Quicksand

§ January 10th, 2012 § Filed under moving house, travelling § Tagged , , § 5 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about place and how it can be so important to some people and others can just live where they are and get on with things. I am not one of the latter and it probably seems ridiculous to anyone who knows me that I ever thought I was. I’ve got to keep moving.

I do have big ideas about having a small plot of land on which to grow food without chemicals and whatever other crap we dice with when we shop at supermarkets. And I’d also love to have a house just so that I could have somewhere suitable to cook and to work. I love reading things by 21 year olds who say they are free by living a location independent lifestyle without owning anything and travelling indefinitely, because I thought that too, when I was 21. But, I can tell you that after a few decades of travel you kind of want more than a kitchen space the size of a small chopping board to encourage you to prep real food rather than subsist on takeaways. And anyway, I like food. I write about it.

But, back to place. If I had this house and land, where would it be? For years I thought it would be New Zealand. And, I do like New Zealand, don’t get me wrong. But it is very hard to live here. The houses are full of damp and work is hard to come by. Unhealthy and stressful. Because I spent my childhood moving round the United States, sometimes I think, well maybe I could just go there. I do have family there. Houses are cheap now if you can get work to pay the mortgage and the general cost of living is low. But it’s not that easy, mentally. To go back, I mean. And what about Japan? I love it there, but life can also be difficult not to mention the fact that borne of my own experience is a fear of earthquakes (And, yes, I recognise how ridiculously fortunate I am to get to choose based on this fear). My beloved Thailand? Malaysia? India? Somewhere in Europe? No, I doubt that.

So, to someone like me who has never felt rooted to the ground, it seems like I could just keep looking for that mythical land where things are perfect, well… better. But, do I just keep looking forever? And, even so, the idea of committing to one place for.ev.er. is just scary as hell. I don’t think it’s going to matter where it is. I guess if I could find a good place that also provided enough income for me to keep travelling, maybe…just maybe, I could be content with being tethered to a mortgage.

Where am I going with all this? Dunno. I’m just feeling fed up with the rain leaking into my house and clearing damp off the walls and not being able to utilise the wasted space in my house because it is rented. It’s just a great big, get it off my chest, gripe, I guess. I want to do something. Something.

Day One

§ November 9th, 2011 § Filed under Adoption, Thailand, travelling § Tagged , , § 14 Comments

"The cracker"

I’ve travelled to visit family and  to move my life to a new country. I’ve travelled to build houses or present at conferences. And, I’ve travelled just for the sake of it. Travel to see what there is to see. But I’ve never travelled with such purpose before. Packing involved thinking ahead to what one person could carry in case the other one had occupied arms. It involved guessing what sized clothes I need to bring for a person of whom I had no idea how big he’d got. Does he need shoes?

Bangkok! We can get everything there. No worries.

Now that I am sitting in a taxi all of those preparatory thoughts fall behind. Driving through the big posh areas of Sukhumvit and Silom with all the trendy girls with nail polish and tourists taking photos of giant golden spirit houses only to enter the old towns in the West of the city. It’s like slipping into a comfortable blanket. People are doing normal things like bathing children in buckets, disassembling jackfruit and pounding som tam. The other Bangkok is fun, but I love this Bangkok. I feel comfortable and at home here and we usually stay out here in old teak houses cooled only by fans and sips of nam manao. But not this time because this time we are travelling with purpose. We’ve rented an “aparthotel” in Lumpini with a swimming pool downstairs and a kitchen and cot in the room. We wanted all three of us to be comfortable.

The taxi driver, my husband and I team up as we enter the narrow sois and try to spot the tiny, handpainted, sign for the orphanage. There it is! I tell him, “We can walk from here, kaaa” “No problem”, he says, “I can take you there”, and we finally stop at the end of the driveway. My husband told me in the taxi that he felt nervous, but I hadn’t felt that until now. Looking at old Bangkok calmed me, but now we have stopped moving and all I can hear is a bird and some clinking dishes as someone in the neighbourhood is washing up. We have to straighten our legs, stand on them, and go and meet our son.

I almost catch a glimpse of children playing as the director warmly greets us and takes us to her office. We are offered a drink and a biscuit as we talk about so much in so little time. We want to know what his routine has been so that we can keep that comfort going for him. She shows us a stack of photos and other little things and puts it all in a giant folder for us. 20 months of life summed up in a tiny parcel that we will carry home. We ask a million other questions and are happy that we have written down the answers because we already know that we are not taking anything in any more. It’s time to go and she wants us to leave quickly so that the children don’t confuse us with the volunteers who come and go. Our son has been prepped to know that we are forever…if forever is and understandable concept to an under two.

