Ghost month

It's lunar 7th month, the Ghost Month again.

Don't you just love the Ghost Month? It's like Halloween, only that it is one month long instead of one day.

I am quite fond of Ghost Month. I love the smell emits from the burning of incense papers, hell money, as described in Wikipedia. I think it smells really nice. And the smell of it brings back old time memories. Every year I helped my mother arranging all the paper cloths(for the ghost to make clothes), ready made paper clothes, hell money and all sort of other things. We burnt and arranged incense sticks around the house, arranged the paper stuffs on the floor, in front of the house, then burn.

It's been a few years I haven't help me mum. Cos I am now working in Spore and the days that we are supposed to burn the incense papers are always on weekdays...

In this month, almost every where we go we can smell the burning of incense papers. The smell of it only reminds me of two things, Ghost MOnth and CHinese New Year. And forgive me for saying one more time, I love that smell.

I used to be very scared of going back home after dark during this month. That was when I was in sec school. Now Ghost Month to me is just like any other month, only that it, "smells different". One thing I don't like is my mother forbids me to go diving in this month. But lots of my diving kakis are also the same. So it doesn't matter a lot.

This morning the radio was talking about reducing the burning of incense paper for conservation. A suggestion in Taiwan calls people to donate money online instead and send the receipt to monks and let them do the ceremony at one go. A caller said we cannot reduce it. It's our tradition and if we don't burn the hell money, how are the dead going to receive it? And one suggested that we burn cheque instead. We can write many zeros.. as many as we like, hehe.. and we then only need to burn one paper, won't pollute the air. ha! That's a good one :p