Arriving in Mumbai - Part 2

So like I said in my previous post, I sat on the kitchen floor eating cookies for breakfast while pondering the concept of an Indian family, when my friend Tushar and his cousin's family told us a true story about a girl named Jing Xie from China.

Tushar:  "Two years ago I arrived here very late at night in Mumbai, I got out of the gates and I was waiting for my luggage, and there was this girl also waiting for her bag.  We spoke a little and she told me her name is Jing Xie from some city in China.  Her accent was so thick she was barely comprehensible, but I did understand, mainly because over the years I know so many fresh-off-the-boat Chinese like you [referring to me]"

Me:  "Yeah, whatever."  [I smirked]

Tushar:  "So anyway, this girl, she has got to be the most naive person on earth."

Alok [Tushar's cousin's adult second son]:  "OMG yeah, unbelievably naive."

Tushar:  "Apparently Jing Xie met some Indian boy through the internet, which prompted her to watch two Bollywood movies.  She then concluded that India is a magical place and that she should visit it at once."

Me:  "A bit nuts, but go on..."

Tushar:  "So, Jing Xie arrived with no information about India whatsoever, she was to meet the Indian boy who was then suppose to travel with her.  She didn't know much about the boy either from the looks of it."

[Lots of laughter from my host family when they thought of Jing Xie]

Tushar:  "But the boy never showed.  She paced back and forth, asking everyone at the exit gate if he was the boy, but no one understood her English, which was extremely broken.  I was the only one who gets her.

Then of course she started crying, and if you know Indians...they love a good drama.  Soon fifty people surrounded her, and I was by this time trying to fix the situation.

No one really tried to do anything for her, but they all had their opinions on what should be done to the boy, "Someone should call the boy's parents and tell them what a bad son they have."

I was in fact really tired, but I could not leave her there, so finally I suggested that she should come with me to my cousin's home for the night."

Alok:  "Yes yes.  This was like 3 a.m.  Imagine, we were all asleep and we got a phone call from Tushar saying something about a Chinese girl crying.  We hung up and forgot about it.

[Lots of laughter]

And then Tushar indeed showed up with this Chinese girl at our apartment.  She was dressed in the most bizarre outfit...she was wearing a little schoolgirl uniform."

Tushar:  "Oh no, not before she insisted first she and I must go to the Mumbai police station to let them know she was with me, a total stranger.  All of a sudden she decided to be untrusting.

She was stubborn as hell, she wouldn't believe that I am a nice guy and only trying to help.  Finally we went to the police stand, and she insisted that the police record both our names and her situation.

The policeman said to her, "But Miss, we don't really care where you go."

And then she said in her ridiculously thick accent, "This man [Tushar], can is, or not, a killer."

The policeman was very confused, "Is he trying to kill you?"

She answered, "I not sure."

In the end the policeman thought it best to just write down our names on a piece of paper, immediately after which they threw away in front of our faces.  But she was appeased and she came to the apartment and stayed the night."

Alok:  "The next morning we tried to find her Indian boy from the only phone number she kept.  It turns out this boy actually lived more than 100 km away, he entrusted a friend to pick her up at the airport but that friend bailed.

Of course we got tough on this boy.  We threatened to tell his parents, and in India that is a huge deal."

Tushar:  "He is actually a nice boy, just as naive as Jing Xie.  He was really scared when we threatened him, he said he was on his way to our apartment."

Alok:  "It was so ridiculous.  When the boy arrived, our entire family [all seven + Tushar] sat down like a panel and interrogated him as if this was a match making.

We found out where he worked, how many brothers and sisters he had, his past time interests.  We did all this in straight faces...he was quite frightened.

[Lots and lots of laughter]

Then, we came up with the most brilliant plan.  We got his parents' number and we called them, and we made up a story about how we had a daughter and we were interested in matching her with their son.  We talked to his parents quite a bit, as is the tradition in such matters."

Me:  "Wait a minute, what's the point of calling his parents?"

Alok:  "We were not going to release Jing Xie to him just like that right?  What if he is a psycho killer.  He needs to know we mean business and that at any time we could call his parents and tell them the truth."

Me:  "Interesting...by the way, how old is Jing Xie?"

Tushar:  "I found out she was 37, no way to tell from her face though.  The Indian boy was 22."

Alok:  "Finally we let them go off and tour the city, we took Jing Xie around a little too.  She really enjoyed the sights.

We made sure this Indian boy behaved though, we made him call us everyday he was with her to check in, or else we'd call his parents."

Tushar:  "I tell you, this girl left India very happy.  She thought it is a magical place."

[Laughter, laughter, laughter]

I laughed very hard like everyone else in the kitchen, thus marked the first memorable event of my trip.  And as for the rest of it?  well, it was every bit as bizarre and endearing as this story.

Jackie

Arriving in Mumbai - Part 1

The beginning of my journey started in Mumbai.  I arrived very late at night, and after weeks of anticipation, I was pumped full of energy.  My friend Tushar was to meet me at the airport, otherwise I had no idea where I was to go.

Fortunately my friend was there to greet me when I exited the gate, and another one of his friend Omkar also arrived at the same time.  Tushar himself got to Mumbai only a few days before, but he was already all settled in his cousin's home, which was where Omkar and I were to stay as well.

Tushar and I go way back for more than ten years now, we met in the university dorms while he was in med school and I was in my freshman year as an engineering student.   Over the years, he often accused me of having a biased opinion of him:

"You only see a part of me Jackie."  He often says, and his Indian roots was mainly that hidden blind spot he was referring to.  So this trip ought to bridge that gap yeah?

We arrived at his cousin's home; it was a two bedroom apartment, and I was surprised to find his cousins an elderly couple as I had expected someone our age.  It was very late at night, and after appropriate formalities of greeting our hosts, we soon went to bed.

And only after a few hours I opened my eyes to warm yellow sunlight fusing into my room, and when I looked out the window, I saw a long red colored sari flying off the side of a wall.

"I am in India."  I mused.

I stepped over where the boys slept on the living room marbled floor and watched them snore under thin pink mosquitoes nets, and then I tip toed out into the balcony for a looksie.

You know how you've just arrived in a new country and you had imagined this place for a while, and then you see it for the first time and that is the impression that stays with you, well, this is mine:

Autorickshaws spewing black fumes, cows with flowers on their heads pulling a buggy, smoke from garbage piles burning next to the road, men dressed in white cloth walking barefoot to the Jain temple, boys playing cricket, a pink temple at the entrance of a slum next door, a wedding procession blocking the street, men in orange turbans, DDT spraying, women in saris, water puddles, cars honking, little boys in school uniforms...all in one visual frame.

"Doesn't this place make you feel alive?"  Tushar asked me from behind, he then took an exaggerated deep breath, held it in for good measure, and then belt out,

"Yup, the natural and unnatural scents of a whole lotta life."

"You mean all that life over there?"  I pointed to the direction of the slum next door, thus began the first of my series of judgmental outbursts in India.

But Tushar knows me well, he simply ordered me back inside to take a cold bath with a bucket of water, the standard showering method in India.

When I came out the boys were stuffing their sleeping bags away, and Tushar was in the middle of a passionate speech.

"... people here [India] live in harmony, they are not depressed like people in the west.  That is because people in the west are so isolated, no family around, they only think of themselves.  People here look out for each other.  Look at this family for example, my cousin has two sons, and their wives, and their toddler son, everyone living under one roof together...happily.  You should hear how they laugh in this apartment, all this would be unthinkable in the west."

I sat down on the floor to have a listen, my wet hair swooped up and wrapped in a towel.

"...There is a community here, and so people do not need things like they do in the west.  You see way less of the problems like drugs, alienated youths, and depression and such as you do in America."

It must be noted that Tushar is Canadian.

Despite my natural skepticism, at that moment, with the scented air coursing through my lungs, my mind did take on his sweeping generalizations rather favorably.

Breakfast was served on the floor in the kitchen, and immediately I saw tiny cockroaches scurrying across.  I pretended not to notice.

Cookies for breakfast, plus spiced chai with raw milk.

