Traveling time!!! Finally had a chance to visit the sea in the southern region of Thailand again!…

Krabi is a very special place especially around the Railay bay area. The surrounding is very serene and harmonious. Without road access, Railay is considered quite lively in it’s own way. If you call this region to be Bob Marley I wouldn’t be surprised.

There are mainly 2 sides to the Railay bay, generally people arrives on the west side from Ao-Nang. The beach there is beautiful. However, there is also the easy-Railay which is even more special in its own way. The beach there is actually a mangrove, which makes it more interesting. During the high-tide the sea water rises to cover the whole sandy area. So walking in sea water to get around brings fantastic experience especially with the surroundings of trees in the sea.

There are also several beautiful lime stone sites which are perfect for rock-climbing. I believe this is the most beautiful rock-climbing site in the world (although I haven’t been to too many sites). The lime stones are not just on the Railay area but on several islands in the area as well. To say that the area is beautiful would be an understatement : -).

The room rates there are also quite reasonable especially during this low-season. One can easily find a fan room from Baht400-600 a night and air-conditioned room from  Baht 1000 per night and in some places you can even get breakfast with the deal. These rooms can be found on the east-side of Railay. On the west side, the rooms are much more expensive. There is also another beach which is a hike away from Railay bay and the price can get even lower but it’s not easily accessible.

Climbing there always give wonderful experiences. I did meet a really nice climbing guide his name is Su and he works at the Tex climbing shop. I have visited this shop once before (around 2000-2001) and liked it very much. However, the climbing guide that I met last time no longer works here. I heard that he has left the shop and tried to be a musician. Anyway, I still would highly recommend this Tex climbing shop. Su and I became good friends and I look forward in seeing him again sometime soon.

There is an island close by  the Railay bay, it’s called Koh Tub and Koh Moh, these two islands are quite special in a way that when it’s low-tide, these two islands would connect to each other. This is definitely one of my favorite places to spend the day. I did quite a bit of snorkeling to the back side of Koh Tub and it’s amazingly serene and vibrant there, I did spend some time just sitting in the water while overlooking the beautiful sea from this spot.

Check out the pictures!!! : -) http://fog007.photos.live.com/albums.aspx

HH Phakchok Rinpoche came to Bangkok for about 10 days (April 17-26 2009) again and did give teachings over several topics at several venues. For all sessions, he number of people who turned up were more than expected. On the last day of the teaching, at the Tai Pan hotel, the seats were full and people had to start sitting on the floor. I think this is a good sign that we have to be prepared for more people in the future.

 

This trip has been very successful. I must thank everyone involved, the committee, the sponsors, the attendees, and all sentient beings for allowing me to participate in organizing the events. My personal special thanks to Khun Jarunee who has been extremely helpful in all aspects from finding venues to getting the message out about the event. Many thanks to the Tawana hotel and all their staff for their extended help and generosity during HH Phakchok Rinpoche’s stay.

 

I will be putting on the audio recordings of the event up on the web soon.

Amazingly rain storm arrived just after the grand opening ceremony of the Vasutara hall which is the first hall with roof at the at the Tara Khadiravana center.

 

The timing was just perfect, right after the opening ceremony of blessings has been completed by Kunga Zangpo Rinpoche, rain poured in, and few moments later, a heavy rain-storm came with very strong wind. The storm was so strong that we had to stand by the thick curtain to make sure it blocks the rain from splashing into the hall. It was quite amazing that the timing of the rain was right at the end of the opening ceremony, I think this is a very auspicious sign.

 

In the afternoon, we all received green Tara Empowerment with series of lectures which continued until the next day. Kunga Zangpo Rinpoche has an amazing character, in-depth wisdom and calm like the deep ocean. In my opinion, I really think he has rid himself from the seed of anger and he did teach of us about different negative emotions especially how to rid of anger.

 

 

Check the photos in the photo album http://fog007.spaces.live.com

 

 

I have been playing with Arduino for few months and really liked it. However, after sometime I did run into several limitations with the current hardware platform it currently supports so I started looking at other solutions and the first hit as an ARM Cortex-M3 board with STM32F10x (ret6) mcu. This little thing is extremely powerful compared to that of what Arduino supports. This ARM Cortex-M3 runs at 72MHz having 512kb of flash memory and 64kb of RAM, wow! really plenty..

