The Revenge Of Loan Shark (大耳窿的报复)

A retired HK police officer told me about a bizarre case of the restless spirit of a loan shark who haunted his murderers until they were arrested and convicted. He wanted my opinion if it was indeed the spirit who sought revenge or it was merely the consciences of the murderers; or it was indeed the spirit who was behind the work… This case happened around 1996 and it is one of the murdered case that was convicted without physical evidence, i.e. the body of the loan shark was never recovered until today.

While this story is still fresh in my memory…

Somewhere in 1996, the sister of a loan shark visited a local police station to report a case of missing person. According to the lady, her brother; Mark has gone missing for months after a trip to mainland China. She suspected Mark has died because she dreamed of Mark’s spirit returned to her telling her to take care of their dad. In addition, the spirit also told his sister to look for a person named Mah.

The police officers certainly didn’t believe the lady but due to professionalism, they passed the bizarre case to CID nonetheless. A team was formed to look into the matter and investigators found Mark’s loan record in his bedroom. Interestingly speaking, amongst the list of borrowers; there was indeed a person named ‘Mah’. Mah was subsequently summoned to the police station for further investigation.

It was truly out of the CID’s expectation, Mah swiftly confessed of participated in the murdering of Mark, the loan shark. According to Mah, he together with other 3 pals murdered Mark because they couldn’t afford to repay their debts worth of around HKD300,000. It was out of their expectation that after the murder, Mark’s spirit haunted them almost every day. They saw the ghost in their drawers, bedroom, bathroom etc. until so much so that all of the four couldn’t sleep and subsequently lost their appetite. The gang tried to move to Macau to escape the haunt of restless ghost but Mark’s spirit continued its pursue until none of them dared to turn off the lights after dark. This condition continued until Mah was summoned for investigation…

Coincidentally, during the interrogation of Mah; his beeper beeped. It was Mah’s 3 other friends. So a trap was set and two of the three pals were successfully arrested during the first attempt leaving the last one at large for the time being. After a few days, the last person surrendered himself and he too confessed to the murder of Mark.

The problem now is that although the culprits were nabbed, but the body was never found. According to Mah’s statement, Mark’s body was chopped into a few pieces and thrown into land refilled area a month ago. Also according to the HK environmental team, Mark’s body was probably buried under hundreds of tons of trash if they were to exhume the remains. That would take a few hundreds of personnel to work 24x7 for 3 months or so; not to mention to waste millions of tax payers’ money… added to that it was virtually impossible to find Mark’s remains after all this time.

So the public prosecutor went on with the four’s testimonies and all of them were convicted; two were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Personally, I would like to think that it was the four persons’ consciences that caused them to physically ‘see’ Mark’s ghost. Perhaps the four have no intention to kill Mark and they felt awfully sorry for that mishap to have occurred. Should Mah and his pals just forget about the murder of Mark, then Mark’s apparition would not have materialize in front of the fellows. I would rather praise the police’s professionalism in tackling the case instead of attributing it to spiritual influences.

This is also a warning to all the loan sharks: perhaps you are bad enough to squeeze people’s hard earn money; people who owe your money can take your life too!

Everyone Has A Price Tag (人的价格)

Do you believe that everyone indeed has a price tag attached to him/her?

The price may or may not in monetary terms.

First, let’s talk about a person’s value in dollar and cents:

When I was in my college, some ladies in our group suddenly half-jokingly talked about what would be the price of a college girl willing to give up her virginity.

Surprisingly speaking, a tiny lady raised her voice and said:

“I would go for MYR1,000!”

I am not sure if there were any takers after such a naïve discussion… But my point is that this tiny lady’s price was MYR1,000.

Of course, one can get a prettier social escort for MYR150 only now days.

So, before a person would put a price tag onto himself/herself and expected to be patronised; he/she must understand the market demand and competition too!

A person may also tag himself/herself with non-monetary terms may be in the form of favour, convenience or even companionships:

I knew a senior manager in a government-led company likes superbikes. Not surprisingly, most of his subordinates were also superbike fans. Those who didn’t own superbikes were odd men out and those persons without superbikes could not work long with this superbike fan boss.

In another situation, when I asked about the possibility of a master’s degree with a university, one professor knew that I was from some organisation so he proposed to me that if I could persuade my boss to donate an old machine for his university; then we could talk further… So, the professor’s price tag was an old machine.

In real life industrial situations, I have made use of both price tagging techniques to see through many projects. So, everyone does have an invisible price tag attached in his/her back. The trick is to find out his/her price and ‘negotiate’ tactfully without hurting his/her own ego.

Please forget about Hong Kong movie clips where a tycoon would just throw down a signed blank cheque for you to fill in the blanks… since this type of action hurts people’s ego; it could never work.

