Thoughts beyond my life & my travel - Bel

This is day 2 of the Chinese New Year. I joined many others to pay respect to our ancestors. Though it's more than a year since mom left us, I still miss her a lot. I had a tearful and silent moment giving her flowers after a group of people left. When I left the resting place, I decided to visit the temple next to it - The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery. After I started the walk, I could imagine why this monastery is so appealing to tourists and visitors. Hundreds, maybe a thousand statues of buddhas stand along the paths to the temple. It makes walking uphill much easier, as you will be always surrounded by buddhas. The temple is full of visitors, particularly domestic helpers. Aren't they Christian? Some even bought the lucky chimes that are supposed to be tao-related.  Religion forms a solid belief in many people's minds. It holds people together, and at the same time, divides people and creates conflicts. What if different "gods" sat together to ...

It must have been more than three years that we last met. No matter how many times you had talked to someone online, meeting a person in real life takes some times to digest and connect the dot dot line between online and real life. I could see he still has a nice smile, he still has some "female" features like the brows and the thin lips. His voice sounds a bit "thin" and "low" as compared to what I could remember. I gave him a smile back, and we got on a boat to an outlying island. I felt a bit awkward when sitting down, like facing a half-known stranger, so I put my bag in between us, leaving us some space to "breath". Through the 30 minutes' ferry ride, I can reckon he's still the man that I met three times three years ago, but his thinking might have been "polished" over times. Now he is much senior in his job, he wants to mentor the next generations. His gesture still tried to be "friendly" but not as fri...