Wow... amazing, I guessed I last visited Pulau Ubin 4 months back and so many pleasant little surprises when I went there.
I am particularly amazed at the current state of the
German Girl Shrine(you can notice from the link that shows the state of the temple a few years back); a shrine that housed the remains of a German Girl who lived in Pulau Ubin many many years back. People flock to this temple to pray for fortune like buying toto etc and gee I guessed that quite a number of them got their prayers answered. Apparently someone has renovated the temple very recently (the shrine got a flesh coat of paint and newly expanded zinc roof and tiling on the floor) and from what I heard from two villagers living there, that someone has strike lottery and won a few hundred thousands of dollars and naturally he wanted to repay the "German Girl Deity"
I am somehow quite attached to the German Girl Shrine. Since I stumbled upon this temple about 8 years back, I have seen it transformed from an abandoned rundown place to now what it is today; there is now a caretaker and there are a constant stream of worshipers flocking to the temple praying for luck.
Do not wish to boast :P but it makes me think that how one or two persons' efforts can really create something great to happen (a bit like the chaos theory or the butterfly effect)... just recounting...
When I saw this temple 8 years back... it was really in bad shape. There are holes on the roof and termites etc and apparently there was this old caretaker who passed away. I also got to know that the temple was standing on state land without a permit and it might be demolished. My friend (Michael Kam) and I did a documentary about our search for this German Girl's identity and then I brought a reporter from Straits Times and she did quite a big write up on the newspaper. In the midst of it, Both me and my friend went to appeal to Land Transport Authority and even Singapore Tourism Board to ask whether the temple can be preserve...
Gradually over a span of four years perhaps from the publicity generated from the
Straits Times article and also by word of mouth, more people came to know about this temple and even more newspaper articles came up and the authorities eventually issued a license (TOL)
to someone who will take care of the temple (btw there are two caretakers, one of them holds the license and effectively is the owner and the other one who comes almost everyday to clean up the temple... anyway I don't really like the former cause I think he got some ulterior motive... will talk about this perhaps next time). Soon enough some worshipers got lucky and they repayed the deity by renovating the temple etc. In fact the Straits Times article even inspired a playwright to staged a play entitled
"Moving Gods" and perhaps that the German Girl Deity bestowed her little blessing on me, I was fortunate to get the playwright's permission to do a tele-movie adaption of "Moving Gods" and screened at Arts Central channel. Though I must say that while filming, my production crew and myself encountered some spooky unexplained incidents there... to be continued :)
