The Maldivian Night Sky.

Spot the clouds!

I remember when I was a boy of about twelve and my brother was about fourteen, we took a family trip up to Penang, my father's hometown. We stayed in The Palm Beach Hotel, a 3-star hotel on Penang Island, a short drive away from the tourist traps and the beach.

I remember we were playing billiards till we got bored one night in the hotel, and my brother and I decided that we would walk on the beach. 

It was an amazing walk on the beach that night - the night was cloudless and the moon was in its full glory. The beach was bathed in this eerie pale blue light, and we spoke in hushed whispers as if we were on hallowed ground. The vast swallowing darkness of the ocean lay just ten metres to our left as the shells crunched beneath our slippered feet. It was a moment of mystery, and magic - and looking to my brother, I thought to myself - 'Dammit, why did I have to share this moment with you?!'

I was twelve, and already I wanted a girl to share these moments with. 

*************************************

I write this because I know that my mind is feeble, and I will surely forget. I will return to Melbourne and to work, and my mind will imagine it differently as it gets cluttered with other noises. 

I was walking back to my room to pick up something one night here in the Maldives, and above me the hazy half moon cast its eerie glow on the world beneath it. You could make out the outlines of the low-lying clouds beneath, slow-moving gentle giants moving halfway between the waters and the stars. 

My slippers slap the wooden walkway leading to our villa, and the ocean echoes underneath. There is a gentle warm breeze caressing my skin, and it causes the coconut trees in the distance to slow sway and the crystal clear waters beneath me to dance in the moonlight. 

I have heard the term 'haunted by its beauty' before. I now understand it. 

Made in Maldives.

Contrary to popular belief, we did not come here on a BMM (baby-making mission). The realities of our three weddings in Melbourne, Malaysia and Singapore back in Dec/Jan earlier this year meant that we returned to Melbourne exhausted and a little 'peopled-out'. We loved our weddings and being able to catch up meaningfully with great friends and families, but we also craved to be alone by the end of it.

Back to work, and back to reality, there have been times in the relationship where it's always been go-go-go and there hasn't been time to sit quietly and be a couple.

Nine months on, we rise and we fall like ordinary couples amongst the waves of life. We talk,we laugh, we expect, we cry, we unconsciously bring work home, we argue, we apologise, we make up, we promise it will be better tomorrow. If we are not careful, we sometimes forget what it meant to be husband and wife.

We finally understood the need for a honeymoon.

And so here we are, amongst the calming turquoise blue of the Indian Ocean, the gentle sound of lapping waves at our doorstep beating out the rhythm of a line of idle days, the white powdery sand giving way to the weight of our footprints. The sun is turned to just the right temperature, its rays dance in the clear waters beneath us.

We are children once more - 6 am dips in the ocean, pointing excitedly at the varieties of fishes swimming underneath our villa, reading aloud interesting paragraphs of the book we've brought, secretly making fun of all the other lovey-dovey couples here with their matching clothes.

We are here learning to be best friends again.


(And then we can talk about making babies. Tee hee!)

The Uncle.

It is a Tuesday night in a famous parmagiana joint in Melbourne. Two Masterchef contestants who are trying their best to remain unobtrusive are sitting over the bar counter eating their parmas, and they add a touch of celebrity to an otherwise sparse and subdued dinnertime crowd at the pub-restaurant.

There are three Indian men sitting near us.

There is a quiet white-haired gentleman, a young man in his early twenties to his right who is his son, and then there is the uncle. The uncle is travelling from interstate on a business trip. The dinner location was his nephew's idea.

The uncle sits there in his business suit, his shirt collar still crisp, peeking out from underneath his grey suit. His back is ramrod straight, he leans forward as he speaks, and his index finger is always making a point.

"You know," he says to his nephew "I know that your amma has asked to see if I can get you a job, just to start somewhere, you know? I am looking, but you know, I want to get you a good job, not just some kind of a shit job."

