so user friendly that I could transfer the photos and songs through Bluetooth but I keyed in the contacts data one by one manually. I just loved doing that although it took so much time and made my eyes tired.

And last weekend, I went for Samsung Galaxy S4 training, provided by Samsung for all S4 users who were willing to learn more about the phone’s function. At first, I also didn’t know if there was such training. I knew it only when my good friend bought her Samsung Galaxy Note 2 last year. She told me she attended the training and showed us many functions that were available on her new phone. I was like… “Wow, that was good! If I bought Samsung phone, I would definitely attend such training.” Hehe… So I registered myself and went for the training.

The training provided was great! I learnt many things that I didn’t know before and it benefited me in many ways, especially that I could type faster now! Hohoho…. (One reason I used Blackberry was because it has QWERTY keypad that made me easier to type my email or message and that was also the reason on why I was reluctant to change to touch screen phone).  

Perhaps I was just too outdated, but the predictive text had made my life easier to type.  Other than that, the trainer also taught us to ‘tick’ the ‘Continuous input’ under the Samsung keyboard settings, where you could just swing your finger around from one alphabet to another to create words that you wanted to type. Wow!! It’s very useful function! And at first, I thought it would only applicable for English words, but I was wrong. I could type any words. Be it short cut or words in any other language. Huehehe… I was so happy and excited that I could type message or email faster without having to type the alphabet one by one which took so much time, especially when I typed the alphabet wrongly.

I could also set more than one language, in my case, English, Chinese, and Bahasa Indonesia as the input. There was a convenient button where I only needed to slide it to left or right when I wanted to change the language input.

The trainer taught us how to set the home screen and arrange icons in other pages; how to create folders; how to set many different email accounts, etc.

The phone had a group play function too where S4 users could share the file, photo, also to play music together (worked as speakers).

S Translator apps would make our life easier too when we went for travelling. For example: if I went to Korea and had no idea how to speak Korean. I could type the words in English, translated into Korean language and there was a speaker where you could let them hear and they could answer your question by talking into the microphone where it could translate the words back into English. Hehehe… I haven’t tried the function before, but it seemed so easy and interesting :)

We tried ‘Air View’ function where we could preview information by hovering finger over the screen, preview a scene in the video, magnify the content, etc.

Using ‘Air Gesture’ function, we could pick the phone up without touching it, view important info when the screen was off, scroll through webpage and email messages, moved between pictures, pages, or music tracks, etc.

NFC enables us to transfer the file, photo, music to the Samsung phone users who also has this function. I haven’t tried it yet hahaha… I will try it one day with other Samsung users.

The phone allowed us to browse multi window (max. 2 windows at the same time).

When using ‘Smart Pause’ function, video would be paused when the device detected your eyes faced away from the screen. It was another unique function by S4.

We tried the animated photo in the class. Quite cute!! It could freeze the picture you didn’t want to move and see those you wanted them to move. We took picture of our trainer who moved his hands.

PSI 401 @Clarke Quay - 21 June 2013