I know that there are many Penangites spread over the seven seas reading my blog for all the good and bad it may contain.
Had you spent a good part your carefree childhood here,your elders would have passed down to you tales about The Seven Sisters as well as The Dato that presides in the brook at a bouldery slope near the Kek Lok Si temple.
Sad to tell you that the place has now been ripped apart,in the name of erecting a carpark area for the commercially driven,uber materialistic buddhist temple,who in my eyes,is no different from a large spiritual pawnshop complex that hawks you roof tiles at a minimum of $50 a pop,complete with a mini resort style tram, to fetch you great polaroid shots of Kuan Yin or Buddha.
In a frenzied scramble to build a car park ,fuelled by greed for tourist dollars and want for more pilgrim donations,the overzealous expansion displays a real devil may care disrespect as well as total disregard for the environment and guardian spirits of the land,our islanders rever.
The poor man's shrine that offered the terminally ill and hexed a chance to find a free cure,as well as victims of robbery to trace the culprit is no more.
The stream that housed the good earth spirit has been defiled.
The playground of fairies left baren.
The seven stone urns plundered.
With all that,it upstages the hush hush gossip mill about the last abbot,who was rumoured to have been ultimately defrocked for being embroiled in a scandalous relationship with somebody's wife.
Instead the current Abbot should be made a posterboy for Dollarism and be given a free one way ticket to hell by the soul laundering whacko Master Kek Eng Seng,most heavenly disciple of Conjobism.
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Greenery Gone
(NST-6/10/2011)
Penang Island Municipal Council is taken to task for not stopping the Kek Lok Si Temple car park project earlier
The NGOs also want the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) to explain why the destruction of a hill slope near the Kek Lok Si Temple in Air Itam had gone unnoticed for nearly four months until the matter was raised in the press a week ago.
Works to clear the hill slope of trees, natural rocks and boulders to make way for a RM10 million car park project by the temple had started some time in June, said Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam Malaysia executive committee member Prof Dr Jimmy C.S. Lim.
He questioned why the council only issued a stop-work order last Wednesday and state officials only inspected the site on Tuesday although what had been going on there was highlighted numerous times in the media and on websites.
"What kind of enforcement is this? After all that has happened, the council should not consider the temple's proposed car park project.
"We should not have the council telling the temple to submit the necessary applications now so that the approvals could be expedited because it would not be right. The project cannot be approved," Lim said here yesterday.
He said neither the council nor Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng should allow a project to take place without first consulting the people.
Criticising the council for not acting on the matter in time to prevent the hill slope from being destroyed, Lim said the council must realise its responsibility to safeguard public interest and protect the environment with diligence, followed by a sense of urgency instead of waiting for several months.
He added that the Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) should rehabilitate the stream that flowed on the site that had also been affected by the development.
He also took the project's consultant engineers and architects to task, saying that they had breached their professional conduct by allowing the detrimental development and that they should be reported to their respective professional boards.
The proposed car park project and the defacing of the hill slope made the news last week following protests from NGOs and debates online.
The development on the site was first reported by the Chinese dailies in July.
The Penang Heritage Trust and the Culture Heritage Action Team (CHAT) also called a press conference last Saturday, criticising the development and the manner it had taken place without due consideration to the environment, the cultural and historical assets on the site on Crane Hill and the stream, which has now been reduced to a "large drain".
The NGOs lamented that natural rocks with unique shapes like elephants and tigers, a huge flat-surfaced rock dubbed the "Pavilion of Swirling Water", where people could sit and listen to the sounds of nature, and a very old "Datuk Kong" shrine with seven stone urns dedicated to the "Seven Sisters" (Keramat Tujuh Beradik) were now lost.
The oldest stone urn in the shrine was dated 1887.
It was reported yesterday that the ground work on the site began without any approval by the council as the temple did not submit any applications for the project.
Lim, who is past president of the Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM), also urged the council to relook into the temple's approved project to build a crematorium and columbarium a little further up the hill from the car park site.
He said such a development should not be allowed as it would be too close to the Air Itam Dam, which was the source of the island's drinking water, and an important water catchment area.
The car park, crematorium and columbarium projects all together, he said, would also not solve the traffic congestion problem in Air Itam and might potentially worsen it.
"Would these projects instead exacerbate the traffic problem as more people will be encouraged to drive to the temple while roads in Air Itam remain as narrow as they are now?"
He suggested that it might be better if the council told the temple to build the car park near the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway and match it with another car park for another 1,000 cars.