The nephew smiles a little, upset that he is in a position of need. "That's okay, uncle, I am applying to a few other jobs..."

The uncle dismisses his comments with a wave of his hand. "Have you thought about Dubai? You know, you can make lots of money in Dubai, even if you just start out."

The nephew smiles again, and gives a little shake of his head. His life is here in Melbourne - his family, his footy team, this new girl he's seeing.

The conversation carries on, the uncle continuing to dictate their conversations like a business meeting. They talk about the footy, he looks at the picture of their dogs, they talk about how his brother will be travelling to Europe. His voice is firm and cold - he does not smile even once.

"Wow!" the nephew shakes his head, trying to relieve the high tension of a relaxing family dinner, "I can't believe I finished all that meat!"

"Yeah, it's good. You know, young man, Dubaiii.... if you work there, you can own your own house in four years."

There is more awkward silence. They finish their meal.

"Eh, dessert." says the uncle, staring unblinking at the nephew. It is not an offer. It is a challenge.

The nephew shrinks. He raises his hand with a smile, not meeting his gaze. "No thanks, uncle. I just... can't. This is too much."

The uncle raises one eyebrow and looks down, he lets out a disappointed sigh at this sign of weakness.

He brings out his wallet. It is as thick as a small book, filled with credit cards and receipts from his travel and business cards. His personal assistant must not be able to organise this part of him.

The bill comes and he is quick to snatch it away from the half-hearted attempts by his brother to pay for the meal. It is a dance they are all too familiar with.

"Hey, it's nothing," - he lifts his hand just enough to reveal the cost of their dinner for three to his brother.

He walks to the bar to pay and his brother and nephew are left at the table. They are both quiet, the brother's fingers drum along to the music in the pub. The nephew is deep is thought, wondering what success and happiness looks like, and whether they are the same thing.

"Coffee?."

Surrendered, they stand up, thank uncle for dinner and walk out into the cold Melbourne night.

The Need To Be Alone.

I have just returned from a friend's birthday party after a long day at work. Some good friends have come over to our place to revel in the Saturday night.

I sneak away upstairs and click onto Facebook and just scroll through status update after status update and carry out a conversation with another friend via Facebook chat.

It might seem almost anti-social for me to leave my friends like that on a Saturday night, but they are understanding and do not ask after me.

Later, while in the shower and washing off what was today I think to myself, 'What is wrong with me? Am I really anti-social?' - or is there just something innate that makes us want to be alone sometimes.

I look at my work and obviously it is a very people intensive one. I work with wonderful staff and nurses and the care of our patients is achieved through phone calls and beeping pagers and written notes. The humanity of our work means we will negotiate our way daily past unreasonable expectations and sometimes difficult people - staff, patients and their family members alike.

After work, I visit Karen at her workplace and spend more time with our friends, which usually spills over into dinner time. Home finally, and we try and protect the time that we have together, and yet, as much as I love my wife, I sometimes keep her at arms' length and tell her that I need to be alone. She doesn't always comprehend this need, and I can't explain it away either.

And so I escape. Facebook seems like an odd choice, given that it is social media, but sometimes it is a nice quiet one-way window to all your friend's world, to see what is going on in everybody else's life, and to wish that you too were on that vacation on that sunset-kissed beach or in Paris.

We all 'veg out' in different ways - we curl up in bed with a good book, we let our mouths hang open as we watch a mind-numbing reality series on television, we scan through hours and hours of what can only be described as glorious rubbish on Youtube. 

My friends who understand this phenomenon call it the 'retreating into the man-cave' which I found quite amusing. The term itself suggests that it is a primitive instinct - that our ancestors once too, needed to be alone, away from the mammoths and other cave-dwelling neighbours. The gender attached to the cave begs the question - what do women do?

I believe that it is in this down time, when our brains are in screensaver mode, that we do our best thinking. Our subconscious is given a chance to relax and reorganise our thoughts and secretly solve our problems in the background while we perform seemingly unproductive tasks.