Like I mentioned in other posts, I had been an avid traveler for about a decade, but I had never been on a trip like this.  You have to understand, there was tremendous buildup for my recent embarkment.  I had quit my job for one, then there was the comparatively ambitious itinerary in India, plus the length of my journey...all adds up to bring on a considerable amount of dread in me once I began.  On top of that, there was the usual trepidation of traveling in India:  are the toilets going to be clean?  what happens if little kids steal my stuff?  Oh Slumdog Millionaire really brought up some visuals here.  I know I will get sick, what if I shit my pants in a long train ride with a toilet that is only a hole on the floor and I fall on my ass?

Such thoughts can drive a sane girl nuts.

A little boy of about two, grinning from side to side, and bottomless, came running into the kitchen.

"Good morning little one."  We all did a little cutsie talk.  He basked in the attention for a while, and then he turned around and took a piss.

His grandmother ushered him into the bathroom, and his mother wiped the floor, the marble floors covering the entire apartment now made sense.

"In the west, it is ridiculous how much diapers we throw out.  Here [India], mothers just know when their kid will take a dump."  Tushar remarked.

I too think it is freaking ridiculous the amount of diapers are used in the west, I am just not sure about anyone peeing so close to my chai.

But I was very ready to accept new norms, at least for the duration of my journey.

Jackie

Learning sex in Hong Kong

Photo taken from site

What would you say is good sex education to a child of eight who has yet to learn the basic knowledge of life:  that all girls have a vagina, babies do not come from a woman's anus, and penises are useful for more than peeing?  Just give the facts straight up would be my answer....the Hong Kong government thought differently.

For months there was talk about the need to teach safe sex to children, this was in the Eighties, when the whole world grappled with fear over the spread of AIDs seemingly overnight.  "The teachers ought to do something." was whispered among parents.  "Ain't our problem, these kids have parents." the teachers said.  In the meantime, we the children let our imagination play out with our Barbies and Kens, but really, nothing in our wildest dreams could come close to the actual genius of coupling.  Eventually, the government took matters into it's own hands.

It was deemed early on that teachers were unable to handle such a task, after all, their Gestapo like approach in keeping discipline would be seriously compromised by sex education.  Parents were also out of the question; the strict conservative Chinese parenting culture must not be meddled with either.  Time passes and frustration mounted as the city watched debates on the news discussing what to do, until one day, the government announced that it was producing a TV series to be aired on a prime time slot.  Immediately after that, a short ad was shown over and over, "The Nature of Sex", the show was to be called.

The parents were relieved.  At last, their children will learn the truth without any hassles to themselves.  They didn't mind loosing their favorite TV dramas to this upcoming new show either, in fact, they were looking forward to it because finally sex is on screen.  Before this, only soapy melodramas were available where the same pregnant wife character appeared again and again in different story lines, and she inevitably banged her bump like an African drum whenever her husband was unkind to her.

All this was followed by months of anticipation, until the day came when the first sex show was to air.  The city was electrified, we could not wait to get out of school; our teachers gave us less homework that day and sent us home with an unprecedented "Make sure you watch TV tonight.  Channel 2, seven o'clock."

Forgive me for remembering it so well, but really, it isn't something you'd forget given the circumstances.  This was the plot of the episode:

A boy of fifteen was living with his brother who was a cop after his parents had passed away.  The boy and his school friends were very curious about sex.  After playing sports in the evening, they took with them a ruler and stayed behind in the change room; they did something to themselves [not shown] which brought the boys a lot of pain.  

One day the boy was walking down the street when a young attractive girl ran quickly towards him, she was being chased by the cops.  She saw that she was cornered and she begged the boy for help.  The cops surrounded them, and the boy gallantly wrapped his arm around the girl and said to the police, "Why are you bothering my girlfriend?"  One of the cops ends up being the boy's brother, so the cops let them go.  The girl kissed him on the cheek, thanked him, gave him her pager number and said "Call me whenever, I'll give you a discount."

The boy couldn't stop thinking about the girl and her 'offer'.  He started saving money, and he purchased five condoms.  He reasoned he could wear three condoms for the first round and still have two backups for seconds.  During this time, he went through a moody period when he tried to decide if he should go through with paying for sex, his brother was worried about him.  

The boy decided to meet the girl, and they got a room somewhere.  She was in the bathroom when he tried nervously to put on a condom, he barely got one on him when the girl came out wearing nothing but a towel.  She smiled sweetly and unwraps the towel in front of him. [no sex or nudity shown]

The next scene both boy and girl were lying in bed.  He was calm now and was reflecting on what he just did when the cops burst into the room to arrest the prostitute.  One of the cop was the boy's brother.  

The final scene was the boy walking out of his school after he was suspended, and his friends rushed out to talk to him.  They asked him what sex was like, and they called him their hero.  He smiled proudly but told his friends not to have sex with prostitutes.  

- The end -

To this day I do not know what to make of it.  Two weeks after the show, my mom caught me and my sister playing a game of hookers and cops.  I'll leave it to you to conjecture the effects of this sex education to a generation of youngsters.

Jackie

Corridor

There was once a long corridor in my life not so long ago.  I have walked through it thousands of times, maybe even tens of thousands, back and forth, sometimes due to need, other times deliberately.  I remember I always walked a little slower in that corridor, to savor a moment, which by design, as absurd that it is if you really think about it, has served as a sanctuary for me.  

The corridor was built to permit a walkway between two separate buildings, which in the beginning were two distinct companies, but through natural corporate evolution it is now one massive complex after the dominant company swallowed the other.  Over the years, as the company grew, various extensions blocks were added throughout, they popped out from corners and stacked on top of each other; giving the whole structure a Tetris like appearance.     

When you drive into the car park, at first you'd see enormous columns where huge puffy clouds of hot gas puffs into the air, which makes you wonder exactly what goes on within despite the clean futuristic exterior of the building.  Then at the far end of the other side stands the main lobby, and above the door, the bland company name is prominently displayed in block letters.  The name itself invokes a certain feeling, something along the lines of say Initech or Intrude a la the movie Office Space.  

But amidst this utilitarian nightmare there is the corridor, which takes away a little bit of the coldness I think.  It is the only section fully glassed from the front, which gives the look of an exposed vein; it reassures you a little that real people are indeed inside.  And a couple of years ago, a true genius from human resource hung paintings done by employees all along the back wall of the corridor, which strengthened that feeling from both within and out.

When I close my eyes today and think back to all my years in the company, the physical location I remember most is indeed the corridor where the sun is literally allowed to shine.  Within that tight temperature controlled environment, sunlight was almost a luxury.  I remember during those long hours at work, when seasons didn't matter, when I carried a pager 24 hours a day, when nauseating tasks were no end in view; I was always uplifted by the sight of that little plot of grass just outside, even when as far as nature goes it was in fact very meagre.

My mind was always occupied back then, and as far as I remember, my thoughts were mostly tinged with bitterness.  Most of it was likely my own fault, since I was ambitious as hell and I wanted more out of my career than I was entitled.  Towards the end, I frequented the corridor for no apparent reason.  My Harry and I sometimes exchanged cryptic pages during work hours like "holy meeting" or "Let's leave the Smurfs" of "big dogs", all code words to meet up.  It sounds silly now, but it was just the thing to keep both of us sane.

One day, big yellow cones were placed on both ends of the corridor with an unmistakable message: "Caution, Wet floor" along with the picture of a stick figure falling on his ass.  As I approached, I could see the floor was indeed gleaming wet under the morning light.   A cleaning lady, of whom I know did not speak a word of English was mindfully mopping.  And as I gestured to seek permission to pass, she pointed to something at the window; it was a grey squirrel sitting right up against the glass.  He had the a lovely playful expression on his face, and he was hugging a pine cone in his chest like it was his only possession in the whole wide world.  The lady and I were both delighted, we spent some minutes oohing and aahing together, a common language it would seem.

Moments later, I noticed the lady's wet mop was leaning against the rail, and behind it was the outstretched floor of the corridor.  And suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, from some physical depths of me, I had an overwhelming desire to pick up the mop.  I thought to myself, here is a job that makes sense, a clean floor is a goal that is attainable.  The lady stared at me and my awkward expression; she looked a little worried, but there was no way for us to communicate.  It took me a few seconds to eventually come to my senses, and when I did, I spoke a few cheerful words in English and hurriedly went away.

Jackie    

  

Champagne the cat

Picture taken from Site

I wrote in an earlier post that my first real job was an unpleasant one, and indeed it was a terrible place to work.  The only good thing about it was a chance for me to see first hand what happens to people who are too afraid to leave, in that my first job was priceless.  However, outside of work, my life in the Ottawa area was not at all horrible.  I have made one long lasting friend, and another I will never forget.

