Yesterday, mum and I went through almost my entire wardrobe to decide what I should take back to the UK with me. We focused on work clothes — shirts, blouses, dress pants, winter skirts, and so on.
Very soon, clothes covered almost every surface in our family room. We began with three piles: definitely take; maybe take; definitely not take. But the piles evolved. By the end of our sorting session, we had: definitely look at again and choose what to take; maybe look again; don’t take but leave in Melbourne to wear when I come home; leave for mum to wear; pass on to relatives; donate to charity.
The donate to charity pile was the largest by far. Mum would look at a shirt or a pair of pants and say, bewildered, ‘What were we thinking when we bought that? It’s so short/tight/loose/bright/complicated/ugly!’
Indeed, this kind of retrospective brings home to me how subtly influenced we all are by fashion trends. Only two or three years ago, the fashion was to have short tops that hung no further down than the hips. I remember throwing out clothes that were ugly because they were so long.
Now, we are back to long tops and suddenly, these short shirts and blouses look ridiculous. It’s the same with pants. The fashion was for close fitting pants, then wide legged ones, and now we’re back to closer fits. That’s one fashion I won’t follow. Wide legged pants suit me so I’m sticking with those.
Mum put all the charity clothes into a box. ‘We normally give clothes to the Diabetes Foundation but they haven’t called us in a long time,’ she said. ‘We’ll put them downstairs so they’re out of the way.’
That night at dinner, the phone rang. Mum picked it up. ‘Hello? Yes…’
Dad muttered, ‘Hang up, don’t talk to telemarketers.’
But mum stayed on the phone and we heard her say, ‘Yes! We have lots of clothes! 7:30 AM on Thursday? No problem. We will leave them outside the door.’
Somehow, the Diabetes Foundation knew we were ready for them.
I flew from UK to Australia via Hong Kong. As I said before, I was overcome by a terrible cold and spent much of that 12 hours hiding under a blanket. As we landed in Hong Kong, I made a plan to find a pharmacy as quickly as possible so I could buy cold and flu tablets.
‘Drugs! Give me drugs!’ I thought.
Three red-suited Hong Kong airport staff members welcomed passengers walking off the departure ramp, while another two staff members stood behind some equipment. As people walked by a video camera, I saw multi-coloured human shapes cross a TV monitor. It was a body temperature monitor, designed to detect people with fevers. Fever is one of the first signs of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. As I watched people go up to the camera, most of the body temperature maps were in cool blue, green and yellow colours.
With trepidation, I watched my own thermal image show up on the screen. There it was — my head was definitely bright red. Surely someone would soon tackle me and take me to quarantine?
However, the two attendants were talking to each other, and barely glanced at the screen. I was safe.
Now that I am home, I have been having treats for breakfast — steamed buns and filled coconut rice rolls. This has been the only thing that has prevented me from going into Mega Muesli withdrawal. Mega Muesli is the best muesli in the world. I discovered it at Arjuna Wholefoods early on in my year at Cambridge and quickly graduated from a 1 kg pack, to a 2 kg pack. By mid-year, I was going into the shop for 4 kg packs of Mega Muesli every two months.
“How can you?” he said, shaking his head. “I have to buy 500 g packs. I get one a week and I finish it. I can’t control myself. If there was a 4 kg pack in the house, I’d eat it all. Doesn’t matter how big the pack is — I’d eat it in a week.”
Damjan visited me in Cambridge every month or so. He generally took a pack of Mega Muesli with him on the 3.5 hour bus trip back to Oxford. During February, Damjan called the day before I was to visit him at Oxford.
“Joan, can you–“
“Bring some muesli?” I interrupted.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“I know what you like, Damo. I already bought it. Guess what it said on the poster board outside Arjuna when today?”
“What?”
“Valentine’s Day: Say it with muesli!”
As Damjan began laughing, I added, “I’m saying it with 4 kg, the biggest there is!”
The final time Damjan visited to Cambridge, he came to help me pack to leave for a temporary move to Oxford. We stocked up with one final 4 kg muesli pack. We would have bought another pack but unfortunately, I had too much luggage.
I had talked to mum and dad on the phone about what I needed to bring home to Australia.
“Remember to bring any clothes you don’t want to wear anymore,” Mum reminded me.
Dad said, “Double check that you have your passport, driver’s licence, Aussie mobile phone, and plane ticket.”