 

However, I did run into difficulties in programming its firmware as it’s very difficult compared to Arduino platform. So after a while of learning and testing the codes, I did finally manage to work with it and found out that it’s much more powerful than what I found out initially. From programming side, it’s generally more difficult than Arduino. So what I did decide to start X duino project to create Arduino-like library for running on different hardware platforms. Currently this Arduin-like library works on ARM Cortex-M3 and is available. So if you feel like you can check out X duino ARM Cortex-M3 page

It is now possible to easily program powerful micro controller. All you need is just some basic knowledge of programming, if you don’t have this knowledge then example projects are also available, you can take a look at them. All this has been possible with XDUINO project. 

 

 

What you need now comes down only 2 things:

-XDUINO board from XDUINO hardware

-XDUINO IDE software from XDUINO download

that’s all

 

 

 

 

Went to Cha-am and Huahin for 4 days new year celebration with all immediate families..

 

The energy for new year was relatively low, perhaps people were not really in party mood this year.

Pictures ADDED, check the albums at http://fog007.spaces.live.com/

 

 

 

 

Check the photo album!

Yet another great Lama visits Bangkok. This is very very amazing.

His Holiness has a very special character, expression and compassion which could be felt. His explanation on things are crystal clear and he welcomes all kinds of debate. How amazing!!!

 

(please don’t take my understanding to be what he said, as these are just my understandings)

I did make many break-throughs from the teachings. One of them is about giving and generousity. When we give something to someone, we always expect some feed-back or atleast a ‘thank you’. However, the real giving is giving without ANY expectation, and not even expectation for the merit generated. When we give we should just give and also give the merit generated as well. This is the real giving!. Give without any expectation, not even expectation for the merit from it…. VERY VERY important.

 

Another point he mentions was about emptiness of self. If we look at our nose, where do our nose actually starts and where is the end of our nose. Can we draw a clear line and define precisely that "this is the starting point of the nose, and this is the ending point of the nose"!! ? I don’t think we can, so if this cannot be precisely defined then how can nose exist in the ultimate reality? Now, if we investigate our finger, and we take out some skin of our finger, would our finger remain to be a finger..the conventional answer would be yes. What about the parts we have taken out? say some skin, some dirt, and maybe some water molecules, are they part of our finger? Conventional answer would be, yes they were. If the skin and the dirt and the water molecules taken our are part of our finger, then what everything in the world is also part of our finger as the swet from our finger evaporates into the cloud, the cloud turns into rain, into waterfall, etc etc.. so everything is part of our finger…. funny eh? Now, think on the other view, if we take out some parts of our finger, does our finger remain a finger? (conventional answer: yes). Now, does any of the parts those have been taken out have nature of finger on it’s own??  No, they are junk… Then how could it be possible that something that does not have true nature on it’s own be combined and become something real and existant with true nature (like a finger)? I hope I am getting it right!. I think I have had a glimpse of emptiness..

 

Anyway, after all the teachings, Rinpoche was discussing about establishing a new model of medical treatment facility which he plans to starts in Nepal!!. What a great man, only 27 years old, abbot of 2 monasteries… amazing…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another great Lama visit to Bangkok. Thanks to Dr. Andy Lowe and Thousand stars foundation. Rinpoche gave us several lessons and one of the most important thing that I learned was that meditation is not everything it is a practice for actual living.

 

Went to the Tara Khadiravana center, Nong Phlub (district), Hua Hin (city), Prachuab Khirikhan (province) which is quite a big place of about 30 acres where Thousand stars foundation is trying to make it into a practicioner’s retreat and event center. What a great plan! Rinpoche did give us White Tara empowerment there.

 

After all the events and teachings both at Chulalongkorn University and at the foundation house in Bangkok, we took Rinpoche out on Friday to see the Emerald Buddha, grand palace and Wat Po then to MBK for shopping. It was fantastic.

This trip has been fantastic as I have been looking forward to go on this trip for years.

I was not sure how I got the seat on the airplane on 22nd Oct as my ticket is an mile-award ticket and it has the lowest priority. I called THAI office on 22nd Oct morning and was told that there are 21 seats overbooked. Some how they called me back later to tell me that I got a seat confirmed which was fantastic (this happened after I have been going to the airport and being on stand-by for 2 days without getting a seat).