Being a big city girl all my life, I was not eager to live in the small town where my company was located.  Instead, I rented a room in the city of Kanata, a nice suburb area of Ottawa, also dubbed the silicon valley of the north.  My landlady, Vidya, had only just purchased the house, which was a large one in a quiet neighborhood, with woods to the back.  I had my own room and bathroom on the second floor.

The day I arrived, movers were bringing in furniture and Vidya was busy directing the men, and so I went on a quick tour of the house on my own.  And as I looked around, I took an instant liking to my new home, seeing the possibilities clearly amidst the chaos of the move.  The rooms had good light, tall ceilings and wide windows, and the kitchen had a good view of the gazebo in the yard.  My room was a spacious one, and Vidya provided me with a nice bedroom set; the pieces were already in the room but strangely positioned and partially covered in cardboard wrappings.

"Jackie, do be careful with your closet room.  Champagne is in there."  Vidya shouted urgently from downstairs.

"Alright, I'll watch it."  I answered back.

I shut my bedroom door and prepared myself to open the closet.  Vidya and I had discussed much about her cats prior to our meeting, and I had a strong curiosity to see them, especially the tomcat Champagne.  Vidya had three cats, two girls and one boy, they were all elderly I was told.  She made particular mention of Champagne in her correspondence.

"He is a rambunctious man."  That was the way she puts it.

I opened the closet door and I heard a bit of growling.  A fawn colored cat walked out with his tail down signaling his displeasure at being locked up for more than an hour.  I looked inside the closet and I saw two other cats cowering in the corner, I let them be.

"Well hullo Champagne.  I have heard much about you."  I said to the famous cat.  He gave me a sidelong glance and continued to survey the room, the furniture, the height of the desk, the workings of the lamp, the zipper of my suitcase..etc.  I sat at the edge of the bed watching him, fascinated.  I had never really lived with a cat before, though I had always wanted to, and here was the finest of his kind, who was once awarded the title of second household cat of all of Ontario.

Vidya and I had an interesting start.  She was a newly divorced woman with a young son of five, and she shared joint custody of the boy with her ex-husband.  She purchased the house to start a new life, and me the renter would help to fund it.  I first witnessed her tense meeting with her ex a few days after we moved into the house, it was a Saturday morning and I came down the spiral staircase in my pajamas.  Vidya didn't bother to introduce us but ushered the boy to leave with his father.

After the father and son left, Vidya immediately turned around and asked me:

"Isn't he an idiot?  Have you ever seen such a stupid man?"  She looked eagerly at me to confirm her opinion on the father of her child.

"Well, I only saw him for a few minutes, we barely spoke so I cannot say."  I answered reasonably.

"You have no idea."  Vidya rolled her eyes.

A few days later I would have to agree with Vidya over the stupidity of the situation, when she came back all riled up after speaking with her lawyer.  Apparently after seeing me at the staircase, Vidya's ex husband was not satisfied with the explanation that I was a renter and decided instead I was the lesbian lover of his ex wife, and somehow such a claim would help his legal case to lesson child support, gain custody to the boy...etc.  I was surprised.

"I need to do something."  Vidya was livid, pacing back and forth in her lovely sitting room raging to bring her nemesis down at all cost.  I tried to calm her with words, but it was no use, they just sparked new ideas in her head.  Champagne however did better, he jumped on top of the entertainment unit and commandingly meowed a few times, and he stood there like a sphinx; it seemed to trigger something in Vidya.

"Oh Champ, you are the man of my life aren't you?  I can always count on you can't I?" She said dejectedly.

I took the cat's cue and asked her for stories of Champagne to distract her.  It worked, we spent the night talking about his past.

Champagne was fifteen years old when I met him, and he was with Vidya since he was a kitten.  She purchased him from a pet store for $100.

"He was a funny kitten, completely unmanageable."  She said, laughing as she spoke of him.

A long time ago she said, and in better days with her ex husband, she purchased a new couch and was transporting it to a new house when they heard sneezes from inside the cushions.  Champagne had somehow found a way into the inner compartment of the chair and got trapped there, in the end they had to cut open the cushions to get him out.  Another time Champagne sneaked outside through some opening at night and got caught in the rain, the next morning she found some wet dirty thing outside her front steps and she shrieked from thinking he was a possum.

And over the next few months, I found out on my own what it was like to live with Champagne.  I have two words to describe it:  pure joy.  At nights he gave us gifts.  I could hear him in my half sleep dancing some hunting sequence downstairs, he howled and chased his fuzzy bite sized toys around, then ceremoniously marched upstairs and delivered them to us while we slept.  In the mornings I'd find colorful little things at the foot of my bed, but I always had one less than Vidya, which I am sure signified something in Champagne's feline logic.

The one thing Champagne valued more than anything was freedom.  There was no end to his effort to break free from the house.  He learned how to open doors, sometimes he organized a joint effort with Snowflake his white cat girlfriend.  One time he followed a boy we hired to mow the lawn all over the house, we found out it was because he figured that when the eventually boy leaves the house, it would give him a chance to escape.  Yet despite his love of independence, he very much enjoyed people's attention, on Halloween he proudly wore a black bow tie and stood waiting at the door for trick or treating children.  It was delightful.

I was content in being a homebody back then, my job was horrible and it was very cold in Ottawa.  I loved being in the house and me sitting at the breakfast table on Sunday mornings observing Champagne's ingenious ways to steal my bacon.  But Vidya was full of plans, she was determined to meet the man of her life after her divorce.  We spent interminable hours talking of her hopes for a new romance and my wish for a new job, while Champagne stood quietly next to us.  I gathered he took real pride in being the man of the house, and in his own way he was taking care of us, just as he cared for his kitty girlfriend Snowflake.  Champagne and Snowflake curled up and slept together everyday, and whenever she made the slightest demand, he would diligently lick her inch by inch.  On some nights Vidya and I sat watching their romance while snow fell and a cup of tea in hand, and I never felt so entranced by any other sight.

Vidya and I both agreed Champagne was the man of our dreams.

The ugly legal battle continued throughout the winter, it seemed Vidya and her ex could not agree on anything.  Every time her ex called, Vidya would spend hours analyzing his words to sieve for something to use against him in court, and the legal fees mounted.  Up to that point, divorce was some vague idea in my mind, but in the Ottawa area I witnessed the realities of broken families when I saw scores of fathers with young children in McDonalds on Wednesday nights, it was sad.

Vidya's son reacted by throwing the worst temper tantrums imaginable, and he took to kicking Champagne in the gut.  Sometimes I'd see Champagne flying across the hallway because the kid went mad, it took all my restraint not to shout at that moment.  For some reason though, Champagne never gave up on the kid, he seemed to understand the situation and pitied his abuser.  I talked to Vidya about it.

"You know Champagne really cares about my son.  When my son was a baby and cried, Champagne would insist I come to the crib.  He could not stand to hear my son cry."  Vidya told me.  Yet she didn't do enough to end the problem, I suspected it was because she felt more guilty about the stress of the divorce on her son.

Over time, as the temperature dropped, Vidya and I got closer as friends.  We went out together, I even concealed my age and accompanied her to singles dance for the over thirties. I came to respect her resilience.  After two failed marriages, one being physically abusive, it was a marvel she didn't loose hope on men.  I admired that positivity.

One day in spring I got a new job in the US, it was considered a very good thing, but I was sorry to leave Vidya and Champagne.  They both saw me to the door and watched as the taxi drove me away to the airport, and I saw Champagne meowing at the window for the last time.  Vidya and I kept in touch over the years, we'd call to debrief each other on our love lives and career status.  She had never found the right man, but as time passes that no longer mattered to her.  

About a year ago I received a phone call from Vidya and she informed me Champagne had passed away.  I was stunned though not surprised, he was by then twenty-two years old.  The old devil outlived his two younger feline companions, as I was sure he would, and lived to the fullest till his very last breath.  Through her sobs, Vidya told me Champagne demanded his freedom all the way to the end, despite being in pain, and the last thing he did was smelling the flowers in the garden.  He died in the gazebo in Vidya's arms; I have a vivid picture of them together in my mind, I often think of it.


