Naming the stars

The eastern dawn sky this morning may look rather blank except for the unmistakable duo planets of Jupiter and Venus peeking out from above the rooftop but actually, there are zillions of stars that cannot be seen with the eye or a camera. My neighbourhood has too many street lamps that contribute to light pollution and moreover, my eyesight isn't what it used to be. Hence, I am unable to see more than a few specks of dim lights in a darkened sky.

So when I went outdoors this morning to take a picture of the four visible planets, I wasn't very hopeful of a good result. Nevertheless when I subjected the images to a little cropping and digital manipulation, I was happy to see minute speckles of light points appearing everywhere. Methinks, I did a pretty good job identifying many of these stars. Got to give myself a pat on the back!

The image on the left was taken with a Nikon D5100 camera fitted with a Tamron 18-200mm zoom lens. The manual settings were focal length 18mm, aperture number f/3.5, shutter speed 0.25s and ISO 6400. The settings were probably good enough for me as I wanted to take in as much of the sky as possible. However, the limitation showed up when I zoomed in to the 200mm focal length when I wanted to concentrate on the Jupiter-Venus pair. A lot of camera shake which even my tripod couldn't reduce.

Then I remembered that my Olympus E-PL7 camera gave me some acceptable results in the past. So I switched to using it with the tripod stand to photograph Jupiter and Venus together. No doubt, I shall be using the Olympus again tomorrow morning. Weather permitting, that it. Some more cropping and digital manipulation followed soon afterwards and I must say that the results more than satisfied me. The visible moons of Jupiter appeared very clearly in the picture below, with Venus hovering nearby.

Conjunction

A bit of a challenge for me this morning as I struggled to get out of bed at 6am but was rewarded with this wonderful sight outside the house. The first thing that struck me was the thin crescent moon and above it, the bright Venus and the slightly dimmer Jupiter. But I has to strain my eyes to catch the vastly dimmer Mars and Saturn. 

The moon at 8.8 percent illumination was located well below Jupiter, but all were roughly aligned in a straight line. Yesterday, it was positioned to the right of Venus and with Jupiter, they made for a triangle. 

What with the days now getting bright at an earlier time, I won't be able to see the moon by tomorrow as it will then be too low in the sky. So it was a last chance today. Glad that I managed to pull myself out of bed...

Car park full!

Attended the 95th annual general meeting of The Old Frees' Association in Northam Road this morning. Everyone were glad to see one another. None the worse for the pandemic restrictions. Of course, everyone were masked up too. That was the least we could do to safeguard ourselves from any unsuspecting infection. I climbed the stairs to the upper floor to take a view of the car park. For the first time in two years, it was full with the members' vehicles. 👍👍

And nope, I am not in the management committee. My days are truly well behind me. Almost 30 years already. But I'm in the OFA Centenary Celebration Committee. That's right, the PFA will be 100 years old in 2023 and I'm part of this committee which is planning activities to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. We've just had our budget of RM250,000 approved by the members at the annual general meeting.

Castration in a temple

Over the past years, various stories have abound about Dr Wu Lien-Teh's connection to a Kek Lok Si temple saga in Ayer Itam, Penang. This connection had concerned his role as a physician in treating the temple's first abbot when he inflicted a most severe wound on himself in 1907. What the abbot did is now a Penang folklore. Through the decades the story continues to create new interest every time it is retold. Even the New Straits Times carried a feature story about this incident four years ago. A prominent news portal, Free Malaysia Today, also had a special story on the abbot last year.

As a committee member of The Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society, I am well aware of Abbot Beow Lean's self-inflicted injury. I think this is a very appropriate time to bring up the story of the abbot's wound again to set the story straight. In Dr Wu's own words, here is the passage from pages 250-252 of my own copy of the first edition of Plague Fighter which he published in 1959.

