Sunday, November 25, 2007

Deconstructing Me

I guess it has been quite a difficult few weeks for me. It almost seems like I've lost my identity in the past few weeks. I have been wrapped in a coccoon of denial this past year, but one by one the silk wrappings are being picked at, unravelled, and I realise now that there's still so much more to learn about myself.

'Who am I?'

'How did I get here?'

'Where am I going?'

The first two questions are already really tough questions to answer. What's more disconcerting, however, is that I have no answer for the third one.

It is times like these that I sometimes marvel at my parents. I mean, surely they didn't struggle with all these pretentious questions. Their priorities and mindsets were different - fall in love, get married, have children, work hard for yourself and the kids, retire and enjoy it.

I don't know if Pa ever struggled with the future at my age. I'm sure he did, but he put his head down, and kept pushing to the finish line. I wish I could be the man he was at my age, rather than, as my brother aptly puts it, a high school kid with a job.

' I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is! I love him Laurel, I... love him! '
-Dorothy Boyd, as played by Renee Zellweger, Jerry Maguire 1996-
At what point does a person become an adult?

Ruddslide - Labor Day

Seen on a chalked signboard outside a pub called the Victorian:

Elections have got you in a Rudd? Howard you like a drink instead?

Oh how I love witty wordplay!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Great Indoors

'Scared of a world outside you should go explore,
Pull all the shades and wander the great indoors...'
John Mayer, Great Indoors

One would think that with all the hard work put in at the Emergency Department that I would make use of the days off better. I mean, Melbourne is beautiful this time of the year, and the weather is picture perfect every day.

Which doesn't explain why it is that I spend most of it wandering the great indoors. I snuggle up in bed, draw the shades, and settle in with a good book instead.

I need someone to drag me out into the sun!

Thing No. 6: The Boy Goes to Skool (Darjah Dua)

People always think about school in terms of school time - your teachers, every period, recess, your friends, physical education sessions - but they often forget about the hours that matter, the hours spent milling about after school ended, especially on a Friday afternoon.

As a child, when school ended, only two things matter - what game will you be playing with your friends, and what you are going to be eating while you're playing those games.

I will save the games that we used to play for another entry, but today I want to remember the things we used to eat, or more importantly, the interesting people who sold them.

When school ended for the day, there was this huge compound outside our primary school where kids would invariably end up, and either start up a game of marbles, or play police and thief, or just mill about waiting for for their parents or schoolbus to pick them up.

And what better place than that grassy compound for the itinerant hawkers to come and sell their things to us:

1) There was Uncle Johnny, the perennially tanned, chubby, foul-mouthed, fortysomething ice cream and drinks seller who stayed with us into our high school years. I can remember his old motorcycle with the accompanying single wheeled sidecart where all the goodies were kept.

He would sell everything from the branded icecreams [Walls' Cornetto, Paddle Pop (Paddle Pop! Wow! Paddle Pop! Yeah! Superduperyummy!)] to the simple generic scoops which you could either have on a cone, or in between two wafers - an icecream sandwich, the best invention ever!

Somehow, Johnny had enough space in his metallic sidecart for bottles of soft drinks as well. Read that properly, we're talking Coke and Sprite and Fanta Orange and Sarsi in glass bottles. None of that recyclable aluminium cans, thank you very much. I loved those glass bottles - the bottle caps could be used for games, and there's just something authentic about drinking soft drinks from dirty glass bottles with the fading Coca-Cola or F&N trademark, you know.

2) His closest competitor was this old uncle, who was fat and was always in a singlet and gray shorts. He had none of Johnny's youth or enterprise, and he only had a bicycle.

On the back of this dilapidated bicycle was a metal box where he all he sold was aiskrim potong - red bean, corn, pandan - all for a measly five sen each. I had no idea how this man was making a living. Surely you cannot make an ice cream stick for less than five sen, right, uncle? Or are you a millionaire in disguise just bringing happiness to little kids?

What was interesting about this uncle was that on the metal box itself, was a rudimentary 'Wheel Of Fortune' like wheel made out of a circular wood and some rusty nails. You could spin the wheel for as many times as the ice cream that you bought. One time for one ice cream, two times for two ice creams, and so forth.

All along the wheel were slots reading 'Kosong' 'Satu' 'Dua' ('Zero' 'One' 'Two') which were the amount of sticks that you could potentially win. So, five sen for one stick, and a potential of winning two more ice cream sticks. Seriously uncle, this is your front for selling drugs right?

3) There was this Malay auntie who used to sell curry puffs, prawn fritters and popsicles who we absolutely adored. She was really mild mannered and had a very cute young daughter to boot

( I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no, she was too young, and which primary school kid thinks about those things... although, there would have been an endless supply of curry puffs and prawn fritters if I did marry her. Another one that got away.)

The lady would sit outside under the sprawling acacia tree, with her basket full of warm goodies, and we would rush to buy it from her. She would put your curry puffs and prawn fritters into these clear plastic bags, and you could always request for her to squirt in some homemade cili sos.

And the popsicles - oh the popsicles - all kinds of colours and flavours, from orange to lime and grape, but my favourite would have to be the one with the assam - it even had the assam seed at the bottom! She would cut off the top of the sausage like plastic bag which held the cold treat and we would greedily chew away at the plastic, sucking hard to eviscerate the icy innards.

Her husband was actually a gardener at our school, and they lived in a shed at the back of the school. During recess, we would venture to the back of the school, desperate for a curry puff or prawn fritter fix. Not even the fact that the shed lived right next to the dirtiest place in school - the primary school boy's toilet of unspeakable horrors - could deter us from eating there.

