A Little Malaysian Goes A Long Way

A Vietnamese meal and a bottle of wine were the beginning and the end.

The long and short of it was that I dropped my driver’s license, unknowingly, somewhere in the dark streets of Richmond, Melbourne one night in my search of the perfect bowl of Vietnamese noodles. About a week later, a lady working in Kampung Pandan, Kuala Lumpur sends a letter to my home, saying her brother in Melbourne picked my license up and would I like to have it sent, or collected somehow.

She had sent the letter twice, after having it returned the first time due to some postcode mix-up. I call her up, then her brother, who turns out to be a cook in Tien Tien, an Asian restaurant in St. Kilda’s. He says he came home one night, and there it was on his doorstep. Probably a neighbour had picked it off the street and thought it was his, or some relative’s.

I collect the fateful document at the restaurant, which is charming, and return a few days later with a bottle of wine as a gift. He takes it after much back and forth, then proceeds to cook dinner for me and a friend, and refuses to let us pay for it. Because we are all Malaysians, he says, and have “yuen fen”, to meet each another.

Kinship, across borders with people you have never met. I am inspired, and so comforted to have encountered this – simple yet amazing bond among us. Good things in life are hardly free, but you know, evil is banal as good is simple.

Thanks again Kee Weng! I am a lucky girl.

Good quote

...Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...Do not...seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will...gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter No. 4


Without a doubt, for better or worse, this has somehow often been the case.

Thanking Distracted by Shiny Object, whose blog is on Blogs of Note today for the quote. Nice pages you got there.

1st quarter and selective feeding

February gave me the slip. Today is March 1, before you know it the first quarter will be over.

Where am I? Where have I been? Well the year started sickly, literally. I was hospitalized for the first time in my life, for mild typhoid supposedly contracted from Indonesia. Then I went to Hong Kong. Then Manila. Then home for the Chinese New Year. Then Manila, and Hong Kong and Manila again. 3 weeks home, 6 weeks away. 7 weekends home, and 2 weekends away. Time measured in expense claim statements.

Well. I suppose that it just where I have physically been. In my mind, the hospital is far away and so much has happened since. It is true what they say - we race ahead. A month apart can mean many different things. It may not seem that way in hindsight when you are 50, but hey even 50 is getting redefined. I wouldn’t even use it as a benchmark of old people anymore.

An interesting quote picked up over the weekend:

“Ï guess that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares, Martin, we've got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.”

Yes we have time to feed. Yet we have a disproportionately larger amount of what do you call them? Things, to supply. Living the so-called corporate life half the time, and trying to make a life out of the other half means these "things" are called challenges, priorities, ideals, realities, emotions, surprises, disappointments, realizations, learnings, rubbish, egos, fatigue, hunger, adventures, reflections, appreciation, recuperation etc.

Getting lost. And finding your way, defining the way. Sometimes uncontrollably yet necessarily veering off it, redefining it, and staying on it. All take time.

But then, this entry is already longer than it should be. Because simply, there are only a few appetites that one should indulge at a time, and the trick is to have a handle on which.

It’s like finding the Optimal Feeding Pattern to Optimize Results of Life. I bet some management consultants would love to work on this one.

And on the flipside we find

This other un-great thing about travelling. For business. And very frequently.

When you just had a great Chinese New Year break with family and good friends and it feels too soon to leave.

And packing and calling the cab seems to be going against every grain in your body - like slicing salmon sashimi in the wrong direction.

And you're standing in the terminal, holding an overly sweet chai latte with scalded sticky fingers because it spilled as you pulled the lid off.

And you sigh enough to move the plane as you unfold your little tray table and switch on your laptop.

But little mercies - the comfort hanging around in a bookshop brings, good enough company from the stranger sitting next to you, airport acquaintances who will share the journey to this place not our home, and colleagues who do not piss the hell out of you when you arrive.