4. Castration in a Temple:

Among the best known sights in the island colony of Penang, which few tourists ever miss, is the Kek Lok See or "Monastery of Supreme Bliss," lying on the top of a hill and situated just five miles from the centre of the town. Soon after the founding of Penang by Francis Light, two temples were built by the Chinese in honour of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy - one in Pitt Street within the town area, for over a century the most frequented place of worship in the island, and the other on a hilly site known as Ayer Etam (Black Water), some five miles away. The former prospered from the very start and money poured in for improvement and new structures, while the latter had to await the arrival of a scholarly and devout Buddhist priest, named Beow Lean, from the ancient city of Foochow in southern China. He came at the end of the nineteenth century. His training and artistic temperament enabled Beow Lean to grasp at once the possibilities of constructing an immense temple amid the gorgeous scenery after the style of the famous Kusan monastery, where he received his initiation as priest.

Penang was full of women of leisure and wealth, who had inherited much property from early settlers who, in those days, paid neither income tax nor death duties. Besides, the opium and spirit farms in which they heavily invested their savings, brought in huge profits and, through intermarriage with other wealthy families, they became, indeed, well-off. In their declining years, these persons became more and more interested in religion, especially Buddhism, preached by both Chinese and Siamese priests. The Rev. Beow Lean approached these kindly ladies and interested them in his scheme of constructing a worthy monastery in Ayer Etam to replace the ramshackle Kuan Yin home. He asked men and women supporters to form committees and collect subscriptions. Although he asked for $500,000 - then considered a large sum - donations poured in, and when half this sum was reached, Beow Lean felt justified in starting construction work. For five years, tier after tier of most picturesque Chinese architecture made its appearance upon the undulations of the once thickly wooded slopes, resulting in a structure which never failed to arouse the admiration and wonder of streams of interested visitors who could order vegetarian meals on the spot at a relatively cheap price. Then rumours, originating doubtless from the jealous management of less popular places of worship, began to spread of orgies and secret underground tunnels used for vicious purposes.

Dr Wu Lien-Teh at Kek Lok Si

By the time the imposing monastery was completed in 1905, the wicked slanders had reached their zenith. The devoted and sensitive-minded artist-abbot, for he had thus been deservedly promoted, kept his patience for two years until late one night in the early months of 1907, I received an urgent call from a young novice priest of the Kek Lok See to attend his revered master for severe bleeding. There were, as yet, no motor cars in those days, and the long journey of five miles from my house to the hill temple by a slow horse carriage driven by a sleepy driver took over an hour. Then a steep climb of some hundred steps was undertaken before I could reach the sanctum of the abbot, with whom I had earlier established a cordial friendship, for he had come from the same city as my wife and they could speak the same dialect. I soon discovered the cause of the haemorrhage. In a moment of desperation caused by years of anonymous abuse and slander, especially after he had devoted his entire life to the establishment of the unrivalled Kek Lok See, he found no other way out of his misery than this supreme sacrifice which, according to Chinese religious traditions, was more worthy of honour than the mere taking of own's own life. In the cause of my studies, I had heard of the forcible castration of the famous historian general, Ssu-ma Chien (Han Dynasty), who after defeat in battle was ordered by his imperial master to be deprived of his sex organs, and also of generations of eunuchs in China and Turkey, who had once been normal young males but had been castrated in order that the imperial court might be served by sexless males side by side with aggressive females. But that any man could possess sufficient courage and strength of will to inflict such severe pain on himself, surpasses anything I have ever read, whether fact or fiction. Imagine this man, in the lonely hours of the night, alone in his secluded room in the temple, dimly lit by candle, his right hand holding a massive vegetable chopper, his left hand firmly grasping the entire group of his most intimate organs and, with perhaps a muttered prayer on his lips, severing them from his body with one determined stroke. It was, indeed, an unusual deed and worthy of historic record.

The abbot did not need to excuse himself nor I to commiserate with him, for we understood each other. My immediate job was to stop the bleeding, relieve the excruciating pain and prevent retention of urine.

It was already daybreak when I left the sacred precints of the temple, and I felt, indeed, fatigued. Thereafter, I took a daily trip to see my revered patient and to dress the sore wound caused by dripping urine and resulting sepsis, but it granulated in time, and at the end of the month the pain had ceased and sufficient new skin had been formed for me to cease attendance. I charged nothing for my month's work. I learnt afterwards that the abbot had recovered completely and managed to place his beloved monastery on a firm business footing, so that when he died and was cremated within the temple walls his good deeds were well remembered by all.

A rather faded water colour painting of the Reverend Beow Lean now hangs in the main reception hall of Kek Lok See.