As we enter the sala one boy shouts out “Hello!” but they all seem to be moving in a blur as we try to spot the one who is coming home with us. The director jokes that we must identify him before we are allowed to take him home. As we haven’t had a photo since his first birthday this might seem impossible with all these little pairs of eyes looking at us, some children cosying up or showing us toys. But then I see a little boy sitting on the floor as his carer puts on his blue Crocs. He is looking and pointing at us. He knows it’s us and we know it’s him. He walks a little way, hand in hand with the carer, until someone picks him up and puts him in against my body. My mind switches locations and I am picturing those little kiwis we take to give to students in other countries, the ones that clip on to things and don’t let go. He is a limpet with eyes on me, so close. He’s just looking. We expected crying or pushing away but, no, just looking. Someone says “Mama, Mama!” and then points to my husband and says, “Daddy!” and his eyes flit to and fro until the director ushers us out to the taxi.

The taxi affords us a good amount of time to check each other out until he finally starts crying and then changing from one person to another. Holding* a biscuit calmed him but he never took a bite. He liked looking out the window, just like us, but in between spotting interesting things he started to cry more for what was missing. “Kaw thort” I apologise to the taxi drive for the noise. “Mai bpen rai”, no worries, he says back and I think about how lucky we have been with both drivers today. And then it dawns on me that we are about to get out of the taxi, at our hotel, as a family of three.

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

*He held on to that little biscuit until it finally fell apart in the bath at 7pm, and when we opened his hand half of it was still in there.

I Love…

§ August 1st, 2011 § Filed under Adoption, I Love Mondays, New Zealand § Tagged , , , , § 27 Comments

Thai crocs
my son.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly! The reason I’ve been so absent here on Shantiwallah is that I have been away in Thailand collecting my 20 month old son.

It hasn’t been easy as we don’t have a very good system for adoption here in New Zealand. We tried to start the process back in 2007 when we were still in Japan but the NZ government won’t work with citizens abroad, so we came back. From January 2008 we have been working with the authorities to get a mound of paperwork the size of Mount Taranaki completed and verified by all the right people. It was finallly sent off to Thailand last year where things were set in motion for us to go and collect our wee lad. We left Auckland for Bangkok on the 10th of July and visited the orphanage, coming away with a special little package, on the 14th and have been getting to know Mr. Poom* ever since.

It’s been a long journey with lots of bumps, but we are so happy to have him home in New Zealand, even if he does resent the New Zealand cold as much as I do!

*Not his real name as we are not allowed to identify him on the internet. We only have guardianship for now until the adoption process is complete sometime next year.

I Love…

§ May 31st, 2011 § Filed under I Love Mondays § Tagged , , § 7 Comments

Kim-chee!

Kim-chee, bean and peanut salad

I haven’t done an “I Love Mondays” in a while, but I’m inspired because I’ve been doing fun things in the kitchen using kim-chee as an ingredient. Normally I just scoff it down with rice or noodles, but just think of the spicy salads. And it’s a great probiotic, too. Those clever Koreans!

Report from the Antipodes

§ May 22nd, 2011 § Filed under New Zealand § Tagged , § 9 Comments

Report from the antipodes

Resurrecting Frogs and People

§ May 21st, 2011 § Filed under moving house § Tagged , , § 2 Comments

"Tea in Futon"
I think the other kids had already lost interest by the time I found myself staring at a lifeless frog with an ice cube on its belly. That image is still very clear to me. The girl with the fuzzy brown hair and the waffle-soled shoes had put it there, an older kid, one of “the babysitters”. Older kids were usually scary or boring, which is probably why I was the only one left to see this miracle. I was always the one who wanted to know things, especially weird ones, and since this girl had learnt about frogs being cold blooded at school, and deduced that that meant ice would give a dead frog life, I was not going to miss it. Sadly, here is where the memory ends. I just can’t remember if the frog came back to life or not. I must have either been pulled away by some other fascinating endeavour such as playing Star Wars on bicycles, or just walked away thinking it might not work and I didn’t want to know. I remember really, really wanting it to work. Does it work? Wait, don’t tell me.

