Of foreign sounds, supermarket shopping and tiny freezers.

 5/366 - Project 366 2024

We do a lot of our shopping at Tesco. Yes, yes, I know it’s now called Lotus’s but I cannot bear to vocalise that grammatical abomination nor even type it out. Actually I think I know why the Thai Lotus chain ended up with this solecism when they took over Tesco in Malaysia. I’m pretty sure it’s because ’Lotus Stores’ has already been registered locally, forcing the Thai company to adopt this misnamed version here instead. 

Whatever the reason, I find it very difficult to use the new name so for this essay I shall just use Tesco.

As I was saying, we often shop at Tesco, specifically the store at Sungai Dua not far from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The new academic year started not too long ago and the Tesco customer demographic has changed dramatically as a result.

There’s been a sudden rise in the number of younger customers: men and women in their early 20s dragging or pushing their carts up and down the aisles. The next thing you notice is that there is something a little out of place with these young people. That they’re Chinese is not too surprising considering we are in Penang where Chinese-Malaysians outnumber the other races. However, these young adults aren’t Chinese Malaysians. They’re Chinese. Full-stop. They speak a foreign Mandarin with more rolling sounds, and they speak it at a volume just that little bit higher than locals do. They dress more flamboyantly than locals do. Errr I think you can guess that ‘flamboyant’ is probably being a little kind in some instances.

And they’re not just buying food stuff or snacks, but cleaning implements and concoctions as well - brooms, mops, dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent… I can’t recall the last time I saw a local 20-something walk into Tesco and browse around the toilet brush section.

Seeing them huddled in small groups trying to decide between Glo and Sunlight Dishwashing liquid, or discussing what size of rubbish bin to get for their room, and whether a big bag of Ruffles is a justifiable expense in their budget, my mind is cast back to 1987 and my student life in Australia.

It was my mother’s idea to try and get me Australian Permanent Residence. ‘Your brother can sponsor you’, she’d said and I just went along with it. Filled in the forms, went for what I thought was a disastrous interview at the Australian High Commission in Yap Kwan Seng Road in KL, came home and said to Mum that I was probably staying put in KL. 

It was quite a surprise then that a letter came not a month later, saying that I had been granted provisional residence, subject to a medical exam and asking me to present myself at a doctor’s on a particular date and time, which I did.

A few months later, I was picked up at Kingsford Smith Airport by my brother Joe and my life in Sydney, Australia had begun.

I worked for a year in the western suburb of Auburn and saved enough money to put myself through college for the next 2 years. Joe had kindly refused to accept money for my staying with him and his wife, Hilda, and as I had no friends to go out with, my savings at the end of the year amounted to quite a tidy sum. This, along with my Austudy government allowance of A$50 a week, meant I could enroll in the much-respected Graphic Design course at Randwick College of TAFE, and get by without assistance from my family.

And so it was that in late January 1987, I moved from the by-then familiar comforts of a single-storey house in Thomson Street, Drummoyne, to a small room in a 2-bedroom apartment in Oberon St, Coogee.

I could of course, pronounce Coogee properly and with a few hints from Joe and my other brother Gerard, both of whom had attended the nearby University of New South Wales, could navigate my way around the area without much trouble too.

The subsequent 2 years are so full of incident I could fill a book with them. Instead I’ll just stick a few stories in here and maybe save some for later.

There were two supermarkets along Belmore Road in Randwick,  Coles and Franklins. Joe had suggested Franklins as the prices were lower and for the first couple of weeks I did indeed shop there. Later on I switched to Coles as the shopping experience was better. It was a tiny bit more pricey but that wasn’t so much of an issue. I remember Coles had an Asian cashier on some days, not that meant anything - it was just something I noticed.

The apartment I moved into was on the 1st floor of a block of walk-up apartments perpendicular to the main road, Oberon St. Down the driveway, up a staircase serving 2 apartments on each floor and our door was on the left as you came up to the landing.

Mark Jong, who owned the apartment was a friend of Hilda’s brother and that’s how the introduction was made. He was a bachelor about 10-15 years my senior and a really nice guy. The thing about Mark was that he worked in his family business - manufacturing frozen dimsims - and thus did not need to dress up for work. This casualness  extended to his attitude to keeping the apartment clean too as it turned out.

On my first shopping trip, I went the whole hog. I did the thing I saw those Chinese university students do. I got the toilet brush, the dishwashing liquid, the laundry detergent, a bottle of Jif scouring liquid, sponges, scouring pads… the whole cleaning company spread. But wait. I bought groceries too of course. Vegetables, a 2-litre cask of white wine, a variety of meats, a bottle of Baileys, a tub of ice-cream and a small bottle of Dewars. OK I think you can see where my priorities lay… Of course I got the grog from a bottle shop, but the rest was from Franklins and I heaved the bags onto a bus and excitedly carried it all upstairs to my new home.