4) Finally, there was this ancient uncle, and by ancient, I mean that he was a mummy who somehow lost his tissue paper covering - this man was a skeleton with skin, and had none of his teeth left, so his mouth always looked like it caved in, and he probably had a cataract in one eye. He had the old man walk going on as well - shuffling slowly along, hunched in his grey trousers and dirty white collared short sleeve T-shirt so that he was always looking at the floor.

He would always carry around his white gunny sack of goodies with him (like a Tim Burton idea of a Santa), and, finding the spot under the tree away from the curry puff auntie, he would open the sack and lay down a mat where he would parade his wares.

He had everything a kid would want -

  • those tiny playing cards with the random cartoons in front (I will explain the game later)
  • the tiny boxes with the four small bubble gum balls in them (you remember them - bursts of strawberry or grape or blueberry, flavorful but useless for making bubbles)
  • the sticks of fish satay - all glazed and sesame seeded for your eating pleasure!
  • the bubble gums which I swear were made using the byproducts of heroin manufacturing - you know, the ones with the red or yellow wrappers with a bear blowing bubbles in the front, and the temporary tattoos on the inside? - the bubble gum itself had this eerie white powder around it, not that it stopped us from popping it into our mouths!
  • marbles - from the milk ones to the cobras and the multicoloured glass ones
  • the card games like Donkey, Old Maid, Happy Family (one happy family at home!) and Snap.

This uncle was like our own personal Willy Wonka, only deader.

Other hawkers came and went but these four were the perennials who I remember distinctly, unobtrusive witnesses to us, the children as we grew up in the sun of that grass courtyard in front of our school.

The Long Weekend

It was a very difficult yet fulfilling weekend for me - four straight days of work in the Emergency Department in the mornings from Friday to Monday. It is fun work in the ED, no doubt, but it can be physically draining as well, and that's why they've kept it to four days of work a week for all doctors.

Working the mornings always leave the evening open for potentially wonderful dinners, and it started on Friday when I managed to catch up with my K and PL at Kake di Hatti, which was the equivalent of the Indian Rose Garden, given the speed at which the food was served to us! It was fast Indian food which was pretty good, and we adjourned to their apartments which I have yet to see. It was a really nice little place, and against the Melbourne city night skyline as our backdrop, we chatted late into the night the way we used to.

I was really excited about Saturday night because I was going to see P who was coming down from Sydney for a dance conference. P is a good friend and my Christian mentor back in my IMU days, and seeing her was a rare annual treat.

It was pretty late in the evening when we finally went out that Saturday. We walked the streets of Toorak just catching up, and when it was time, we went to squire'sloft for some pretty darn good steaks. Having said that, however, whenever I meet up with P, the food becomes an aside, and it is always the conversations that takes centre stage. She becomes my sounding board, and well, let's just say that I continue to discover things about myself through her eyes which continue to surprise me.

We had such a good time and the few hours flew by too quickly, and so we met up again on Sunday night for dessert. This time she got to tell me her stories and I marveled at the journey that shaped her life and her marriage - I thought I knew all there was to know about her, but I was so wrong!

She shared this verse with me this visit, and unbeknownst to her, she actually shared this verse with me 4 years ago after Dad passed away.

Psalms 84:5-7

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.

6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

I feel that there she herself must have clung on to these words during her hardest times, and now she continues to reinforce it in my life, as I set my heart on the pilgrimage, into the journey of understanding who I am, and how I got to where I am today.

That's partially why I write this blog.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Beginning of Wisdom

I spent last night catching up with an old friend, and we sat over salmon and steak - I listened intently as she regaled her stories over the past six months of where she's been and what she's done. She's just returned from a missions trip to Africa, in Worcester (how English sounding is this colonial name in an African country!) and Lesotho.

I just sat transfixed as she told me her stories, and this was an honest evaluation of the whole thing - it wasn't all easy and smooth sailing at all. Anyone who is going on a missions trip and not expecting to be broken needs to wake up from their ideals.

And I watched the heartbreak as she told the problems she had with the leaders of the centre, supposed Christian leaders who showed none of the grace of God to them. The six months of emotional stress began pouring out, because my friend in all her nobility had shouldered the burdens silently.

'Has there been nothing good from these six months?' I ask.

'I have changed,' she said, simply.

I burst out laughing. No you haven't.

'And I don't care if nobody sees it.'

'I now understand how much God really loves me. I understand the meaning of grace now, of how little I deserve, and of how much he truly loves me.'

Amidst all this turmoil, I watch as a silent hope stirs in my friend, afflicted by the fallings of human nature, and - having nothing else to cling on to but her God - she clung on to Him for dear life.

In that moment, under the soft yellow glow of the restaurant and the lingering chatter of the other patrons that night, I smile from her across the table.

I can't see it, you're right, but you have changed.

I think one of the greatest joys in my life is seeing someone come to realise the full extent of God's love and grace for them. Many Christians are still trying to earn their salvation, or earn the love of their heavenly Father, unfortunately, in the same way sometimes that we try to earn our flawed earthly father's love or approval.

I haven't been to church enough. I haven't converted enough souls to God. I didn't take the opportunity to speak up for Christ when I had the chance. I can't speak to God because He has disappointed me. Or I have disappointed Him. If only. I am going to be standing before His throne and have nothing to show for this life.

On and on we self flagellate. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm condoning sin and impassivity. But I wish for all of us the freedom from guilt and anger towards ourselves and towards a God who loved us so much He came down in the form of us, to identify with us, and ultimately to die for us.

God loves you. Unconditionally. Let that truth set you free.