Last time in Lyttelton

When I first came to Lyttelton, it was December 2011. I came because I was in New Zealand for two and a half months without much of a plan, and the opportunity had arisen to pet sit here over Christmas. I’d Skyped with the homeowner from Istanbul, right before I made my way to New Zealand via Georgia, Armenia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. I wasn’t especially excited about Lyttelton – it’s next to Christchurch, which I didn’t think much of – but at least it would be good to have a base for the best part of a month.

But I found that I felt at peace here. And after that, I came back to Lyttelton to pet sit every Christmas. I also looked after the next-door neighbour’s four cats for the whole of April 2013, and in mid-2014, reeling from the worst break-up I’d ever had, I came back again for lack of any other ideas. I rented my friend’s room for six weeks, cried a lot, and tried to piece myself back together.

When I explain Lyttelton to people I tell them that it’s a port town – a village, really – surrounded by hills, and that many of its inhabitants are writers and artists and musicians. It’s a chill, friendly kind of place. It has a farmers’ market every Saturday morning and I look forward to the whitebait fritters all year. It was the epicentre of the big 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and even today some sites are vacant where buildings used to be, and others are fenced off. For a while, there was no supermarket, and the bank was a van that showed up once a week. The Port Hole bar was reborn in a shipping container. Gradually, art seeps in to brighten things up; the latest, in recognition of the Antarctic expeditions that stop by Lyttelton, is a sled dog on the corner of London Street, recently unveiled by sculptor Mark White. (“Have you any idea how hard it is to make a sculpture look fluffy?” he said to me.)

Things I have done over the years while staying in Lyttelton:

Between Sky and Cardboard

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the rakyat unseen in 1Malaysia ads, the migrant workers who never get a day off, and the stateless kids in hiding

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the bumiputera who yearn for minimum wage, and the OKUs trying to just get up on the kerb

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the refugees detained for fleeing persecution, and the domestic workers detained for fleeing abuse

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the kidnapped fishermen, the death row inmates, and the caged schizophrenics

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the tired pro bono lawyers, and the defendants haunted by colonial laws they were promised would go

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the students who demand their place on the streets, and the teachers who urge them to think for themselves

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the filmmakers, writers and artists who reflect the country they see instead of the one they’re told to

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the child brides, the trans sex workers, and those who sleep sandwiched between sky and cardboard

Selamat Hari Malaysia to those whose faith or lack thereof is not allowed to stay between them and God

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the scapegoats, the political footballs, and the folks not important enough to even make either category

Selamat Hari Malaysia to those who shine a light on injustice, knowing it to be worse than bad PR

Selamat Hari Malaysia to the glimmers of hope. If anything is to be celebrated today, celebrate the kind.

Ten years

Today marks a decade since my mother was alive.

“I just can’t imagine how that feels,” people tell me. “I just can’t imagine how I’d cope.” They told me that on the day she died and they tell me that now. I don’t have the luxury of not being able to imagine. But, knowing that it was going to happen – and perhaps that is the faint positive of a long illness rather than a sudden death – I tried my best to prepare for it.

I was lucky that we essentially got to say our goodbyes. We got to make things right between us. And she was lucky that she was able to die at home, surrounded by love, and we were lucky to share that with her.

That doesn’t make everything okay. The lottery of illness is unfair and she still had a lot of living she wanted to do. And my family nowadays is small and broken and I don’t know if it can be repaired. But those of us who are still in contact with each other, we do our best.

She is with me when I try to be kind, despite my rage and hurt. She is with me when I bite my tongue and try to be patient. She is with me when I use her funny old phrases, talk to cats, or smile for a photograph. I see her in me, then.

I know that she was proud of me, despite the fact that I made a whole lot of choices she wasn’t thrilled about. I know that she believed I was fine; that, even though I was the youngest, she didn’t need to worry about me because I would always be okay. And I know that she was right about that.

Today I went to the Thai Buddhist temple and kneeled before a monk while he recited a prayer and sprinkled holy water. Even ten years on, it is not possible to avoid crying when I mark her birthday or anniversary. I wrote her a letter and then burned it. The flames took to it so quickly. I regretted that I was not fully present this time a year ago, when I went to light a candle in a church, because I was there with my ex who had just broken up with me and I could not concentrate, was struggling to process two kinds of grief at once. But I also knew she would understand. Of course she would understand. We had a bond.

I’m far away and I am carving out a life for myself in a place she’s never been to. I experiment with churches and temples and quiet spaces to myself, with candles and burning things. Today I think of us, ten years ago and before, at the beginning of this journey. There was always love. There will always be love.

2013: The year in cats

Okay, so I haven’t updated this blog in quite some time. I’ve been more focused on writing things elsewhere, and reporting on life as it unfolds hasn’t appealed so much. If you’re interested, I’d be happy if you’d check out my website for up-to-date info on my articles, zines and whatnot; and I’m on the Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway, I hear the internet is rather fond of cats, so I hope sharing the various cats (also, dogs) I’ve lived with in 2013 might go some way towards making up for my silence here.

I began the year, as has become customary, in Lyttelton, a small village (population 4000) next to Christchurch, looking after three cats and two dogs.

Hidup Rakyat: Bersih 3.0 in KL

Soalan ditanyakan. Jawapan disediakan
The question has been asked. The answer is ready

I live in Kuala Lumpur, currently. My 32-hour stopover in February wasn’t enough, so seven weeks and six countries later, I came back. I’m here temporarily, but for a longer period of time than I spend in most places. I’ve been exploring the city, learning Malay, cooking and eating epic food, following lizards around, and waking up next to someone I’m completely smitten with. And last Saturday afternoon I found myself in front of the Lotus Hotel in the city centre, surrounded by protesters who had just been tear gassed.