Greased lightning

Photo by Clayton Malquist on Unsplash

It was a most terrifying experience for my wife and I yesterday when we were heading home across the Penang Bridge in hard, driving rain. It was a freak storm that brought down trees all over the state, both on the island and mainland. 

The rain came at about six-thirty or so, but had lightened up enough at about 7.15pm. From our shelter at a cafe, we decided to head for home. But who could tell that the rain became heavy again just as we entered the highway to the bridge. The windscreen wipers were working at full speed to clear the water away. 

On the bridge itself, the downpour was so terrible that all traffic slowed down to a 50kph crawl; still moving smoothly but slowed down considerably. 

All all around us, on both sides of the bridge, we detected lightning bolts crashing down. I was concentrating on the road but from the corner of my eyes, I could see the bolts of lightning striking the sea. Not pencil-thin lightning that we normally see from afar. No, these lightning bolts were near and thick, and every time one struck, the interior of the car lit up.. I estimated maybe some 30 to 40 bolts accompanied us on our journey across the bridge. Lightning has been known to strike vehicles and all of us on the bridge were simply lucky that nothing untoward happened. 

By the time we arrived at the mainland end of the Penang Bridge, the lightning strikes were behind us. But it was still raining very heavily and the roads were flooded. I debated whether to use the North-South Expressway or the old Federal road to get home, and decided on the latter. But this road was also flooded in parts. In many places, I had to keep a constant pressure on the accelerator so that the flood water wouldn't flow into the exhaust. And finally, after more than an hour's journey, I could open my gates and park the car under the porch. Took me another half hour to wind down after this experience!

Fear

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has travelled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

Khalil Gibran

Morning light

Good morning! This was the view in my neighbourhood this dawn morning when I looked eastwards. Although my eyes told me that it was still dark, my camera's sensors told me otherwise. And this was at 6.32am. A bonus: Venus and Jupiter were up there.

Japan, Day 8: Departure

With this entry, I shall conclude my Japan travellogue. I wanted to finish it earlier but unfortunately, it has taken me four long years to come to the end of my writing. Much of what I wrote in the last year or so was dug out from the deepest recesses of my memory but luckily, I had taken lots of pictures and it was these pictures that I relied on for my writing.

We had arrived in Tokyo on the back of a typhoon that had diverted our flight to Incheon international airport in Seoul, Korea. We spent about six hours on the airport's benches. No thanks, of course, to AirAsia X's version of no-frills hospitality. But at least they gave us some food coupons which we were able to use in an almost empty airport terminal with only one food outlet opened.

Now, on the final day of our short family vacation, we were leaving Osaka as another rainy spell was setting in. Even Kyoto had been wet the day before. Checking out from our airbnb accommodation, we hurriedly made our way to a shopping complex in Osaka. As there was no-where else for us to explore in the rain (there went our intention to visit the Osaka castle on the final day), we spent the time eating again before catching the train to Kansai international airport.

Would we be able to undertake another vacation in Japan any time soon? To be sure, this is a most memorable destination. Good food, interesting historical and nature places to visit, impressive technology. But there is also a dark side to Japan that people nowadays tend to ignore or forget. I'm referring to the atrocities from 1941 till 1945. 

People say that time heals everything but does it? When Japan invaded this land, George Town was bombed and machinegunned mercilessly. The Japanese soldiers were cruel to the nth degree. In these four years, I've learnt so much about the sufferings of our civilian population at their hands. It will require an effort to reconcile the Japan of World War Two with the Japan of today. If I can find peace within myself for that, then yes, I can consider going there again.

Anyway, this is the last picture I want to share from our Japan trip. At the airport, there was this bottle of Louis XIII cognac from Remy Martin with a duty-free price tag of 900,000 Yen. We all dug through our pockets and our remaining Japanese Yen couldn't add up to even a small fraction of this amount. So we arrived home empty-handed except for some insignificant souvenirs. 😁😁😆😆

Two for the price of one

Waking up at 6.25am this morning, I suddenly realised that I had slept through the crucial time (2.55am) when the moon was astronomically at its roundest or fullest. This was despite the fact that according to the Chinese lunar calendar, the 15th day of the third lunar month fell on last Friday, the 15th of April. But I still groped for my cameras in the dark and rushed outdoors. Possibly the moon hadn't set yet and I could still take a few pictures of it. Well, I wasn't disappointed. I guess in terms of absolute roundness, four hours or so wouldn't make much of a difference with our normal eyesight. 

