CULTURE, LEARNING and TEACHING

Bali: I try and telescope my visit into one journal entry by just letting my mind freely conjure up some images. Here I share those specific images that for me gave Bali its distinct flavor:

Beautiful, aesthetic, graceful, ethereal but not in an other-wordly way; a sense of serenity within the daily drudge of life; a calm but bustling island; friendly faces with a welcoming style as one is greeted by the word “selamat” everywhere;

Tropical; colorful yet muted; art and batik; wood carvings and stone carvings; vistas of seas, sands, stretching shorelines, and spectacular sunset skies across the horizon; banana trees with their large green leaves fanning out in every courtyard; palm fronds and coconut trees interspersed with paddy fields; rice terraces on every available inch of land as in the case of one rice terrace carved into a small open area between two modest homes along a busy street filled with people, cars and motorcycles; volcanoes and lakes; rural and urban; nasi goreng and cap cay in a warung, or pizza and pasta in a restaurant; bintang and boutiques; local and global;

Temples and beach bars; graceful architecture with carvings, gateways with flourishes on roofs and pillars; monsters and barricades at compound entrances to ward off evil; gods and alters everywhere in homes, massage parlors, schools, offices, stores, warungs and cars, and on the roads; a Hindu island in a Muslim dominated country…

Bali - a soulful way of life cradled in amazing human, terrestrial and spiritual landscapes; where warmth exudes from earth that is green and fertile, air that is pregnant with moisture, and human hearts that are hospitable and welcoming.

It had rained all night, and I started this November morning with a long walk in the park. The park was beautiful - damp, lush, cool, humid, green, muddy. The paved pathways curved around within the muddy grounds; the trees were shrouded by a light misty haze made of raindrops that looked like the finest gossamer veil covering the trees so lightly that it almost wasn’t there; I could hear the soft sound of water dripping as raindrops that had collected from the night rain slowly plunked from one leaf onto another leaf below it; the ground cover felt like a soft peaty packing of moist mud and fallen leaves under my feet; the whole forest was permeated with the faint fragrance of eucalyptus trees and alstonia blossoms; and in the background I could hear the myriad sounds of a thousand birds.  Yes, the park itself was beautiful and I could breathe deeply and let my energy surrender to the call of consciousness.

We seem to always wait for the perfect time and the perfect space to make the shift from the physical to the spiritual. And in waiting for a future, more perfect moment, the opportunities in the “now” disappear and are lost. Sometimes there are second chances, but sometimes there aren't. So the moment I have now is the only moment that is real, and in being so it becomes perfect.

I was to meet my colleagues at 9:45 am at the Commonwealth  MRT taxi stand. I had planned on taking the bus to the MRT station, but since I was running a bit late I decided to take a cab from where I was staying near Orchard Road and told the cabbie where I needed to be dropped off. On getting out of the cab I did not spot my friend anywhere, and after waiting for about 10 minutes I called her (fortunately there was a small bit of charge left in my cell phone battery). It soon became apparent that we were in different places. The cabbie had dropped me off at the Queenstown MRT taxi stand, one stop before the Commonwealth MRT. Although it would mean traveling in the opposite direction to where we were eventually headed, my colleagues told me to stay where I was and took a cab to come pick me up since this was only my second day in Singapore and I still didn’t know my way around very well. We then looped back from Queenstown and finally took off toward Jurong to go to the PCF preschool where we had a scheduled visit. When we reached our destination and got ready to pay the fare we found that the second cabbie actually charged us less than the metered amount. He had deducted the fare for the extra round trip distance between the Commonwealth MRT and Queenstown MRT to pick me up. He said that even if the first cabbie had mistakenly dropped me off at the wrong spot we shouldn’t have to pay the extra. That was the sweetest thing! I couldn’t imagine this happening in very many places around the world. What a refreshing and touching gesture of the human heart this was, especially when urban behaviors in fast-paced societies can more often be driven by the “time is money” mentality…

My arrival in Singapore was smooth, the airport was clean, the clearance was quick, and the welcome was warm. What a mix of shiny sleek high-rises and low charming colonial architecture, rich modern malls on wide boulevards, and the pulsating density of Serangoon with its millions of closely packed stalls of Indian, Chinese and Malay foods. There is even a Macdonald’s tucked away in the heart of Serangoon. Thankfully it gets lost amidst the exciting flavors of the other local cuisines. Indian, Chinese and Malay are the three dominant ethnic groups that make up most Singaporeans, and I noticed that the national anthem on TV was sung by people in costumes that reflected this ethnic diversity.

On the way to the university I spotted a temple very ornately decorated, with a massive awning and canopy as though for a huge festival of sorts. My colleague told me that it was for the Seventh Month Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. The seventh month of the Chinese lunar year falls in August and with it came the festival of the Hungry Ghosts. This festival is taken very seriously by the Chinese. It is believed that the gates of the other world are opened and all the spirits are released from the ethereal world into the real world. Filial piety and the duty to look after one’s parents and ancestors  is observed as the spirits of deceased family members and ancestors are honored by the living descendants through food offerings and the burning of incense. Sometimes paper lanterns are floated into the water to light the path home for souls that might be lost. Meals are served in homes with empty places at the tables for the deceased ancestors to dine along with the living descendants in each family. It is a time to pay respect to and honor the elders and the departed.

Interestingly, almost every Asian country in my travels appeared to have a variation of this custom and cultural value that venerated the elders of the community. Perhaps customs such as these ensure the prolonged adult-child continuity that is characteristic of traditional societies around the world, and that is manifested in the inter-dependent parent-child interactions often seen amongst families from those communities...