Reminisces: My Uncle's Death Ceremonies
[Wednesday, July 18]
I haven't gotten a chance to go online at all for ages now... I must have gotten too used to having constant access to the Net (well, not quite constant, but at least it was there) and now that I'm back in the Gorillas' house, going online has become vastly more difficult. It's rather annoying how the local topography seems to resist allowing us to go online from here: the Gorilla says there's a hill at the back of the house (where the computer is) that blocks the wireless connection; and the front of the house is too crowded, as well as having too few sockets, to allow us to try from there with any amount of ease.
So I'm typing this on the desktop that isn't used for much more than printing or the children's games...
My laptop has been delayed twice. Well, I suppose it's actually only been delayed once, but from my point of view it's twice... you see, I ordered my laptop from So Hour. (Which reminds me I should record some memories of my uncle's passing. But that will come later.) And some of the people I asked said hat their laptops, after ordering, had arrived within 4 working days, so I expected the thing to be waiting for me in KL when I returned.
It wasn't, and the online track feature said I could expect it around the 17th--yesterday. I was disappointed at first, of course--I've got plans for that laptop, I tell ya!--but eventually I settled down to having my family around and going around on visits and shopping trips and goodness knows what else we've been doing, I certainly haven't kept track.
And then yesterday I bounced out of bed... well, at any rate I got out of bed hoping for a shiny new laptop to have arrived with the newspaper delivery, and then I was immediately disappointed again when the newspaper turned out to have arrived alone. Later I managed to get online for a few minutes at a friend's house while ostensibly picking up my siblings (who had had a sleepover at said house) and found the estimated date of arrival changed to the 27th, which was certainly shocking to me.
I made a phone call to the company later, and they said lots of deliveries had been delayed because some vendor had missed a shipment of some part or other, which prevented them from assembling the thing, which caused them to have to make a lot of deliveries late. Claus said it smacked of a fake excuse, but even if I agreed with him (I'm still not sure whether to trust them or not about that), it would be impossible for me to do anything about it at this juncture--the laptop's been paid for already.
It's very annoying and inconvenient and I'm going to have to make another trip up from Sing to KL just to pick up the laptop (the 80 bucks it'll cost me for the round-trip is nearly negligible compared to the price of the laptop itself, so that's only a minor grudge) and that alone will eat off about 12 hours' total from my time. Not to mention that I'll have to start borrowing CDs from everybody in sight to install various programs I want--DotA, MapleStory, PhotoShop, Microsoft Office (if it doesn't come included)... at least, if the battery power is good, my trip down will be somewhat enlivened. [Note: It's been delayed AGAIN, to the 3rd of August this time.]
It's just all very annoying, that's all, and I've decided that next time, maybe ordering online isn't such a hot idea, notwithstanding all the free upgrades and rebates and whatever are offered.
And now to my uncle's ceremonies.
He died a Buddhist, so that's how everything proceeded. My grandpa got all the formalities done relatively quickly--of course, he had the whole household to help--so within 12 hours of the death, the body was in the coffin and there were heaps of shrine paper everywhere; priests and merchants were scurrying around to prepare the effigies, and the entire front half of the house was turned into a temporary cavity where nothing except the coffin (with body inside) and various mourning-related items were placed discreetly around.
There was even a cassette player, with a tape of recorded chants in it, set on Loop and put at the coffin's head (the coffin was made so that the head and face were visible through a glass cover). Apparently the chanting was meant to guide his spirit as it went wandering around, but just to make sure, there was a wok and relatives had to keep a bit of paper burning in it at all times to light the spirit's way to... well, to wherever it was going to go.
