Fever Days
Just a minute ago, I found myself dancing to Abba. Voulez vous. Aha! Aha! It shouldn't be taken lightly. It couldn't be the fact that Abba started alphabetically from my CD collection, which is, today, compiled into CD books. That's pretty much all that I have wasted my entire life over, it seems. When you keep all your CDs in plastic sleeves, it diminishes the whole collector concept. When they were all once upon a time stacked into piles and piles, there seemed to be structure... power. Now they appear almost invisible, unimportant. Grown ups think differently now, I keep telling myself. Besides, grown ups do important, serious things now. Like falling in love and moving to another country. And when you move to another country it's not the same as moving into another town. You take what's important. You save as much space as you can in your roller wheel luggage case and you lug whatever you can. Even an entire life time of CDs. But I am all grown up now and smart enough to take them in huge photo album sized books of hundreds of CDs in them.
I chose to stay in my room tonight. Mum's watching an Australian documentary about some crocodile hunter and dad's with Gavin watching the news, keeping up with who's winning the Iraq war. "It's one sided" Gavin says, "BBC gives a fairer assessment" dad says nothing and mouths off something about palaces and things. I guess I am so over all the depressing stuff that are going around in our little town. I chose Agnetha's voice, ringing victorious on the stereo. It's playing Waterloo now. But outside this bedroom there's a different war going on now. While American wages a global cowboy war, we are waging another war of our own, fighting enemies we can't see. Enemies so insidious, sinister, clever and unlike us, work even harder and move even faster. They even have less baggage. And we have absolutely no idea how to win. Waterloo.
When the panic started, the virus had barely a name. Now that the scientists have begun carving out a face for it, while we begin losing ours. Pretty soon, the masks and goggles are going to be the standard issue dress code. All fashion sense thrown out the window. We're all scared shitless of course. Suddenly nothing was safe anymore. With AIDS you know that if you don't fuck around you will be alright. But not this bug. You get it just by saying hello to the wrong person. No one's got a moral line this time. Just ask the pastor who caught it and died like, the next day. Prayers are aplenty now, all of us desperately clinging to any spiritual hope and filtered masks we can find. "Wash your hands ALL the time" I remember my dad saying to Ben on his mobile phone once. Ben's already thirty and planning on marriage and running his own IT company and I am quite sure he knew when to wash his hands. But that was just my dad.
For now, my bedroom is my safe place. My weights bench has been moved to the side. Now with the outbreak, I stopped going to the gym. The last thing I want to catch is the flu because I rubbed over some idiot sweat bead on the wrong end of the seat or something. There are fake DVDs on the side table. And there's a picture of Stephen not too far from the alarm clock and the phone. My bed is on the carpet floor. No point getting any bed frames, I told mum once, I don't plan to stay long in Singapore town. When I leave you can donate it to someone else, I said.
The bedroom though tiny, is cooler than the outside, all thanks to air conditioning. But it's the next best thing to privacy which comes in extremely short supply in this country. But I really can't ask for more. I fight less with the folks now. Maybe because I have a proper day job and I stay out of their way. And vice versa. But in times like these, everyone stays out of everybody's way. Except when one is having a lovely dinner and seeing mum's face light up when you tell her what a nice meal she has cooked up. Today mum cooked "mee soto". It was her first attempt. And being the typical Chinese, she opens the conversation over the bowl of ingredients with an apology. "No pepper corn in this. Won't be any good. Must have pepper corn in mee soto" Mum pours the hot gravy broth into the bowl and serves it to me. "Careful, careful. Hot" I turn to her and tell her that everything she cooks is wonderful. She smiles. And it's beautiful. This woman who is constantly racked with insecurity and depression, I suspect, is beginning to find her peace.
Just last week she cooked mee siam, my favourite dish and last Sunday it was long-tong. The mum I knew and loved from childhood days seem to be suddenly resurrected from such a long absence. Somewhere along the way, between our graduation and the menopause, mummy dissapeared into some abyss of dispair. Through the drama of a near divorce and my dad's breakdown, it had to take a disaster of terrorist carnage in faraway New York City to slowly drag her back. In some ways, it must dragged us all back to what's more important. Reminding us of what is truly inevitable, and what is really worth living. Everything comes to an end. "When the durian is ripe, it knows that it is time to fall to the ground" mum said when we were talking about Oldest Uncle who is wasting away from cancer. But that was before the panic. Durians were falling everywhere now it seems and this time, it was because the forest was on fire.