As an added bonus, a turned around 180^o and caught sight of the four planets in the brightening sky, almost equidistance apart. Two celestial sights on the same morning! Priceless. By the way, how often do Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus line up like this in our morning or evening sky? It's not that rare, actually. I'm told that the last time was in 2020, and before that, it occurred in 2016 and 2005.  No doubt, we shall witness it again in future years.

Worship resumes

It's been two years. After two long years of what seemed like eternity, we were able to re-open our Kongsi House for worship again today. Today's session coincided with the celebration of the birthday of our resident deity, Tai Tay Eah (大帝爷) on the 15th day of the third lunar month. The only restrictions we continued to impose were the wearing of face masks and the scanning of the MySejahtera QR code.

Tai Tay Eah has been our resident deity for a very long time; not only at our Kongsi in Penang but also in our ancestral village in Hokkien Province of China. 

When our forefathers arrived in 1805, they had brought with them some ashes from the original worship urn at the Hai Inn Tong temple there. 

That's why the main hall of our Kongsi here is also named Hai Inn Tong, in honour of the original Hai Inn Tong temple in Ow Quah Sia. Tai Tay Eah, the healing deity, takes pride of place on the main altar. The deity has temples all over Penang but the main one, the Cheng Leong Keong (清龍宮), is located in Jelutong. Click here to read what I wrote about Tai Tay Eah some eight years ago.  

Some of the trustees and committee members turned up and we were quite happy and relieved to see one another. None the worse after emerging from the lockdowns of the past two years! 

My added bonus today was to see one of my old aunts - my father's cousin - whom I had invited to share in the worship at the Kongsi when I learnt that she had just moved up from Kuala Lumpur. 

I wanted to ask her about her grandfather, who was also my great-grandfather, but her memory wasn't already up to scratch. But she did reveal to me that in the old days, one of his lines of business was stevedoring and he had two shophouses somewhere along Beach Street to hold the goods in transit. Unfortunately, there is no way to identify their locations today.

Four morning planets

I woke up at 6.30am this morning. Not that I wanted to go observe the morning but because I needed to go marketing early. But out of habit, the first thing I did was to get out of the house with the camera. Just testing my luck to see whether I could catch the so-called morning stars without the dawn getting too bright or the neighbourhood houses blocking my view. Turned out that I was lucky enough. And so, here is a view from between two houses, of the four planets in a row: Saturn at the top, followed by Mars, then Venus and finally, Jupiter at the bottom. They are positioned in a roughly straight line along the so-called ecliptic plane.

Over the past fortnight or so, Jupiter had been crawling upwards slowly from the horizon in the east but it had not been sufficiently high enough in the sky from the point of view in my neighbourhood. Today is the first time I'm seeing it although I've friends staying in highrise condominiums on the island saying that they could already see this planet.

From now onwards until the end of the month, Jupiter will be rising higher with each passing day. At the same time, Venus will be sinking slowly towards the horizon. They will meet eventually and then slowly pull apart in opposite directions. On the morning of the first of May, the two planets will be closest together as they pass by one another. As they are the brightest objects in the sky, their combined brilliance will surely be a sight to behold. I can't wait but I hope the sky will be clear enough without clouds to hide them then.   

Back in school!

Well, I haven't been back at the school for six months! It's about time I do. 

The previous occasion I was here at Penang Free School was on the 21st of October last year when I was one of the very few people - you can almost call me a gate-crasher - to attend Speech Day. But before I could even mount the stairs, someone called out to me that Speech Day in 2021 was at the nearby Digital Library. So I changed direction to the Digital Library, thereby bypassing the main school building.

Yes, it has been six months since I last stepped into the grounds and 18 months since I was in the main building itself. Climbed the staircase to the headmaster's office. New headmaster for the school, name of Syed Sultan bin Shaik Oothuman. He's not a newbie at the school, actually. He had been teaching here for more than 10 yeas, then left on a transfer to another school in Penang. Then when his predecessor, Shamsul Fairuz bin Mohd Nor, suddenly requested for a transfer from Free School last December, the Education Department's search for a suitable replacement landed on Syed Sultan. 