So, what is the price that could move you, my friend? Is it $10,000 or a million dollars?

Whatever sum you would tag yourself, please remember that other parties are judging your value too!

You may call this unethical… that is only business!

Duality Of Our Human Nature (人的双面性)

Thanks to MagicSEA that many people come to me… only when they have problems. They would not come to me just for social visits nor for a cup of tea. This is the time I could see the ‘spiritual’ side of these folks. No one comes to me when their businesses are good because when these folks are earning big money, they fall into their secular façade. One wise scholar once said:

中国人得意时是儒家，失意时是道家。

(The Chinese are followers of Confucianism when they are exorbitant,

They are followers of Taoism when they are low in morale.)

Confucius taught us to work hard, take care of our family and obey our rulers. Those are all mundane issues; nothing too spiritual. So, when Chinese are in good mood; they would be worldly people.

On the other hand, when Chinese are low in esteem and everything else went wrong, they would hide under the blanket of religion; namely Taoism.

This is nothing new. Old Chinese scholars throughout old dynasties for thousands of years would hide themselves in villages or mountains to practise Taoism, but once the emperors summoned them; these scholars would be happy to serve the emperors.

There is another saying that goes:

穷算命，富烧香。

(The poor goes for fortune telling while the rich prays in a temple.)

Normally a poor wanted to know when he/she can get rich and this person is nowhere spiritual or religious because his/her main concern is to fill the stomach. However, since a rich person already has what he/she wanted; perhaps he/she wanted more; a rich would go to a temple to ask the gods/goddesses for more fortune.

Of course, the above applies to people of any race and religions. People of major religions came to me asking for magic to attract money and women… Apparently, these folks are no religious folks although their names sound like they are.

Based on my observations, no one is 100% religious or worldly all of the time. Our characters shift between two extreme: religion/spiritual on one end, while worldly on the other. The major factors affecting these mood changes are many: social and financial status amongst some important factors...

If you understand the duality of your own mind, then there is no need to contact me.

Exposition Of Thoughts (思想的说明)

It was my aim to get 1 million visits to my blog and this is already achieved. So I would sort of take a more passive approach to blog writing, after all; there are still many things to do in life than writing blogs.

I have many friends both in the East and the West. The westerners are more open in expressing their thoughts about spiritual matters in general while people in the East take a more emotional approach…

In my final years of my undergraduate study, there was an optional lecture known as ‘engineers in society’ that encouraged the students to explore how we think and how engineering can help to change our society. Being an optional lecture, as expected; the attendance was always pretty low. I myself wasn’t very hardworking one but I did drop into the lecture occasionally to get myself exposed.

Amongst many topics, there was a topic about spiritual matters and social development. The spiritual matters in this context refers to ‘religion and occult matters’.

Before the lecture started, the professor asked one of the participants: “What do you think about religion?”

The person shrugged and the professor replied: “Is it a fact that you do not know; or you have no idea at all?”

Then the most undesirable matter happened to me. The professor noticed I was the only ‘outstanding’ (Chinese) in the lecture theatre, he then pointed to me and asked:

“And what do you think?”

I struggled to squeeze a reasonable answer from my otherwise brain and somehow the words blurred out:

“Religion is a tool that almost destroyed human civilization throughout the history. It behaves as if yeast which causes bread to ferment but in the process, it is killed by its own action at the end.”

The professor smiled and asked me to elaborate more. And below is what I have said:

“If we look into the history of our civilizations, east and west; rulers made use of religious excuses to invade other countries. Many Chinese empires fell due to the emperors were too engrossed into religious matters. Too often than not, large amount of money and labours were deployed to build temples instead of strengthening the internal military powers and economic developments. When money was not enough, the emperors would impose taxes onto their subjects until lives were so difficult that people revolted against the emperor and brought down the empires. Also, by hiding under the blanket of religions; Chinese emperors were more eager to achieve Buddhahood than defending foreign invasive forces.

The old Tibet was ruled by politics and religions. Within Tibetan Buddhism, religious persecutions amongst various sects were a norm. Most notably was the persecution of Gelupa onto Jonangpa although both sects practise Kalachakra Tantra. Tantric rituals were touted to be very powerful and the torma (ritual cakes) once thrown out were much more powerful than an atomic bomb. In actual fact, the so-called most powerful fire ritual failed to halt the Chinese army from entering Tibet…

In Old China and Tibet, the religions they follow became toxins that caused their downfall.

