haven@arif blessed

it is done.

my haven @ arif has been blessed and we can officially move in! woooo-hooooooooooooo!

it was a simple ceremony although there were lots of preparations before the day started. we'd invited Lama Thubten Namdrol Dorje of Thekchen Choling to perform the house blessing, Tibetan Buddhism style. He'd also been pivotal in advising us on the Feng Shui of our home as well as hub's office.

hub's been brought up in a mainly Taoist-Buddhist-Chinese folk religion environment, which suits me fine. on paper (i.e. my birth certificate), i don't have a specific religion but have been exposed to Taoist and Buddhist practices (family influences) and 10 years of catholic school education so i have learnt to respect other people's religions. my philosophy has always been the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

we had a short ceremony to consecrate our beautiful Green Tara copper statue now sitting in the altar. the hub had spent the early part of the morning running around buying fruits, flowers and other local snacks like ang ku kueh (紅龜粿), huat kueh (发糕) and nian gao (年糕), sweet soup, tea etc. mil cooked her signature vegetarian vermicelli and two other vegetarian dishes.

it's quite an experience for me as my parents' home never had an altar so i'm supremely ignorant about praying rituals, practices and significance. from now onwards i have to learn how to take care of Tara and the altar properly. (Below pix taken with my N73 early in the morning before i left for work.)

our family of 4 stayed overnight at our new home for the first time. the girls bunked in with us in the master bedroom as we wanted them to get used to the new home first before sleeping in their own rooms. it was so breezy we opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fan. honestly it was great NOT to have the air-conditioned for a change and we could enjoy the fresh cool air. over at the IL's place, we've to sleep with the aircon on every night because of the massive construction works (mrt circle line) and swamps of mozzies.

unfortunately, FIL was also admitted to the hospital the same day we moved in. he'd stayed for the house blessing ceremony but BIL picked him up after lunch to SGH. we're all now hoping that since he'd receive some blessings, all will be well.