Actual photograph of me on Facebook. 

According to a good friend, the best definition of whether you are an introvert or extrovert is how you recharge - introverts recharge in the solitude of their own company while extroverts recharge around other people. I have always scored down the middle in all the personality tests - both the jester and the philosopher.

So if you are with me one day and I have quietly sneaked away from you, I hope you don't find me rude. I am just recharging, and perhaps just like my forefathers before me - reclaiming a little of who I am.

Sher Genius.

I was walking home after a jog along the M river, when suddenly I hear the bright clang of metallic plates behind me, letting me know that a cyclist was crossing the bridge and fast approaching from behind.

He whizzed past me and shortly after, my ears pricked to the clang of metal again. This time the sound was a lot more dull.

Using my Sherlock(tm)-ian powers of deduction, I surmised that the approaching cyclist was in his sixties, heavyset and a little out of shape, has a wife who doesn't love him anymore, is left-handed, and has two pet dog....

..... and that's when I jumped out of the way of the approaching park-maintenance car.

Genius, Sherlock. Seriously, if I were any stupider, I would be a butternut pumpkin (which are well documented to be the least intelligent of the pumpkin species). 

Let's not talk about my amazing powers of deduction, even my survival instincts are made of fail. 

***************************************

We have been making movie nights out of watching Sherlock, the BBC movie-length miniseries  reinterpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective.

The casting is perfect, with Benedict Cumberbatch making a masterful Sherlock, with the unassuming Martin Freeman playing the competent and endearing yet relatively duller John Watson. The cinematography is as good as anything to have come out of Britain in recent years, jumping between MTV-paced pursuits and claustrophobic suspense scenes. 

The script has been clever to the point of being breathtaking at times, and all Sherlock Holmes fans will delight in the homage paid to the original stories. 221B Baker Street has now been repackaged and reintroduced to a whole new generation of fans.

I remember reading any Sherlock stories I could come across as a child, and now I am re-reading them again on my iPhone. The words are still fresh and the images they conjure in the imagination are as eerie and  entertaining as it must have been to his readers almost 150 years ago.

Apparently the inspiration for Sherlock came from two doctors - Dr Joseph Bell, who could infer the greatest conclusions about his patients from the slightest detail, and Sir Henry Littlejohn who was a Forensic Medicine lecturer and Police Surgeon.

Which goes to show how variable the powers of observation in doctors are - I stand as evidence to the other end of the spectrum. :)

Travelling Home.

Taking the plane home and the captain reminds us firmly to remain belted to our seats.

The stewards patrol the aisles militantly, politely barking at us to prop up our trays, straighten our seats and pull up our window shades, failure of which will cause the plane to spiral madly out of control, leaving all of us screaming and ruing the twenty degrees of economic chair tilt that we indulged in, almost the certain cause of our plummeting death.

It is as I release the window shades that the sun streams in to the plane cabin and squeezes my eyes close.

I open it again, and we are hovering just slightly above the clouds. Five years ago, I would have marveled at this incredible sight, but now experience has dulled the child-like fascination with flying.

How did I get here? How did my eyes and brain get used to such a sight as flying as not to be amazed by it any more?

When I was younger, air travel used to be a novelty for the family. Yes, we would drive interstate on our family vacations and there were times I sat in the carriage of the train in my travels to Singapore, but I was almost twenty-one when I took my first ever flight. We traveled as a family to Melbourne to watch my brother graduate.

Here I am, thousands of miles above the earth, having a view once only belonging to birds, a view that Icarus would have given his left wing to witness, defying gravity and all I can think of is 'meh'.

It is in this moment that I choose once more to let the little boy out again, a small smile etched on my face as we pierced through the cotton fields in the sky, almost feeling the brush of vanilla fairy floss on my face as we plunged through the puffy blankets, our vision momentarily blinded before the earth burst before us below, all different shades of green and brown and orange.

