On the up: Almost Famous
On the down: Being Banned!

*Sorry morry. This is waaay overdue but must be documented, no matter how late!*

Okay, so I don't want to show off, and I know it shouldn't be about ego and all that but

WE TOTALLY ROCKED the Buddhist culture and arts festival.

I mean, most of us got back from Singapore and we were all like "Please just let my bed swallow me up forever" but The Amazing Joe and The Fabulous Shin were all bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bouncing around with their batteries top charged, all ready for the next fair.

A lazy dolly though, let her bed swallow her up for a few days first *shame shame*

Anyway, we were totally a hit. The crowds loved the Neon Lama, even when he wasn't there.

Look err, no offence and all that but this was the corridor next to Kechara...........................


And this was Kechara........

(photos taken within seconds of each other).

To up the ante, Small Fry (the most intelligent 9 year old in the world) and I decided to paint ourselves and pretend for a moment that we were enlightened....

Webbie sloshed on the green paint and made me into Green Tara and Sean became a little mini Dzambala. Who said you can't become a Buddha overnight man.

And just to get Kechara even MORE attention, we took a walk around the fair (oh god, I like SO love attention, ego ego ego!)

Actually, Tara is supposed to look royal, gorgeous, svelte, greeeeeeeeen and pretty like this

And Dzambala looks regal and filthy-rich, zing-bling like this:

And this is our ciplak interpretations of the Buddhas!

I think there's something slightly disturbing about the way I think I look better looking like a green highlighter than I do normally. Poor Tara sitting on her moon disc and lotus must have been looking down from the sky and thinking,

"OH MY GOD, what a fat version of me. Some more got such short eyelashes. What total samsara injustice!" (Okay, not really cos she's full of compassion and no ego).

I was also called A martian, Mrs Shrek, the Swamp Thing and The Incredible Hulk, which REALLY did not impress me. hmph.

We heard later that some people thought we were taking trance and came up to pray to us. OH DEAR. Then annoying little bratty kids danced around in front of me and tried to irritate me into moving. I swear if they'd touched me, I'd have poked them in the eye with my plastic lotus. I tried to deal with it by trying to channel compassionate Tara energy - ommmmmmmmmm - when all I wanted to do was slap them. Evidently, I'm really NOT someone worth coming up to pray to just yet.

Anyway, we got warnings and bans! The organisers didn't like us walking around - we were supposed to stay within the confines of our booth. Like gee, every single booth here is promoting the same thing (Dharma) so what difference does it make man.

Then somebody put a little bowl in front of Dzambala (just to see lah what happens), and someone put in some loose change and the organisers got het up again and took the bowl away, stating that we were soliciting funds and were begging for alms.

Like gee. It's just a gimmick. We weren't even asking people to put donations. If I'm being honest, I'd say I just wanted attention because I have an enormous, self-absorbed ego. So get over all your funny rules man.

Then they kept coming up to our booth and trying to get us to move our posters in because they claimed it was blocking the walkway. Our posters are like 1 1/2 foot wide, and the walkway is about 5 metres across. GEE.

The next day, they rang up good old Henry and said, "I hope you're not going to do anything special today."

HAH.

So no more green and gold paint.

Not that that stops any of us. We shall always endeavour to get attention and so we did.

Fabulous adorable I-wish-he-was-straight Eric Choong turned up to help volunteer. HE IS SO DAMN CUTE and I want to put him in my pocket and take him home.

AND THEN
SOME
MORE

Amber Chia came to visit. She is soooooooooooo pretty man. Next life I'm gonna be Amber Chia's reincarnation and I too am going to get famous doing adverts for Brands Like Guess.

She is also so super sweet and so doesn't have any airs. I think someone just asked her to come by to help support Kechara and she did, AND took heaps of photos.

Irene (the most perasaan person I have ever known, and who only keeps getting more perasaan as she gets older) stood in the middle of the crowds and started screaming,

"AMBER CHIA!!!! AMBER CHIA!!! AMBERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

So of course lah, all of us had to join in so big mouth Joy and I started,
"OH MY GOD, is that Amber Chia?!"
"Where where?!"
"I think that's Amber Chia at KECHARA PARADISE!"

We were being totally rude and obnoxious but Amber didn't seem to mind at all. Look how unruffled and darling she looks next to KMP's (equally sexy) books:

Okay, but it wasn't just all ego-boosting and fun and games. The Kechara people worked SO AMAZINGLY HARD all those five days to talk to people about Dharma, Rinpoche's teachings and Gaden. I just can't understand how people like Joe, Shin, Pooh Bear JJ, Webbie and Dory did it. They just talked non-stop and answered heaps of people's questions, talked to them about Dharma non stop.
It's not a competition, of course. Every tradition of Buddhism is fantastic and we're all teaching the same teachings - it's just the approach that's different but sometimes I guess that's what really makes all the difference.

There's still heaps of Buddhists here who just offer joss sticks when they want money or a husband for their poor unmarried spinster daughter and like geeeeeeeeeeeeeeee it's about a lot more than that! (You think Buddha got nothing better to do than find you a husband issit).

The fair was a chance to talk to people about the teachings, how it's actually not about Religion (scary capital R) but about a way of life that brings happiness, and (spiritual) wealth, and health, and peace and okay, a husband too if you really want.

People didn't want to respond too well to me though. I'd open up my big posh mouth with my pseudo-overseas accent and they all run run far far. I didn't even dare try Chinese - that's even scarier. Man, I never felt so useless - I can't sell anything for shite!

So I said to Joe, "Er I think I better start writing more books to make up for my total lack of sales power."

Diplomatic Joe just laughed in his nice way. He was probably thinking, "Yah, damnit. Get working now now now."

I'm so proud of everyone else and how hard they all worked though. The green paint gimmick and having my skin dry out like a lizard was probably worth only about 5% of all that they did.

*so so so loves Kechara* muaks!