Had you spent a good part your carefree childhood here,your elders would have passed down to you tales about The Seven Sisters as well as The Dato that presides in the brook at a bouldery slope near the Kek Lok Si temple.
Sad to tell you that the place has now been ripped apart,in the name of erecting a carpark area for the commercially driven,uber materialistic buddhist temple,who in my eyes,is no different from a large spiritual pawnshop complex that hawks you roof tiles at a minimum of $50 a pop,complete with a mini resort style tram, to fetch you great polaroid shots of Kuan Yin or Buddha.
In a frenzied scramble to build a car park ,fuelled by greed for tourist dollars and want for more pilgrim donations,the overzealous expansion displays a real devil may care disrespect as well as total disregard for the environment and guardian spirits of the land,our islanders rever.
The poor man's shrine that offered the terminally ill and hexed a chance to find a free cure,as well as victims of robbery to trace the culprit is no more.
The stream that housed the good earth spirit has been defiled.
The playground of fairies left baren.
The seven stone urns plundered.
With all that,it upstages the hush hush gossip mill about the last abbot,who was rumoured to have been ultimately defrocked for being embroiled in a scandalous relationship with somebody's wife.
Instead the current Abbot should be made a posterboy for Dollarism and be given a free one way ticket to hell by the soul laundering whacko Master Kek Eng Seng,most heavenly disciple of Conjobism.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Greenery Gone
(NST-6/10/2011)
Penang Island Municipal Council is taken to task for not stopping the Kek Lok Si Temple car park project earlier
The NGOs also want the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) to explain why the destruction of a hill slope near the Kek Lok Si Temple in Air Itam had gone unnoticed for nearly four months until the matter was raised in the press a week ago.
Works to clear the hill slope of trees, natural rocks and boulders to make way for a RM10 million car park project by the temple had started some time in June, said Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam Malaysia executive committee member Prof Dr Jimmy C.S. Lim.
He questioned why the council only issued a stop-work order last Wednesday and state officials only inspected the site on Tuesday although what had been going on there was highlighted numerous times in the media and on websites.
"What kind of enforcement is this? After all that has happened, the council should not consider the temple's proposed car park project.
"We should not have the council telling the temple to submit the necessary applications now so that the approvals could be expedited because it would not be right. The project cannot be approved," Lim said here yesterday.
He said neither the council nor Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng should allow a project to take place without first consulting the people.
Criticising the council for not acting on the matter in time to prevent the hill slope from being destroyed, Lim said the council must realise its responsibility to safeguard public interest and protect the environment with diligence, followed by a sense of urgency instead of waiting for several months.
He added that the Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) should rehabilitate the stream that flowed on the site that had also been affected by the development.
He also took the project's consultant engineers and architects to task, saying that they had breached their professional conduct by allowing the detrimental development and that they should be reported to their respective professional boards.
The proposed car park project and the defacing of the hill slope made the news last week following protests from NGOs and debates online.
The development on the site was first reported by the Chinese dailies in July.
The Penang Heritage Trust and the Culture Heritage Action Team (CHAT) also called a press conference last Saturday, criticising the development and the manner it had taken place without due consideration to the environment, the cultural and historical assets on the site on Crane Hill and the stream, which has now been reduced to a "large drain".
The NGOs lamented that natural rocks with unique shapes like elephants and tigers, a huge flat-surfaced rock dubbed the "Pavilion of Swirling Water", where people could sit and listen to the sounds of nature, and a very old "Datuk Kong" shrine with seven stone urns dedicated to the "Seven Sisters" (Keramat Tujuh Beradik) were now lost.
The oldest stone urn in the shrine was dated 1887.
It was reported yesterday that the ground work on the site began without any approval by the council as the temple did not submit any applications for the project.
Lim, who is past president of the Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM), also urged the council to relook into the temple's approved project to build a crematorium and columbarium a little further up the hill from the car park site.
He said such a development should not be allowed as it would be too close to the Air Itam Dam, which was the source of the island's drinking water, and an important water catchment area.
The car park, crematorium and columbarium projects all together, he said, would also not solve the traffic congestion problem in Air Itam and might potentially worsen it.
"Would these projects instead exacerbate the traffic problem as more people will be encouraged to drive to the temple while roads in Air Itam remain as narrow as they are now?"
He suggested that it might be better if the council told the temple to build the car park near the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway and match it with another car park for another 1,000 cars.