The natural chaos of the forests had been manicured by human industry into palm oil plantations and residential houses. Far-running rivers and roads dissect the land into artificial territories, and below us a million Malaysian stories are unfolding, a million rituals are kept and all these rush at me at once and tell me that I am home.


*****************************************


'Rows and flows, of angel hair,
And ice cream castles in the air, 
And feathered canyons everywhere. 
I've looked at clouds that way.
But now, they only block the sun, 
They rain and they snow on everyone,
So many things I could have done,
But clouds got in my way.'

Joni Mitchell, 'Both Sides Now'. 

The One That Got Away.

It was my first year in Melbourne and the university. It was like being back in your first day of primary school. Except that we came into the start of Semester 5, which meant that everybody knew everybody else, and we were intruding into a very large clique. The new kids on campus.

You were either crying secretly (young adults are not allowed to cry openly), wishing that you were back in the comforts of your home some 6,300 kilometres away, or you were wide-eyed and overly friendly, trying to win the trust of the suspicious natives. Most of them were so cemented in their respective circle of friends that we built our own clique, at least among five or six of us who had come over.

We started making friends cautiously among the more welcoming ones in our batch, and inevitably it was the Asian group who started to open up their circles to welcome us in. (Like attracts like, I guess. I can't explain why I only have a handful of non-Asian friends here in Australia).

The boys who had come over with me were soon becoming fast friends and we spent a lot of time together over meals and holidays. We talked about everything under the sun, and as always, the topic would always fall back to the one subject that freshly post-adolescent boys talk about - girls.

I had barely noticed any of the girls in our batch (no, not because I was looking at the boys, idiot. *flashes wedding ring*) because I suspect I was being overwhelmed by everything else in Australia - living away from home, trying to find accommodation, figuring out how to best budget my money, trying to keep my head above the water with my studies and learning to make new friends. Romantic love is always a luxury, something to be pondered upon and nursed only when you have kicked out of survival mode.

My friend, on the other hand, whose eyes were always roving around everywhere except the blackboard during lectures, started pointing out some of the more attractive girls in our batch. He mentioned the name of a girl who I knew about and shared a class with, but had not thought very much of, until, well, he said she was quite pretty.

Here's the first lesson - sometimes something, be it an object or a person, can pass unnoticed and does not carry any special value until someone else you trust has said Hey, look here - this is valuable. That's the premise of Facebook, I guess (hopefully that's how you got here).

I started paying attention to her a bit more in class, and, against my better judgement, struck up conversation with her. She seemed friendly enough, and quite readily chatted back. Our conversations grew longer and easier, and her eyes seemed to light up whenever she laughed.

Or that's how I saw it through my rose-tinted glasses. (Rose-tinted glasses - distorting reality one delusion at a time. Get yours now!)

I waited until right after my exams before I made my move. We were migrating as a student herd away from the examination hall, all of us chatty and elated that the exams were finally over with the mid-year holidays to look forward to, when I popped the question - 'Urm, hey, do you want to go out for coffee some time?'

Her girlfriends around her did the 'Oooh...' thing that adolescent girls do when a guy asks that question, and she was caught off-guard, but managed to regain her composure and stammered out a cheery 'Urm, yeah, sure! Here's my number!'

I smiled to myself, secretly fist-pumping within (self-five!), and we parted ways, with me walking with a particular spring in my step.

But...

There's always a but. I played it cool (looking calm on the outside with all the eagerness of an puppy with ADHD on the inside), letting a few days slip by during the first day of holidays before I finally made that call to her.

It was an awkward first conversation over the phone, filled with enough small talk to drown a Smurf before I ended the conversation with the primary intention of the call - So, when's a good time for us to catch up over coffee?

Silence.

Here's some excuses I've prepared earlier:

'... shopping with my sister on Chapel street for her wedding dress...'
'... then lunch with friends tomorrow...'
'... catching up with some other friends on Thursday...'
'... rearranging my wardrobe on Saturday. Been putting that off for awhile...'

I know when I am getting blown off. We ended the conversation pretty quickly after that, and so I put down the phone with a sigh.