I will want what I have. Oh the realities are so real they make me shudder, but I'm taking them. With a nod and that smile.

My first time in Europe

Inspired by how interesting and strangely prophetic it is to read old blog entries, I will write about this, regardless of facebook status updates and posting of albums.

So. My first trip to Europe.

I got to see Lausanne, Paris and Amsterdam.

I saw snow-capped mountains while flying over Geneva and renewed that same feeling of awe when approaching the brick-red mountains of California last year. I can’t believe I am here.

I thought it plain silly to require euro coins to operate the luggage trolleys in the Geneva airport. Which foreigner lands with local coins on hand?

I was and still am intrigued by Evian, where they produce Evian across from Lake Ouchy in Lausanne. I hope I’ll get to go the next time.

I think the KLM lounge in Amsterdam is brilliant, and in Geneva like a bus stop.

I landed in hailing Amsterdam, and sat in bed watching the pebbly ice knock on the high windows in the dead of the night.

We missed the Thalys to Paris, and I got to see snow for the first time. It was cold.

We had the coziest, most wonderful apartment in Paris and I will never forget it. It even came with food, like a close relative had thought of you and stocked up before leaving.

People huddled close in queue to go up the Eiffel Tower – it was so cold. Just being up there, there in Paris, on the Eiffel! was for me, so fulfilling. Walking down through it was even better. I felt I knew how Batman felt, hanging on to the structures in that blue Gotham City light.

Sacre Coeur, or the Sacred Heart Church. It was snowing lightly and there were unpleasant peddlars trying to make a quick buck outside. But inside, it was so beautiful – you feel like God is really there. And the etching of Jesus on the ceiling is so handsome. Funnily too, a long holy-sounding statement in French by the solemn-looking pastor turned out to be an invitation to lunch after the service.

I cannot write everything down, but what else?

The Pantheon was a very nice surprise. The Foucault pendulum which told time (reliably 11 degrees every hour) is something to watch. Those art students sketching enthusiastically on the ground floor, and the great French dead resting below was a very interesting mix.

The Lourve – hmm, the Lourve. It is closed on Tuesdays, my friends. Don’t ever forget that. But in Musee d’Orsay, I feasted on the Impressionists, not believing I was actually seeing these works in the flesh. Another big check off my wishlist.

Then Amsterdam. Beautiful Amsterdam. I felt so at home, maybe because Ren Horng’s there. I wouldn’t have done the trip with anyone else.

There was a magical foggy afternoon which melted into a magical night. Bicycles and canals which belonged so much to each other the picture would be incomplete without either.

Dutch houses the color of dark chocolate rimmed with peppermint leaned quaintly towards and against each other, telling whimsical secrets from wisdom accrued since the 16th century. Little fairy lights dot the streets and bridges with their warm amber glow.

The girls at the Red Light district, so beautiful and powerful. Working girls with a determination in their eyes I recognize in my own. I did not feel sorry for them; they had the upper hand. And swans in the water, the image of purity conjured was an incongruous one, but then again, maybe it was not.

More museums, where I got acquainted with Dutch artists and Van Gogh. What a prolific man! Almost as though behind the demons in his mind, there was practicality to produce, do better and leave his mark.

In all, Europe was a wonderful fortnight. Parisians are not unfriendly as people say, and the Dutch speak good English so it's easy to get around. Looking forward to the next trip!

Another page out of The Prophet's book

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

-Kahlil Gibran-


Dear friends, may your 2009 be a year of peace and fulfilment. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

Ok so I found one detestful thing about travelling.

Compared to airports and airline lounges, there aren't many more mind-numbing places that I can think of.

Perhaps because it is filled with people on their way to someplace else, the vibe is often restless, and busy in a million directions but here. Add on the queues, luggage waiting and hauling and weird displaced hours that don't belong in a day, and the novelty of duty-free shopping quickly runs out.

But then again, how do you make more hospitable a place that is built for the sole purpose of getting out of?