Jackie

A job in the sticks

Picture taken from Site

I remember vividly how I had only one thing on my mind when I graduated from my first engineering degree:  Escape. I was a girl obsessed.  I ruthlessly let go of a perfectly good boyfriend who wanted to marry me, I cut off from my friends, I said goodbye to everyone before I even had a job in hand. My father tried to guilt trip me into staying,

"We have sacrificed so much for you." he pleaded.

I answered him dramatically, "Those who are grateful end up slaves.  I choose resentment and I will escape."

Oy.

I took the very first job I could find, I purchased my parent's old car and drove off full of naive expectations in my head.  And I think you can guess how that turned out.

I spent my teenage and college years in Toronto Canada, a fairly big and cosmopolitan city by all standards.  I didn't think there was much to love with Toronto. There is nothing to be ashamed of either of course, it is a perfectly functional city: decent employment rates, excellent restaurants, sane politics, good roads...etc.  But I was hoping for some place remarkable, like New York, or Moscow, or Nairobi. In truth Toronto was not really the problem, it was my life there and the burdens come with.  I feared if I weren't steadfast in leaving, I wouldn't stand a chance but to go down a very narrow path, slowly and painfully.

My first job was located in a small town named Arnprior about 50 km west of Ottawa, home to about 7000 people.  It is one of the capital city's satellite communities, except Arnprior was a particularly insular place, I was warned that people there are of a different breed.  No matter.  I was there for a brilliant career, I cared not for the distractions of my surroundings.

Now imagine a delicate and tall Chinese girl, dressed in a flattering business casual ensemble with open toe flats, she walks confidently into a manufacturing plant and straight to the President's office.  She shakes hands with her new boss, the President himself, and was immediately directed to her station ready to assume the role of engineer of a 80-workers strong medical device company.  Technically, that was what happened.

"You is the new engineer?"  Some guy name Frank shouted at me through the deafening noise of the machines.  He was covered in soots, lubricants and whatever else.

"Yes I am, very nice to meet you." I replied.

"You is what they come up with huh.  Certainly different."  He indiscreetly eyed me from top to bottom, then he added, "The last guy was here for only two months."

"What happened to him?"  I asked,

"Oh eh, he eh, he misses his home.  He is from a small town out in New Foundland ya know, those types are f*@!in' idiots.  He was crying like a pussy, bangin' on his desk (my desk) sayin' he wants home and mommy for days."

"Huh." I didn't think there was a town smaller than Arnprior but I held my tongue.

When I arrived at my desk it was completely covered in dirt and junk.  Lorie from shipping snuck up behind me.

"You are a pretty little thing."  She said, I was in fact a head taller than her, I was much thinner though.

"Thank you."  I replied.

"How old are you?" She asked,

"Twenty three."  

"How many kids do you have?"  No one had asked me that before...ever...up to that point.

"None."  

"Well, if you stay here you soon will."  She said, I glared at her.  "The men here, they have their ways...."  She explained.

I thought the wisest thing to do in response was to clear my so called desk.  I searched high and low for cleaning materials, and came back with some bottles of unidentified chemicals.  They worked, at least I could see that the desk was made of good solid wood.

Two days later they found a dead woman in front of the company grounds just off of the main road.  Everyone was talking about it when I got to work.

"She died in her PJs."  Lorie came to tell me.

"Did you know her?"  I asked.

"No."  She said, "This kind of thing isn't abnormal you know, especially in the winter.  This highway is called the killer stretch.  They'd find dead bodies every so often, sometimes they are left there for weeks."

"The drivers just leave them there?"  I asked, trying to conceal my amazement.

"Oh yeah.  They are just drunks."  She said.

"You mean the dead?"

"Well yes, people got drunk and they walk out of their house in the cold and die.  Sometimes they get hit by a car.  But then come to think of it, the drivers are often drunk too."  Lorie was right.  That was exactly what happened to the woman, she was a drunk who walked out into the road late one night and died due to some complication from her alcoholism.

It was a terribly rough first week.  I thought my life would finally begin in this new place, but instead all my hopes were destroyed pretty much in those first few days, and very soon I was again on escape mode.

Since I was new to the professional world, naturally, I tend overreact to the smallest upset.  But this was made infinitely worse by the fact that I came to the most ridiculous workplace in the western world.  From the outside looking in, my job wasn't so bad.  I interacted with FDA and surgeons to design and produce orthopedic implants and instruments.  I attended surgeries, I used state of the art software, and compared to all other employees there, I was a highly paid individual.

The President started his business when he got a contract from the Johnson and Johnson Company, the behemoth cash cow south of the border, and he built his plant from that initial capital.  The problem is, he never grew out of his entrepreneur phase into a real businessman.  His operation was a complete disaster, we were scrapping upwards of 95% of the product line because they were not meeting spec.  In my naivety, I wanted to improve the efficiency and quality of our processes, that was the job of an engineer after all.  But the President had other ideas.

One day, he threw a bowie knife onto my desk.

"I want you to design something like this."  He told me.

"This is a knife."  I said, utterly confused.

"Yeah, I talked to my butcher and he told me how much he paid for his knifes.  I could make a fortune with all that scrap metal."  Rumor has it, he kept the defect metal implants in his barn shed.  I heard there was a mountain of it.  So I spent the day on my CAD program designing a knife.  Why not?  Except he forgot it the very next day and came back with another bonehead idea.

However, that was nothing compared to the safety violations of this place, I was working in mild fear for my life everyday.  The President is by far the most frugal man I know, he would do bloody anything to save a buck.

"There is no fire alarm in this place."  I said in one managers meeting.

The President eyed me darkly.  The production managers, shipping staff and the engineers were all housed in a large room above the plant with only one small staircase in and out.  The staircase was above a compressor.

I boldly added some safety items in our meeting agenda, exercising my engineer authority.  "We need a fire escape and a fire alarm."

"Now, that is not being flexible.  There is an announcement system."  The President replied.

"Yes, but no one can hear it, the machines here are really loud.  Besides, the system is locked inside your office, no one can get to it.  Everyone upstairs will surely die if there is a fire."  Someone else said.

"No no, there is no need.  Everything is good and proper here."  The President soon changed the subject.

But I suppose he feared what I may do, report him to the authorities perhaps.  The next morning when I came to my desk, Chuck the maintenance guy was doing something next to it.

"What are you doing?"  I asked.

"Oh, I am making you a fire escape."  Chuck said.  He was in fact making a rope ladder.

"Is this a joke?"  I asked.

"Well, if there is a fire, you can use this to jump out of the window."  Chuck answered, apparently he thought it was a clever idea.

"The windows do not open, and they are less than a feet wide."  I pointed at the windows.

"I suppose you are right.  I wonder why the boss asked me to do this. This makes no sense at all."  Chuck said, genuinely confused.  He then abandoned the ladder and went away.

After a while, I was accustomed to the absurdity and took things in stride, to a point.  I barely reacted when Pete, the production manager, yelled out the loudest F word I have ever heard because his computer crashed once too many times (The President refused to buy him a new computer though the old one crashes every half an hour).  Pete came to work the next day insanely drunk after five years of sobriety.  The President came up the stairs, dragged Pete by the collar into the front yard and hosed him down with water.  The rest of us barely turned around to look, events like that were normal.

Crazy as it may seem looking back, going home to Toronto was not an option for me, I never even thought about it.  I cried all the time of course, at nights when I couldn't sleep, or when I drove on thick sheet of black ice in the winter through the killer stretch.  I got into inconsolable self pitying moods where I was sure that my life was forever doomed because I couldn't find another job.  Still, going home was out of the question.

The most brilliant incident though happened near the end of my employment there.  The President was always looking for government saving opportunities for small businesses and he found the perfect one.  At that time, the Canadian government was offering cheap environmental greening services for manufacturing operations and I suspect there were some taxation benefits along with it.  He was ecstatic.

The government sent a consultant to the plant and they rerouted all the water and coolant drainage systems in the building.  It was a good thing.  The point was to improve sustainability and to preserve clean water.  However, the President saw this as an opportunity to further cut cost, he had the genius idea of hooking up the toilet water along with the waste water treatment lines.  Why not?  It was only toilet water.  There were only two toilets, one for men, the other for women.

The toilet water overnight turned into black puddles of acids, antifreeze, slimes, engine oils, bacterial cultures and foulness I don't want to know about.  The stench was unbelievable.  The guys could at least pee standing, the women had to risk splashing from this awful stew.  The President told me this was an excellent thing the next day because the women would no longer be able to take long bathroom breaks, he went as far as bragging about it in the company website in the President's address.