It was a very uncomfortable time for me throughout; first of all, because it was a Buddhist ceremony, and I was kind of torn between wanting to respect my grandparents' beliefs, and wanting to avoid anything with even slightly religious overtones--I am Christian, you see, and my family was probably the only Christian one in the whole place for the whole time. I mean, I did light joss sticks and bow, but only as a mark of respect, and... well, it's all still quite jumbled in my mind. There's a passage in the Bible, where some general who'd just been healed of leprosy (his name was Naaman, you can look it up) declared his belief in the God of Israel to a prophet, but immediately asked for forgiveness in future, because his king worshipped something called Baal; and on certain occasions his king would worship Baal, while leaning on Naaman, which would force Naaman to be bowing as well (otherwise he'd be dropping the king). And the prophet said it'd be fine, or words to that effect.
I'm not, I hope, as egotistical as to imagine that my actions might have such an effect on anyone else as to change their whole life; but I wish there was some better way to express my respect for the dead than burning sticks in his honor and bowing.
In any case, my grandpa (who, thank God, appears to be more and more in favour of Christianity, even if he doesn't embrace it) allowed my siblings and I (the adults were excused from most of the ceremonies in honor of the deceased) to only go through the form of the thing, without actually participating. In essence we were merely accompanying our other cousins around. It's a lot more than it seems, because most of the ceremonies involved burning more sticks, drinking libations (a libation is a drink offering, if I'm right), or kneeling, or whatever else the priest would command next. We simply stood by.
Well, it all passed by in days and days of ceremonies--I don't know the dialect the priest spoke, so I didn't understand anything, but I managed to deduce that at least some of the ceremonies were meant to introduce him to the Judges of the Dead and plead them for mercy; some were introducing him to the ancestors; at least one was guiding him across the Chinese equivalent of the River Styx, although the Chinese have a bridge instead of a ferryman; and there were a few more. And through all those days, the cassette player and its chanting never stopped.
At any rate, the ceremonies eventually finished, and the body and coffin were taken to be cremated (the body, at least, was cremated. I don't know what happened to the coffin--reused?). And that was the end of it all, apart from having to choose a spot in some temple to store the urn in which the ashes were. (I wandered around there for a bit, looking at the birthdates of the other people in the other urns there, and I found 5 or 6 people who were born in my year. The photos of them looked rather surprised.)
And that's that. It was, overall, highly uncomfortable, and I hope I don't have to go through anything like it again...
[Monday, 30th July]
I've just gone through several days' worth of orientation, run by the local Malaysian Students' Association, and my goodness it was tiring. I've had I don't know how many photos snapped of myself (and the rest of the bunch, of course); climbed hundreds of flights of stairs; slept for less than a total of 20 hours in five days; and spent money like water. If 250 Sing dollars in 5 days doesn't count as spendthrifting, I don't know what does.
And I've met a lot of people, and a lot of people have met me, and I've learnt a whole slew of lame jokes, lame games, both clean and rather obscene chants meant to encourage one's own team to victory, and a long list of which food is good in which canteen--NTU has an estimated 16 canteens, all of them with their own specialties and oddities. (14, for example, is famous for its sushi.)
My current roommate is a local Singaporean Malay, who's going into his 3rd year of Bioscience, and he's a fitness instructor, and a dragonboater (whatever it is, it sure gets people into shape), and he's got a photo of himself in the room. That was bad enough for my ego, but then I took one look around the room and got very very worried because he's a very tidy person.
And you know what happens to Very Tidy People who live near me--they go insane. (Because I am a Very Untidy Person.)
But he's turned out to be nicer than I'd have thought at first, so it's OK so far. Still, he's planning to move out next week and only God knows who's going to be my next roommate. (Hopefully somebody with only a moderate sense of hygiene and has a huge collection of fiction that he doesn't mind sharing...)
I haven't gotten a chance to go online at all for ages now... I must have gotten too used to having constant access to the Net (well, not quite constant, but at least it was there) and now that I'm back in the Gorillas' house, going online has become vastly more difficult. It's rather annoying how the local topography seems to resist allowing us to go online from here: the Gorilla says there's a hill at the back of the house (where the computer is) that blocks the wireless connection; and the front of the house is too crowded, as well as having too few sockets, to allow us to try from there with any amount of ease.