Today, religious activities became a big business. In Asian countries: Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia etc. People burns down billion dollars of incense and joss papers. Expensive temples were built and added to that were the attached maintenance costs. Religious schools cost another few billions of dollars together with religious publishing, food supply chains, financial services etc. All in all, there are a lot of money involved. Of course, with those major cash activities around; a lot of effort and money are also spent to govern and supervise such economic activities…

At the end of the day, people of various religions get more segregated due to individual doctrines and I would not be surprised that unrest may occur sometime in future when the resources are getting less. At this moment, even people of the same religious group would fight for those limited power and resources…”

Personally speaking, people are afraid of unknown and hence give forth to religious and spiritual matters. It is good to invest in after death matters; but the current wellbeing is still our main priority.

This is the reason I started MagicSEA blog. And this post serves as the prelude of my blogs.

Ethics Of Making Offerings (祭祀的礼仪)

Please pay attention to what you do during spirit offering sessions.

There are some basic manners one needs to look out during customary spirit offering sessions to prevent offending those spiritual good brothers and sisters.

Well, it would be a waste of time and money if the spirits failed to be appeased. So it is better to follow the ritual faithfully; or don’t do the offering at all.

Roy is one of my acquaintance from Singapore and he is the so-called ‘new people’ (新新人类) of the 90’s. These ‘new people’ do not really believe in spiritual world but they are merely curious. Likewise, with Roy, he studied a few sessions of Thai magic with me and then dropped off and only to resurface to tell me his side of the story in the hope to get my opinion.

I am not about to respond to his mail personally but opted to share Roy’s story in this posting:

Roy’s ordeal happened during last Chinese Ghost Month. It was on the 15^th day of Lunar 7^th month and Roy’s mother prepared some dishes to be offered to those ‘hungry ghosts’ that wandered in human realm by the Buddha’s compassion so as to enjoy foods offered to them.

When the time was right, a table was put in front of Roy’s apartment with food offerings and joss papers laid in order. Although Roy was reluctant to participate in food offering session, he was somehow compelled to help by his mother. So reluctantly he laid his mom’s dishes on the table and also 5 bowls of cooked rice together with some joss papers which were to be burnt. Due to lack of proper knowledge, Roy only laid 5 pairs of chopsticks beside the rice bows (as shown above).

After some huh-ha, Joy’s mom asked Joy to bring the prepared joss papers downstairs to burn to the spirits… On his way to grass field downstairs, Roy stopped over to chat with his girl for quite a while until he finally remembered that his whole family was waiting for him to have dinner. So Roy hastily bid his girl farewell and proceeded to burn the joss papers.

Apparently, Roy was not a patient person. In order to speed up his task, Roy overturned the iron container with still burning joss papers; added to that, he stormed at the burning papers to extinguish the flame too…

After Roy was satisfied that all the fire was extinguished, he returned to his apartment to join his family for dinner.

As Roy was eating, his girl called; and he hastily plug his chopsticks into his bow (as shown) and started his love talk.

The incident was far from over…

Two weeks later, Roy fell down from a ladder while trying to retrieve a pair of shoes on the rack. He hurt his back and Roy still not yet recover until today… Worse, he lost his job and his girl too. Now, Roy’s mother is sick from no apparent reasons… And this is when Roy think of me.

So, what went wrong?

First, the position of the chopsticks was reversed causing the spirits failed to consume the food offerings… Roy put the chopsticks beside the bowls meaning the food can only be consumed by human, then when he plugged his chopsticks into his rice bowl; the spirits thought the rice was for them. Without knowing, Roy consumed his rice together with the negative aura of hungry spirits.

That was not all, what really made the spirits mad was that Roy extinguished the burning joss papers prematurely by stepping on them… this meant indirectly Roy was telling the spirits:

“Ha, ha! You are not getting any money!”

The moral of the story is that: It is okay not to make offerings, but if you do; then do it correctly and politely! Of course, I couldn’t help Roy as I am too lazy to travel down south during this time. But I am sure there are many good masters in Singapore that could help.

Old Taboos For The Pregnant (孕妇的禁忌)

The old Chinese has many taboos for the pregnant which may or may not be observed today.

It was and it is still believed today that a pregnant lady should watch over her movements so as not to disturb her baby during pregnancy or miscarriage may be resulted. Hence wise people of the old have figured out some rules to watch over the well beings of a mother to be. For example:

It is still forbidden to perform house renovations and repair if a pregnant is in the house such as hitting nails, breaking walls or removing furniture. In that matter, it is also best not to move the pregnant mother’s bed for the time being until the baby is safely delivered.

If these taboos are broken then the mother may experience miscarriage, the baby maybe crippled or deformed. Perhaps it is due to the reason that no one wishes to gamble on his/her baby that one would rather be safe than sorry… some of these taboos are still being observed from generation to generation.

Amongst all those taboos for the pregnant, one taboo is of my particular interest. This taboo is called the worship of the ‘grandpa and grandma of the bed’ (床公床母).

