Deliciously Me

One of the night during Chinese New Year, my family and I happened to drop by a temple in Armenian Street. I rarely go praying around in island, so I don’t really know much about the temples there unless it’s the super famous and prominent ones – like Kek Lok Si and Kuan Yin Teng. But somehow fate brought us there that night.

Apparently Hock Teik Cheng Sin Temple is famous in giving ‘numbers’!

While dad prayed to the deities in the temples, I took the opportunity to take pictures of the surrounding using my Olympus miu! No, I didn’t bring my DSLR out that day. Lol.

I find the ‘axe’ super cute. Couldn’t stop taking picture of it. Hehe.

While taking pictures around, I overheard a man speaking quite loud in Cantonese to the lady who was kneeling in front of the altar; asking her to ‘ask’ the deity with sincere heart so that she could get 4 numbers from the deity. After she prayed, she shook a container full of bamboo sticks with numbers until one came out of the container. Then she threw 2 red crescent shaped die asking if that’s the number for her.

But she got both sides open up.

Seeing this, the man told her again, to truly believe in the deity and prayed with all her hearts before shaking the container. She did what he said, shook the container again and threw the die. This time, she got both sides facing down.

Mum was standing behind them, watching all this. In fact, there were few people watching this too – all wondering what was her doing. Mum told me, “Maybe the ang kong doesn’t know how to speak English (as the ladies were English-speaking) that’s why can’t provide numbers for them.”

I replied, “The deity sure got hire translator one mah.”

“If got translator, she early early got her 4 numbers d loh.”

As much as I wanted to try my luck in winning the Jackpot (that time everyone was eager in winning the Jackpot) by getting numbers from the deity, but from the rate of her getting the 4 numbers and with her another friend also waiting for her turn – I had to put off my intention. Haih.

As I turned around from where I stood, I spotted this transparent plane covering a hole with coins in it.

A closer look revealed that the floor of the temple are elevated about half feet higher than the original tiles.

We then we went the stairs to the first level after asking the caretaker about it. We had to take off our shoes before going up.

The place is refurbished and the carvings on the doors and walls were painted with new coat of paint, making them look bright and new! As I walked around taking pictures, I noticed something different with the neighbours’ houses.

They have back doors on first level! I wondered why they have such designs – another escape in term of emergency? Hmm.

There’s nothing much to explore on the first level, therefore we went downstairs. The two girls took their own sweet time getting numbers from the deity, making me lost interest in earning my lucky numbers too as I didn’t have much time to spare. It was already late at night and everyone was tired from earlier day trip. So we left the place.

Maybe I should drop by there again. ^^