The Selangor royal tomb at Bukit Melawati... And my fetish for numbers!

Greeting dear readers. Normally, I would post pictures of old tombs at the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) . I have these pictures of the Selangor royal tomb at Bukit Melawati ready to be posted there when my peculiar (or rather, superstitious?) sense of number prompted me to post it here instead!

You see, by right I should have started my travel to the East Coast via a certain route in Negeri Sembilan yesterday. But while on the way from Kuala Lumpur, my gut instinct somehow told me to change course and rest somewhere first before officially starting the journey on Thursday, today that is. Anyway, let's move to the pictures. Here goes...

OK... Here is a sign-board marking the place where the royal tomb stood at Bukit Melawati. For information, there's a few other buildings on the hill including a museum and a tower for viewing the moon.

The royal tomb is actually the last place I visited at Bukit Melawati in this trip. Earlier, I had a looked inside the museum among other places, the Selangor History Museum and took some pictures... Pictures which have been posted in the article Senjata Melayu lama di Bukit Melawati (Old Malay weapons at Bukit Melawati) at the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) just before I started this article.

Another signboard explains a bit what's in store. But I'm not sure if it is open to the public. After all, it is a royal tomb and normally such places are not open to visitors...

Now, when making my last posting here, Finally. Back to KL... But with excursions to Tronoh, Kuala Kubu Baru and Rawang... on Sunday, I thought I'm finally done with story-telling of past travels and would go the East Coast afresh with no backlog of stories that needs to be let out.

Then I realised that my digital camera actually got 87 pictures taken after my last long travel, the Kedah and Perak trips were done over a month ago... If I want to start afresh for the coming travel, I must erase all the pictures in the camera...

This I must do by first tranferring the pictures elsewhere. Then, I should tell the stories about those pictures, mainly the 80 plus or so taken in Kuala Selangor on the 8th of March 2008 which happens to be the 12th Malaysian elections polling day!

Nevertheless I got inside the tomb area. Here is a signboard explaining a certain exhibit there...

Anyway, the 87 pictures put me in a quandary. As it is stored in an SD card, I need a computer with an SD card slot or reader before I could use any of it for my blogspots. At least then I could transfer it into my pen-drive and this could then be used at any Cyber-Cafe where I tend to make my postings nowadays.

The problem is normal home computers such as the ones used at Cyber-Cafes don't have SD card slots. I need a laptop for the job (since all modern laptops have one) but my own beloved laptop was still stranded for repair in a shop in Kuala Lumpur since over a month ago!

Back to the tomb area... The exhibit in question is a cannon. The yellow-clothes wrapped around it is to signify the cannon as of royal status... And perhaps it has magical powers.

So I was in this quandary on how to tackle the pictures inside my digital camera when later in the afternoon, people from the shop where my laptop was under repair finally called... Imagine, after a month having my computer languishing there because they had to wait for the right inner component to arrive before they could make the repair. So I immediately rushed to Kuala Lumpur to grab the laptop, never mind I had to pay more than RM400 for the job.

The main tomb building itself is locked. Inside, lies the bodies of Selangor's first 3 Sultans, Sultan Salehuddin (officially said to have ruled 1766-1782 but noted by some to have been installed as the ruler of Selangor since 1743), Sultan Ibrahim (ruled 1782-1826) and Sultan Muhammad (ruled 1826-1857) and their close family members.

At least one problem was solved today... I could transfer the pictures from the camera into my pen-drive using the laptop. And that means I could upload the pictures on-line later...

This board gives a simple Selangor royal genealogy. Also shown is a brief history of the first ruler, Sultan Salehuddin who is also known as Raja Lumu, son of the famous Bugis prince Daeng Chelak.

And so here I am in a Cyber-Cafe starting the process of telling the stories around the 87 pictures transferred from the digital camera. After having a look at the whole lot, I decided to start with pictures of old Malay weapons posted at the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) ... Then these pictures of the Selangor royal tomb would follow...

I thought when these are done, then I would make piece on the hills at Tanjung Keramat, some 2km west of Bukit Melawati specifically for this blogspot. Afterwards I would sum up everything in Malay for the blogspot CATATAN SI MERAH SILU ...

Outside the tomb building are these other tombs wrapped in black clothings. Some said the colour signify warriors of certain standing.

But as it turns out the posting on old Malay weapons, called Senjata Melayu lama di Bukit Melawati (Old Malay weapons at Bukit Melawati) is the 115th in the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) . I thought it would be the 114th but a check at the blogspot's dashboard showed I was wrong... I already made the 114th posting (titled Masjid Universiti Petronas di (Petronas University mosque in) Tronoh, Perak... ) on Sunday!

That sort of distrupted my whole plan for distributing the pictures into articles for all my 3 blogspots. You see, if I decided to go on with my earlier plan, then by the end of the night, I would end up with a total of 116 postings in the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) , 177 here and 262 in CATATAN SI MERAH SILU ...

Somehow the totals don't feel right... Somehow, I don't feel it to be in harmony with my expectations that tonight's posting should clear all my backlog of stories (and even some emotional blockages!) before I finally embark on the journey towards the East Coast...

The name in this picture should say it all... Translated to English, here is the tomb of the "Black warrior".

So instead, I decided to put the pictures of the Selangor royal tomb in this blogspot instead of SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) ... As it turns out, among the 87 pictures transferred from the camera today, there's also a few pictures of Kuala Lumpur that also "screams" to be seen. So I thought I would use it for some sort of farewell article in the blogspot CATATAN SI MERAH SILU .

These changes should sum up to a total of 115 postings for SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) , 178 here and 263 in CATATAN SI MERAH SILU... That is by the time everything is let out tonight. Strange as it is, somehow to me, the number brings back equilibrium and thus I may travel to the East Coast in peace without any more baggage or worries. Ends! :]