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Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Future of Funerals

Over a timespan of 7 days, the siblings go on rotating shifts to stay at the funeral, taking care of the food, coffin and guests.

On Monday it was such an emotional day.
That dreadful high-tech machine that slowly allows you to transport the coffin until you can't see it anymore, before the final push into the cremation machine.

The wails of the relatives, my cries amidst.

I shall cut the drama and skip to the thanking part.

Kudos to dearest Neng who though, couldn't make it, have been constantly checking on how my family and I was coping; Mr Ting who dropped by to say hi and asked about my attachment; as well as Ying, Fung and Minty who talked to me for over 2 hours.

During our conversation, I shared with them about how businessmen are being "smart" of providing better funeral services, like folding incense papers for $20 per pack, and 50 packs minimum. Others including paying $300 for somebody to help out at the funeral, taking over and staying up from 11pm-7am. Even better, bigger paper houses for the dead that would need to build additional tent out of the HDB block, rounding the total cost up to 10K.

Fung then joked about the future funeral being them taking over the entire funeral, while family members just have to stay home/office and observe the whole ceremony through a CCTV.

Funny thing is, it's not hard to believe.
They do everything that I find us being there kind of useless.

Well since my family isn't exactly a small one, and especially when you have a uncle doing big business, it is no wonder we received many condolences flowers and blankets, so much so it's blocking all the walkways.


Orchids, Chrysanthemum, Liles ... you name it.

What surprised a us was this:


A fresh new concept that we like.

Tears dried, rituals over, ash locked.

We live, we die.
That's the way it has to be ...

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