Buddha Unfolding Festival – Tibet

Every year, during the Shoton Festival, a grand event to unveil a giant Thangka of Buddha is held at the Drepung Monastery, in Lhasa.


According to the locals, the giant Thangka of Buddha was drawn by hundreds of artisans and only unveiled once a year. The purpose of the unveiling is to let the sun shine on it. Hence the festival is also known as the ‘Sunshine on the Buddha’.

The unveiling takes place in Drepung Monastery which is located in the mountains, in Lhasa. In order to see and participate in this event, people must climb up the mountain, one has to be up very early in the morning. It takes about two hours of walking and climbing to reach the destination.

Expect the temperatures to be very low and cold. If it rains, everyone would have to wait till it stops, and this may take an hour or two. The unfolding is carried out by hundreds of monks while Tibetan opera troupes perform at Norbulingka.

The photos were contributed by a friend, Lee Chin.

My friend who only needs two friends!

Have you ever thought of how many friends you need in your life?

Well, few days ago, my good friend told me that he only needs two friends in his life. One of them is me which made me feel really honored. However, he didn’t tell me who the other friend was.

This good friend of mine has an interesting character. I have known him for ages and I see him as an interesting person because his thinking is different from regular people. If you don’t know him, you would think that he is strange.

Well, I was a bit shocked when he told me he only needs two friends. I thought how could a person go through life with only two friends? He said what’s the point of having so many friends and most of them are not Relevant to you in life.

Have you ever thought of using the word “Relevant” to measure your friendship? I was wondering how he came out with this word. If I am going to use this word, I would say all my friends are relevant to me. Definitely they are there for some purposes or else they aren’t my friends anymore.

It is interesting to have this kind of friend because he makes me think. Maybe he is not very normal, but sometime he is right also. Even though I have so many friends in so many countries, but how many of them can really help me and listen to me when I have problem or when I feel depress? I would say only one who is becoming a priest soon. However, he is so far away and we can only communicate through email.

Thus, this made me think again, do I really need so many friends like most people or I only need a few friends like the interesting friend of mine?

The Foreign Mistresses

During my grandfather’s time, it was common for a man to have a few wives. The wives served their husband, gave birth to many children and also acted as servants of the house. However, from my parents’ time onwards, men can only legally have one wife. If they have another woman besides the wife, that woman becomes the mistress.

Recently it has become a trend for Malaysian men to keep young foreign women as mistresses. We are now flooded with these women, making them easily available.

I was amazed to find out that even fresh graduates in their twenties also kept mistresses as secret girlfriends even though they are already attached. Another young man at the age of 25 has even left his wife with two young children for them.

A lot of us were shocked when we found out how much money these women are capable of extracting from these men. We heard of a particularly wealthy married man who is only 38 years old with two young children. On a business trip to a foreign country, he met one of these women and decided to keep her as a mistress.

He brought her back to Malaysia and even bought a RM500K house for her. She then persuaded him to buy a few apartments in her home country for her mother to generate rental income. Every month he gives her lots of out-of-pocket expense money for living and gambling in the Genting Highlands Casino. Even her taxi bills come to more than a thousand a month. Recently she opened up a company of her own and used up more than RM300K of his money for capital. His poor wife knew but couldn't do anything about it because she is only a housewife and depends on him for everything.

Another rich man in KL keeps these women as mistresses on an annual contract basis. That means he changes his mistress annually. The agreement is for the duration of one year, the mistress will be given a platinum credit card for her spending whims and fancies. According to a reliable source, most spend up to RM50K a month just for shopping.

My cousin told me some agents in KL are selling name lists of rich men to these foreign women. These agents did their research and compiled all the important and rich men’s phone numbers into a list. When these women arrived in KL, they can buy the lists from the agents. On getting the lists, the cold calling starts. On contact, if the men get curious and show interest, they will be pursued.

A friend told me that it is common for these women to become mistresses to two or three men at the same time and without them being aware about it. They can have a man in KL and another in Kuching. Or both men could be in the same town. How they do it, is they know that one man (the main sponsor) can only visit them on certain days and they will ask the other man to come on their free days. Since their apartment is normally rented by the main sponsor, they will use their friend’s apartment for the second man. By doing this, the two men will never meet.

