Happy new year!

Happy year 2007! Yesterday, I went with my mum to Buddha tooth relic temple to make a donation, we were given two packets of sweets, and I found that there was a kind of sweet which I can actually eat. As a vegan here, I haven't been eating a lot of sweets as most sweets aren't vegan. Later we went to Yue Hua in Chinatown and bought a number of things, including a packet of mini-size tofu. The tofus were "ready-to-eat", and were flavoured with five-spice, It was really nice, but eating too much can have the opposite effect.. or maybe I am just too tired to feel like eating.

I went back to volunteer for a full day at KMSPKS on new year's eve. It was really cool! The participants manage to hit the target of 100 million mani mantras! I think we were all very happy. I didn't manage to pack lunch for the participants, but I asked to pack for dinner and was allowed to :). We were also given some blessed orange juice and some kind of cake. I took a mouse-bite size of the cake crumb, and I suspect it wasn't vegan from its taste, but nevertheless it was just a tiny bit so I glup the whole thing down. I really don't wish to take animal products, but I thought I shouldn't spit it out. That aside, being a volunteer was really fun and rewarding, even opening doors for participants, standing guard at the door, distributing some food to the participants during part of the blessing ceremony - yea, all of us were given blessings by the tibetan monks that day too :). I dedicate the merits of this retreat and with this merit may all sentient beings enjoy ultimate bliss.

On the 29th, I went to chalet at Aloha resort with my school friends. One of my friend's family booked the chalet and invited us. My friend's family and relatives were having BBQ food for dinner. As I am the only vegetarian around, this of course poses some inconvenience since they were spreading butter on the meat to be grilled. My friends know I am vegan, so they brought out margarine instead to spread, of course, they didn't know that our local margarine isn't vegan as well. But I really didn't want to inconvenience them by saying "Oh, I can't eat margarine too!" So I juz closed one eye to a margarine-spreaded asparagus. Besides this, there was some concern from them regarding the grilling of the veggies on the grill which was being used to grill meat, but I thought since it wasn’t my intention to eat non-veg stuff it is ok to share the grill. The veggies don’t really taste excellnt at all lol.. perhaps marinade is needed. My friend’s family really made vegan fried bee hoon for me, and I am thankful for that :) I didn’t sleep for the whole night, and to add on to that - the days of volunteering, I guess that explains why I am so tired.