Dimbulah, at Change Alley

The real Dimbulah is a town in Queensland, Australia. The word 'dimbulah' is thought to mean a long waterhole in the Indigenous Australian language which makes it a terribly apt name for a cafe, if you ask me.

The Dimbulah Coffee at Change Alley is my new coffee place. It's tucked away at a corner of Change Alley and always seems relatively peaceful, despite the lunch crowd. I go there once or twice a week, just to have coffee, write and think.

It's a quietly modern cafe, cookies and muffins under glass domes, the constant hiss of the coffee machine in the background and a selection of sandwiches and cakes at the counter. But the coffee really is the main draw; it's lovely smelling, with this distinct aroma to it, unlike the bland pap Starbucks serves. Plus, at $4.5 for a latte, it's cheaper than most coffee places by almost a dollar and the Singaporean in me loves that it's both cheaper and better. Plus, it provides the daily papers and lots of magazines which is something I wish more Singaporean cafes would do. I almost never bought magazines in Australia, because I could always go to any cafe and read anything I liked.

The crowd there is split, it's not exactly an expatriate haunt but it does tend to have a steady flow of expats coming through, mainly for the coffee and the peace.

Sorry for the long radio silence, not that I'm under any illusions about my non-existent blog readership. But in between work and my sister flying off next week and other assorted activities, I haven't had time to even breathe lately. The only reason I'm able to write this is because I've come down with a bad case of flu and have been given 2 days medical leave.

I get this feeling I'll re-read this when I'm well and cringe at all the typos; I'm so drugged out on cough and flu meds right now, its not funny.

Addictive pleasures

They say the first step to recovering from addiction is recognizing that you have a problem.

Well, I have a problem.

Hello world, my name is D and I am a coffee addict.

The thing is, before law school, I never ever drank coffee. I belonged firmly in the group of chai and green tea drinkers. Coffee always seemed too strong, set off weird chemical reactions and generally tasted too bitter.

Oh, how times have changed. Now, without my first cup of the day, I can't even function. I'm this sleepy eyed denizen of the zombie world.

It wasn't just law school. It was also the effect of moving to Melbourne. That town has a coffee joint on every corner, all run by enterprising Italian immigrants with monstrously beautiful coffee machines that hummed and churned out gorgeous little cups of espressos or lattes. Fair trade, organic, kenyan, Gaggia....there is this language of coffee. I had to ask what fair trade was when I first got there. It was so different from the plastic and syrupy Starbucks coffee I'd always seen in Singapore and boy, it was good.

It helped that law school had an Italian cafe on the ground floor, filled with sunlight, cakes and the unbelievable smell of coffee. I'd stumble into class on Monday mornings, late and wild eyed and pray for the lecture break so that I could have my first cup.

Coffee got me through Contracts, adminstrative law and the pain that was civil procedure class. My third year, coffee got me through my break up exhaustion and I'm seriously thinking I wouldn't have survived my post break up third year classes without it. I mean really, when you've been up late arguing with an ex boyfriend and crying, the law of equitable remedies is not going to be the first thing you think about in the morning.

But anyway, so I read this article this morning (over my morning cuppa of course!), on how Starbucks is going to close lots of stores down in Melbourne and Australia and I was delighted. I actually believe in cultural diversity and I think it really really applies to coffee and food. And I think its so wrong, when you have streets full of individual, charming cafes, for you to choose Starbucks' syrupy crap instead.

Look, if there's a Starbucks right downstairs from where you work, I totally understand. It's there and you need a fix bad, I get it. But when you get to choose, when you want a place to sit in the sun and read, Starbucks shouldn't be your first choice. I'm not even sure it should be on your list of choices.

The problem with all this is that I'm now back in Singapore. Where good coffee isn't so easy to find. I like coffeeship style 'kopi', don't get me wrong. But there are days I long for a creamy soothing well made latte and it's actually kind of hard to find one. I'm ruling out TCC because the seriously, their coffee is such a disappointment (FYI, their cake kind of sucks too), Starbucks is all pretty syrups and frappucinos, but the actual coffee is sort of blah. Spinelli's is good, one of the best I've tried so far. Anything else? I'm an addict and desperate SO PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR COFFEE SUGGESTIONS.

Oh and I'll get around to trying Pacific Coffee, but I have to say, based on what friends tell me, I'm not getting any hopes up.

Friendship

It's late and I can't believe I'm typing this out instead of sleeping.

But.... I needed to say this, to get it out of my system today.

In recent years, some of my close friends have fallen upon hard times. I see the direction their lives take and just ache for them.

I cannot believe these people, these essentially good people, would do these things, would indulge in these patently self destructive acts.

But they do. And I have to stand by and watch them with tears in my heart.

I've known them since our schooldays together, kids in uniform bonding over Macdonald's fries, comics, games and first crushes. And I want to hold on to those memories and their fresh happy faces because what I see today breaks my heart.

You can't save people from themselves.

I don't like to interfere but I need to say something soon because if I don't, then I'm just not a friend.

Good night all.

Orientation

I know I've been particularly whiny recently and I also realise I seem to complain about being back in Singapore alot. But I think it mainly does come down to the process of moving to a new place, finding people to hang out with again and just generally feeling disoriented.

My first six months in Australia were terrible. I was lonely and cold had never experienced winter before. All my close friends seemed so far away and I longed for friendly faces and loving hugs and for the sun. I didn't know where to buy stuff, where to find the things I wanted to eat; the city seemed so foreign, so cold.

It's the same experience all over again. Really, it is.

Except that now I think about the ski trip I could have taken, cake and hot chocolate with friends in warm cafes and lazy weekend morning brunches. I see on facebook the dinner parties and gatherings I missed out on and ache.