I met my great uncle Gurmukh Singh on the way to board the air-plane and he was on his way to take care of matters at his charity clinic in New Delhi and he is in process of opening another charity clinic in Kushinagar (an ultra-generous being like a bodhisattva). So while in Delhi I did go visit his clinic there.

 

Took the early morning bus to Agra, made couple of friends on the bus including a guy from Delhi named Sumeet and a spiritual person from Malaysia. They were very cool. Had a good tour of Red Ford and then went to the Taj in the late afternoon. We found out that the Taj has been temporarily closed as some VIP guest of the government was visiting the Taj. People were lined up to wait for it to open, the line was probably about 300-500 meters long. The Taj opened again at 6:30pm in which Sumeet offered to squeeze to the front and get us our tickets then we had to squeeze in to get into the Taj. It’s extremely hard to describe the scene there during the pushing and pulling of the people (you would have to watch an Indian film with riot in it to get the picture). Fortunately the police officers were in control, they did not pull out their canes to organize the crowd. It was a dark foggy night which made taking the picture with flash extremely difficult. We went into the Taj and took a couple of photographs, enjoyed the atmosphere and got out. Later we found out that only our group from the whole bus got into the Taj. (It was not very nice as people came from all over India just to see the Taj Mahal and most of them didn’t get to go in). Then we took the bus back to New Delhi. The bus ride was not supposed to take more than 4 hours but it took 8 hours as there were labour-class protesters sleeping on the inter-state roads taking their rest as they were marching towards New Delhi to demand their rights. Well it was quite a big delay. Anyway, nothing unusal .

 

 

From New Delhi, I took a train to Chakki Bank in Pathankote (Punjab) then took a bus from there to Dharamsala. I left on 26th evening and arrived in Dharamsala on 27th mid-day. On the bus I made some friends who were western volunteers working in New Delhi. Great people, they were Matt, Olivia, Camilla, Renate, and Yiling, so I tagged along their group. From Dharamsala I took a bus upto McLeod Ganj (or upper Dharamsala) while the rest of them hiked their way up. The place was very beautiful and people were extremely nice and friendly. I stayed the ’Green Hotel’ which costed me a Rs300 for a big room to myself with hot shower and a great balcony view. Got our rooms for the night, visited couple of temples and saw the town, which was fantastic.  From there then we roamed up and down the town which was extremely calm and peaceful. The weather was a little cool, just right. Then we all had dinner together and went to bed. Next day we met up for breakfast and went around town again, this time to His Holiness Dalai Lama temple and then I hiked towards behind his temple which seems to be a long way but it came back to the temple itself (lol, made me feel quite dumb really).  Then the girls left the place by bus to New Delhi in the evening. Only Mattew and Olivia stayed on. That evening we went to see a film about how Tibetan children crosses the Himalaya mountain to come to India and how their parents send them without knowing if they would make it alive or it. The producer of the documentary was there, the actual title of the documentary was ‘Escape over the Himalayas’. (Again, it made me realize how fortune I am and why I should cultivate the Bodhisattva path. On Monday Olivia and Matthew went for hiking on the hills but I didn’t go as I felt a little sick and I planned on attending teachings on the ‘Bardo’ by Chamtrul Rinpoche which is 2 hours a days for 5 days (which I did attend) and I started to feel ill as I did catch a cold. That night itself I met up with Jonathan while watching a football match. He is a British guy, a new writer, travelling and writing his first book. We got along really well.

 

For the next few days I ran up and down the hill in search of an Oracle which took me 2-3 days to find and I finally found her and asked her about how I should pursue my path and her reply was that I should ask His Holiness Dalai Lama. So I tried to request an audience with him for when he comes back but it was impossible as his schedule was extremely tight (extremely tight could even be an understatement). Apart from attending the teaching in the evening, I did have a chance to visit the Tibetan library, and also went to the Holloween party organized by Phil Void. Met up with bunch of ghosts there which was fun. In the nights, we would spend the

nights listening to live music performed by my friend Shambhu and Rohan at a restaurant called Carpe-Diem. Yes, it was totally relaxing.