Mum continued, “Bring your watch too so we can change the batteries. And, well…” Mum hesitated. “No, I guess you can’t… bring some muesli?”
“Probably not through quarantine,” I said, surprised that mum remembered the muesli from when they visited me in April.
“Ah well.” She sounded regretful. “That really was nice muesli. It had a good mix of nuts and fruit and things.”
During an extended family gathering a few weeks ago, my dad heard a high pitched ringing sound.
‘What’s that?’
But no one else could hear it… except my 15 year old cousin, Simon. It was his mobile phone. Did you know that phone manufacturers are selling phones with high frequency ring tones? The frequency is such that anyone over the age of 25 can’t hear it! Perfect for school! The teachers can’t hear the joke that everyone else is in on.
I have spent the last four days hanging out with mum, dad and Jason, eating at favourite restaurants and shopping for work clothes. The other thing that I’ve now ticked off on the ‘to do’ list was what mum called my ‘major service’. Like a car, I’ve been getting my annual check ups and oil changes. I’ve been to the doctor, the dentist, had some blood tests and an x-ray. I seem to be in good nick.
When I see my cousin this weekend, I guess I’ll have my hearing checked.
I flew home to Melbourne on Wednesday, arriving Thursday. I have a cold and felt wretched for most of the 23 hour trip. The only movie I could manage was 300, a bloody movie that I kind of enjoyed in my ill state. All I can say is that it achieved its aim of stylised glorified violence very well. It’s interesting how many people praised it for being historically faithful and emotional, as if it had aims other than beautiful fight scenes.
I’m at home with mum and dad and enjoying it a lot. Jason asked me, ‘So, Joan. Does it feel like you never left?’
It is often true that when one leaves and comes back to find things exactly the same, it does feel like you never left. But I couldn’t say yes in this case because I now appreciate home (and Australian) comforts more than before I left. It is nice having a fridge full of yummy food that you didn’t buy or didn’t cook. It’s nice to have a fully functional house, with no silly taps or broken lights. It was very nice to fly in at night and it to be 19°C.
I am still sick but I reckon I’ll get better soon.
Last weekend, Damjan and I went to Brighton, England’s most famous seaside town. We had a great time. More than any city I’ve visited in the UK, Brighton feels like Melbourne — full of young people, relaxed, and multicultural. We arrived in time for Brighton’s food festival. So not only did we enjoy the tourist guide attractions of the beach, tacky seaside pier and King George IV’s extravagant Royal Pavilion, but we also got to eat ate lots of the best kind of ethical (free range, organic, international and local) food.
Brighton’s beaches are a poor substitute for Australian beaches. Instead of sand, there are pebbles. The good thing about pebbles are that they don’t get into your shoes and clothes like sand does. They can be painful to walk on. The English Channel also makes for cold swims. I only waded in up to my legs.
Walking out of the street of our hostel, directly in front was the wreck of Brighton’s WestPier.
A lady from the Brighton West Pier Trust told us that it was in perfect condition in 1975. Here it is intact, with its concert hall and pavilion on the walkway to the big bit at the end (whatever it is).
Its private owner wanted to turn the pier into a casino but the local council refused permission. Having no other plans for the pier, the owner offered it to the council for £1 but the council declined because it couldn’t afford the upkeep. The pier was left to decay. The West Pier Trust was set up to raise money for its restoration. They finally managed to secure funding from the Government and private funding (£15mil each) but in 2003, there were two fires. The pier was already falling apart so fire was the final straw and the structure was completely gutted. Also gutted was the funding from the government (bye bye, £15mil). The Trust now says they’re going to build a massive needle tower type thing in front of the pier that will somehow save the whole project. Erm. Right.
When we walked by the beach each morning, we saw this fellow with the metal detector. We once saw him stretching and flexing. He looked funny.
The Royal Pavilion was unlike any castle I had visited in England. King George IV was a party dude. He liked clothes, food, women, food, music and food. Over about 35 years, he turned his Brighton holiday farm house into this ‘fantasy palace’. They tried to make it look Indian on the outside and Chinese on the inside. I giggled at some of the attempts at ‘Chinoise’ styling by people who had never been to China.
We didn’t know that the food festival was going on when we planned our trip. We had stepped out of the Royal Pavilion and suddenly saw tents in the garden. At the first tent, someone offered me a strawberry and banana smoothie. All I had to do was blend it by riding this bike. I was delighted that someone had also thought of harnessing the energy of stationery bikes. Imagine if we could have blenders on our normal bikes. We’d all have smoothies by the time we got to work.