I was in heaven when I finally left that job.  As fate would have it, I was awarded a small career miracle.  My next job was to be in the most venerable research facility in the world, something to this day I have no idea how it came to be.  More importantly, I was to meet my ex-fiance, but that's a story for another day.

Jackie

A nod to Roosts

iStockphoto.com

Here in the US, the NPR station has a three minute fiction contest and the winner piece for this month is named Roosts by Zach Brockhouse.  It is a beautifully written story, very original, please do read it.  The picture above goes with his story.  For this competition, writers are asked to submit a short fiction that began with the line, "Some people swore that the house was haunted," and ended with the line, "nothing was ever the same again after that."

For fun, I thought I'd give it a try tonight.  I think I will name it Midnight.  So here it goes:  

Some people swore that the house was haunted.  Mother says differently, and she was the one with the facts.  You see, it is easier for others to blame the house because it is worse to let us believe my baby sister was possessed.  They told us we could leave the house and there, problems solved.

Mother wouldn't have it though.  She'd say it wasn't the house and she was sure of it.  She would repeat to them the story of the hospital visit, when Grandpa had a cholecystectomy and she brought my baby sister along to see him.  My sister was only a toddler she said, and before she was inside she was happy as a bee, cute as a button.  But after, Mother exclaimed, after my sister was brought into the hospital she went crazy. 

"My baby cried so hard she went upside down in her carriage, I thought she'd choke.  Something awful happened to her there."

Yes but that was also around the time when you moved into the house isn't it, people would counter.  But I knew there was no convincing Mother, she wanted to be right so bad.

It comes and goes her crying, the same ghastly tone in her wail every time.  It always happened at midnight, and stops within a minute.  I had heard it of course; I slept next to my sister in the same bed all those years.  Grandma came to witness once, and the next day she came back with some Buddhist charms and amulets and she asked my sister questions.  It won't work Mother would say.

Mother preferred the bible; she placed one between our pillows.  The Lord Jesus Christ will protect you, Mother told my sister.

Protect her from what I wondered, the ghost was rather courteous.  My sister grew tall, she learned to ride a bike, she did her homework okay, what's a little crying in the middle of the night?  

But Mother had to be right, the bible had to work.  The crying is less she assured everyone.

She didn't know I had made deals with the ghost.  On some nights I told him to hush it because I had a test the next day.  He was rather obliging; he must have cared about us.

Except nothing is so simple, in death or in life, change is inevitable.  When my family moved to a new country, the ghost had to decide.  He chose to stay in the house and not board a plane with my sister.  In the airport we were nervous but my sister, she didn't look any different.  We said goodbye to many and crossed an ocean, and as it were nothing was ever the same again after that. 

Jackie      

  

A bizarre dream

Picture taken from site

I dreamt I was inside a large room of a very grand estate. The room was old and plush like one from the turn of the century, full of dark colors and antique furnishings. The sunlight was beaming through a large window, and the shadow of the window panes casted on the wooden floors. The house may have been English, or perhaps French; I am no expert to tell. I walked across the room and my footsteps echoed; it was a pleasant sound, brisk and commanding.

But as I walked I was aware of many restrictions on my movements. When I looked down I saw the spread of a heavy skirt. I felt the tightness on my waist held together by a clever corset, which also anchored the weight of the skirt. I wore an enormous hat, and the bottom of its broad brim shielded part of my vision. I did not know what the hat looked like, but I was sure it was an ornate one; perhaps covered in flamboyant plumes and elaborate fabric trims. The hat was held tight on my head cocked to one side, which was perfectly balanced by the coiffure of my hair.

I moved towards the window and I looked out. I saw a party of men and women sitting outside in a garden. There were rose bushes and willowy trees behind, and the people were dressed to the same style as me. They were beautiful like an impressionist painting. I stood there watching them laughing and chatting easily together; while my gloved finger stroked the face of a brooch high on my neck, the weight of it suspended at my collar. I felt its contours and decided it must be lovely too, though I did not make out what it was. A lady saw me and she called out for me to join them. The next thing I was transported outside.

"Come, come my dear sister. Do join us." She waved her arm wide to one side. The men stood up and smoothen their tailored jackets.

She called me her sister, but I did not recognized her. She was small and delicate. I was faintly aware that I was no longer myself, but there was no mirrors about to let me see my face. Yet I assumed this role easily enough and I waved back at them. There was a man opposite to the lady; he was the first to stand, but he did so very slowly. He was tall and handsome, and he smiled at me.

"Will you not join us?" The lady asked again, framing the choice as an ambiguous one. I saw the table in front of them was laden with food and drink served in exquisite China and the party was waiting for my answer. The beautiful man looked at me knowingly and inexplicably that settled the matter in my head.

"No, I believe I will go for a walk." I said.

"An excellent idea." The man said, suggesting he planned to join me. I took one good look at him, and I thought his handsomeness was only surpassed by his gentlemanly manners.

"Yes, a walk is a fine idea." My make-believe sister wished to join us as well.

The next scene the three of us were strolling on a narrow lane, flowers and trees all around us.  I did not know our direction but I determinedly pressed on. I didn't say very much, but I guided the other two. The lady mindlessly followed while talking nonstop, the gentleman kept very close behind me.

"What a beautiful day, it is so wonderful to be out." The lady said.

"It is always very fine this time of year." The gentleman answered.

"Do you think there are many birds around? It sounds like there are many." The lady continued.

"It certainly does." The gentleman replied.

Their silly conversation continued like this, his politeness never failed him. But I felt his interest was entirely feigned, which made me like him even more. So we walked on, and the lane began to widen. At first there were still trees about, then suddenly we were in an open field. The sky was clear and bright, but the sudden vastness was slightly disconcerting.

The next scene we were approaching some kind of farm. There was a decrepit split and rail fence and a sorry looking farm house in the field. We stopped to survey our surroundings. The lady again spoke.

"What a charming farm." She said.

"Beautiful country indeed." The gentleman replied.

"What are you talking about? This is covered in shit." I said, pointing out the obvious. The lady pursed her lips.

"You are correct, so it is." The gentleman said.

The muddy shit was thick and we were foot deep in it. I passed through the fence and I headed to the direction of the farm house. The gentleman again followed me close behind. The lady however stayed behind.

"We should have dinner." She said. That was the last time I saw her.

There were farm animals scattered about in the field, chickens, pigs, cows. Each one of the them was missing one limp, and they were covered and lying in shit. The animals were in such terrible shape I couldn't tell if the chickens were roosters or a hens, their feathers had completely fallen. I tried to reach out to them, but they tobogganed away on their stomaches, their remaining limps desperately propelling them in the thick shit. They were moving slow, but I moved slower in my binding dress, and eventually they were gone from my view.

The next scene I was inside the farm house observing the total chaos inside. The floor indoors was covered in shit as well. I looked down and my skirt was stained, and my footsteps were sticky to the floor. It was a more modern house, the kitchen was in front, and there were filthy furniture about, some fallen broken chairs here and there. The farmer and his woman were in the room, but they were not surprised to see me. At first I wanted to ask them about the animals, to see about improving their situation. But then I looked at the two people in front of me and I saw that they too were covered in shit, I didn't think they were in control anymore than the animals.

"Your neck is covered in shit sir." I said.

"No'm, I ain't." He said. His mouth opened wide and many of his teeth were missing.

"You and your lady, you two are covered in shit." I said, again pointing out the obvious.

They didn't answer. The farmer stared at my neck. His woman too, they were both looking intently at the direction of my brooch, my hand instinctively went there, again stroking the face of it.

"You have a lovely place." The gentleman said to the farmer. I had forgotten all about him.

"Would you like some food?" The farmer's woman asked.

"No." I answered bluntly.

"Perhaps another time." The gentleman politely answered, his manners remains impeccable in all this horror. I was shocked at him.

At this point it was near the end and I became very angry. I wanted to make a scene and protest against the state of this place. I tried to bend down and pick up some shit. I would like to throw it at the gentleman. But I was stuck, the dream would not allow me to do such a thing.

