As a River Flow into the Sea

I used to hear people say that the feeling that we have about life, is as a river trickles, gathers, navigates, rush, and finaly flow into the sea. I am coming into agreement with that sentiment. I paved for myself a difficult path. One that torments me further by parading my foolishness, exposing only scum of the supposed human intelligence. Not that i had expected that i was a genius, but i did have an imagination that i could at least be the better specimen of this category of existence. I have since been saved by the magnimity of the most dense of thick banana chocolate shakes, whose calories may prove to be the more superior in servicing the advancement of mankind than my meagre, quivering brain.

"It's strange but true, people just wake up one day, and for no reasons or apparent causes, simply made the decision to be a medic!" One of my colleagues once shared his observation on how people come to squander their time in the ambulance. Mine, started with a broken arm. I used to own this small piece of soft, yellow blanket printed with tiny flowers, that was absolutely the favourite of all my favourite things. The best thing about this blanky, was the squareness of its cut. In a stroke of serendipity, perhaps that was in the brew from all the cantonese soap opera i had been watching from TV, an idea formed in my tiny 5 year old head. I went to my father who was sitting quite comfortably in the living hall, decided that i now had a patient, and he most definitely had a broken elbow (even though he had to keep his right arm nicely in place for the whole procedure). That was my first self-taught skill of applying the triangular bandage, in the form of a yellow blanky which i am still proud to annnouce that it held my daddy's arm for a good part of the day (how much was assisted performance i will never know)!

Thus is how so many paths etched in their most primitive beginnings. I'm unsure if this decision of becoming a paramedic is made entirely out of this caramelised memory. To a kid, the boundless relief, and love that is borne out of healing meant the whole world. I started appreciating the idea that once people know they are ok again, it makes them smile, smile so bright, even if not seen from their lips. At the back of the ambulance, frankly, we rarely see people smile. Those are the privileges reserved for the surgeons, doctors and nurses who work with the patient until they are fixed and good enough to go home again; we would be lucky if our patients don't faint while on their way to the hospital. But these sun-lit smiles are, albeit imaginations, good enough for one to hold, and believe is my rightful part to share, even if i never get to see it.

Emotions, i have since surmised, offer a very convenient basis for making decisions such as a dream career. But it is also one of the hardest to defend. Without clarity as to how that moment of vulnerability supply the grounds for commitment, one may never toil enough to really find her way into that dream she thought she so very wanted in the first place. And i am starting to believe in greater magnitude, that this is what i'm here to do in Penang. To find a way to be comfortable in this skin of a healthcare person. To really decide in the course of my time here, that i belong in that dream i dreamed, no matter how i falter in the beginning, or how i feel out of place in my current environment.

My only solace (other than my good dog and cute colleagues, and a local coffee house), is the gift of thought and reflection. That at least in the midst f it all, there is a voice of literature, in the form of Anton Chekov, that had once taught me to understand "We shall wait, and we shall see..."

所谓－ 家

紅花雨（1）

詞: 小蟲. 洪宇 曲: 小蟲. Johnny Chen H.
演唱: 趙詠華， 胡德夫

紅花開 紅的心 紅的好美麗
為了你 等下去 我還在這裡
人不再 錯花季 雲濃月怎明
傷了心 不離棄 落成紅花雨
花若開 若有你 花才會美麗
盼望你 回頭看 我還在這裡

記得你 那一天 紅紅的眼睛
你的臉 你身影 笑容隨你去
在一起 流眼淚 一起看星星
能有幸 能相遇 永遠不忘記
漂著雨 迎著風 雨過盼風清
你牢記 我牢記 家就在這裡

我的家， 又在哪儿？





（1）http://blog.xuite.net/sinner66/blog/8338793

－ － － － －§ － － － － －
Sharon Chong

Tuck & Patti - Can't Help Falling in Love

Sandakan (two) - Hiding in the Closet of Nature photos

Here are the snappies for the camping trip:

Yes, the trip's not very legal indeed

My guide for this journey, well, and many journeys passed
or yet to come - Daddy!

First meeting with the river - what was the name of the river again?

Oops...



Rummaging a steep rear of the hill


Living up to my Hakka roots of "land-openers" -
one weed down, two weeds, three, four (woozing sweat & back pain).......
gosh, and they opened forests??


Luxury of a 3-men tent, courtesy of Eric.

Back to the river



Dip time!
i was standing right inside the natural crate below

Yep, i know you're thinking "Ugh... dirty river"
but don't let the colour fool you, it's th natural pigment of fallen leaves.
so my guide told me
;-)

Boiled noodles with onions and eggs -
with a Japanese stage set, free of charge!
Come -sh Eat a-ke!

He's older than he looks. Secrets?
Marrying the right cooking wife, taking it easy, and get a dog.


Paying for ambients? Who needs pretentious ambients when
there's the real thing?

Very important, we brought clothes line.

Just the clouds couldn't hold itself through the night

- - - - - § - - - - -
Sharon Chong
:o)

Sandakan (one) - Hiding In the Closet of Nature

The sun is coming out soon. The fog will cease, and the team of clouds will retreat, leaving the trees and low bushes stand in their wooden grey and brown, sometimes yellow, sometimes orange. Their dense green lush their tops, or skirt low to their leafy stems. What a morning, gently greeting the jungle campers.

