Where Does The Buck Stop?

In the news read today, it was declared that Australian airport check-in staff now face 'air passenger rage", when confronted in disagreements over things like excess luggage weight, varying ticket entitlements due to a complicated pricing structure and impatience. ON another reference, a national airline blamed maintenance staff for the increasing occurrence of problems inflight delays and technical glitches of operating aircraft.

I was initially amused that the two problems were portrayed as obviously "not my fault, but always others". Ground check-in staff pointed their fingers at paying passengers and corporate management blamed their staff. I searched hard for a mention of possibly sharing the many facets of the two problems together by shareholders, management, operational staff members and customers. There is no team spirit in commercial Australia these days, underlined by a preoccupation with perpetuating the problems instead of focusing on workable solutions.

The two problems I read about were flagged about in a way that suggested that the fault lay with he other party - there was no hint of also examining one's self in recognising contribution to both the problem and solution. the way the media reported it was also one-sided; what happened to investigative journalism that took in aspects and views from all relevant parties?

After I read the two separate pieces in two different newspaper publications, I was left dry-mouthed that the buck was just passed on. Does this seriously reflect our society and the way it thinks, at both the group and individual level? To make money is to find solutions first. Problems encountered are interpreted at an intense level as "rage". Providing effective solutions is to dig beneath the symptoms and hype. I was surprised why no reason and background was offered as to why airline passengers are apparently getting more difficult to handle - could it be related to why there are more technical faults occurring with a particular airline.

A House in Goulburn

Lucia huddled on the rocking chair, warmed up and content. Outside the window it was as grey as the foggy cloudy overlay of the sky in June. The fireplace was not working but messed up with soot. Not that she cared. She had woken up with the radio station alarm announcing a hearty welcome to a day starting at minus five degrees.
Dawn was the best time, a quiet time without care, schedules and chores wating to be paid attention to. The steam of a freshly prepared coffee or oats boiling on the stove symbolised cosiness.

The house was solid brick. There is a comfort about countryside houses, Lucia thought. One that brought back memories of simpler times. One that fitted with the harsh climes and beautiful sceneries not matched in most capital city locations. She could see the bare branches of several trees outside the window, and the trellis pattern provided a sense of stark perspective. She could smell the wood of the house and feel the roughness of the open brick. She felt the house had as much character as she did.

Over toast and muesli, she mused about the path she had chosen. In the beginning, it was hard to resist the lure of the Big Smoke. At the end it was easy to forgo the false promises of short-sighted commercialism. Lucia recalled how she read about a corporate lawyer in Singapore giving up the apparent riches of a mercantile career to live the life of a hermit nun in a cave in Nepal. She also felt strong empathy for an ex-banker who was forsaken by her employer despite being on the apparently winning side of a mega merger of two companies. Society teaches so many to fall for doomed things, she thought. Life's potential in each of us was more fulfilled beyond the glitter of the momentary and the greed of the short-sighted.

Half-read books and various tapestries were strewn on the timber flooring. A neighbour unexpectedly dropped by to say hello and pass on some freshly baked muffins. "The wheat fields still have the frost on their tips", he remarked, having just driven in from Yass. The breath from his mouth showed up as thick as the mist surounding the inland valley town of Goulburn. Once there was much promise of this settlement becoming even the capital of the whole nation. Now it lay forgotten, apparrently in the middle of nowhere, and having an economy sucked off its vitality by drought and the dwindling interest in its pride and joy, the State police training Academy. The iconic Big Merino, really just a three-storey souvenir shop,had been resited away from the town's main thoroughfare. It was interesting that this had happened, just like the Hume Highway bypassing the place long ago, together with its droves of passer by traffic and spending.

Did it really mean doom and gloom? Lucia thought Goulburn, her adopted town, had a rare chance to go back to its roots. It must rely on its own character and stride out accordingly. It can offer a refuge to the tired souls from misshapen urban experiences. It can refresh young individuals who have aged unnaturally. It has the air quality that many in countries further north yearn for. It can provide retreats to nurture the inner self.

Lucia had a lift in her step as she walked out into her garden. The clear sunshine contrasted with the bitter cold. Yes, it can be unbearably hot in January here - and she decided to enjoy the cold air instead. Whatever disadvantages Goulburn has must be embraced and turned to an advantage.

Windy Cold

A throbbing pain on the left side of the forehead. Persistently.

Like moss embedded on to a branch or a wall, it seemed inextricably hopeless to get rid of it. It's like often bumping into the very individuals whom you subconsciously try to or hope to avoid. By chance or design, these very same persons have to turn up, to confuse, to destabilise and to create mischief.

The conspiracy of silence makes it inadvertently worse. Actual suffering of pain is supposed to be accompanied by perceptions of gain, but only in theory. I finally understand that silence can be deafening, when it is applied in a discriminate manner, to surprise when one least expects it.

Biting cold can be overwhelming, but when supported by the wind, the chill permeates.
When mixed with a sense of helplessness, one gulps for air, hopefully only in a figurative sense. It still feels real, like the rush for air from below a raging watery surface. There is truly a psychological and physiological urge to be freed.