And I have decided to write again. There's got to be something else creative I can do that won't get me in trouble for a change. I am not terribly successful and I don't have tonnes in the bank. But my flair for design is my greatest asset people say. Though it seems more like my greatest liability. People know I am good at what I do. And dammit, don't I know that too! But I am a magnet to people who want a piece of my skill. And they want it cheap or free and I am so sick and tired of it you know? My talent that always gets me in trouble. The parallel to a rich man with money that everybody wanted to borrow from and not return. How often have I swore off doing another bloody wedding card? Here goes: no more bloody wedding cards! Suddenly I don't know why I came back home anymore. If I had stayed in Sydney I would have become an artist. Maybe a writer. I might not get rich. But then again, I might be safe. I remember settling back home and the job and then falling sick right after. I swore angrily with my open right palm fanning upwards in the air: such a crowded little town, one germ and the whole bloody population gets sick. How I wish I could take that all back. How I hoped, to be wrong this time.
They say that once you get the fever, it's almost touch and go. Your lungs fill up with fluid and then it's bye bye. Forget Perth honey, this is it. Plus no one gets to visit you in hospital. No one in their right mind would anyway. I don't know if I laughed when mum said to Gavin to be careful everytime he went out. He never replied when mum nagged about the smoking. He barely humphed when dad suggested nicotine patches. Gavin was the mono syllabic boy. And Gavin says nothing most of the time. "And wash your hands!" Dad says. Gavin: "..."
Dad seems the calmest person around. He seems to have mellowed over the years. Although it would take an occasional glass of wine and the wrong bank IOU to set it all off: the famous Tan family temper. The Tan-per. He once put all our lives in danger when we were all kids and our little holiday Malaysia went horribly wrong. We were travelling back to Singapore by train on the first class carriage when news of a derailment stopped the train from going further. We were told that we would be safely transferred by bus to the other side of the tracks and carry on. It sounded quite simple of course but what really happened was we all sat by a dusty road for a bus that took a whole night to arrive and Gavin (who was just a toddler) kept vomitting. When we finally got to our carriage, it wasn't first class. It was cattle class. We sat near the toilet door that had no hinge, where everything rattled and stank of urine. My dad finally snapped and rained curses on Malaysian backwardness and inefficiency. Someone clenced a fork while my mum hissed sensibility into my dad's ear. He relented of course and kept quiet after a while. It was a stupid thing to do; losing his temper at a time like this. But looking back I might have done the same thing. Dad says Malaysians were backward and inefficient. Except when they're police officers demanding bribes at the highway or kicking up a stink about us in the papers.
Maybe dad is always prepared for the worst. He was a great planner. When most of his generation had given way to whinging about life's shortfalls, dad just whistles away, watering his plants. They are like our step brothers and sisters. The kids that never gave any trouble, owed money or had confusing sexual orientations.They simply... bloomed. Some I suspect, are almost as old as I am. But he takes such excellent care of them. I have seen dried up deadweeds sprawl back into a lively sprig under his care and it's just amazing. What was once a concrete and cold corridor outside our door (like the same millions of cold concrete corridors all over the country) is now a lush garden walkway. Our neighbours who have become good friends appreciate that fact. They actually tend to the plants everytime we went away on holiday. And so I tell him about how much happier he would be in Australia, where he could afford to have a garden and grow anything he wanted, even grapes. It's hard to grow fruit in Singapore. It's not just that there isn't any land. The weather is not agreeable too, it chokes them all to death before they even get a chance to flower. In Australia, the grass really is greener. I've seen them, so I know. I wonder if dad is really prepared to have me leave for good. But even so, I know he is not prepared for the next few months to come. Even if the contagion doesn't kill us, maybe the recession would. "I think its not time to sell" I heard him say to his broker.
I am going out of my bedroom now to have a drink of water. Then I plan to sleep. Now that a strong immune system is all we have got to survive, we swallow every advice we can like entire varieties of multivitamins that GNC has to offer. We all develop our own formulas of green teas and life herbs. We revive ancient adages of drinking ample water and having lots of sleep and rest. All work and no play makes Jack a dead boy. Maybe we got our values right this time. "We" as in our family of course. Not the rest of society which is in social self destruct mode, ostracising nurses and doctors like a snake eating its own tail. "When you finally get settled there," mum whispered, "...get us over" Now that the prospect of a forest fire is heading our way, it seems the logical thing to do is run. But before we run, we hide. And we plan. We survive first before we make our escape. It doesn't matter where we call home. We have come to realise after so many years of fighting what home truly means. Home is our family. And home is where our hearts live. And today, our hearts don't want to live here anymore.