In the morning, before anything else such as opening my eyes properly, I have a cup of tea. If I were a frog, this would be my ice. I can’t do anything without it. My body is so used to it that if I don’t have tea for some reason, I just stumble round until I realise what is wrong and then put the kettle on to rectify the situation. I don’t need coffee. Coffee is good, but it would put me from 0-100 in 10 seconds, and then I’d crash. Coffee is for later and for special occasions like sitting in cafes with friends. I need gentle tea full of sciency things like catechins and antioxidants. Black tea, freshly boiled water, milk. Americans call this “with cream”. “Cream and sugar?” is the collocated question you are asked in an American restaurant. I love watching English people hear this question for the first time because I can see the internal struggle on their faces when, horrified that someone would put cream in their tea,  they politely reply, “With milk, please” . Little do they know it doesn’t really mean cream, it means milk or that strange little animal, half and half. How can you have half cream and half milk if milk IS cream with some of the cream taken out? At which point do you call it milk? Anyway, this is how I have my tea. In the morning, there is no other way.

When my brother and I were little, my family went to Walt Disney World. We drove down to Florida where, we believed, the local kids did not have to go to school. I mean, you could see them all at Disney World so obviously they didn’t have school*. We felt a lot of freedom there because our parents let us run around for hours as long as we “stayed together”. We rode favourite rides over and over and, for my brother, this meant Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.  I am quite certain that they don’t have that ride anymore because a) it wasn’t sophisticated enough to hold the attention of the kids of today and b) it was based on the Wind in the Willows, a book, with pages and a cover and book smell. I don’t know how many kids read this type of book anymore. I didn’t much care for the ride as there was a scary part at the end, but do you know what my one memory is? There were a bunch of frogs sitting on a picnic blanket…drinking tea!

at home at homeLook at this teapot!

The photos are by Vince42 on Flickr

*We later moved to Florida and were highly disappointed when we found out that we did, indeed, have to attend school.

Tea and Tumblr

§ May 12th, 2011 § Filed under writing § Tagged , , § 3 Comments

Waiting for the water to boil
I’ve been off my game. Writing, but not really writing, if you know what I mean. Working but not achieving. Running in place. And the things that have distracted me are creative and beautiful. For example, when looking for a photo of the Queenstown gondola for work, my eyes get distracted by a photo of a local tree taken from a new angle. This, of course leads me over to the person’s photo stream where I’ll see a cup of tea…and then need to make tea. But, oh, I can not just make tea! I have about a dozen sorts so I need the right tea for the mood. And, of course I need the right cup and pot. I’ll need to find the right sized strainer for that teapot, you know. I can enjoy the brewing process for the full 3-5 minutes before sitting back down with my tea in front of the screen.

But the idea of tea with work makes me sad. Tea is for breaks, so I can’t work yet. I make deals with myself. If I have my tea and a real break, I’ll surely feel refreshed and be able to get back into production. So, it’s OK to just enjoy the moment and then it’s back to work! Flickr surfing, cooking things to write about, staring out the window and wishing it would stop bloody raining. Winter is depressing in New Zealand, I find…until the sun comes out again, then it’s great. I mean, who else gets to sit out in the warm sunshine in the middle of winter (for 10 minutes, anyway)? I am deep in distraction.

Halfway through the cup, what do I discover on the interuniverse but Tumblr. I’ve never looked at it because I’d assumed it was just another blogging platform. That was until I noticed that one of my photos had been used on there without permission. While that situation was rectified (I asked her to take it down and she did) another came up. Hmmmm, Tumblrrrrrrr. Tumblr is basically procrastination crack for creatives. It’s something akin to Stumbleupon in that one thing leads to another, but you get to build it yourself with all the lovely things you come across and make it beautiful.  Grrrrrrrrr. Keep this away from me! Before my last sip of tea, I have built a page like only an addict could do. And I love it, but I will not be passing on the link. Not because I am secretive or hiding my addiction, but because doing that means I would become involved in another network and networks feed the procrasti-monster. No more networks. Except the one I am building, of course.

Here’s the funny thing. Since then, my productivity and focus has improved tremendously. What does it all mean? Isn’t it obvious? It means I need some sort of creative outlet. Or maybe it just means the sun is out today, but I’m quite sure that I can’t go long without creating something or I lose it.  ‘It’ is my focus, my drive and my joie de vivre. So, here’s the plan. From now on, I will take more tea breaks.

I Love…

§ May 2nd, 2011 § Filed under I Love Mondays, New Zealand § Tagged , § 2 Comments

Sociology.

Is there still time to cash in on the Royal Wedding?

I am fascinated by how people act in different circumstances. There is nothing like a celebrity event to bring out the lovers and the haters. Of all the street parties mentioned on TV that day, one was a group of anti-royalists who were claiming that, “You don’t need a Royal Wedding to get together with the people on your steet and have fun.”. Is this not irony? It was BECAUSE of the Royal Wedding that they were having their party, even if it was an anti-event. Why didn’t they just have it on a different day?

