Strange Days

The heater just would not turn on. I checked all the related options, timer, temperature options and electrical charge prevention buttons. Still the gadget would not turn on. Then the house telephone stopped working. There was no live line. You may expect this in Zimbabwe, but in Australia, it would be fair to think it was unusual, or may be not. I thought the connection to my kitchen phone was just unintentionally pulled off. No, it was not.

The bathroom heater lamp had one of its outlets blown off. I noticed all the bedroom ceiling lights had dimmed. The showerhead was leaking and so were the taps at the kitchen sink. The tap covers for the shower area and vanity cabinet began to fall apart in one form or another.

Maybe an alien spacecraft had flown over my house, causing all these unexpected defects in its wave. Or more realistically it was just simple wear and tear. However I could not help noticing the uncanny timing, the sense of it all happening all at the same, perhaps coordinated time. I then realised that I had piled up newspapers from the past six weekends left unread. Hey, I was just slack and the fact that these weekend editions came in at least 12 separate sections did not help at all.

Rushing through speed reading in an effort to clear up my newspaper reading backlog, I saw the whole host of stories flagged by the mainstream Australian media. I came to realise the trivia made in media output - aesthetic matters, relationship flare-ups, unnecessary products,regurgitated storylines and hidden advertorials. What a sad use of good newsprint. I had vowed to stick to electronic news but I could not resist the value bargain offer of hold-in-the hand newspapers delivered to my home at a ridiculous price. When I had more important commitments, there are all these papers to process.

The relative unimportance of an increasing number of media stories then linked to the utter insignificance of the nature of breakdowns around the house. What if there is no telephone or heater. Most of the world's population contend with less. I could dress up inside the house and even did send text messages on my mobile phone to friends more than a thousand miles away that my landline phone at home had stopped working. What if the taps were leaking? Many people had to walk kilometres just to get some precious pails of potable water.

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.