So I'm typing this on the desktop that isn't used for much more than printing or the children's games...
My laptop has been delayed twice. Well, I suppose it's actually only been delayed once, but from my point of view it's twice... you see, I ordered my laptop from So Hour. (Which reminds me I should record some memories of my uncle's passing. But that will come later.) And some of the people I asked said hat their laptops, after ordering, had arrived within 4 working days, so I expected the thing to be waiting for me in KL when I returned.
It wasn't, and the online track feature said I could expect it around the 17th--yesterday. I was disappointed at first, of course--I've got plans for that laptop, I tell ya!--but eventually I settled down to having my family around and going around on visits and shopping trips and goodness knows what else we've been doing, I certainly haven't kept track.
And then yesterday I bounced out of bed... well, at any rate I got out of bed hoping for a shiny new laptop to have arrived with the newspaper delivery, and then I was immediately disappointed again when the newspaper turned out to have arrived alone. Later I managed to get online for a few minutes at a friend's house while ostensibly picking up my siblings (who had had a sleepover at said house) and found the estimated date of arrival changed to the 27th, which was certainly shocking to me.
I made a phone call to the company later, and they said lots of deliveries had been delayed because some vendor had missed a shipment of some part or other, which prevented them from assembling the thing, which caused them to have to make a lot of deliveries late. Claus said it smacked of a fake excuse, but even if I agreed with him (I'm still not sure whether to trust them or not about that), it would be impossible for me to do anything about it at this juncture--the laptop's been paid for already.
It's very annoying and inconvenient and I'm going to have to make another trip up from Sing to KL just to pick up the laptop (the 80 bucks it'll cost me for the round-trip is nearly negligible compared to the price of the laptop itself, so that's only a minor grudge) and that alone will eat off about 12 hours' total from my time. Not to mention that I'll have to start borrowing CDs from everybody in sight to install various programs I want--DotA, MapleStory, PhotoShop, Microsoft Office (if it doesn't come included)... at least, if the battery power is good, my trip down will be somewhat enlivened. [Note: It's been delayed AGAIN, to the 3rd of August this time.]
It's just all very annoying, that's all, and I've decided that next time, maybe ordering online isn't such a hot idea, notwithstanding all the free upgrades and rebates and whatever are offered.
And now to my uncle's ceremonies.
He died a Buddhist, so that's how everything proceeded. My grandpa got all the formalities done relatively quickly--of course, he had the whole household to help--so within 12 hours of the death, the body was in the coffin and there were heaps of shrine paper everywhere; priests and merchants were scurrying around to prepare the effigies, and the entire front half of the house was turned into a temporary cavity where nothing except the coffin (with body inside) and various mourning-related items were placed discreetly around.
There was even a cassette player, with a tape of recorded chants in it, set on Loop and put at the coffin's head (the coffin was made so that the head and face were visible through a glass cover). Apparently the chanting was meant to guide his spirit as it went wandering around, but just to make sure, there was a wok and relatives had to keep a bit of paper burning in it at all times to light the spirit's way to... well, to wherever it was going to go.
It was a very uncomfortable time for me throughout; first of all, because it was a Buddhist ceremony, and I was kind of torn between wanting to respect my grandparents' beliefs, and wanting to avoid anything with even slightly religious overtones--I am Christian, you see, and my family was probably the only Christian one in the whole place for the whole time. I mean, I did light joss sticks and bow, but only as a mark of respect, and... well, it's all still quite jumbled in my mind. There's a passage in the Bible, where some general who'd just been healed of leprosy (his name was Naaman, you can look it up) declared his belief in the God of Israel to a prophet, but immediately asked for forgiveness in future, because his king worshipped something called Baal; and on certain occasions his king would worship Baal, while leaning on Naaman, which would force Naaman to be bowing as well (otherwise he'd be dropping the king). And the prophet said it'd be fine, or words to that effect.
