Asking money from God?

I don't believe in god. But if I do, I would ask god for things I have no control over. I would ask god to keep my family and friends to be safe and sound, strong and healthy, happy and enjoying life. Sometimes I would ask god to take the rain away and give me a sunny day, or let me do well in an exam. I won't ask god for money. But would anyone do that?

My relatives do. Some of us chinese pray to many deities, gods and goddesses. Different gods are in charge to different things. For example in my old house, we had four gods: The three main buddhas, a 'de zhu gong' (the god in charge of the land), a kitchen god and another one outside the house (I think its the god in charge of guarding the house). These are the standard altars of a chinese family home in Malaysia. But other people have more.

Many of my relatives are very obsessed with money, and very superstitious. Bad combination. They spend lots of time, effort and money praying to gods in charge of finance, so they can be rewarded with more financial luck. I remember once when I was in primary school, I followed one of my aunt to a temple to ask for a lottery number. The ritual was weird, involving throwing coins, rubbing the idol's face with taufu, writing stuff with chinese brush then burning it and bringing the ash home to mix with tea and drink it. I didn't remember how did the miracle numbers pop out and had my aunt won. But I remember my aunt putting quite a big sum of money into an angpau (red packet) for the old lady performing the ritual. Very good profession to go into for anyone who wants to earn lots of money by performing peculiar entertainment since my aunt couldn't be the only greedy person in the world.

My family, being quite middle class (we get what we want often but we are not spoilt) is naturally quite disgusted with my relatives' behaviour. I sometimes wonder what makes them so obsessed with money. Perhaps it's their poor upbringing. My grandmother had 12 children and she was a single mum who brought up all of them by tailoring. My mum told me they can only afford to eat chicken once or twice a month. Only one out of the 12 siblings made it to university. Many of the elder ones had to drop out of school early to help generate income for the family. Since they are unskilled by the time my aunts and uncles were married, their jobs bring them just about suffient income to pay for food, shelter and other basic stuff. It's really hard for them to fork out extra money for say, university fees. But I have seen poor people who are content with their simple life. Why can't my relatives be a little happier about who they are now? Are they just trying too hard to get out of the vicious circle of poverty, to the point that they lose sight of everything else in the world, that they have to ask for money from god? My aunt said people like me, who had sailed through life smoothly, would never understand their predicament. Perhaps I never would.

Learning french

Bonjour!

I'm determined to learn french well. I met lots of patients from African countries who spoke french in my GP placement and I hated not being able to understand their conversations with the GP (who spoke very good french). Many other reasons to learn french: it's (one of the) language of love, it's one of the official languages within the UN and it is my secret ambition to work one of the African countries one day. I'd also like to visit France once my conversational French is up to the minimum standard.

We've just started with the alphabets, numbers, self introduction and some of the other basics. It was a real pleassure to learn a new language. Repeat after the teacher. Watch the spelling. I have almost forgotten how long did I took for me to feel comfortable using English. In lesson, I met my old self: feeling insecure, shy, reluctant to speak, and fear making mistakes, and envious of the other students who were better than me. But as I say I want to learn it well and I am revising it every day.

I really like pronoucing 'r' from the throat. But it's very hard, dismantling and rebuiliding the part of the brain which makes the connection between the visual 'r' and the motor action of the tougue to make the 'arrr' sound. Had to consciously stop myself and say 'r' from my throat each time I see the letter in a word.

And I didn't know there's even a french way of saying Malaysia! (Malasie)

Au revoir.

Greenwich-Amsterdam-Bruges-Canterbury

I am back from the first round of my summer travel.

Thursday:

Went to London by megabus (surprisingly comfortable for £10). Then went to Greenwich and visited the the Royal Observatory and the Prime meridian, the Old Royal Navy College, the Queens house and the National Maritime Museum. The view was breathtaking! Spent the night at the Malaysian hall.

Friday:

Joined the tour group and travelled across the English channel, France and Belgium to reach Amsterdam. Went for a canal cruise ride, followed by a tour of the red light district, which was a little disturbing.

Saturday:

Excursion to a cheese and clog factories and took pictures at the countryside in Holland. After that we visited the Anne Franks house, a diamond factory and the sex museum. Also saw lots of other attractions from outside.

Sunday:

Spent some time in Bruges. Beautiful churches. Went to the chocolate factory. Stopped by at a alcohol warehouse in Calais and bantered a bit with some drunken men. Stayed in Kipps hostel which was fantastic.

Monday:

Saw Canterbury. Learnt about Canterbury tale, went into a castle in the UK for the first time and visited the Canterbury cathedral and the Eastbridge hospital for the poor pilgrims.