So there he was, back on familiar ground when I visited him in the headmaster's office on Monday. He was just 71 days into this new job. Syed Sultan and I are not unknown to one another. I've known him since 2017. That was when my friends and I first conducted the PFS Leadership workshops. Thus, we're quite comfortable in one another's presence. And you know what? He was eager for my friends to resume the Leadership workshops! Let's see how it turns out.

By the way, Syed Sultan is not an Old Free in the strictest sense. He studied at Methodist Boys' School but because of his already long association with Penang Free School as a teacher and a Senior Assistant, I guess he knows the school culture very much better than most people. He's the right person to continue with the school traditions and steer the institution through the difficult times as the pandemic changes to endemic.

Indian breakfast

Growing up, the only Indian food that I was familiar with was the nasi kandar. It originated from the Indian-Muslim community in this country where the travelling hawkers of Indian ethnicity but Muslim in faith, thus the term Indian-Muslim, would go around selling their nasi kandar from pots which they carried at the ends of a sturdy pole that was slung over their shoulders.

But in truth, this was my only exposure to Indian or Indian-Muslim food throughout my school life. I wouldn't even call it a cuisine yet. Most mornings when I was in secondary school, I would buy a packet of nasi kandar from a vendor selling from a coffee shop at the back of my home in Seang Tek Road. At 6.15am or 6.30am, I would be lined up at his stall awaiting my turn. And it would invariably be a small piece of fish and two pieces of ladyfingers (okra) bathed in a generous curry gravy that landed on my plate. All 30 cents' worth. I would consume it by 7am, just in time to finish dressing up before cycling to school. The heavy meal would last through recess time and indeed, it would last until 3pm or later when I usually arrive home. 

Then when I went for my studies in Petaling Jaya in 1973, I came across an Indian stall at a market's hawker centre in State PJ selling not nasi kandar, although that was what I wanted to eat to satisfy a craving for the stuff, but real Indian food. For the first time in my life, I ordered a piece of thosei and a glass of milk tea to wash down this strangely delicious meal. And down the years, I've also become firm friends with the various forms of thosei, roti paratha (or roti chanai), chapati, idly, puri and the various types of vadey. Also, banana leaf rice. When it comes to banana leaf rice, I greet the food like it is a long, close friend to me, but that's a story for another day!

This morning, I decided to visit one of the Indian food stalls at the neighbourhood market in Bukit Mertajam. There are several such stalls at the hawker centre but somehow I find myself gravitating towards this one more often than the rest. My normal order would be for a thosei and an apom, and a piece of chapati for my wife. But today, I blurted out suddenly to the vendor, enquiring whether she also had an idli. So I ended up with all four on the plate today! 😄😋 Talk about gluttony indeed! 

Japan, Day 7: The Torii gates

You are not in Kyoto if you do not visit the famous Fushimi Inari temple on the outskirts of this ancient Japanese city. And that was what we did on the last full day of our short vacation in Japan almost five years ago. Whereas we had spent the whole morning eating and wandering the area north of the Kyoto rail station, in the afternoon we took a short train ride to the Inari station. From there, we crossed the road and there we were at the entrance into the temple! Mind you, nobody could get themselves lost here. One can either follow the crowd or choose to follow the unmistakable landmarks that led you forward. But first, here is a short video of part of the train ride. 

All these little brightly coloured structures - some are sub-shrines - meant only one thing: that we were on the right track to the Fushimi Inari temple.

And pretty soon, we had arrived at the entrance which was guarded by two stone foxes on either side of the steps. But then we were sidetracked to various stalls selling Japanese street food. Another round of nibbling and eating for us before we could finally venture through this first of many hundreds (or thousands) of Torii arches.

To be frank, by the time we had arrived at this section, we were already overwhelmed by the thousands upon thousands of the Torii arches. We could continue walking beneath these arches until we reached the top of Mount Inari but because the day had been wet - it had been raining lightly since we arrived in the morning - we decided to call it a day in Kyoto. We took a different path back to the rail station and it took us through some wonderfully secluded wooded areas of the temple grounds. 

