Tram No 8 goes to Toorak Road

*

If you read this blog frequently, you'll find that I talk about Melbourne a fair bit. And I think I make it sound like this blissful place, this place of sunshine, good food and wonder.

Partly, I was a student there and there was just so much more freedom. Partly, the food really IS better there. And partly, it's a less insecure place. It's a city grown comfortable with itself, its immigrant quarters and its Victorian past.

Three years in Singapore is also three years away from the city that I grew to love. It's odd because even when I was lonely and heartsick there, I still loved the city. On the wet and cold nights, staring out of the tram windows, I felt that the city shrugged itself around me, mourned with me and sent its angels to make me smile.

Here's something I wrote when I was still living there - a different girl in a different time -

10 May 2006:

".... I think I must have finally hit that stage where one gets mad obsessions about pop stars with floppy hair and nonsensical crushes on random boys.

.....

Today on my way home from school(actually it was the supermarket but school sounds less aunty) this dark haired medium tall guy got on and sat across me and started gabbing on his mobile in french.

And I swear, he had the most adorable smile I had ever seen in my life. He was on the phone chatting volubly and amiably with his friend and occasionally smiling at a joke and I swear that the charm and general good naturedness contained in that smile made the stars dance.

He had these impishly crooked teeth, you know, the kind that only serve to make a smile ever more boyish and full of mischief and dimples that flashed and winked every time he moved his lips.

It made my day, it really did. I mean, all those glum looking city slickers around me and you get this guy in a grey coat and green scarf who smiles like the world is this great wonderful place and I just wanted to beam back at him in return. As it was, I sat there with my lips twitching in an effort not to start grinning like a mad stalker person and only let myself smile when I got off at my stop.

Whereupon he sailed off on tram 8, still on his phone saying unintelligible things in french,still smiling his adorable smile and probably never to be seen again.

Isn't it mad? And isn't it so 15 years old and feeling faint because the boy you liked breathed in your direction today?"

*

Ah well. Singapore, you have got to work on increasing your incidence of cute, dimpled french speaking boys with angelic smiles! :)



DISCLAIMER: Ahem. French boy on tram really existed. But I never saw him again. It was fun writing about him though.

3rd Year

"It is possible at a distance to maintain the fiction of former happiness - childhood or school days - and then your return to an early setting and the years fall away and you see how bitterly unhappy you were. I had felt trapped in Singapore; I had felt as if I were being destroyed by the noise - the hammering, the traffic, the radios, the yelling......."

-- Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

I had meant to write this post earlier but work, life and an accident got in the way. I came back here in June 2008 - it has been three years since I came back to Singapore.

It gets unbearable at times, living here in the cramped conditions, the noise, the lack of space, the snaking lines and construction sites everywhere. There is money to be made in this place - otherwise all the foreigners I see on the train wouldn't be here - but there is no peace, no quiet, no space.

Walking to the station from my office a few weeks ago, a drill started up nearby and it filled the air with its poisonous insistent "Ba Ba Ba Bam!"over and over again - and I completely lost it. I all but screamed at Mr Grey - "I HATE THIS COUNTRY, I HATE THE NOISE, GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

I don't hate Singapore but I am utterly sick of it. I am sick of the noise and crowds and having to smell people on the train every single day.

I am not sick of its people but I am so sick of being pressed up against them on the train and having to know - in intimate detail - if someone has had a shower that morning and the types of soap/shampoo used.

*

And yet if you ask me if I would move back to Australia - I would hesitate. Time and visits back have confirmed that while I was happy and felt free there, I had also been enormously lonely in a way that a person is lonely when you live among a people not your own.

Living elsewhere would be exchanging one set of problems for another set - the only question is - which set can I live with?

*

Happy 3rd anniversary Singapore. I'm sorry to be so grumpy - you're not a bad place in your way but your people have GOT to stop rebuilding and tearing down every third building all of the time. It's exhausting and I'm not really sure it improves things in any concrete (pun totally intended) way.

But still. It's been three years and when I find time, I'll have a glass of wine in honour of that.

Mozart chocolates

*

So in Vienna (and all over Austria) they sell chocolates covered with gold foil and stamped with Mozart's portrait. I was fortunate enough to be given a bag full of them and they turned out to be delicious - layers of chocolate, marzipan and some caramel :)

Mr Grey and I were just sitting around munching some ...