Something moved in me that day, though. Maybe it was the fact that I was now in a new country. It's time to turn over a new leaf, to be brave, nothing to fear but fear itself and all that, and I decided to try something that I had never tried before in pursuit of a girl - persistence.

The very next day I call her again and say, Hey look, I would really love to meet up. Why don't you tell me when's a good time.

She panicked this time, pulled out her Book of Excuses again, and flipped right to the page marked 'In Case of Emergency, say this...'

'Yeah, I'm not sure but I definitely won't be able to do this afternoon, because I'm going out to lunch with my boyfriend, right, and then we are going to...'

She kept talking nervously after that but it was all just in one ear and out the next.

Boyfriend. Right.

All my brittle newfound determination and dogged Salesmen-of-the-year-like persistence suddenly just gave way beneath me.

What happened to me for the next six months I can't explain to you. The pain that I felt from that girl's rejection, a girl who I knew barely anything about and who, if I really thought about it, meant nothing to me, was almost physical in nature. Her unattainability had suddenly made her even more desirable and me more miserable.

It is never in my nature to ever come between a couple, and so I gave her up there and then, standing on the sidelines instead, eating tubs of ice-cream and singing myself to sleep with self-pitying renditions of All By Myself on my pillow wet with tears.

Okay, so it wasn't that dramatic but it hurt. A lot. Significantly out of proportion to the situation. The old Self-Esteem took a downright beating. But Time is kind, and a great physician of all hurts, and in about six months I was finally able to let go and move on.

Sounds like a long time for someone I barely knew. Here's the second lesson - love is a crazy, inexplicable thing. The matters of the heart are beyond the laws of arithmetics and reasoning. But if you're really, really lucky, and you wish really, really hard, one day you will meet someone who will give you the ability to look back at life - and love - and laugh.

With relief.    

Other People's Stories: (Nearly) Taken in Thailand

My friends, a wonderful married couple now, recount a time when she was almost kidnapped in Thailand, a country they still visit almost yearly.

There were six of us, right, and we were trying to get a cab to take us to our next destination. There were two cabs there, and so the three guys stood there negotiating with one of the taxi drivers while the girls were sitting in the other cab. 

There were two girls at the back while I sat in front, with the door open, one leg out of the car. That's when our cab suddenly took off, right, and I had to reach for the car door to close it! I yelled at the taxi driver to Stop!! Stop!! but he just kept speeding away. 

Yeah, we were like 'What the _?' when we saw the other cab suddenly take off, right? 'Cause we never told that guy where we were going.

Man, I tell you, that look on B_'s face was one I will never forget. She turned towards me, her eyes wide open and dilated with fear and she was banging both arms against the window, yelling out to me.

We hopped into our cab, and told him to follow the other cab. We tried to catch up with the other cab, but he was driving too quickly, and he sped through the maze of back-alleys and small lanes until we lost him.

We were yelling at our taxi driver to call his friend in the other cab. He rang the friend's mobile but the friend would not answer. 

All that ran through my head was like, Oh man, what am I going to tell her parents, man. 

All three of us girls were shocked, silent with fear and stunned to the point of being unable to react. 
Yeah, you know what saved us? 

Thailand traffic.

We were caught up in a jam on a main road, and saw our chance to escape. We bolted out of the cab, and threw some baht onto the seats and just ran and ran, through like, eight lanes of traffic. 

We finally found a landmark and called the boys to come and get us. 

Thank God, man. I shudder to think what the guy's intentions were for us. 

Yeah, so, travel tip for Thailand. Make sure the guy is always the first to get into the cab, and the last to leave. I heard about a guy who was loading their shopping into the taxi's trunk when the cab took off with his wife in the backseat and she was never seen again.

These things are rare lah you know, but...

His voice trails off, and his eyes peer into an alternate universe for a moment where the girls did not escape, and he shudders a little and shakes his head back into a reality where she is across the table from him, smiling.