I chose to stay in my room tonight. Mum's watching an Australian documentary about some crocodile hunter and dad's with Gavin watching the news, keeping up with who's winning the Iraq war. "It's one sided" Gavin says, "BBC gives a fairer assessment" dad says nothing and mouths off something about palaces and things. I guess I am so over all the depressing stuff that are going around in our little town. I chose Agnetha's voice, ringing victorious on the stereo. It's playing Waterloo now. But outside this bedroom there's a different war going on now. While American wages a global cowboy war, we are waging another war of our own, fighting enemies we can't see. Enemies so insidious, sinister, clever and unlike us, work even harder and move even faster. They even have less baggage. And we have absolutely no idea how to win. Waterloo.
When the panic started, the virus had barely a name. Now that the scientists have begun carving out a face for it, while we begin losing ours. Pretty soon, the masks and goggles are going to be the standard issue dress code. All fashion sense thrown out the window. We're all scared shitless of course. Suddenly nothing was safe anymore. With AIDS you know that if you don't fuck around you will be alright. But not this bug. You get it just by saying hello to the wrong person. No one's got a moral line this time. Just ask the pastor who caught it and died like, the next day. Prayers are aplenty now, all of us desperately clinging to any spiritual hope and filtered masks we can find. "Wash your hands ALL the time" I remember my dad saying to Ben on his mobile phone once. Ben's already thirty and planning on marriage and running his own IT company and I am quite sure he knew when to wash his hands. But that was just my dad.
For now, my bedroom is my safe place. My weights bench has been moved to the side. Now with the outbreak, I stopped going to the gym. The last thing I want to catch is the flu because I rubbed over some idiot sweat bead on the wrong end of the seat or something. There are fake DVDs on the side table. And there's a picture of Stephen not too far from the alarm clock and the phone. My bed is on the carpet floor. No point getting any bed frames, I told mum once, I don't plan to stay long in Singapore town. When I leave you can donate it to someone else, I said.
The bedroom though tiny, is cooler than the outside, all thanks to air conditioning. But it's the next best thing to privacy which comes in extremely short supply in this country. But I really can't ask for more. I fight less with the folks now. Maybe because I have a proper day job and I stay out of their way. And vice versa. But in times like these, everyone stays out of everybody's way. Except when one is having a lovely dinner and seeing mum's face light up when you tell her what a nice meal she has cooked up. Today mum cooked "mee soto". It was her first attempt. And being the typical Chinese, she opens the conversation over the bowl of ingredients with an apology. "No pepper corn in this. Won't be any good. Must have pepper corn in mee soto" Mum pours the hot gravy broth into the bowl and serves it to me. "Careful, careful. Hot" I turn to her and tell her that everything she cooks is wonderful. She smiles. And it's beautiful. This woman who is constantly racked with insecurity and depression, I suspect, is beginning to find her peace.
Just last week she cooked mee siam, my favourite dish and last Sunday it was long-tong. The mum I knew and loved from childhood days seem to be suddenly resurrected from such a long absence. Somewhere along the way, between our graduation and the menopause, mummy dissapeared into some abyss of dispair. Through the drama of a near divorce and my dad's breakdown, it had to take a disaster of terrorist carnage in faraway New York City to slowly drag her back. In some ways, it must dragged us all back to what's more important. Reminding us of what is truly inevitable, and what is really worth living. Everything comes to an end. "When the durian is ripe, it knows that it is time to fall to the ground" mum said when we were talking about Oldest Uncle who is wasting away from cancer. But that was before the panic. Durians were falling everywhere now it seems and this time, it was because the forest was on fire.