I'm not, I hope, as egotistical as to imagine that my actions might have such an effect on anyone else as to change their whole life; but I wish there was some better way to express my respect for the dead than burning sticks in his honor and bowing.
In any case, my grandpa (who, thank God, appears to be more and more in favour of Christianity, even if he doesn't embrace it) allowed my siblings and I (the adults were excused from most of the ceremonies in honor of the deceased) to only go through the form of the thing, without actually participating. In essence we were merely accompanying our other cousins around. It's a lot more than it seems, because most of the ceremonies involved burning more sticks, drinking libations (a libation is a drink offering, if I'm right), or kneeling, or whatever else the priest would command next. We simply stood by.
Well, it all passed by in days and days of ceremonies--I don't know the dialect the priest spoke, so I didn't understand anything, but I managed to deduce that at least some of the ceremonies were meant to introduce him to the Judges of the Dead and plead them for mercy; some were introducing him to the ancestors; at least one was guiding him across the Chinese equivalent of the River Styx, although the Chinese have a bridge instead of a ferryman; and there were a few more. And through all those days, the cassette player and its chanting never stopped.
At any rate, the ceremonies eventually finished, and the body and coffin were taken to be cremated (the body, at least, was cremated. I don't know what happened to the coffin--reused?). And that was the end of it all, apart from having to choose a spot in some temple to store the urn in which the ashes were. (I wandered around there for a bit, looking at the birthdates of the other people in the other urns there, and I found 5 or 6 people who were born in my year. The photos of them looked rather surprised.)
And that's that. It was, overall, highly uncomfortable, and I hope I don't have to go through anything like it again...
[Monday, 30th July]
I've just gone through several days' worth of orientation, run by the local Malaysian Students' Association, and my goodness it was tiring. I've had I don't know how many photos snapped of myself (and the rest of the bunch, of course); climbed hundreds of flights of stairs; slept for less than a total of 20 hours in five days; and spent money like water. If 250 Sing dollars in 5 days doesn't count as spendthrifting, I don't know what does.
And I've met a lot of people, and a lot of people have met me, and I've learnt a whole slew of lame jokes, lame games, both clean and rather obscene chants meant to encourage one's own team to victory, and a long list of which food is good in which canteen--NTU has an estimated 16 canteens, all of them with their own specialties and oddities. (14, for example, is famous for its sushi.)
My current roommate is a local Singaporean Malay, who's going into his 3rd year of Bioscience, and he's a fitness instructor, and a dragonboater (whatever it is, it sure gets people into shape), and he's got a photo of himself in the room. That was bad enough for my ego, but then I took one look around the room and got very very worried because he's a very tidy person.
And you know what happens to Very Tidy People who live near me--they go insane. (Because I am a Very Untidy Person.)
But he's turned out to be nicer than I'd have thought at first, so it's OK so far. Still, he's planning to move out next week and only God knows who's going to be my next roommate. (Hopefully somebody with only a moderate sense of hygiene and has a huge collection of fiction that he doesn't mind sharing...)
Comments
first of all, waiting hurts. I know, even though not waiting for laptops. They and their excuses, too bad you have fully paid it. If not, u can somehow "ugut" em. =P To be delayed like 3 times, each for around a week, good luck on waiting. What brand anyway? Dell?
Next, condolences to your uncle, and his family and yours too. I thought your whole family (i mean, the big one) are Christians.. so, it's only you are your family (the small scale one). My vocab sux. Nvm that.
Looks like water and oil wont mix. VERY TIDY vs VERY UNTIDY = you know what's next. Wait for yer new roommmate. ^^
aw man, this is the longest comment i ever written. Anyway, if you have time to drop by at Atlantis, we got some OST's up for grab. Check it out later.. in case u lost the URL, it's there in my blog.
Last but not least, again, condolences from me.