Mr Grey : So what do you think makes these chocolates so nice?

Me: maybe having Mozart's picture on them makes it taste nicer on a psychological level.

Mr Grey: No no! It's nicer because in the factory where they make this chocolate, they pipe in Mozart's music all day long and the essence of Mozart's genius soaks into the chocolates! That's why they taste so nice!

Me:........ er ....

Kerferd Road Pier

One of my friends posted this.

What would I give to be there right now. I'm homesick for the smell of spring, gelati and that ineffable sense of well being that rises from the St Kilda sidewalks on warm spring days.

On friendship

*

This sermon led to so much thinking and reflection. It's such a basic issue: who are your friends? what does it mean to be a friend?

It's the kind of sermon I wish I'd listened to at age 18, before I made so many mistakes. Friend mistakes, bad friend mistakes, boyfriend mistakes....

I wish I'd recognized toxicity earlier - before the damage set in. But then this is the kind of toxin you don't realize is in your system until your legs get numb. (Of course, for me, my fingers turned black and gangrene had almost set in before I realized what was happening....)

This sermon made me realize how few friends i have - but so grateful that I have any at all and also so grateful that the ones I have are so wholesomely good.

In fact, thinking of the friends i DO have, I realize that I'm so rich in friendship which is the best kind of rich there is.

Against all sound judgment

Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire;
he breaks out against all sound judgment.

Proverbs 18:1

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
but a wise man listens to advice.

Proverbs 12:15

*

Reading through Proverbs this year.

Wisdom takes a lifetime. It is amazing how rich and full of meaning even a few verses can be.

I'm meditating on Proverbs 18:1 this week and all other attendant verses on seeking good counsel, keeping the company of wise friends and seeking the Lord.

There are so many applicable areas and so many myriad ways in which Prov 18:1 is true but here are a couple of thoughts that stand out:

1. This is one of the chief reasons for church (Rom 12:5) - so that we may form one body and guard each other.

2. God did not ever intend for man to be alone. Later in Proverbs 18, this little verse jumped out - (He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD). Hundreds of other verses in the bible of which Proverbs 12:5 is one, about seeking wise counsel, keeping good company, fleeing bad company also jumped to mind.

3.ultimately, the company we need to keep .... the person to stay close to is God. (Gen 1:27) and in Him alone can we find rest.

4. Drawing close to God is only possible through Christ. (Matt 11:27, John 3:35 - 36)

*

There is so much more to unpack. But mainly I think on reading that verse, anyone who is even a little bit honest with himself or herself must immediately think - how true!

When alone or isolated, we will only seek to gratify ourselves, think our own selfish thoughts and fall into a cycle of loneliness and selfishness.

Rambling walks and things

During the Sunday evening walk with Mr Grey, it came to me today that life is starting to feel good again. The gladness of living and breathing and being is coming back. And it also occurred to me that sometimes, trying to tough things out and not admit grief or sadness or loneliness is the worst possible way of dealing with things.

Somewhere around the time 2009 ticked over to 2010, a bunch of things changed and I didn't cope very well with the changes. People moved away from here, I moved away from my old church, I met Mr Grey and for awhile in 2010, I went back to school. So life was just kind of crazy I guess. Filled with the strain of change, of what had been and no longer was, worry of what was to come, of what could come...

It's now 2011 and life is finally achieving a kind of peaceful equilibrium. It's not perfect but at least I'm no longer grieving as much...

The walks helped. Mr Grey helped lots and lots and God was and is very patient and forgiving. So in all, I'm very grateful.

In a very random way, the sermon today about Ephesians and the church brought a kind of clarity. The visiting pastor told an anecdote (as they do) about a grieving widower who attended church one easter sunday and was unable to rejoice in hymn and song with the rest of the congregation. As he sat there grieving silently, it came to him that even while he could not rejoice and sing, his congregation rejoiced for him and sang for him and would go on rejoicing for him until he could join them once more.

I realized that during the time I could not rejoice fully and sing, people in church rejoiced for me, served in church and sang for me. And it came to me also that while I grouchily sat in a corner nursing my wounds, the other people in church had gone on serving, doing things that helped and overall tugging everyone else along.

The thought of that really helped and I thought of lots of people in church who quietly do their bit and was just thankful for them.