Jackie

This was my dream from last night. If there are any Freudian disciples out there who would like to analyze it for me, I would love to know the meaning. Feel free to comment and tell me I am nuts. :)

Sugar the Dachshund

Picture taken from site

Sugar is a dog. Sugar is a mother. Sugar was my purpose for one day.

Someone I know wisely observed how we often trade our time for money or experiences. This got me thinking and realizing that outside of making a living, I seriously got bored of all the shopping (the gratification is always too brief), sight seeing (which rarely leaves an impression on me) and TV watching. I thought I would take a chance and try something else entirely different for a change. So on one Saturday, I looked up a local Petsmart event for an adoption drive and signed up as a volunteer handler. I picked a dog event because I didn't have the heart to see cats suffer inside tiny cages all cured up and scared. I thought I had a better chance to come back in one piece with dogs.

So this is how it works. Foster parents and drivers bring homeless dogs from shelters and foster homes to the event, and volunteer handlers like myself would show them to potential adoption families. The strategy is to stand outside by the curb of the pet store giant and accost pedestrians for a chance to charm them. Each handler gets a dog and a bio sheet and then that was it, we go out there and hope for the best pretty much.

I stood in line among half a dozen or so volunteers and we waited to be matched with our dog. Big energetic pit bull mixes showed up one after another, but because I had no experience with dogs, they didn't think I could handle them. So I waited and waited, and just when I was beginning to think I was wasting my time because there was no more dogs to be had, one lady showed up with a Dachshund in the crook of her arm.

"This is Sugar. I need someone to take her, I have another dog to show." The driver lady said.

I personally do not love Dachshunds, I had my heart set on a bigger dog and so I hesitated in claiming Sugar, but I was next in line.

"She needs someone to hold her, she likes to be held." The driver lady added.

"Do you mind holding her for the day?" A very smily blond girl at the volunteer desk asked me. "She should be a breeze."

"Oh yeah, she is easy." The driver lady agreed.

So I stepped forward and took the dog into my arms. She had a surprisingly firm body, like she was entirely made of muscles. I briefly introduced myself to Sugar, she didn't seem to care and looked in the direction of the road.

"We'll be fine." I said to both the driver lady and the smily blond. They assured me Sugar was easy again, all I had to do was to keep holding her and they handed me her bio sheet.

With Sugar sitting awkwardly in my arm, I looked for a space to sit by the curb and found one between two pit bull mixes. Their handlers looked friendly enough and I squeezed myself between them.

"Oh what's this fellow's name? He is new. I had not seen him before." The handler to my right asked me. He looked young, maybe in his early twenties.

"Her name is Sugar. Let's see..." I was scanning through her bio sheet to get a good read on my new friend.

Sugar's blurry picture was at the top right corner of a 8 1/2 X 11 sheet. She was four years old it says, or so believed. Her personality profile was the usual: friendly, calm, good with kids, good with cats, loves cuddles, doesn't bark very much... But as I read on, something stood out in her history section.

"Looks like she was rescued from the puppy mills, she likely had dozens of puppies it says." I loudly declared.

The young man's face scrunched into a grimace, his pit bull mix did not look pleased hearing it either. Sugar however was not giving a damn, she looked like she had passed it all.

"Some people deserve to die." The young man says simply.

Right then the driver lady stopped by to check on us, and I asked her about Sugar's puppy mill background. "Oh yes, she escaped death over and over again this one. First she survived the puppy mill hell, then she was almost put down at the local shelter in South Carolina."

The next part she lowered her voice as if to avoid being heard by potential families. "She is not even toilet trained, she was likely locked inside a tiny wired cage her whole life. And the part about her not barking, I think it is because she was debarked."

"Debarked?" I asked. Then the young man told me it is a common practice in puppy mills, they jam a metal rod down the dog's throat to damage her vocal cords so she cannot bark.

"Some people deserve to die." This time it was from me.

Now, however horrible their pasts, the dogs all seemed to be in a jolly mood. All except my Sugar. She was perfectly calm in my arm, but she was listless, and voiceless. So I played the happy puppy part for her, I did my megawatt dimpled smile every time someone walked by. But no interest.

Some folks stopped and say cute things to the dogs, but most hurried inside the store like they wanted to avoid something awful. The dogs did their very best.  They looked forlornly at anyone who paid them the slightest attention and they were on their best behavior. I don't know much about dogs but I had expected more aggression between them. I mean, if this was a fight for life situation for us humans, we would likely claw our competitors' eyes out. I thought the dogs were very neighborly, I would even say they had a sense of solidarity.

Frankly I didn't expect any of it to work. I had good conversations with the other handlers, we were thrilled to be doing something good, but we steered clear from discussing the dogs' futures. The afternoon wore on and nothing. People passed by but neither the pit bulls or Sugar had any luck, and the handlers were growing a bit despondent. The dogs themselves had more hope, or wisdom, the pit bulls licked their handlers in perfect intervals, but my Sugar was spiritless. She didn't seem to care what happens to her.

A young attractive couple appeared looking around and they had a dog with them, a little black one not much bigger than Sugar. I seized the opportunity. I put her on the ground and led her to them. Sugar perked up and she sniffed the butt of the couple's dog.

"Oh she is pretty." The lady said.

I smiled mega huge, "Oh yes, she is so beautiful and calm. A lovely dog you can take anywhere under your arm."

"Yes and it seems she likes Ken." The lady said.

"Is that your dog's name? he is adorable." Sugar was trying to be nice to Ken, but Ken wouldn't have any.

"Oh Ken, be good now. She looks so much like you, she is the same color. She looks awesome with you doesn't she?" The lady asked Ken.

The driver lady came by and the two women talked. And I thought it was promising because at the end of their conversation the couple assured us they would come back before the event closes to get Sugar. Then they walked away with Ken still giving my dog the cold shoulder. Little mutt!

"That's a good sign." I said smilingly, feeling relieved. But the driver lady didn't look as pleased.

"Some people just want everything matchy matchy." She said with her eyes rolling. I suppose she understands dogs better than me, but then I realized it wasn't so, she reads people better than me, and she didn't like this family for Sugar. I went back to my space by the curb with her tucked in my arm again, not sure if I should be glad or not. The other handlers congratulated me, they said it was a good sign.

I should say that I was less anxious after the couple, or maybe I just didn't have the tenacity to grieve over someone else's life for a sustained period. When the event was drawing to a close and I saw no sign of the couple returning, I sort of resigned myself to an enlightened sense of failure, I adopted Sugar's devil-may-care air.

Twenty minutes before the event closes a woman showed up with three little girls and a little black dog.

"Oh my, look a long haired Dachshund! Wow look at that face, those eyes, she is a beauty!" The woman exclaimed. The girls petted Sugar.

"Casper, look how gorgeous she is." The woman said to her dog. Casper the dog went up to Sugar and licked her in the face. I swear I almost swooned from joy.

"Oh Casper is from this same adoption event, we got him a year ago in this same place." The woman explained to me while looking serenely at her happy family.

"You have a beautiful family, are the girls sisters?" I asked

"Oh they are triplets, not identical though." She said, then she asked her girls "You girls want a girl dog right? You will fight over where this dog sleeps won't you?"

So this was how Sugar found her new family with three little girls and a black dog name Casper. The woman was not fazed when we told her Sugar was a puppy mill mommy and she needed to be toilet trained.

"I am a doctor, I have handled much worst. Casper was not easy either but look at him now. Sugar will be spoiled for the rest of her life." was the woman's answer.

The girls were eager to buy something pink for Sugar, I offered to watch her until they were done with their shopping.

When all were settled, and we had a happy ending, and the other dogs went where destiny led them; I realized I hadn't bothered to get to know Sugar this entire day. I was so eager to find her a home and playing God with her future I forgot what an experience this was for the both of us. I was grateful I was given this little extra time, and I looked her in the eyes and I talked to her. I told her I was sorry for her life in the puppy mill, I was sorry for her lost babies, I said her life would change and I wished her the best. I thanked her for letting me be a part of her life, even if it was only for a little while. I spoke slowly and repeated the same sentences over and over, and in the end, for the first time, she looked at me and nuzzled up to my face. We said our goodbyes.

The woman and the girls came back with a pink collar with fake diamonds on it and a cart load of doggy things. Sugar looked smashing in her new attire.

"Pink bling, you weren't kidding!" I joked. The woman laughed and she puts Sugar in the shopping cart, then everybody seemed to be talking all at once, a family figuring out their new life together. I waved my goodbyes unnoticed and left with my husband.