 

After 5 days of class which ended on Friday, we found out that His Holiness Dalai Lama would be coming back to town on Saturday so Phil did organize a little band going to sing for His Holiness on his way back to town. So on Saturday there was a big reception for him as he have just recently received US Congressional gold medal from the USA government. People were waiting from way below town uptil his residence, people were waiting for him and looking forward to see him wave at them while we sang on the side of the road which he passed by. It was a fantastic experience. After that we just hung around and relax and Jonathan decided he would join me for the trip to Bodhgaya so we sorted our train tickets out. We left McLeod Ganj/Dharamsala on Monday and headed back to New Delhi on our way to Bodhgaya. So we took a bus on Monday 5th November to Pathankote. On the way, the bus tyre got punctured so there was little delay. When we were in Pathankote, we were 2 hours early for the train as per scheduled departure time. So we went to a local Punjabi road-side (Dhaba) restaurant and saw a snooker table inside, so we started playing with the local Punjabi guys. They were extremely friendly and nice so I played snooker with them for about 2 hours before me and Jonathan headed for the train station. Once we got to the train station we found out that the train was delayed for 2 hours so we waited and got on the train. The train arrived around noon in Delhi (scheduled to arrive at 7am or so), well nothing unusual for the almost 6 hours delay.

 

In New Delhi, first thing we did was sorted our train tickets out for going to Gaya (near Bodhgaya), we both got first class tickets but on different trains of 10 minutes apart. Then I did manage to have dinner with Camilla, Renate, Matthew and Olivia in New Delhi, it was great that they could join us. Gagan (My cousin in New Delhi) also joined us later. Next day we headed for Bodhgaya. After boarding the train, I found out that one of our cabin-mate is an Member of Parliament (MP) from Bihar, he belongs to the communist party. So I made another 3 friends (4 people in the cabin) on the train, the MP, an NRI, and an Indian engineer.

 

Arriving at Gaya was interesting. Yes, and it looked poorer than New Delhi. Anyway, after saying bye to the MP, Jonathan arrived about 10 minutes after me in Gaya. Then we decided to take the auto-rickshaw to Bodhgaya (The price was Rs100 but later we found out that it should have been Rs50). Arriving in Bodhgaya we shared a room and all were fine, we met up with a local boy named Manish and he showed us to Sujata cave and other nearby places. Then we met Joe (from Switzerland) at Om restaurant and we kinda hung out together most of the time. I went to visit The Karmapa at his temple (this is one recognized by Shamar Rinpoche) and exchanged a few words with him and he seems to be very nice person. We also visited several other temples in the area. For the next 5 days I attended the Kagyu Monlam (prayer). It was great experience. Joe joined me couple of times during the event. On the 3rd day of the event Jonathan fell sick and so did I. I started having a terrible cramp on my stomach. This happened in the night while all the clinics were closed. So the guest house owner took me to doctor’s home. He was very kind, I must send a ton of thanks to him. After taking some medication, I started throwing up, even the medicines came out. Somehow, I was fine in the morning. So for the next 2 days all I had was some cookies and electrolytes. Jonathan didn’t eat for 2-3 days and he became fine. On 16th November there was a grand opening event for a Vietnamese temple so monks from several temples of different traditions were invited. I attended the event, it was very nice as monks from almost all schools of Buddhism attended, prayed, blessed and had lunch together with monk of several traditions on the same table. Yes, it was magnificant. Then I went to the sculpture maker who supplies all the shops. His name was Birendra Kumar, a very simple man. After selecting a Buddha statue that he has made I paid him Rs200 and gave him Rs50 as tip to support him for the the is doing, and surprisingly in return he gave me a piece of wood with Buddha which he carved on it and he told me that that piece of wood which fell from the Bodhi Tree in the Mahabodhi temple and  has been given to him by a Thai monk. Wow, this was really something to me!.. (what kind of karma did I create to receive this???? Thank you all for reading and sharing this joy)

 

Took auto rickshaw to airport and as I checked in at the check-in counter, the flight manager told me ‘I have been waiting for you’. Then he continued ‘we share the same last name’, his name was Vicky. He was an employee of THAI airways who travels often and that day he happened to be in Bodhgaya. After noting down his contact information I proceeded to the security check and met one military personnel who asked about my trip and started chatting with me, he mentioned that he was from Agra. As I told him that I plan to visit the Taj Mahal again he told me that I should let him know and perhaps he could take me around the next time I come .

He was very nice. Then I boarded the airplane and made my way back to Bangkok.

 

It was fantastic, fantastic, fantastic trip …. people are extremely nice and friendly and fortunately I managed to make friends with ‘a lot’ of people in which

I have just sent out maybe 20 emails out to check if they are alive

 

Wait wait, I did go back and count and I did send out emails to more than 30 people……