And I have decided to write again. There's got to be something else creative I can do that won't get me in trouble for a change. I am not terribly successful and I don't have tonnes in the bank. But my flair for design is my greatest asset people say. Though it seems more like my greatest liability. People know I am good at what I do. And dammit, don't I know that too! But I am a magnet to people who want a piece of my skill. And they want it cheap or free and I am so sick and tired of it you know? My talent that always gets me in trouble. The parallel to a rich man with money that everybody wanted to borrow from and not return. How often have I swore off doing another bloody wedding card? Here goes: no more bloody wedding cards! Suddenly I don't know why I came back home anymore. If I had stayed in Sydney I would have become an artist. Maybe a writer. I might not get rich. But then again, I might be safe. I remember settling back home and the job and then falling sick right after. I swore angrily with my open right palm fanning upwards in the air: such a crowded little town, one germ and the whole bloody population gets sick. How I wish I could take that all back. How I hoped, to be wrong this time.
They say that once you get the fever, it's almost touch and go. Your lungs fill up with fluid and then it's bye bye. Forget Perth honey, this is it. Plus no one gets to visit you in hospital. No one in their right mind would anyway. I don't know if I laughed when mum said to Gavin to be careful everytime he went out. He never replied when mum nagged about the smoking. He barely humphed when dad suggested nicotine patches. Gavin was the mono syllabic boy. And Gavin says nothing most of the time. "And wash your hands!" Dad says. Gavin: "..."
Dad seems the calmest person around. He seems to have mellowed over the years. Although it would take an occasional glass of wine and the wrong bank IOU to set it all off: the famous Tan family temper. The Tan-per. He once put all our lives in danger when we were all kids and our little holiday Malaysia went horribly wrong. We were travelling back to Singapore by train on the first class carriage when news of a derailment stopped the train from going further. We were told that we would be safely transferred by bus to the other side of the tracks and carry on. It sounded quite simple of course but what really happened was we all sat by a dusty road for a bus that took a whole night to arrive and Gavin (who was just a toddler) kept vomitting. When we finally got to our carriage, it wasn't first class. It was cattle class. We sat near the toilet door that had no hinge, where everything rattled and stank of urine. My dad finally snapped and rained curses on Malaysian backwardness and inefficiency. Someone clenced a fork while my mum hissed sensibility into my dad's ear. He relented of course and kept quiet after a while. It was a stupid thing to do; losing his temper at a time like this. But looking back I might have done the same thing. Dad says Malaysians were backward and inefficient. Except when they're police officers demanding bribes at the highway or kicking up a stink about us in the papers.
Maybe dad is always prepared for the worst. He was a great planner. When most of his generation had given way to whinging about life's shortfalls, dad just whistles away, watering his plants. They are like our step brothers and sisters. The kids that never gave any trouble, owed money or had confusing sexual orientations.They simply... bloomed. Some I suspect, are almost as old as I am. But he takes such excellent care of them. I have seen dried up deadweeds sprawl back into a lively sprig under his care and it's just amazing. What was once a concrete and cold corridor outside our door (like the same millions of cold concrete corridors all over the country) is now a lush garden walkway. Our neighbours who have become good friends appreciate that fact. They actually tend to the plants everytime we went away on holiday. And so I tell him about how much happier he would be in Australia, where he could afford to have a garden and grow anything he wanted, even grapes. It's hard to grow fruit in Singapore. It's not just that there isn't any land. The weather is not agreeable too, it chokes them all to death before they even get a chance to flower. In Australia, the grass really is greener. I've seen them, so I know. I wonder if dad is really prepared to have me leave for good. But even so, I know he is not prepared for the next few months to come. Even if the contagion doesn't kill us, maybe the recession would. "I think its not time to sell" I heard him say to his broker.
I am going out of my bedroom now to have a drink of water. Then I plan to sleep. Now that a strong immune system is all we have got to survive, we swallow every advice we can like entire varieties of multivitamins that GNC has to offer. We all develop our own formulas of green teas and life herbs. We revive ancient adages of drinking ample water and having lots of sleep and rest. All work and no play makes Jack a dead boy. Maybe we got our values right this time. "We" as in our family of course. Not the rest of society which is in social self destruct mode, ostracising nurses and doctors like a snake eating its own tail. "When you finally get settled there," mum whispered, "...get us over" Now that the prospect of a forest fire is heading our way, it seems the logical thing to do is run. But before we run, we hide. And we plan. We survive first before we make our escape. It doesn't matter where we call home. We have come to realise after so many years of fighting what home truly means. Home is our family. And home is where our hearts live. And today, our hearts don't want to live here anymore.
posted by Jef + Stef at 6:45 pm
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