Heritage tourism legacy

My heritage tourism legacy is still very much alive. Ten years ago on this very date, a wayfinding system(*) covering ten heritage tourism sites in George Town was launched. Although I was fully involved in this Think City project as researcher and author, which included me penning the short narratives for the wall plaques, I can't remember why I wasn't present for the launch, though.  Looking back into my own archives, I'm surprised that I had not even written anything about the launch on this blog! 

But it was a good thing that my old schoolmate, Lim Siang Jin, with whom I had worked closely together on this project did get an invitation. One of us had to be there! A lot has happened in George Town since then and I am still glad that our work is still visible in the city today. Before I go on to the pictures which I discovered today on facebook, here are links to some of my earlier blog stories regarding this Street of Harmony project:

On 16 October 2011, I wrote: "I came home yesterday thoroughly spent, having endured more than five hours under the blazing sun with my old classmate, Siang Jin. We were walking up and down the so-called Street of Harmony in the core heritage zone of George Town. He was taking photographs of the heritage sites while I was telling him where to aim his camera. You see, I am mighty glad that my collaborative work with him is now almost at any end. It was an assignment that began in December last year, which means that almost 10 months have been spent on it. Ten months, 10 long months." Click here to read more about Four heritage sites in George Town.

On 30 November 2020, I wrote: "These 10 information wall plaques were originally devised by my good friend, Lim Siang Jin, and I in 2011. During that year, we had approached Think City and had obtained some funds to carry out a project along Pitt Street and Cannon Street. Together, they are known as the Street of Harmony because of the close proximity of so many houses of worship belonging to the four main communities along this stretch of road in Penang. I spent the better part of one year visiting these institutions and talking to their representatives in order to learn more about their history. My essays were even scrutinised by the Penang Heritage Trust to ensure that my facts were correct." Click here to read more about Penang's Street of Harmony.

On 2 December 2020, I wrote: "Two days ago, I had written about the digital brochures and wall plaques which my friend, Siang Jin, and I had prepared for the George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI). I had also mentioned that we had direction signages made for display at strategic points along the Street of Harmony. These have certainly outlasted the brochures because until today, they can still be seen along Cannon Street, Pitt Street and Farquhar Street while the digital brochures have long disappeared from the GTWHI website." Click here to read more about the Direction Signages.

On 4 December 2020, I wrote: "Today, I shall put on display the covers of the 10 digital brochures of the Street of Harmony which my friend, Siang Jin, and I had produced for the George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI) in 2011. A lot of effort was put into the research, writing and subsequent editing and layout. While these brochures were then put up by GTWHI on their website for visitors to download, they were removed after a few months. No reason was ever given for the removal but we could sense some hidden tension. I shall leave it to people to conclude whether that decision to remove the brochures was justified." Click here to see the covers of The Street of Harmony digital brochures.

Note: (*) A wayfinding system is simply a system that assists the user to find his way around a place. It can be either a manual system or an electronic one. In this instance, we employed a manual system where directional signages and plaques were attached to lamp posts and walls to show tourists around the Street of Harmony and provide them with some basic historical information. 

Directional road signage at the junction of Cannon Street and Acheen Street

Information plaque on the fence of Kapitan Keling Mosque in Pitt Street

Directional road sign along Pitt Street

Information plaque on the gate of Yap Temple

Directional road signages and map along Pitt Street

Information plaque outside Acheen Street Malay Mosque

Information plaque at the entrance to Khoo Kongsi at Cannon Street

Last words on Mars and Saturn

I think I'll stop looking at the dawn sky for now. For one thing, waking up at six o'clock every morning for the past fortnight or so in anticipation of taking nice photos of Venus, Saturn and Mars has taken a slight toll on my alertness. By mid-afternoon, I feel sleepy and am forced to take 40 winks, a consequence of which I find that bedtime gets pushed back later. Then I have to wake up at six o'clock again the next morning. The cycle repeats and I feel more tired than usual. So let me stop for a while to regain my old routine.

And I think I have enough pictures taken to satisfy myself. Almost daily pictures except for the fifth of April when the morning was too cloudy for the three planets to show up in the sky. Dang it! On that day, Mars and Saturn would have been seen closest together from our point of view on Earth. I would have loved to see that but for the clouds covering up this conjunction of the two planets on this crucial day.