Jackie

Moving Forward

Picture taken from site

The bend off a major roadway started off uneventfully, the rolling hills and splendid trees are not yet in view. My Harry and I are comfortably silent in the car, the radio playing a well-known tune at a soothing decibel. We've entered a single lane side road, and my Harry slowed our pace, an instinctive reaction brought on by lurking police vehicles all around the world. An elegant country house passes by rather inconspicuously despite standing in its lonesome in the middle of a vast grass field. Far away in a distance the hills are densely covered in trees and together they look like giant heads of cauliflowers, except in color. It is autumn, a season of contradictions I heard it once said, because it is both a time of plenty and decay.

More houses pass by in midst of many more vast fields when I notice we are moving alongside an uninterrupted stone fence marking some unknown territories, or perhaps to keep invisible cattle in. I look ahead to see where it ends and find that it doesn't, it stretches on with the road. I wonder where the stones came from, they are flat and jagged individually but somehow stacked perfectly together as if they were always meant to be placed this way.

Suddenly, a couple of trees standing side by side appear next to the road, their figures big and absurd. I lean my forehead against the window to take a good look and I notice their leaves have completely fallen as if the trees feel more imposing in their nakedness, bulging in their trunks, fierce branches jabbing every which way. Together they grow more menacing as we approach, determined to frighten people any way they can. I reckon perhaps their larger than life persona had spared them from the axe, or they have simply gone deranged from being the only survivors after many untold tragedies to their kind.

The sun shines from the back and our view lit up by a warm spread of light, and here and there emerged sparkles of gold. Reds and yellows and oranges intensified. The houses too are illuminated but they barely cast any shadows, or the glowing fields around them would not permit any. Yet the picture is all wrong, because the backdrop is not a clear sky blue, but instead an uneven dirty white and grey. The clouds are sinking, and they give the appearance of being draped in layers, like a velvety theater curtain impenetrable by the brightest lamps. I have read that the smallest baby cloud weighs more than a hundred elephants.

"These clouds weigh millions of elephants." I say, at once realizing it is an unintelligible remark, but my Harry answers knowingly, "That looks about right."

Another familiar song is on the radio, and the sunlight fades, and the colors again settle into a less contradictory palette. The world steadily rolls by, but it is no use. I am disappointed by the loss of a sudden brilliance, and a train of thought is forever halted. I feel my mind closing in, and again I am aware of my Harry's presence, the melody of a song, and the prospects of our destination.

Jackie

Three little boys, one vast desert

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I have a theory. The best way to get to know a culture that is not your own is to date it. And if you are really curious, then as logic speaks, you must marry it. So, with a robust sense of adventure, I knew quite early on that I would marry out of my race. NO, not just out of my race, I wanted a complete foreigner, someone who believes in uprooting his entire life at least once. I have no distinct reason for wanting this, except I can't help being bored by my Chinese immigrant surroundings during my formative years, as much as dim sum eating and bubble tea sipping enhanced the cultural landscape of Toronto Canada where I partly grew up, I wanted to do everything humanly possible to avoid making a life out of it.

So I guess I got what I wanted, I married a Jewish guy. Israeli to be exact, he corrects me every time when I refer to him as a Jew. And it is fun to compare notes on our childhood experiences. We are each appalled by the other. He gaped when I told him how my mother brought me along to purchase a cane to beat me with (not asking for sympathy here, it is a common practice in Hong Kong, we get to pick the color), and I am shocked at the complete freedom he had as a child.

My husband (My Harry) cannot sustain a continuous conversation about his past, I am not sure why, probably because he is a guy. I practically had to heimlich bits and pieces out of him, but it is worth the trouble because his claims are nothing short of fairy tales to me. I cannot imagine growing up like that. As a little boy of six, he took the bus to go to the library by himself. (What?) His entire school body staged a strike when the teachers implemented uniforms requirement: a school logo on any t-shirt the student wishes to wear. (What the?) His mother bought him as many eggs and flour as needed to egg and flour the principal at the end of the school year. (What the...you get the picture)

So while I was marching to and fro between classrooms and deathtrap playgrounds in Hong Kong (Read my Kindergarten in Hong Kong post), My Harry was spending his time very differently. He lived in a suburban neighborhood in Israel, where he and his little buddies had access to the beach to the west, sandy streets with open spaces all around, and whatever beyond in the east. This was a time of innocence I guess, when parents did not feel compel to escort their children to their daily routines.

One day long ago, My Harry decided it was high time he and his friends Shai and Tzhi explored the east, which was a whole lot of nothing, a typical desert in the Middle East. They planned to map it.

"I orchestrated the whole thing" My Harry said, smiling at the memory.

"Shai drew well, he was in charge of drawing the map."

"Tzhi's mother made good sandwiches."

So the three boys carried little backpacks with water bottles, sandwiches, and coloring pencils and headed out for the expedition. They circled around their kindergarten, passed one apartment building, and it was time to eat. The sandwiches are good.

Then taking off again, passed another apartment building, crossed one big avenue, and approaching a very small hill. Getting tired and hot already.

Then they climbed the little hill, saw a whole lotta nothing in front of them, a span of desert, and decided they had enough. They turned to go home and play.

In the meantime in another part of the world, I was probably threatening my mom yet again that I would jump out of my window off the seventh floor if I had to endure another hour of piano practice. (This is a common threat from Hong Kong kids, we all lived in tall buildings) I carried out my threat to the extent of lining my favorite dolls next to the window, gave them a funeral, and then ceremoniously threw them out one by one.

But in the end, for all the differences in our beginnings, My Harry and I wound up doing the same job in the US. I suppose our marriage is a true product of globalization. Would I have it any other way? Probably not.

Jackie

A Ladies Luncheon

A long time ago, I was engaged to a man who is a diplomat from Turkey. We were engaged for five years, together for six. At that time, the Turkish foreign ministry forbade young diplomats in the service for less than seven years from marrying foreign nationals, and in a crucial moment of our relationship, they increased the requirement to twelve years, and when it was too late, they abolished the stupid thing altogether. It is questionable if I would have passed the security clearance in the end, as I recalled there was a long list of conditions, but I cannot think of a more politically inert group of people as Chinese Canadians.

When things got tough in our relationship but I couldn't let go, my friends obliquely suggested it was because I as in love with the luxurious lifestyle and prestige of dating a diplomat. I must admit, I did feel very chic when we attended functions together with police escort. I suppose what people said made sense considering the denouement, what kind of self-respecting modern-day educated girl would give up her professional goals just to be with a man anyway? Others can have their opinions I guess. But the truth is, we hung on because the love was strong, and the relationship captured both our youth and romantic innocence. I lived with him for a year in Germany as sort of an illegal immigrant, the rest of the time we were apart in different continents, unable to be together but unwilling to separate.

When I first got to Germany, I was introduced to my ex-fiancé’s boss the Consulate General and his wife. They had quite a bit of sympathy for us in light of the rule against us marrying, and Mrs. Consulate General made an effort to make me feel welcomed. Europe was an exciting place for the diplomatic circle at that time. America was about to attack Iraq and Europe was in an uproar. Everywhere we went conversations immediately turned to George W. Bush, Tony Blair, UN Security Council…etc. My ex-fiancé was anti-war of course, but all the same, in private, he thought his country was stupid for defying the US. “It is going to happen anyway, think of all the oil and military contracts Turkey will miss out!”

One US diplomat in a British consulate dinner said, “I understand France’s position, they are defiantly against war. But what is the problem with Germany? They are rather sheepish about this whole thing.” I thought it was not such a bad thing to be sheepish over attacking another country unprovoked, the Germans most especially. My ex-fiance said something clever in reply, and I stood there feeling very invisible in a long body-hugging black dress. In a later conversation, My ex-fiancé mentioned that I had just arrived from the US, and the US diplomat helpfully suggested that I should apply for a job as a secretary in her consulate, but I couldn’t help being offended given I held an Ivy League degree.

Soon after the British dinner, Mrs. Consulate General of Turkey hosted a Ladies luncheon and invited the spouses of all the other Consulate Generals in the city. I was told this was a very typical event; it is the duty of the wives to host and attend this sort of thing. She told me to arrive an hour early so she could show me how it was done. I thought Mrs. Consulate General had excellent taste. I liked the way she fixed the mansion, and her own paintings displayed very elegantly next to the furniture she collected from around the world. We sat in her museum-like reception room and sipped tea while we waited for the ladies to arrive, and she said to me, “I will tell you about this life, it goes by very fast.” I wasn't sure if she meant it was a good thing, she said it very deliberately like she wanted to help me form some kind of resolution. I kept silent.