At the food festival, there was a table full of sage plants. I never knew there was such a variety. Pineapple sage?
On the left are giant turnips. On the right are tiny pumpkins.
This reflects a philosophy that I’ve learned this year at Cambridge. It is a philosophy that I have not only learned but have come to believe in my core. Essentially, for me to be effective, authentic, persuasive and steadfast in the real world, I need a deep understanding of the ideal state. It is not enough to build on what’s already been done, seeing a few feet or five years ahead in the fog. Fundamental change happens when you know what you are aiming for over the next ten, twenty, fifty years, and there are a critical mass of people who believe in the same vision.
You can be idealistic and realistic at the same time. In fact, to be a change agent, you have to be.
This year has given me vision and that has been more valuable than any technical or business skills one might learn.
I am on the hunt for a house in London. Unexpectedly, this is a full time job. I’ve been on the phone to agents all day, trolling websites, sending emails, and coordinating with my future house mates. House hunting is a surprisingly stressful activity. Your hopes get raised, then dashed, then raised, then dashed. If it happens enough times, you start thinking that you’re chasing a dream, that it’s not possible to find a four bedroom place in north-west London for less than £600 (A$1500) per week.
And I’ve only been at this for one day!
Hahaha… Well, I’ve extrapolated from what my friend, Judy, has told me. While I’ve been writing up my dissertation, she’s been looking for houses. We’ve got a month before crunch time but Judy’s been disappointed often enough that we’re reluctantly letting go of dreams of living in a non-dodgy neighbourhood.
Luckily for the team, now that I’m homeless and unemployed, I can reinvigorate the search with full time fervour and constant internet access.
Judy warned me of a nasty real estate ploy, which I’ve already fallen victim to about five times in my one day of house hunting. When you express interest in an advertised house, the agent calls back and invariably says, ‘That house you emailed about, it’s already gone. I do have another house, it’s just come on the market. It’s a great one, twice as expensive as the other one and in a completely different neighbourhood. You’ll love it.’
It’s difficult not to get defensive when you constantly have to say, ‘That’s too expensive for me,’ and being told, ‘You’ll never get anything for that amount in this area.’ I’ve got a tactic, though. I make it sound like me being cheap is me doing a favour for them. ‘I’m sorry, that’s out of my budget and I don’t want to waste your time with an inspection.’ Then, they end up thanking me and I feel like I’m nice and honest (not like them), rather than simply poor.
We have found a perfect house. It’s in our price range, it’s exactly where we want to live, it has the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and it’s already partly furnished. Better yet, the agent has contacted us (proving that the house does actually exist) and we’re now arranging to view it.
Fingers crossed that this works out, even if I do have to pay a few extra weeks of rent while I’m visiting home in Australia. I’m trying not to get prematurely attached to the house.
No wonder people go a bit crazy at auctions. I can empathise completely with the emotional pressure to spend whatever you have to so that you aren’t disappointed yet again, and don’t have to go back into the pool of home hunters.
Come to think of it, maybe this is also why people ‘settle’ for people who they’re not quite in love with.
I burst out laughing when I read this at Slow Travel.
“I did however spot possibly my favourite t-shirt slogan of all time adorning the chest of a slim Thai girl it bore the legend ‘Fat people are harder to kidnap’. So that’s the American anti-terrorist abduction strategy explained in full then.”
Yesterday, I handed in my dissertation. I’m happy with it. The thing I worried most about my research (and all my work at uni and as a consultant) is that I’ll write a report that says nothing new or useful, and that it will sit on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. I am, however, happy that I’ve said something interesting. Enough people have read it that I think that it might even be useful. So I have achieved everything I want from this year.
I said goodbyes. Many of those goodbyes were final. I’ve never said so many final goodbyes before. It was a strange, sad feeling.
After I gave in my work, Damjan and I packed up my room and much of the house. It took longer than I expected and I was frantic, worried it wouldn’t get done before we had to leave Cambridge. There were so many bits and pieces that I forgot I had — bank statements, chargers, computer warranties, souvenirs… But it all got done and as the taxi pulled up to the bus stop with two giant suitcases, a medium-giant backpack, a small backpack, and a shopping bag, my agitation melted away.
I am now at Damjan’s house with a cold but without any worries.
