Of Christmas & paintings from the Holy Land

- In Singapore, we have the Geylang light-up for Hari Raya. Lampu lap-lep kata orang Singapore.
- Bright lights shine in Little India (Serangoon Road) for Diwali.
- And Chinatown gets a lot of tang-long lights for the Lunar New Year.
- For Xmas, the shiniest area is in Orchard Road.

Truth be told, I stay away from these places during those times.
I can't stand the commercialisation of religion. Or maybe I just don't like bloody crowds.


But in the city where Jesus was born, Bethlehem (Baitul Laham), a sad story is told by my fav magazine, NatGeo, in 2007 - see here.
It is just a few km from Jerusalem, an ancient city that I visited earlier this year.
But there were fewer and fewer visitors.

We shall not go into the politics here. Just the sadness of peoples being broken apart and how a place of religion is dying due to politics.
If you have no time to read the text, just look at the sad, sad pictures.

A very interesting story (and an interesting picture) about Nabi Isa A.S. is given by Roslan SMS in Bahasa.

Merry Xmas.



-------------------------------------------------------
DAVID ROBERTS

Forgive me for being orang kampung, but I only discovered the No.1 painter for Egypt and the Holy Land, David Roberts, when I went to errr... Egypt and the Holy Land (ie Jerusalem to Christians and Jews. It is holy land to Muslims too, no?).
Roberts is like the foremost artist on how the old era looked like, in the 1800s.
Once you see his paintings, those kampung houses by the sea pictures that we get in this part of the world would never be the same again!

I bought a couple of books that contained his prints of his paintings at very mahal prices near the pyramids. Harga tourist.
Beautiful details, superb human shapes, great colours and shades.
Tak tau mana mamat Scotland ni belajar melukis. Kat Pasar Seni kot?

PICTURE - His painting on how Baitul Laham looked like.

More fabulous paintings by him here and here - these cost a house and your Lexus to buy these days. But you can order the prints at much cheaper prices.