Behind me, two young women were crying “Allāhu Akbar.” I got out of the way as a trampled body was carried into the hotel. Bottles of water were thrown to the street from the upstairs windows, and eventually a couple of emergency fire hoses were aimed from them as well, to cheers from the crowd down below. Protesters offered salt and water to each other. Riot police paced at the corner of the street, so I figured I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Masjid Jamek LRT station was closed, but its metal shutters had been broken by people desperate to escape the gas, and police would later follow them in to beat them.

Some people I met as I arrived in places

Kuala Lumpur
The man sitting next to me on the bus from the airport was thirsty and struggling with the heat. I took a sip from my bottle of water and then told him he could have the rest. I was going through my coin bag of foreign currency, digging out ringgit, and he made me a little origami shirt from a Maldivian banknote that depicted a fishing scene. In the spirit of cultural exchange, I gave him an Iraqi note which he refused at first, reasoning that 1000 dinar must be worth too much, but I explained that it was equivalent to about a dollar and anyway I didn’t anticipate many money-changers taking an interest in it.

He seemed kind and jolly, but he had a sad smile. I thought he said that his wife had died, but I wasn’t sure, and I felt too awkward to press for more details. I do this thing too often where I act like I understand everything that’s been said when actually I don’t.

I’d spent the night in the 24-hour restaurant in Colombo airport, trying to doze through muzak renditions of Danny Boy, the staff nodding off on the sofas next to me. The subsequent flight had passed by in a confused blur. I think I broke with tradition and slept a little.

A million encounters with friendly men had taught me to proceed with caution, no matter how nice and agenda-free they seemed. I engaged with the man from the Maldives, I enjoyed talking to him, but I did not give him my contact details. He said if I ever go to the Maldives I should get in touch. I accepted his e-mail address. I don’t know if I can still find it.

Wellington
My flight got in around midnight. The immigration officer asked me to name the people I’d visited in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and then I collected my rucksack and walked out into the rain. Contrary to the claims of the guidebook I’d browsed in Brisbane, there was no bus, because it was Easter or something. I’d arrived in New Zealand on a visa run, because otherwise I would wind up overstaying my welcome in Australia. And I also kind of needed to just move on somewhere, because Australia Phase One had been defined by all this bullshit going on in my head that I didn’t really need, lots of feeling mopey and anti-social and out of place.

I shared a taxi into the centre of town with two Norwegians; one of them was studying in Sydney and the other was visiting him, and they were going to rent a van and drive around New Zealand and do things like camping and hiking. They asked about my travels, and “Iraq!” echoed through the cab, making me feel kind of like a phony but on the other hand I was only performing the requested recital. Maybe I should just save Iraq as a trump card for when I find myself in the company of oneupmanship travellers: the ones whose chat is all “Where have you been to? Oh, while you were there did you do this interesting thing and that interesting thing? Did you go to this really obscure part that I’ve been to? No?” and then they tell you all about their superior experiences because yours are never good enough.

The Norwegians seemed pretty nice and I almost wanted to ask if I could hitch a ride in their van, but I didn’t want to impose. Anyway I seemed to be on a roll here, being all interesting and independent and stuff, and part of me was kind of amazed at how quickly I sounded like I had my shit together, after spending the past few weeks with the words What The Hell Am I Doing ricocheting around my head. We pulled up outside my accommodation for the next few nights, which was a radical social centre covered in murals, and I said goodbye to the boys and got out all happy and confident, to be greeted by tea and cake by activists who’d stayed up waiting for me. Maybe the encounter with the Norwegians slightly influenced the idea I had the whole time I was in Wellington that it was kind of like Norway; somehow my arrival and the rain that barely stopped and the hills and the harbour and the wooden houses reminded me of Bergen, and hey, it was cold enough.

Melbourne
The white German boy with the dreads had been sitting in the row behind me on the flight from Wellington to Melbourne. As we started to disembark he leaned across and asked me about my Užupio Respublika badge. He’d been in New Zealand for the best part of a year and now he had arrived in Australia without a place to stay for the night. I regretted that I was unable to help him, but there was something about him I didn’t entirely take to. All the same, he suggested we go for a drink and I figured why the hell not – I had time to kill and we were both travellers.

This is the updated version of the many times I’ve thought “hey, you look like a punk, we must have stuff in common! Oh, wait, we totally don’t.”

“Yeah, I was travelling with a friend of mine,” he said as we waited for the airport bus, “but I’m not gay, so living in a camper van with another guy for three months was too much.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this.

“These guys I worked with invited me to Vanuatu,” he said as the bus moved off. “They’re black guys, but they’re nice.”

I thought about whether he might have said this to me if I hadn’t been white. I thought about the white Canadian neighbour about ten years ago who told me she was moving in with some black South Africans and then offered, “They’re awfully nice, you know, Nine, some of them. The blacks, I mean.” I wondered if there was something about my presentation that made people feel the need to explain things like this to me. I wondered if the German boy had considered that I might not be straight.

Instead of going for a drink with him, I packed him off on a bus to St Kilda, confident he’d find a suitable backpackers’ hostel there. I took a train to my friends’ place out in Northcote and sat on the steps outside their place, reading zines and The Day The Raids Came for a couple of hours until Alex came home and plied me with wine.