Tomb sweeping activites ( with alan)

Since as early as nov 2024, alan had plans to do tomb sweeping at mandai in coming march 2025. Since I presume to be free on most of the Saturday morning, I should try to help as it would be a very difficult thing for them to carry all the barang and take public transport. The car booking online for the mandai crematorium started on 10 march, but alan only realize the need for online booking only at mid night 15 march. I managed to go online , only to find the morning slot to be fully booked . the only choice left would be the afternoon 2 pm and 4 pm. Since I had holy shrine activity at night, 2 pm would be the only available slot we can take .

On the morning （22）, we supposed to meet at alan house at 1030am. But I was still late by 15 mins due to a jam at PIE. In the late morning, we went to Bedok market to have lunch. Meantime , we took time to discuss on the possible outcome for the coming election . Both of our GRCs (Jurong west & west coast GRC and marine parade GRC ) are supposed to be HOT seats probably be contested by strong opposition like (PSP and WP) , the prospect of winning is not as high as last election due to perceived gerrymandering, but I still hope WP could contest more that 1/3 of the seats available and get a better results than 2020.

We went to have a walk at Bedok mall, till 1 pm, before we embark on our journey to mandai. There were a lot of cars queueing to enter mandai , and we can only enter after I showed the officer our booking details .

The cars inside the crematorium were tremendously heavy and the parking lot was simply not enough. Most cars choose to park at the roadside and walk into the center. Firstly, we went to the old building (Blk B ) to pay respect to alan’s wife Grandfather ( who passed away during WW2) . most of the time ,alan and his wife does the prayers , while I just stand aside busy playing on my game ( 大航海)

Later, we shifted the car to the carpark nearer to Blk J . the carpark was super full , so I had to wait around 15mins before I get a car slot. We went to Blk K to do respect to alan’s wife parents and later to Blk J to pay respect to Alan;s mother . the whole tomb sweeping took almost 3 hours. I spent some time playing game and playing chess with alan‘son

We managed to end the day at around 5 pm, where I fetch them back to Bedok before going home. Overall, it is a meaningful trip, as we had some opportunity to talk about some Buddhist scriptures (求道) and filial piety. And hope alan’s son could grow up as a filial son to his parent in the future.

About the game I played , although it is tough and time consuming having to play 17 accounts, and in the end , I still missed out the 5th position. But it is good , since I done my best , I should not complain,

For my father;s tomb sweeping , I should take a weekday off this Thursday to go to 自度庵 since I didn’t do it last year , it’s a long blog , I should stop for now ,

GOD bless all the time , 慧台