The Drive Home

I decided to try a new route home from work the other night.

In the year that I've been working at this hospital, I have always taken the same road home - the same road that carries me past suburban houses and petrol stations, the journey interrupted by traffic lights changing their minds ever so often. I am never alone on these trips, often competing with the hustle and bustle of rush hour, and, even in the most solitary nights, another car will often turn up to keep me company.

This new route starts off on a highway and then tapers off into the crowded Sydney Road - a mess of tram lines, jaywalking pedestrians and turning cars flanked by exotic Middle Eastern and Indian shops.

The part I like best is the highway bit, as it reminds me a bit of home. The eternal roads with long stretches of blind darkness dispersed only by the force of my headlights. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Phantom of the Opera, the Goo Goo Dolls and Boyz II Men, crowded into my USB transmitter, each one in turn escaping to keep me company, filling my car with our duets.

I get a glimpse of home, and by God's grace I will be home soon.

Random Memories: Ten Years Old

The things that we remember most as children in the Cheok family were the trips that we took interstate. It would often be school holidays, and Dad, despite his disability, would get us into the modified Proton Saga and take us to Penang or Ipoh to see our relatives and have a holiday.

We would often bring along tapes to play in the car - we had a boxful of cassettes given by a thoughtful church member to our family (that's how we came to know the Beatles, Nana Moskouri and Frank Sinatra) and one year we had ABBA's Gold hits to accompany us (take a chance take a chance take a cha-cha-chance If you change your MIND, I'm the first in LINE, Honey can't you SEE, take a chance on ME...take a chance take a chance take a cha-cha-chance) on our family trip.

I remember the early days, before the days of highways and toll plazas, when you had to use the trunk roads to get interstate. These were often two tiny lanes with traffic coming in both directions, separated only by the perforated invisible wall formed by the intermittent white stripes on the road.

It was not uncommon to see families stopping by the side of the bigger roads (three, maybe four lanes), their children clambering to the grassy knolls with the uneasy waddle of someone with a full bladder near to the point of explosion. The more modest ones had both their front and back car doors open, forming a makeshift urinal as they answered Mother Nature's call on Mother Earth.

These trunk roads often traversed small towns, whose economies were booming due to the weary travellers taking a break at their restaurants, stopping for food and to brave their toilets. These toilets were often grimy and stunk with years of unwash and neglect, repulsive to a point where it would only be used by the most desperate of people, which the travellers often were. These were the times that I was glad I was a boy, as there was no way I would even dream of approximating my skin to the toilet bowls.

I remember it was only my brother and myself in the early years, and we would play games to keep ourselves entertained in the long rides, when the songs ceased to be fun to sing along to anymore.

(I spy... with my two little eyes, something beginning with the letterrrr.... 'L'
*looks around wildly while his brother tries to follow his gaze*
'Land?' "No."
'Lamp post?' "Nope."
'Lorries?' "NOPE!"
'I give up!!!' "LIGHT!!! cackle cackle" *avoids the playful punches his brother throws at him*)

Our little sister finally joined us as a family, singing along to the songs and trying to outwit us in our childish games. And during lulls in our journey, she would rest her tired little head on our laps, dreaming five year old dreams while we stared outside the car window, watching the world go by at a hundred kilometres an hour.