Each Grain of Rice is Precious

Miss the meals at the Mountain...
Meals are generally in buffet style, served with rice, or sometimes buns are available too, around 3 dishes: tofu, green vege or mushrooms, with fruits and soup. You just choose what and how much you could eat, with unlimited helpings. Unlike rice generally eaten in Singapore, the rice there are locally grown and of the short grain species, tastes very much like Japanese rice, very Q and soft.

And all these delicious meals prepared for the hugh number of devotees are made possible due to the hardwork of Venerables, volunteers and donors behind the scenes.
(An day's experience as a volunteer at the kitchen, you can see many mothers or grandmothers all helping and they were also very kind to give a tip or two to the clumsy young volunteers like myself on how to use the knives to cut the vegetables safely when they saw our clumsiness.:P In the evening, some of us helped at the cutlery washing section, where we washed, cleaned, and dried the various gigantic pots, ladles, bowls, etc, used to serve the mass.)
After seeing the process & helping to prepare the vegetables to be cooked into a meal, we better understood & treasure even more the meals being served to us during meal times. The appreciation of the famous phrase of "Each grain of rice is precious" (粒粒皆辛苦) was much enhanced just based on the work required to plan and prepare even a simple meal (for the thousands of devotees...), not to mention the stages before the vegetables are delivered to the temple….
The meals, which already tasted delicious, became even more delicious....
Caring Snacks
No matter where you are, they are sent to you...

Lovely bread being delivered to us by volunteers while we were helping to sweep the road to the main shrine near the foot of the mountain.

Reflecting back on the days of volunteering at DDM, one will really appreciate the planning and logistics of all for an event.