The ladies all arrived at the same time, and they each brought a gift. My face went red, I didn’t realize I had to bring a gift. I felt very uncouth and decided then to be no more than an objective observer. There were two main sitting rooms, and I sat in a chair by myself to work out which country each lady belonged. It wasn’t difficult, they didn’t all know each other but they had a way of presenting themselves which leaves no doubt of their place. As soon as they were seated, I realized I've made an important discovery: The ladies were separated by their country’s position on the war! No mistake, in one room, there was the American, Brit, Australian, Spaniard, Mexican, Pole, Israeli, and the Against-War camp was seated across in the other room. I was fascinated.

I listened to their conversations intently. For months I had heard nothing but opinions on the war, but I did not hear it once mentioned in that luncheon. The ladies artfully skirted around the topic, “I was in the airport two weeks ago and I feel the security had stepped up again, it is not surprising given the way things are these days.” But on the whole, I didn’t think any of them wanted to be there, they had this rigid expression on their faces, and their conversations were very contrived. I sat close to the American Missus, she seemed a rather domineering figure. I guess she thought it polite to speak to me after a long time. “Do you speak English?” I told her I am Canadian, but she looked at me like I deceived her. I wanted to say more, but I did not feel equal to convey elegantly that "I am a Hong Kong born Chinese Canadian currently engaged to a Turkish diplomat stationed in Germany”. No one spoke to me after that.

Mrs. Consulate General had an official assistant; he was a nice looking Turkish young man. My ex-fiancé told me he was new to the job, that he was a clever guy who helped rebuild the mansion which did not nearly look so good before. I saw this promising young man for the first time in the luncheon. He was dressed all in white, his hair slick and neat. I watched him as he walked around in staccato steps to serve champagne to the ladies. When he saw me, he hurried over, and as he bend down to offer me champagne, he gave me a conspiratory wink like we were both new kids in training. I smiled and took a glass, but I did not think it wise to drink. Moments later though, I saw Mrs. Consulate General gracefully gliding across the room to where he was, and I watched her discreetly turn the champagne flutes so that the country’s seal all faced the same direction. It looked like the young man had made a mistake, she spoke to him softly, and I saw his face changed. Right then, the thought crossed my mind that I didn’t like this life so much.

I told this frankly to my ex-fiancé that night and it added to our long list of disappointments with each other which would inevitably drive us apart. My life is very different now, and looking back I am grateful that I had a chance to see a world so unlike my own. Many moons later, I occasionally allow myself to imagine ‘what if’, but it never turns out very well, not even in my fantasy.

Jackie

Kindergarten in Hong Kong

My first lesson on revenge happened in my second year in kindergarten. I was about six years old and I was attending a reputable but strict Catholic school in the suburbs of Hong Kong. I remember scenes from those days like it was yesterday, cramped classrooms, cheap notebooks made of thin scrap papers, memorizing words in unison, heavy backpacks, and mumbling prayers I didn't care to understand. But I recall other things too. In particular, I have vivid memories of falling on the sandy surface of the school grounds and scrapping my knees over and over. Inevitably my knees bled and I bore two very ugly wounds that could never quite healed right because I kept injuring the same spots again and again. In fact, I carry those scars all my life since. I remember how I dreaded having to explain to my teachers why I was so clumsy and fall so often during our fifteen minutes recess, and then explain to my mother all over again why I continually hurt myself. I felt guilty about them in fact; they were proof of my deficiency somehow.

I was rather tall for my age, I had a very lanky body, which I was convinced as the reason I stood out as a target. But it wasn’t so; other girls had scrapped knees as well. We discussed it often as we sat together during our twenty minutes bus ride home and wondering how we should best explain to our mothers. We knew then it was because of our uniforms, which was a dress cut just above the knees. In the summer it was a cotton dress with a plaid pattern, the school logo sewn prominently just beneath the left shoulder, and in the winter it was a woolen dress paired with high dark green socks, but neither ensembles provided protection to where it needed.

One day we realized our shoes were a problem as well. We had to wear lady-like shoes, they were some fake patent leather type, tight and binding to our little feet. “We just cannot move in these things!” One girl boldly said at the back of the bus. But we knew she was only willing to say so then because we were in a noisy bus. There was no way we would repeat that to the adults. In Hong Kong those days, little kids were taught to obey orders since birth. We marched everywhere. In the morning after we got off the bus, we lined up like soldiers for a quick prayer in the school grounds, before we marched to our classrooms. We lined up and marched to recess, and again when we go home.

We were told we had it easy in kindergarten, and turned out to be true, I didn’t know then things would later get worse in primary school. But I dreaded my days in kindergarten all the same. We had exams that gave us nightmares, and the system mercilessly ranked us by our grades. In fact, we marched according to our rank so that everyone knew instantly how each student fared in the class. It was humiliating to stand in the last place. I remember Iiving in a state of mild fear all the time, and at any moment it escalated to full blown panic attacks brought on by as little as a teacher’s glance.

There was a playground in the school, and we had access to it during recess time. Like anything else in Hong Kong, schools had very little space, so it was generally madness when the kids are out and about. Recess was the most dreadful times for us girls, the boys terrorized the playground like demons since they were not at all hampered by their comfortable uniforms and shoes. When a girl got in the way, the boys simply pushed her aside. Sometimes they pulled up our skirts. The first time I worked up the courage to line up to go down a slide I was pushed straight down onto the pavement. Clearly, something had to be done. But we thought telling our mothers or teachers completely out of the question. We simply did not have faith in them to make things right. Until one day, I was angry enough to do the extraordinary.

I convinced the girls for a whole week that we should fight back. They weren’t so sure about it at first but I was surprisingly persuasive. We had a good plan. We knew we had one weapon against the boys: The girl’s bathroom. Our plan, was to kidnap the worst boy and hold him hostage. The shame for a boy inside a girl’s bathroom should somehow work its’ magic and make our lives better. We were so thorough we even assigned a couple of scouts to make sure the whole thing happened out of teachers’ view and to prevent other girls from entering the bathroom. Then we picked our boy, and that was a no brainer really. This boy, whatever his name, was the worst of them all. He was always chasing and pushing us. I remember he was a heavy child but very agile, and the other boys looked up to him too. He was clearly our guy.

So the day came, and the minute we were let loose in the playground we gathered and located the boy. Seven girls surrounded him and grabbed him from all over. He didn’t initially fight back; he was utterly stunned. But when we got close to the bathroom he fought tooth and nail, we had to really shove him in. But a few boys were alerted by then, and they waited outside the girl’s bathroom to rage revenge on us. We managed to keep the boy inside but my friends were afraid by then. The girls turned on me, they said I brought trouble on them and now they would really get hurt. I felt awful. The boy said he would get me for sure in particular. When the bell rang, we all got out and I cried to myself thinking about the next day.

And the next day came, and I was scared to the bone to walk out into the playground. The boys were waiting for us, I could see them from the window as we marched down the stairs in single file. A couple of girls didn’t desert me though, but I tell you it was terrifying. We held hands and walked right up to meet them, and a bunch of boys circled us immediately, and the big boy rolled up his sleeves like he was going to beat us stupid.

What happened next was like a dream. Our principal was a genial nun, she had a motherly face with dark expressive eyes. She rarely walked the grounds during recess but for some reason she was there that day. Right then we discovered we had another weapon: uncontrolled tears. We cried like mad, all three of us. And when the principal came to investigate, we all pointed at the big boy. The situation looked really bad for them, we told the principal the boys were going to beat us again, like they always did, and we showed her our knees. We spoke well, and the boys just looked defiant and very guilty.

“So you like to hit huh? We can arrange that.” Our principal said. We stood behind her big habits skirt as she ordered the teachers to take the boys away.

That day, before going home, the whole school spent extra ten minutes to watch my boys punch the cushions of folded chairs while our Principal warn the students against future bullying. She even told the teachers to look after us better. I remember feeling very tall standing in formation that afternoon, and I had a good view too, since I was a good student, I was right up there in the front of the line.

Jackie