Negeri Sembilan ~ a spooky palace?

I was reading about designs on keris hilts the other night and discovered a thing or two about crickets.

Apparently in Negri Sembilan, a cricket is the soul of a house. Which is kind of spooky. Because as it happened, sometime mid last year, we visited the old Malay palace in Seri Menanti in Negri Sembilan.

And guess what landed on my hand as I took pictures outside the palace. Talk about spooky. Haha.

Well, I'm not too sure what it is. I think it's a grasshopper, but then again, I never devoted myself to the science of entomology.

I decided to look at pictures of crickets and grasshoppers, maybe my untrained eye can spot the difference.

Cricket

Grasshopper



Nah, I can't tell really.

Maybe it's the way the hind legs are folded in a grasshopper as opposed to them being open wide in crickets?

And this is the critter that jumped onto my hand as I took pictures. Surprised me the handsome bug, but I recovered sufficiently to take a picture :)

Now, I'm thinking, damn, that might've the palace's soul. If only I'd known. I might have made a wish or something. Can we do that? More importantly, could it grant wishes? I wish! Haha, that would've made my day.

Rantau Abang ~ dancing on the beach!

A beach. Just the sea and the sand.

A late evening sun.  Just right to cast long shadows.

A light breeze. Just enough to tease the hair without being annoying.

A gentle surf. Just enough to create a hypnotic rhythm.

Who could not be persuaded that everything had been pre-arranged in perfect harmony and detail especially for two souls to converge on that beach on that evening to delight in each other?