I am wondering why everybody in business is saying that the economy is not good at the moment and yet so much money is spent on these women. Have you ever wondered how much money is sent back to their home country every month? For all wives in Malaysia, if you are trying to save money all the time and never want to spend it on yourselves, you better rethink now. There are just too many attractions out there.

Amazing September 11th photos shot from the air

These were shots taken by a Russian pilot who worked in the US on 911. He had the pictures hidden till recently.

True Borneo Island Ghost Stories - The Noisy Hotel Room (Miri City)

I travel alone to Miri every other month on business. Miri's a resort city located near Brunei on the west coast of Borneo.

There is a particular hotel located in the city centre which I would deem particularly haunted or 'dirty' as us Chinese like to describe it. I don't say this lightly as I have several strange experiences on different occasions.

One early morning on one of my trips, at about 5am in the morning, I was woke up by loud noisy footsteps in my room. It felt like a lot of people were walking up and down the room but I couldn't see anything. I got up to switch on the lights to investigate but the footsteps stopped immediately.

There was another occasion when I had a faulty phone in my room. I had to inform room service to send a technician to my room. It had just passed 5pm and I was alone in the room at the time, waiting for the technician to come when I heard 3 light knocks at even intervals at the door. Coming to think of it the knocks didn't sound like how a person would normally knock.

Thinking it was the technician, I got up to open the door. But before opening the door, I checked the peep hole. What I saw gave me a big fright. Staring at the door was a big red eye. After steadying my nerves I was able to seat myself down. Luckily, a few minutes later, the technician came.

My most recent encounter in this very same hotel was encountering noises which sounded like someone trying to open the door. Now this time round I had my boss for company and I was not the only one who heard it, she did too. It started around midnight and continued till the early hours of the morning.

I later realised that all these encounters always happen on the ninth floor. When I stayed on other floors, nothing ever happens. So from now onwards I always make it a point to avoid the dreaded ninth floor.

Things you didn't know about Tibet

This is a photograph given to me by my friends who have visited Tibet recently.

I wonder how many people in Malaysia have visited Tibet? We have seen a lot of documentaries on TV about this country but I guess not many people have been there.

When we think of Tibet, we would automatically think of temples, worships and monks. This is true because worshipping is basically the most important activity among Tibetans everyday. However, my friends have told me something which I didn't know about.

According to my friends, food is really scarce there. If you thought going to Tibet is just like going to China which they would bring you to restaurant for meals everyday with lots of food on the table waiting for you, then you are wrong. In Tibet, you will get tomatoes with fried egg for every meal and if you are lucky, they will give you some meat. You will also get porridge for all breakfast. Thus, an advice from my friends, you must bring some food with you if you don't want to feel hungry most of the time.

You must bring oxygen and tablets for high mountain sickness from your own country. If your travel agent tells you not to worry because they have everything there for you, it is not true. One of my friends started vomiting from the third day there and felt really sick for the whole trip.

For certain nights my friends had to stay in tents because they don't have hotels in certain places. There are four beds inside a tent and nothing else. In these tents, you only get one hour of electricity at night and no water. So you don't brush your teeth at night. You need to share a public toilet which maybe located 10 minutes away from your tent. So all my friends decided to pee outside the tent in the open air.

In big city like Lhasa, my friends stayed in 4 stars hotel which is really nice. After looking through the photographs taken by my friends, I found that most houses look nearly the same from outside. They all look very simple and rough. However, they put a lot of emphasis inside their houses. I would say Tibetans are very good interior artists. Beautiful pictures are drawn on their walls and furniture with bright colours. They also use a lot of fabrics to decorate their windows and doors.

Well, if you look at the picture posted above, the colourful flags is a common sight in Tibet. They are hanging above the road or along the mountain side. Prayers are printed on the flags and you are supposed to write your name on it before they hang it up for you.

I asked my friends how they felt about the whole trip and they said there is only one word to describe, that is, it is an Experience. An experience which you will never get in our country because we don't have to eat tomatoes everyday and we can take shower whenever we feel like it. People in Tibet only take shower once a week or even a month.