| self confessed Fresh Off the Boat Curry Moment #1 reading salman rushdie makes me want to spout a carnival of charles dickens on cocaine prose so i read murakami to send me back into subtly shimmering greyscale suburbia paranoia but like a just washed sow turning back into the mud i pull out the rushdie again but this time i am worn out and cold and only want to vomit equations i has ploblems I wanted to share with you a brief moment of Sawyer History when she felt like a FOB, or a Fresh Off the Boatee. I've been fortunate to never feel this acutely, since I had lived in Melbourne for half my life upon arriving to stay in Sydney. Time takes the edge off memory, but I think as a kid, Aussie culture blew through me like a breeze, I gobbled it up. During a hot afternoon in Malaysia when we immigrated back, I once stood defiantly against relatives, seated heavily in ornate couches but their faces fuzzy, and corrected them-- I'm not Indian, I'm Australian! *sighs audibly*
The sense of belonging grows quickly as a child, might I say. Jonny, blonde, blue-eyed sits in the sandpit whacking and patting the sand flat. Prakash, chocolate skinned and dark haired waddles along. He steps inside, and after some careful observation, copies Jonny. Thwack, thwack, thwack go the pudgy little hands in unison. Jonny smiles and dribbles in approval. Prakash heehees in glee. Prakash and Jonny become inseparable.
(n.b. this expample is an of the process of belonging at its most optimal due to cooperation and best performance from both parties) ANYWAY. This was close to my first arrival in Sydney, and although I had a sound grasp of what it's like here, it's the details you don't remember. And its the details that catch you out. I'm helping a golden bob haired and cardigened army of little old ladies with clearing up after serving tea at church. Crockery begins to fill the sink as the tables are wiped, goodbyes said and leftover biscuits stowed away. I pull my sleeves up and contemplate the tea mugs in the basin.
"Go on, fill her up!" a little old lady tells me.
I blink. I look back at the sink. Fill err up? If the tea mugs were sentient, cultured and understood emoticons, they would have interpreted from me a o___0 look.
Ahh, I join the dots, they 'fill up' the sink here. Strangely innefficient use of water for a drought stricken country. So, a little gingerly, I stuck the plug in and began to fill the sink with hot water and soap. The only way I've washed dishes is to give a rough rinse, giving grubbier utensils a bit more attention whilst fellow plates sitting in the sink all get a shower of recycled water. Then out comes a soapy sponge or iron wool, and scrubba-dubba-doo. A final rinse does away with the soap, again recycling the water. Now I've washed this way, produced squeaky clean dishes every time and can claim to use less water(but out of germaphobic tendencies, I use more detergent... Apologies to the dolphins and fishies dealing with my sewage). This method of washing, I advocate as the Asian Method. But here I am filling up a sink with water that soon becomes tainted with the flea puddles in the cups. I add the soap to it, a flatulent squirt that gains a dubious look from another little old lady. And now I stand, the sink brimming with this concoction of boiling water, tea, coffee, undissolved sugar crystals, dunked biscuits that got too soggy and fell in, now a goopy sludge, plus detergent. This pot luck stew has now become what these cups get scrubbed and rinsed in, before being stacked on the draining board. I am slightly baffled, but lacking the ability of the highly skilled Prakash, I try my best to copy Jonny. I stick my paws into the water. Ouch! Too hot! I hit the cold water tap, flapping my burnt fingers about. Once the water is tolerable, I start scrubbing tentatively, but I can't help giving each cup an extra rinse in a stream of clean water. I begin wonder if I'm doing the Western Fill Her Up Method completely wrong. Washing dishes in light brown, scummy water feels completely wrong. Is my Asian Method in fact not defined by cultural differences? Should I swtich to this more comfortable procedure? Will they approve? Every now and then someone pops a cup or a spoon or a saucer in, saying thanks love, thanks love. Why do they keep on calling you 'love'?? Have you suddenly embodied the glorious most beautiful thing man strives and hungers for??! Is this a prized form of affection dispensed to weird kids washing the dishes?? As I contemplate all this, another put-a-cup-in-the-sinkee comes along and dunks his cup. Greyhaired, shiny eyed, muted woollen vest and tie. Now, I am not sure if he wet his fingers as he plonked his cup or he diliberately tested the water with perceptive hand swishing-- time takes the edge off memory, but a blunt needle hurts more-- and he said, although not unkindly,
"That water's stone cold! Those cups wont get clean. You got to have it real hot! Hot hot hot!"
"Oh, yes, err, I was about to change the water."
"Good. Nice and hot now!" The water gurgled away, like the tide leaving a boat stranded on the beach. A boat full of stranded asylum seekers who prepared with all the hope they had in making this journey, only to fatefully miss an important little detail on the sub-human treatment of such people in Australia. Denention centres- the hell holes at Woomera and Baxter. You've heard the stories-- kids hanging themselves, poisoning themselves by drinking shampoo they've stolen from skungy bathrooms. People climbing the razor wire and cutting themselves with razors. Sometimes I wonder if people make those journeys with all this in mind. It seems like "out of the frying pan and into the fire" to me. But I obviously, have no idea what it's like to become one of them, to arrive at that desparation. anyway, before things get too heavy... I'll just say: little details catch you out.
(I sound so whiney, pretencious and over-senstive now... time to slather on some exaggeration) This put-a-cup-in-the-sinkee, to my slightly frazzled mind, became representative of the West. Standing beside him, hands in dirty, lukewarm, however receeding, water I saw how I was everything he was Not. My foreinger metre went up a mark or two. Here was Jonny tut-tutting me. If the mugs were sentient, cultured and familiar with leet speak, I would have received two words from them: EPIC FAIL. But that old dude was awfully nice about it. There are things that Aussies are much more open about, and there's no presence of hyper-inflated Asian pride to deal with. Elders treat you like equals-- this harvesting respect as well as contempt from youngsters who take them for granted. Plumbers and fish shop workers have no considerably greater respect than doctors and nurses. Again, not to say that it's all good. Here, were blighted by tall poppy syndrome. I guess I'm lucky being able to choose the best from both worlds. There is a dude at my school who used to be the Principal. Then, out of his own choice and bidding, he became the school groundsman. My little Asian mind was blown apart by this, and it's a FOBby moment that I'm glad of. (wowsuperlongpost!!!!!!) |
