Sunday, November 11, 2012

Why I love this island so!

Religious violence is something you see every day on the news.  If it's not Nigerian churches being torched by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, it's probably the tension between Hindu militants and Muslim extremists in India.

All the violence we read about is absolutely foreign to us who live in Singapore.  Whatever Western critics may say about a "totalitarian" government (which isn't true at all) or the lack of freedom (I don't know about you but I can do without the freedom to get killed or maimed), my advice to the critics is this - you remain in YOUR country and I'll live here.  On the other hand, if you happen to live here and you really don't like it at all, it's a free world and you can always go where you think the grass is greener.  Lately, there have been a lot of foreigners who come to Singapore and avail themselves of the goodness of the land but post offensive and abusive remarks against the country they're milking from.  Here is where Singapore should show its "totalitarian" strength and send these ungrateful chaps packing.

Anyway, this morning, after a very early breakfast in Little India, I cycled round this lovely part of Singapore and took pics of the various places of worship.  I had intended for this post to be a wordless post with pics alone to tell the tale but alas, it's hard to remain silent when what I see through my camera lens is nothing but perfect peace and beauty.  Mind you, these places of worship are of the four major different world faiths and here they stand, no more than 100 metres from one another in perfect harmony, wonderfully tolerant and a great picture of what faith truly means as they each proclaim its gospel of peace and goodwill to all men.

It's when I see such peace and harmony of these four great faiths in close proximity to one another that I know in my heart of hearts that God is in his heaven and all's right with the world.  May God bless Singapore and its far-sighted leaders!  OK, I'll be silent from here on.  Enjoy the pics!






As I was busy snapping a pic of the Hindu temple, a bell suddenly broke the silence of the morning and religious music could be heard within the temple.  I took a quick video of the worship session from the road.  The video is a little shaky; I had to balance my bicycle against my body, remove my gloves and hold them with my teeth and use both hands to take the video.  If you watch the video carefully, you will see a guy in a pink shirt, slightly to the right playing a wind instrument but he stands in the shade so it's very hard to make out the instrument he's playing.  It closely resembles the clarinet but it's much larger and the bell is way too large for a clarinet.  But it's definitely a reed instrument because I saw the reed - placed on the mouthpiece just as in a clarinet.  It's the only wind instrument that you can hear in the video.  I really wonder what instrument it is.



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