I look for ways out. At times, the warmth I expect in normal protection mechanisms amazingly does not appear. Is this the onset of hypothermia? I require to encourage circulation and flow, and I may not even get a chance to break the ice. The attacks seem unrelenting.

Just when I am expected to give up, I get a second wind, not one from down the mountains but surging from within myself. It is the human instinct to rebel and renew when unreasonably pressed. It may have seemed physically impossible a minute ago, but at the point of no way out, the mental takes over, buttressed by the soul and inner determination. Extreme impossibilities bring out extreme solutions in me.

The throbbing has changed course and nature. It now becomes the sensation of overcoming anything in its path, including the windy cold.

Somewhere Somehow

On a winter's day in August, I found myself back in the same lolly, preserve and soap shops that formed part of the cottage tourism of Berrima in the NSW Southern Highlands.

This time around, Mui Na was window shopping with me. Mui Na was on the last leg of her six week chill out around the eastern seaboard of the Australian continent, having been to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in the preceding weeks. She had caught up with our other university classmates, Chao Chin and Kwi Wah. The nights had been cool, and when the winds blew, temperatures had plummeted in varying extent. This was a far cry from the equatorial climate of our campus days.

We had a leisurely lunch at a cafe of her choice. Berrima is a a one-main street village, and the sun shone with blue skies over the cool air. It offered a casualness that thrived on familiarity and a lack of a sense of time. Maybe it epitomised what Mui Na wanted on this holiday, with no schedule and just flowing with spontaneous conversation and quiet conviction on what life should - and can - be. We traversed part of the Hume Highway going south before we reached Berrima. We had home meals in Wollongong apart from the foray to the harbour to partake in seafood, and I felt this need to be up in higher altitudes to offer a contrast from the coastline fronting the Tasman Sea.

The day before, we had watched a storm come over my adopted town one evening and then we instinctively headed to Towradgi Beach. The winds had stirred the waves - within minutes, young surf wannabes had popped out in dark suits to head towards the riding opportunities evident on the ocean side, even if the skies had been forever changing in mood. At least twenty surfers waited in the changing waters for the next big wave - and then they went for it.

We caught up for dinner at my cousin's house in Carlingford on a Sunday evening before Mui Na returned to Kwi Wah's Sydney abode. I was fascinated with Ralphie, the Maltese darling pet of Kwi's daughter Kimberley. Mui Na's coming to visit us opened my eyes again to the reason for existence, to live and that everything else is secondary. Somehow, ex-classmates got together as if the intervening past years had never occurred - I did not realise how easy it was to just resume where we left off in campus. Somewhere in the past, a certain wavelength must have amalgamated, to re-surface seamlessly in another place, another time. Somewhere, somehow, this is a gift.

My Old Neighbourhood: Bennelong

Today's Telegraph Mirror recounted how a twenty year old Macquarie University student was hit by another young fellow with a skateboard in the small hours of the night in the main campus. Epping rail station has been transformed into a glittery version of its old self. Couples buy dinner in reasonably priced packs in the Carlingford Asian Village upon coming back from work - and do not have to cook anymore. The main thoroughfare of Epping Road is more choked with traffic than ever before during weekday and weekend rush hours. Higher density housing have cropped up beside the six-lane road. Prices of groceries in Eastwood are apparently a better bargain than Cabramatta and Flemington, the other competing suburbs of similar fare.

As the nineties began, I loved walking in the mornings to the then unassuming rail station just two streets away in Epping. I had my first taste of autumn biting winds standing on the platform. I cooked dinner amazed at the stillness and darkness of the road outside the kitchen window. A teenage boy, I recall, fell outside the block I was in, and there followed the commotion of an ambulance arriving and a distraught mother. I was insistent on getting a car, a Ford, as I did not want to lose the freedom of having one in my home island. The post office was so important to me as well.

Eastwood had a mall, but it was so quiet. What amazed me was how the KFC outlet in that suburb had closed, a strange phenomenon when fast food in all forms was a booming business elsewhere. I noted the elderly demographics on the streets and in the home gardens. Then the number of Korean residents increased, perhaps encouraged by the churches - and I had my contact with Koreans outside their native country, a place and culture I thoroughly enjoyed when visiting before coming to Australia. Gradually one side of the rail line had businesses dominated by Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese - but the Korean shops stuck to the other side of the station.

The day I arrived in Sydney for the first time I stayed at Waterloo Road. Macquarie Shopping Centre had free parking for all vehicles. I sat on a bus that skirted this centre on the day when Sydney was surrounded by a great ring of bush fire one January. I caught a glimpse of how high strong and high winds were fanning real flames so close to people's homes. North Ryde bus terminus was where I learnt about the Sydney state transit system.

Mum came to stay with me in my various places in Marsfield, Eastwood and Dundas. Cooking is so important to both of us - and I appreciated moreover the orderliness of things that she brings to a household. We explored together the diversity of things that only Australia can bring - fruits, blooms, food ingredients, friends and weather. Mum enjoyed her walks to Eastwood Mall - and I encourage her to see what the mall has become today.

I still frequent this old neighbourhood of mine, especially on weekends. These suburbs may have changed, but never the fondness for them in my heart.