Anyway, I have been busy with other things (I know, selfish me) like typing like a frenzied, typing thing in order to take advantage of an incentive at one of my jobs.  The need for money has both made my typing quicker, and worse at the same time. You’d think I’d get better with practice. I should really take some lessons. Or is “the writer who can’t type properly” part of my identity now? Speaking of identity, another thing I’ve been doing was being interviewed by the lovely MaryAnne over at A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai. It was quite fun and very self-reflecting for me. I don’t know if anyone else got anything out of it, but I enjoyed it and I got to be up there with a bunch of other cool people. Check out her whole series on expats. Cool stuff.

There have also been a lot of cool things happening over at Pocketcultures. The team is really big now, so the sun never sets on us! Something I love are the collaborative posts that the team is putting out now. This recent one about Naming Traditions in 13 Different Countries is really packed full of interesting information. I’ve had a couple of teacher friends say they will use it in the classroom and, indeed, it is a good resource.

Auckland is now being thrashed by winter wind and rain, boo! But that’s OK. I’m spending a lot of time chained to my dear computer. I have been working on a massive project that I hope comes to fruition in just a few more short weeks. I am not ready to divulge the details yet but it’s going to be exciting and will be of interest to lots of you (I hope!). I am so impatient, I really want to get this thing going. But I want it to start off well so, alas, I must carry on tweeking.  Hmmm, perhaps I will start dropping hints soon. Or was that one?

Stepping on Tea Leaves

§ April 21st, 2011 § Filed under tea, teapots, Vietnam § Tagged , § 2 Comments

balcony

Even this early, Ha Noi is industrious. In front of me. Right in front of me. If I could freeze-frame, it would be this:

Stop

Curls of breath and curls of still-hot teapot smoke entangle copying the curls in her hair.

She has already been up to groom herself before making and drinking tea.

Stop

Effort and flinging.

Stop

Low morning light catches the arch of water emerging from a cloud of steam in the pot.

Stop

The thick-headed snake dissipates like icicles dripping from a bowing branch. Melting.

Stop

A giant insect wing complete with iridescence. A water wing.

Stop

Water almost to the ground but not until she turns the pot upside down for another shake and a thud.

Stop

With reflexes slowed by observation, I step in something squishy as the woman has already turned and returned.

I am connected to this woman by the tea leaves stuck to my foot.  They will come all the way to the station with me, possibly to Sapa, while the rest remain steaming in the street for a feral dog to sniff.

I Love…

§ March 29th, 2011 § Filed under I Love Mondays, Japan § Tagged , , § 2 Comments

Japan.
July rice with water filled padi II

In my three and a half years in Japan I spent some time in Tokyo and Osaka, but the majority of it was spent in a small rural community very much like some of the ones affected by the recent earthquakes and tsunami. Farming communities which, like farming communities around the world, are struggling to survive against cheap imported food and a young generation who no longer wants to be stuck out in the inaka (countryside). Communities of people who do not represent what the neon, high-tech, modern image of Japan portrays to the world. People who live in beautiful old farm houses that have been in families for generations but have heavy tiled roofs which are prone to collapse during seismic activity.

As I watched the videos streaming of the tsunami engulfing the patchwork countryside of Japan I thought of all the people I used to cycle past on my way to work. I thought about how people who were too shy to speak to me would leave bundles of vegetables, still covered in soil, on my doorstep. And I thought about the day I went for a cycle ride, but ended up stopping to watch an old rice machine plant up a tiny (by New Zealand standards, at least) field. I vowed to stop complaining about the shocking price of rice in Japan after that.

I feel fortunate that the only person I knew personally who lived in that area was OK. But I have friends who are in pain over lost friends and relatives. I hate this. I have friends in Tokyo who are enduring blackouts and can’t drink tap water (not even boiled) or even buy bottled water because all the shops have been stripped of just about everything.  I worry about radiation and aftershocks as they do. It changes how you watch the news when you have a connection. I am learning to scan the sensationalism to find answers about what’s really happening.

As with Christchurch, what is needed is money. It’s important that that money is not allocated to one place and one type of aid so that it does not become tied up with bureaucracy. Within a few months there have been life-altering earthquakes in half a dozen places. Some of these places get media attention and some, sadly, do not. If you can give to the Red Cross in your own country or another large organisation that you trust and which does not allocate its collections *, please do.

*After the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka it became apparent that funds collected specifically ‘for housing’ or ‘for food’, for example, became problematic. If one allocation had leftover funds, those funds could not be used in other areas where they were needed because they had been labelled for just the one, specific use. Money was wasted. There are rumours that oversized houses were built along the coast in Sri Lanka, because leftover money raised for housing could not be used for other situations.

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