Mark wasn’t around much. When he wasn’t working, he often was mucking around with some Brine Shrimp project he was trying to get off the ground with a friend, so I pretty much had the place to myself. As part of his casual approach to setting up home, he didn’t have a big fridge. In fact it was a little single-door unit with the freezer a compartment within the main body of the fridge.

I set the bags down, opened the fridge and started putting things away. The veggies went in the crisper, the wine thankfully fit in the fridge. But oops… the ice cream did not… I had opened the freezer door and stuffed the paper tub in. Or rather I had tried to. It was too tall… I managed to somehow press the sides together a bit and crush it sideways into the freezer but it was then taking up too much space…

That night, after a dinner I had cooked for myself, I had a very large dessert. I don’t think I have eaten so much ice cream in one sitting since. No, I didn’t finish the tub. Just enough to be able to scrunch down the top of the tub by about an inch and thus force it in the freezer.

Spying cleaning up stuff in the Uni students’ carts, I recalled how I cleaned up the kitchen. It was just a few days after I’d moved in. The tiny kitchen was comfortable enough. Grey cabinets above and below, light grey vinyl floor tiles, a gas stove, sink - it was plenty for a young uni student to cook meals in. 

Mark obviously had not done much cleaning so I started with the cabinets. Took stuff out (there wasn’t much to take out, really), cleaned it all up with some Jif, wiped it and put stuff back in. It was starting to look and smell rather nice.

The next day I attacked the grey floor tiles. I got myself a basin of water, a scouring pad and squirted some Jif on the first tile and scrubbed. It was then that I realised the tiles were not actually light grey. They were originally white…

“Damn…’ I muttered. OK I think I didn’t actually say ‘Damn’ but I’m pretty sure it was a four letter utterance. Now that I had revealed one white tile, I could not very well stop, or even do a casual (lacklustre) job. So there I sat for an hour, scrubbing away.

I ust admit it looked pretty good after all that effort and Mark even walked in later and went ‘Wow! The place looks great!’

My new routine was shaping up. College in the day, trundle back home by bus, then cook dinner. On the cooking front, I was making up stuff as I went along. Only once in two years did I cook something I could not eat. Most times liberal quantities of wine in preparation meant the kitchen smelled great and the food was palatable. 

Talking about wine… In the first few weeks of living there, I wondered why I was so tired out at night. I really struggled to do my homework at night. Then one night I worked out what the problem was. 

I’d come home, take some meat out and slice it up and season it. I’d cut up the veggies, chop some ginger and garlic and then marinate the meat. At this point I’d pour myself a glass of wine to accompany the exertions as it were. I’d also pour some into whatever meat dish I was preparing.

As I cooked I’d finish my glass of wine then when I sat down to eat, would pour myself another little glass. After dinner I’d get out the Baileys and pour myself a small glass of it before I cleaned everything up.

Washing done, TV on, Baileys downed, I’d then settle down for a few minutes of the news or whatever, accompanied by a wee dram of the Dewars. I wasn’t so much tired as bordering on being drunk!

Let me just save some of the other college-life stories for later and fast-forward things a bit to 2015. I was by then running Pedal Cafe in Balik Pulau and one of my friends was a lady, YM, who ran a BnB place nearby. One day I posted some pictures on Facebook of my time at Randwick College and she messaged me and asked ‘You went to Randwick? I did too!’

‘Wow! What year were you there?’ I asked.

’88-89’ she replied.

I was there from 87-88…

Turns out that YM studied Accounting and they were in a different building. Still, it was a bit of a pleasant coincidence and we chatted briefly about life in Randwick. Then she said she had worked part time. As a cashier at Coles.

‘Hang on a bit…’ I said. ‘You worked at Coles in ’88?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a cashier?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was ONE Asian cashier at Coles. I remember. I used to shop there all the time.’

‘That was me’ she said.

Setting up home away from home was fun. My 1 1/2 years in Coogee was transformational. I made friends, learnt new things not least of all about myself, picked up new skills, did things I had not thought I could or would do, and even endured two break-ins a week apart. More on that later… I hope these Chinese students enjoy their time in Penang. OK, leave out the break-ins bit. If I could I would tell them to live fully, explore, enjoy, experience. Oh, and if the floor tiles are light grey, do test one little corner first before you scrub away with the Cif. 

 Of Death and Numbers

4/366

Ah the fourth instalment. On the fourth day of the twenty-fourth year. There are those who’d have us write this year as 2023A, avoiding the malediction of reciting the unlucky number 4. The sequence, in fact, is even more diabolical: 2-0-2-4 can be read in Cantonese as Easy Come, Easy Die.

And indeed death is on my mind. 

Just this afternoon I was sent a message announcing that one of my former classmates had passed on. Details emerged over the next couple of hours - a heart attack, a peaceful passing, gone at 58. He and I have not been close in the last 15 - 20 years but even so, he was my friend and his passing is a sharp reminder of my own mortality.

