(Lived experience warning: this is from an insider’s perspective. Fellow HCommons peeps who are looking for serious analytical writing please ignore this.)
Then I went to Hong San See Temple.
When I stepped into the temple, I saw this:
So I washed my hands.
Initially I mixed this up with another Hong San See Temple in Taiwan that venerates 保生大帝, but this one that I went to venerates 广泽尊王 instead, and I didn’t know until I went there and made a faux pas taking the incense sticks and addressing the wrong deity omgosh. It’s so embarrassing because I saw that there were two largest-sized deities in the centre of the shrine hall and the initial characters on their couplets on their shrine bay was “广” and “保” so I thought one was 广泽尊王 and the other was 保生大帝 but in fact the other deity is his wife 妙应天妃 omgosh. I hope she isn’t mad at me for thinking that she’s a guy.
I’m so sorry I pah jiao I didn’t realize her facial features are more defined, and her jaw is more contoured than her husband’s because she is wearing makeup.
But this temple is a bonus documentation though. Another addition to the corpus. So, I still sketched the altars anyway.
The temple attendant is really nice. He gave me some water.
I’m starting to get used to having genuinely nice relations when I’m on my own in a temple again. It feels unreal, but I’m trying to forget whatever that happened in the past and absorb the present.
But anyways I completed my sketches earlier, and I headed over to New Bahru nearby for some whimsical stuff.
Found a new shop that I like that also sells Jellycat plushies after The Elly Store. I love their packaging, it matches my blouse.
My new name tag with Miu Miu! Miu Miu is a feisty 16-year-old tabby cat that I met at my former MA in Buddhist Studies classmate’s vihara, and thanks to Miu Miu I got to know my classmate D better, and he is one of my closer friends who understands me even though sometimes I’m just being random.
So tomorrow I will just tidy up my data and contact the committee member at 真人宫, and update the corpus because I found new deities during gai gai.
Anyway, I just want to say to 保生大帝, 文昌帝君 and 拿督公: thank you for believing in me when I don’t believe in myself sometimes. It sustains me.