Legend has it that the ‘grandpa of the bed’ is fond of tea while ‘grandma of the bed’ is fond of alcohol… So during the last day of Lunar Calendar, household with pregnant lady would prepare some alcohol, tea, foods, sweets, joss papers as offerings for the grandma and grandpa of the bed so that they would watch over the pregnant mother and her baby during the pregnancy period.

Old folks believed by worshipping the ‘grandpa and grandma of the bed’, the baby’s ‘spirit of the fetus’ (胎神) shall be protected by the ‘grandparents’.

People also believe that this spirit of the fetus moves about in the house hence explaining the forbiddance of doing house repair during pregnancy. For example, during the 1^st Lunar Month, the spirit is on the bed, during the 2^nd Lunar Month, this spirit moves to the bedroom window, while on the 3^rd Lunar Month, the spirit is in the living room and so on…

Other taboos for the pregnant would be but not limited to:

A pregnant lady should not sleep under open sky in the wilderness. This is because people believe that there are many wandering spirits in the open that might harm the mother and the baby. This is especially true if the outside is foggy.

The pregnant is also forbidden to plug melons and fruits because they represent fetus of the mother. The mother may experience miscarriage if this taboo is not observed.

A conceived lady is forbidden to go to a funeral service and cemetery because the aura of the places is not auspicious and bad aura may harm the baby.

Outsiders are forbidden to visit a household with a pregnant lady. This is meant to prevent misunderstanding… for if there are problems with the baby later, the visitors may be blamed to cause harm directly or indirectly to the baby…

Of course, most of the taboos mentioned above are not followed now days… personally speaking, I would not recommend anyone do any house renovation work in front of a pregnant mother.

Legends Of Gua Langsuir (难产鬼洞的传说)

Gua Langsuir or Langsuir Cave is situated near Tasik Dayang Bunting (The Lake of Pregnant Lady), on the west coast of Pulau Dayang Bunting (the Island of Pregnant Lady), off Langkawi Golf Club.

Legend has it that in old days, 3 numbers of langsuir (a type of lady vampire) stayed in the cave. These female vampires can transform themselves into very attractive ladies who could sing and dance in such a manner that would arouse any men. These vampires would lure those unwary sailors and fishermen sailed by the cave.

Whoever were enchanted by those pretty emanations would either jumped overboard and drowned, or those who managed to swim to the cave would be tortured slowly by those vampires until death; then the lifeless body of unfortunate victims would be consumed by those 3 horrible creatures.

As the time went by, almost everyone knew the presence and tricks of these langsuir and people would stay away from the cave causing the 3 langsuir starved.

One day, a blurred and deaf fisherman row his boat passed the Langsuir Cave and he was not aware of the langsuirs’ enticing call…

All of the three langsuir were extremely happy to see this fisherman since they have starved for quite a long time already. Sorry to say that all they efforts to attract this nearly blind and deaf fisherman have failed miserably. This incident has led the langsuir to think that they have lost their charm against people in that area.

Consequently, due to their own fear of revenge from victims’ family members; the three langsuir decided to fly away from their hiding cave and not to return…

Or was the legend true as described?

Well, while I can’t be sure if the three langsuir are still in the cave now, but my pal, Saiful did believe the vampires were still in the cave some 10 years ago.

Saiful was working with a hotel in Langkawi and he used to charter a small boat to fish with two other friends.

This was just one of their fishing trip to fish near Langsuir Cave. It was around 6pm, Saiful and his friends were about to finish fishing and return home…

Suddenly there was a gust of strong wind blowing at their boat that made the boat pitched port and starboard. Just as when Saiful and his friends were balancing their bodies again the pitching of the boat to prevent their boat from overturning, Saiful suddenly heard a woman’s voice coming from the direction of Langsuir Cave:

“Young man… what is your name?”

The wind continued to blow hitting the boat across the bow. Just as when Saiful lowered his body and holding firmer against the side of the boat, another woman’s voice was heard from the cave:

“How old are you?”

This time, Saiful could feel the source of voice was getting closer… but Saiful didn’t answer the voice as his instinct told him not to.

Yet another strong wind hit Saiful’s boat and another voice followed and at this point, Saiful sworn that the source of voice was just within reach:

“Why are you here?”

At this point, Saiful ignored the voice and he started to pray. It was not that Saiful was afraid of the voice nor was he curious; but Saiful was more concern of keeping the small boat balance so that all of them could return home safely.

Luckily at this point, a motorised fishing boat came by and the skipper was kind enough to let all of the three people board his fishing boat and also tow Saiful’s small boat back to harbour.

Afterwards, when I met Saiful in a food stall, he told me that he firmly believed the voices were from the three langsuir as all of the three voices were of different accents. Saiful thinks that he was correct as he didn’t respond to the mysterious voices. Otherwise he would not be able to survive in the choppy sea at that time though Saiful is quite a good swimmer…