I think the first time I witnessed human life being snatched away was when I was perhaps 4 or 5 years old. I remember my father driving our family car and I think my mother sat with me in the back. We were stopped at a busy junction - well, as busy as traffic could get in the late 60s - a dusty road in front of us. There was a sudden commotion, a large lorry flashed across my field of view, going from right to left along the road, its image framed by the front windscreen. An unusual crashing noise I had never heard before, then a collective gasp of sorts, doors of neighbouring cars flung open, men rushing forward, my mum going ‘Oh!’, then an image of a young man’s body being carried past us - he wore a white shirt, I recall. Then a second body. 

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Don’t look’ my Mum said to me and as I lowered my head, I heard my Dad say ‘the lorry hit the bicycle…’

The hubbub settled and we were soon on our way again. But I shall never forget that vision of the white-shirted body of a young man, limp arms and legs dangling, being borne away by another man.

At about the same age, I was responsible for the death of one of our puppies. Our dog Rombo had given birth to a litter of pups and we’d kept one. One afternoon as I was watching the world go by from the front door of the house, I spied a cat sitting on a low concrete wall across the quiet road our house was on. ‘Ooosh, Rombo!’ I went, making the noise our dogs had come to learn to mean ‘Look! Something to chase!’. In an instant she too saw the cat and dashed down our driveway and across the road. The little puppy ran after her just as a car came up the road and the pup had no chance. Its life snatched away in an instant.

Some years later, I was reading the newspaper and came across a small article that caught my eye. Just a single paragraph, it said a young child had been electrocuted on a coin-operated kiddie-ride. The parents had placed him on it, put a coin in and a moment later, faulty wiring sent a charge through the machine and the body of the child, taking away his life instantly. 

I’ve thought about this many times over the years. Being a father of 3 and having also stuffed coins in countless kiddie rides over the years, I’ve often thought about those parents and how they came to terms with what had happened. One moment it was smiles and laughter and the next… darkness, despair?

When you’re young you feel immune from death. Youth is your vaccination against fear. And the absence of fear is the foundation of your sense of immortality. Life is laid out far ahead of you, its ending obscured by opportunities, challenges, experiences. Sure, we’ll all go someday. But not today. Not soon. And meanwhile I have stuff to do.

Then we age and we start losing friends and family and suddenly you realise that at some point it’ll be your turn.

I picked up Joan Didion’s book ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ in 2005. It is a book of mourning, written after the sudden passing of her husband, John Dunne. His death was as unexpected as it was traumatic. 'Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.’ she starts her book. Over the course of the year, she mourned, she grieved, she regretted  imagined scenarios. And she documented it all. Then just before the book was published in 2005, their daughter who had been unwell, passed on.

My Dad was diagnosed with cancer in January of 1988. Treatment was not possible and he died at home in April of the same year. Shortly before he left us all, he told the family priest ‘I can go any time. I am at peace.’ I was living in Australia at that time, making plans to come back and spend time with him. He couldn’t wait.  It took me many years to get over that.

Death is indeed on my mind. But so is Living. So let’s do more of that, I think.

Of Journeys.

 3/366

Was listening to a podcast on the way to the workshop this morning and liked it so much I played it again on the way back this evening. In fact during lunch I even surfed the net to find out more about the comedian on the show, Henry Normal. He’s a writer and poet of some repute though I must admit that that reputation had eluded me until today. Though I appreciate a good poem, I don’t really read that much poetry, so had not heard of him as poet. And the fact I don’t really watch TV explains why I’m not familiar with his role as a writer or producer of many TV series.

The podcast episode of Radio 4’s Comedy of The Week had quite a few standout poems and I will probably visit some of them in future essays but for today I’d like to home in on one line - not actually in any poem - which reached out to me.

Now I love the idea of journeys - physical as well as figurative ones. And I have often told people to just ‘enjoy the journey’ when it comes to their life. So whether it’s changing jobs and careers (and haven’t I done that so many times!), or dealing with a crisis or an unexpected situation, or even navigating a challenging relationship, I have often suggested just relaxing and enjoying the ride. Don’t focus too hard on the destination and trust that the process is for the better.

It is this aspect that Henry Normal’s declaration touches on:

‘The Nature of Journey is Change’

When I heard this line I paused for a moment. I should say I was driving at the time and my pause was in my head not on the road. I then had to hit the rewind button to hear it again.

Every journey changes you. It’s not the destination that does this - it’s the path you take to get there. It’s not your degree that changes you but the courses you attended, the friends you made, the insights you gained. It’s not the job you take on that changes you but the daily grind, the challenges, the successes. 

It’s a very subtle distinction and I realise that though I’ve always told people to enjoy the journey, the implication has always been that one day you’ll ‘get there’. Understanding that the nature of the journey is change removes this intention and focusses instead on the little steps along the way, allowing you to value, savour and draw as much as possible from each one.

I like this idea. But now it is late and the nature of the night is sleep. I shall think about this more tomorrow.