That morning, with hearts of an explorer, we trot into the reserved forest, just beyond the backyard of my uncle’s house. My father traced the vaguely familiar steps of childhood; I journeyed with care, not knowing what to expect. What can I expect? In a few minutes only, we reached the small stream, its rather flat banks well blanketed with algae, bidding out steps caution. In a hop, we crossed the stream, and continued uphill where in another minute brought us to the open top. The hill is rather low, compared to my expectant heart.

Across the gravel road, the front line of a thinning forest stood facing us, as if they were standing in a line of defense, ready to do anything to prevent anymore human intrusion. We came to the edge of defense, strolled casually past the line, lamenting in my mind the helpless bodies of wood that bear the marks of red painted “X”, demarcating the line of trees that are to cease being cut, while the gravel parades before it. Beyond the defense, lives a completely different world.

No bridle paths, donned with clear cut planks to ease our walking, but fallen leaves of brown, black, dark red and occasional green, carpeted all the face of the hill, covering branches of old that were to crack and collapse at the slightest foot stomp. Trees, sometimes the size of my thigh, most of the time the size of my forearm, rooted at their spot, close by their neighbours. There were almost always a couple of rattan twining caressing tree to tree, enough to prevent us from walking by without swaying a few parang chops. When the marking ropes ran out, it was time to trace our way back to the open.

Now we’ve pitched the tent on the open hill top. Father fetched water, and we made coffee, hot and soothing very well for lunch with bread while we sat under a shade. “Isn’t it great to be able to camp out, so that we abandon our cares and worries, and give all our attention and energy to the here and now?” Father said, with a hint of gratefulness, or perhaps a boyish delight, now mixed with the reality of age.

At about 3.30pm, we decided to have an early bath and dinner down at the stream.

The water spurts and bubbles gently above burning heat from a portable flame, in a while swims inside two chunks of dried boodles, two peeled onion bulbs, three eggs accidentally cracked open in their container.

The motley broth simmers with an oily glow at the surface, sitting nicely on a rock island midstream. In a dip, the noodles swim easily into our plastic cups, pushed gently by the branch-sticks (impromptu chopsticks made from nearby branches) we were using. What came later, was a difficult sensation to achieve elsewhere. Hot broth and noodles steamed itself through my tongue and palate, and glided slowly down my throat and further down where my chest was now swayed gently as the oncoming current swept coolly past the rest of my body. A river cuisine no restaurant can ever offer.

At times like this, father and I were reminded of a song we both love, a song I used to awe in bafflement:

You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know ...

You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind

Colours of the Wind said it all. Location is not just a location anyone can simply own and claim. It is a place, a place filled with people with their meanings and languages, a place with life of nature, waters of nature, rocks of nature; of God. I sighed in my heart.

Night came with occasional drizzling rain, making their rhythms on our tent fly right beside our ears. We sipped hot coffee inside the already heated tent. Father laid down to rest beside me, covered with huge drops of sweat, I laid on my sleeping bag beside him, not ready to sleep yet, not even a hint of drowsiness; all alert, all awake and thinking. With my eyes closed, the distant town played its band of large and small engines, toots of horns, whizzing of wheels, a steady and restless rotor. My left side took in all of that. Also now, the hillside aroused its magnificent orchestra of a thousand bug clappers, bird hooters, screeches, whistlers….; a constant midnight concerto.

I will never understand how did such a time came that I should hear this massive “naturally occurring” juxtaposition, each side declaring their own rightful characters. It will not creep inside an album, but it has shouted a question in my head. I came from the city, I hate the city; I came to the jungle, I’m afraid of the jungle. I couldn’t sleep, my ears heard the whole night of torment.

- - - - - § - - - - -
Sharon Chong. May 7, 2008
:o)

Artistic Zeal

These past few weeks saw one of my very confusing days. Much like having a spin of yarn in your hands, and not knowing what to do with it. Or closer still, like sitting down in a library archive room, in front of the whole catalogue drawers, searching, searching, searching, for something, something, something. Do i know what i'm looking for? Maybe. Do i have a clue if i'm looking at the right place? Maybe. Do i like what i'm finding? Maybe.

And maybe not.

I've not read philosophy, but damn choices.

Anyway, there're stuff that tickled me and i thought them very interesting. And it's amazing to look at the world outside of movies, or filmmaking, and find myself amazed at creativity that involves things that are more organic. Not that actors or actresses are not organisms, but i meant that word to describe the nature of representations.

Some visuals are works of very mundane things around us. You might remember Buchanan, in Art Attack, making 'large arts' on some empty spaces with simple gears. And he would 'process' those objects into some picturesque renditions.

Vik Muniz, an artist from Sao Paolo, Brazil, gave a little presentation during the TED talk in California. Watch how his exploration into sketches, lines, dots and colours produce such amazing pieces of works.

- - - - - § - - - - -
Sharon Chong, published June 27, 07
:o)