This morning again, the cloud cover was in patches but it was thick enough to obliterate the planets from my view. Therefore, I shall conclude my dawn photography sessions and simply post here my final picture from yesterday morning which I took with my son's old Nikon D5100 camera. There's a thick line running diagonally below Venus but that was only an overhead electrical cable and nothing more. 

Again from our point of view on Earth, the three planets are moving across the sky at different speeds. Venus is the fastest of the trio and had actually overtaken Saturn moving eastwards in the sky on the 29th of March. Saturn is comparatively the slowest, which is why Mars was also overtaking it on the fifth of April.

(On facebook several days ago, I mentioned that Mars was moving downwards towards Saturn and would be overtaking it but a friend messaged me privately to say that no, it was Saturn that was moving upwards towards Mars. I noticed that one of NASA's stories mentioned that Saturn was moving towards Mars but I've seen more news write-ups saying the opposite. To me, I would still maintain my position that Mars was moving towards Saturn. Ah, but it's all relative, right?)

PS. If I could have a better view of the early morning sky, I could probably see Jupiter rising above the horizon too. It has come into view already and is brighter than either Mars or Saturn. It should have been quite a sight but for me to see all four planets together, I will need a better vantage point than simply roaming the few metres outside my house.

The best of the Seekers

For the past one or two fortnights, I've been hearing The Seekers being played quite randomly over the BBC's radio stations which I tune in regularly on the Internet. For some reason which I cannot fathom, two of their songs seem to be stuck in my head day and night. This is not a bad thing but it is not a good thing either. Usually, I can dismiss a song that's stuck in my head within 24 hours but I'll Never Find Another You and Georgy Girl are rather stubborn. Ah well.... 

Needless to say, I do possess their compilation compact disc and vinyl records which are gathering some dust in the cabinets. It's time that I give them an airing. Curiously enough, both the vinyl records bear the same title.

Side One: Morningtown ride, A world of our own, The carnival is over, Sinner man, Walk with me, The times they are a-changing

Side Two: I'll never find another you, When the stars begin to fall, Some day one day, Turn turn turn, We're moving on

Side One: I'll never find another you, A world of our own, The carnival is over, Someday one day, Walk with me, We shall not be moved

Side Two: Morningtown ride, When will the good apples fall, Island of dreams, Open up them pearly gates, Emerald city, Georgy girl

Japan, Day 7: Two temples

After our lunch, we spent the next few hours exploring the streets of Kyoto. We never strayed too far from the railway station and managed to stumble across two old temples. The first was the Higashi Honganji, an oasis of calm within busy Kyoto. It is a rather enormous Buddhist temple with a long history dating back to the 17th Century.  

Because we were walking from the direction of the Kyoto rail station, we entered the temple complex from the first gate we came across. The wooden doors were heavy, ornate and impressive! This turned out to be a secondary entrance but never mind, it still impressed me enough!

And inside the courtyard were their two most impressive main structures - the Founder's Hall on the right and the Amida Hall on the left. This temple had survived fires several times and the present structures were rebuilt in 1895.

Taking centre stage was, of course, the Founder's Hall where an image of the temple's Shin Buddhism founder, Shinran, is enshrined. The hall is one of the largest wooden structures in the world, measuring 76 metres long, 58 metres wide and 38 metres high.

To the left of the Founder's Hall is the Amida Hall which holds an image of Amida Buddha along with an image of Prince Shōtoku who introduced Buddhism to Japan. 

My eyes hurt when I entered the Amida Hall. Everything was so bright and no wonder: the hall was decorated with gold leaf.

It's possible to explore the grounds, walk the corridors and use the quiet halls for some quiet reflection. Chairs were lined up in files for visitors. However, photography wasn't allowed and the guards would admonish anyone that dared to bring out a camera or mobile phone.

Next, we came across the smaller Koshoji Temple a short distance away. Found it by accident through more aimless walking, although we had the presence of mind to keep the Kyoto Tower within sight. This temple is not as well known as the Higashi Honganji we visited earlier. Nevertheless, it has its fair share of visitors when we were there. As I don't have much information about the place, maybe it's best to share some photos instead.