Food, Politics and Change

I was in the electorate of Bennelong, Sydney when the news came through - a Federal Government which had been in power for around 138 months had been voted out in a sheer process of democracy. Over the delicious Indian rojak salad that cousin Susan and her hubby Boo Ann had prepared, the people in this gathering contemplated the experience of change. A sitting Prime Minister, who perhaps had stayed on for too long, was almost on the verge of being replaced by a fresh newcomer in Bennelong. Political history was being made over the night.

The evening before, in another suburb, I had tried Swiss pizza for the first time, with thinner crusts and more meat. I was not convinced that my group of colleagues were not eating Italian pizza, for how can one separate the two definitions? It was a warm night outside, but we were sitting in air-conditioned comfort. I watched, with intense interest, the goings-on of an open kitchen preparing the food, with the woodfire oven in full view and a fatigued teenager continuing to turn the dough. How can this place be called Swiss Quattro, I thought. The food perhaps reflected the Australian society of today, a fusion of values and cultures. After downing the bruschetta, Ceasers Salad, pasta and pizza, we could dip pre-cut strawberries and marsh mellows with chocolate sauce as if we were having fondue on the mountain slopes near Lucerne.

Recovering on Sunday in Wollongong town with a lunch enjoyed with an ex-colleague, I realised that the flavour of the weekend had been change. It was about actual and contemplation of change. Politics - or basically how those in power run a place -may not be related to the partaking of food, but is perhaps best digested together, for achieving that balance of nourishment for both the mind and the stomach. Three individuals I know, and whom I had met up that past week, were making changes in their lives, one even going inter-state. Do my friends already want to make that change long ago, or were they encouraged in a kind of evolving process? Do people remain in their comfort zone and require to be pushed to change? Or do people refuse to change and push out others who seem be a threat to their presumed existence?

And to celebrate those changes, we had met, over food.

At Home

I love chicken curry, South Indian style – smooth aromatic gravy over juicy meats marinated in the flavours of several spices, chillies and seductive coconut milk. A sister of a Portuguese mate living in Wollongong remarked that she could not understand why I put potatoes in the curry mix and then serve them with rice – a double whammy of carbohydrates that bewildered her logic.

The curry I learnt to cook comes from Mum, who experienced a forerunner of current Australian multiculturalism by sharing and exchanging recipes with her cosmopolitan neighbours in the tropical heat of Malaysian afternoons. It took me perhaps a quiet weekend in summery New South Wales to realize why she and I – plus the multitude of others stirring up Tamil-styled chicken curry in the former Malayan peninsular – had put both potatoes and rice in the same meal.

The British had ruled Malaya in colonial days, and it dawned on me that they had been raised on potatoes and bread. Savoury, well-textured potatoes must have been hard to come by, more difficult than the flour and yeast to make bread. So whilst their house keepers in the humidity of their outpost dished up what they knew best – their childhood curries – the masters also yearned for their own comforts of childhoods past.

Sydney, and most of New South Wales, continue to perpetuate in the nether zone of no or little rain, despite cloudy overcast days and some unusual of rain. It has been several years that water use restrictions have been imposed, and now it has grown worse to restricting hand-hosing gardens on two days of the week, before 10am and after 4pm. The idea is not to think so much of watering lawns as to find more sources of water for household use. In my corner of Australia, tucked between rising hills and miles of beaches, many families have installed rain water tanks so that they escape the legislated water use restrictions. The question is whether the skies do allow sufficient water to pour down to be collected in such tanks, but I admire the spirit of my regional neighbours.

So my garden in Balgownie has to be in tune with these water-conscious times. Maybe not. My front patch, outside the bay windows, is an attempt of a microcosm of Australian flora from Darwin to Hobart. There is frangipani, more at home facing the Arafura Sea; jade-like leaves of native succulents that thrive on benign neglect and little rain; cane palms; green and gold coloured coastal bushes; and pink flowering geraniums. In contrast at the back of the house, where bedroom windows face, are aromatic plants covering a spectrum of mint, basil, chillies, chiam hong, curry leaf, strawberry and parsley. The garden bed facing the lawn and lounge houses what I think are really useful growth – aloe vera; deep yellow and iceberg red roses; kumquats, Tahitian limes and Imperial mandarins in a citrus-related collection; chrysanthemums; ornamental red and yellow small chillies; daun gaduh; and some red and pink boundary blooms of a plant that seems to flower the year round. There is another patch with work-in-progress but now viewed with a flowering theme in mind – hibiscus, bougainvilleas, geraniums and some native wildflowers.

A Traveller's Life

The only three essential things to have, when travelling, are having sufficient money, authorised passports if you cross different countries and the right tickets at the required time. Beyond those basics, what is really important is a sense of adventure, humour and friendship.

I was in Rome when I thought I was being ripped off for a transaction. A well dressed lady approached me and the vendor and helped settle the misunderstanding. In Shanghai, I knew I did not have sufficient speaking grasp of standard Mandarin and went to a MacDonalds outlet along Nanjing North Road to get some change in currency -as they spoke English there. In the darkening forests near a lake in New Zealand's South Island, I temporarily got lost on the walking trail but got back to the known, through some benign force.

At Kobe in Japan, I befriended a local motor bike rider who was coming on the same overnight ship to Oita on the southern isle of Shikoku. In Koh Samui,life was so easy going no battered an eyelid when the testicles of a Brit backpacker hung out through in front of everyone of us in a small group having an islander's breakfast at the beach. I saw snow flakes for the first time in the mountains near the Swiss-French border and that was a wonder for someone originally from the equatorial regions.

I realised in my sojourn through the European continent that Chinese restaurants had tables of six, eight or ten in different countries, but never four. Greek food was really salty, but I did think of why anyone would leave Santorini for Melbourne. I recall with fondness how a good mate of mine from uni days and I were confined to free Auckland accommodation (courtesy of Air New Zealand) for two nights due to Typhoon Bola. I enjoyed the Lebanese spread one dinner time on a wintery night in Canberra because a nice colleague took me there.

On the way to the Phi Phi Islands off Phuket, my fisherman's boat encountered a storm, accompanied by the expected choppy waters. Through another benevolence, the boat boy and I managed to reach the safety of the lagoon village. Outside Nanjing, my commercial tour bus coach broke down for a few hours, but I appreciated better what it meant to be a farmer in China. On a summer's evening in Tassie, I got lost driving with a Singapore friend along a remote road, but we managed to get the right road instructions from a group of elderly walkers.

In Seoul, I was invited to an English-language focus group meeting after I chatted with someone off the street. My Singapore friends in turn do take time off to spend time with me when they hear that I am in town. I woke up one night in windy Welington and had to go to an ice-cold toilet, but found out later the next morning that fellow travellers also faced the same dread. Travel can be infectious, but so can be the sharing of experiences, with hindsight and lots of laughter! People who seem to be strangers just turn out to be indiviudals whom we are yet to know.