Singapore changes so much and so quickly that it seems like a foreign city despite having grown up here. My home is the same, but the city morphs into a different creature every six months. I miss my friends, my friday night group, Boy and my girl groups from school, work and church. I kept asking myself, all through the last two weeks, if it was worth it to give all that up to move back.

There isn't a good answer to the question. There is only a story, rather a patchwork assortment of stories.

The story of how my mum, my sister and I met for lunch at a cafe to celebrate her birthday last week. The story of old friends meeting after 2, 5 or 10 years over coffee or drinks. The story of new shoes and the finding of a lovely new restaurant come back to.

Finally, the story of family and the cousin who drove me to the air freight centre to pick up my boxes and patiently and uncomplainingly helped me through the frustrating process of extracting them out of the warehouse and into my home.

Wandering minds

There is a greater reliance on my ipod now. Everyday, I drown out the crowd, the rumble of the train, the dull roar as we fly through dark tunnels toward work and offices and ever greater crowds.

So I sink beneath a pool of music, willing my mind elsewhere, anywhere but the carriage of silent, weary and sometimes outright grouchy people.

It's something you forget. You move to a different country, one with more space and fewer people and you forget how to cope with crowds, how to raise barriers, how to slip with ease through a throng. It's hard to imagine that I've been away long enough to forget.

I'm not so sure I really changed that much. There's always been that hankering after wide open spaces and moving away just answered that need. I greeted Melbourne's parks,cafes and the Victorian countryside like they were old friends and always reacted badly to the suggestion that Australian cities were 'quiet' and that there was 'nothing to do' in them.

I wish I could wrap it round me like a blanket and take it back to Singapore with me but I can't. You can't bring a whole country with you and so I'm determined to try and bring the attitude I brought with me to Melbourne back to Singapore instead.

Don't look back. Every country has something different to offer and Singapore is itself full of urban curiosities waiting to be explored. Don't try for a pale replica of things you cannot fully experience in another country, instead, look for what is unique about the place and embrace it. I'm going to eat nyonya food, wander the heartlands, smile at random aunties and uncles and go swimming outdoors.

But I'll plan my next vacation around countrysides and star gazing, just so I can let that part of me fly.

The reverse is also true

Friends used to complain to me about the racist attitudes of Australians, Americans and the British towards them, the Asian Other.

I used to shrug and tell them that all countries will have a certain proportion of people with racist attitudes and they would smugly tell me that "no, Singapore is not like that". I used to try and explain that they, as well educated Chinese Singaporeans, were unlikely to suffer from racism as they were usually the ones being racist to others but I never felt that the message got through to them.

Recently, I went to one of the many Crystal Jade branches with an Indian friend, M, who has an especial fondness for century egg porridge. Throughout our entire meal, the waitress serving us spoke to me in Mandarin and seemed reluctant to even speak to him or look him in the eye. I was offended on M's behalf but M didn't say much about it, possibly because he's used to the treatment.

Another sadder tale, is that of an Aussie friend of mine, whose Singaporean girlfriend's family disapproved of their relationship to the point where it tore them both apart. They could not, would not accept that she was dating a non Chinese boy and the relationship didn't survive the disapproval.

Where there are narrow minded, xenophobic people, racism will exist. This post by a well known local blogger highlights the situation in Singapore rather aptly beneath the angry words and tone.

Singapore is not exempt from racism just because we have public holidays for several races and religious faiths.

Food and love

I came to the food blogging scene late, just as I learned to cook and bake late. In my childhood and throughout my teens, the kitchen was always a foreign land to me. I didn't even know where the salt and pepper was kept, much less the pots and pans.

I learned to cook when I moved away from home and I learned to bake when a flatmate moved out and left me all her baking equipment. Having picked up these skills, I turned to the Internet for recipes to try out and stumbled into the world of food blogs.

My favourite food blogs all have several things in common; they are well written, their recipes work and they have an understanding of the deep connection between food, life and love.

This post from a blog that I've mentioned before, moved me deeply. And reminded me of the Boy and 'our' restaurant, a little place tucked behind the park that served gorgeous steaks and live jazz. I hesitate to even blog the name here, it's such a little place that I don't really want to see it overrun.

The first time he took me there, I fell in love with the place. Small, cosy and best of all, a live jazz band every week. The steaks were good and the desserts, gooey and delicious.

The last time we were there, the week before I left for Adelaide, we were seated next to an elderly couple. While waiting for the wait staff to take our orders, we somehow fell into conversation with them. The man, ruddy cheeked and cheerful, told us they'd come from a tiny town along the border of New South Wales and Victoria.

He and Boy traded jokes, laughed about women and his wife nodded and smiled indulgently at them, two boys having a bit of fun. Somehow, we all became two happy couples, chatting, sharing jokes.

Along the way, it came out that they'd been married for fifty years. Fifty! They'd raised 5 children and had 11 grandchildren and yet, they were out here, on a date, having fun and laughing. Boy and I looked at each other and knew we were both thinking the same thing.

It was near the end for us and we knew it. I'd be returning to Singapore soon, so painfully soon. He had to stay in Australia and neither of us saw a long distance relationship as an option. The difference was stark, the longevity of their marriage beside our happy but short lived relationship. I looked around at the little restaurant where we'd spent many happy evenings and knew that I'd never be able to come back. Not alone and definitely not with someone else.

I ate slowly that night. Relishing the steak, the place, the music and the moment. Knowing it was probably our last time there. Enjoying the banter between Boy and the old man. I tried to hold on as tightly as I could, to the memory of that evening and the memories we'd created in that place and hoped that the memories would last me a lifetime without Boy.