Sunday, January 20, 2008

Flower and pots

After dilly-daily for a few months, I finally found the flower pots for mum's home. I found them in the nursery in Taman Desa. Here are the flowers before they were tranferred to their new pots. The picture was snapped during our last visit to Seremban-2 a month ago. If you see the picture carefully, you can still see the 'liquid paper' marking on the edge of the pots...


Van (our maid) transferred the flowers to their new 'home' this afternoon, with new soil recommended by the owner of the nursery. That's how they look like now. My worry is that the pots might be a little too small for the flowers. We are going to let the flowers get use to their new home for a few weeks before moving them to mum's home.


The pots are two-piece with their respective base. The bases are actually swallow plates to prevent soil from staining the ground.


As we are going to leave the flowers at mum's home un-attended, I am afraid that weed may start to grow un-controlled. I will see if I can find some 'golf-course grass' to cover the surface of the soil... just like the grass they grow at the backyard of mum's home.

Any comments?

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Prayer on the completion of Mum's new home

We visited mum's new home on 28th,Dec, which was exactly the 99-th day since she passed away. There were quite a long list of stuff to be prepared for the prayer... as was instructed by the 'Master'. Anyway, an unique experience for that... though I rather not to have such an experience.

Mum got the following... one cooked whole-chicken (with head), roasted pork, fried fish... 8 'fatt' cake, 4 oranges, 4 apples, 8 'jin tui'... 3 cups of wine, 3 cups of tea, 3 bowls of rice... flowers of 5 different colours.


... and the 'tu di' had these... 5 raw pork, 5 duck eggs, 2 'fatt' cake', 1 orange, 1 apple, 1 bowl of rice, 1 cup of wine, and 1 cup of tea.


The prayer last about half an hour. I was involved in the whole prayer... so, was not available to take any photo during the session.

The final ritual was to have all other visitors to pay respect. Oh... there were three visitors... again, see if you can name them. Here comes the first visitor...


The other two visitors are seen in the back ground of the following photo. To everyone's surprise and griefness, one of the visitor left us to meet mum two days later.


A close up view on the tomb stone, with mum's photo clearly seen.


I found it quite interesting and worth further 'research' on the meaning of the writing on the flags...


By now... have you noticed that there is something still missing at the site? Hehe... that was due to my laziness again. Anyway, will try to get a suitable pair of pots for the flower. The maid has been informed of the important task in transferring the flower from the old pot to the new ones (which is still not in existence). Okay... will mark it in the calenda.

The "Master" told us to pray for 'ching ming' at mum's site at least two weeks before the actual 'ching ming' day, that's before 19th, March. I was also adviced not to pray at other yards if we have no control of when to pray. Since the date is always decided by the oldest uncle... and usually, they will do the prayer earlier, most like I will not be visiting other ancestor's yard this year.

Mum's new home on the X'mas day

After a long delay and some nudgings and pushings on the contractor, mum's new home was finished. As promised by the contractor, it was finished before the Christmas day. We visited the site on X'mas day... it was a very very cloudy afternoon. It was basically raining from KL all the way to some where near the memorial park.


6 persons joint me for the visit... see if you can figure out who they are. All of them are in the photo, see who you can name (of course, I am not in the photo). I was sending them to the LCCT airport heading to Thailand for their X'mas holiday. We made a short stop-by at the site on the way to LCCT.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Mum's new home construction from 10th,Dec to 15th,Dec

I supposed to visit the construction site every 2 weeks... but again, it didn't happen... (shame, shame...). My second visit to the site only happened on 10th, Dec... that was 4 weeks since my earlier visit... that was when the contact person called to inform that the tomb stone should be able to be erected some day after the 13th... which is four days later. I was excited to hear the news... and rush to the site... that's what i found out...

Another view of the construction in progress. I was very worry about the schedule as the work in progress showed that there are a lot yet to be done... and our dateline is numbered. The person in charge seemed to be very confident in meeting the dateline... so finger crossed.

It was a rainy day... and they put up the "tent" to spare the site from rain water. One side of the tent was lowered with a piece of brick to allow water to flow into the "tank".

I called the person-in-charged again on 13th,Dec (that was the date he gave me) to confirm if the tomb stone would be ready to be erected. We confirmed that the date and time is to be 15th,Dec, 11am... that's the Saturday in the same week that the previous photos were taken... phewww...!

The tomb stone is very very heavy... see how they move it into its place... step-1...


step-2...

step-3...


step-4... take a 'pit-stop' before carried on.
Two more persons joint in for the final positioning of the tomb stone into its pre-fabricated slot.


step-5... make sure the tomb stone is slightly slanted upward.


mission completed...


That's the close-up on the tomb stone. Mum's photo is not in place yet.

I did a simple prayer with some fruits and cakes.


and the 'tu di' also...


and the final ritual, as usual, is...