A little whisper in the dark

He ain't heavy, he's ......

......my brother was holding my chin together - I had just flipped myself over the handlebars of the bike, managing to land chin first, before using the rest of my body to shed whatever forward velocity I had.

And so my chin bore the brunt of the impact, and ripped a macabre second "mouth". I don't remember much of the accident, just the moment of impact, and then me hitting the ground. My first reaction was to hope that no one noticed me falling off (almost everyone did, since I was near the front of the group of riders) and to pick up the bike and keep riding.

Then someone saw the stream of blood dripping off my chin, and stopped me......

As the younger brother I've always picked up on my brother's activities - building plastic models, mountain biking, and basketball. Its something to look up to, and aim for. What better than to out-do your big brother, right? And its always been a struggle to be gain credibility in his eyes, I wonder why, it really wasn't necessary, yet perhaps that's why I got into those activities: to outdo my brother.

But he's always excelled in hand-eye coordination stuff, whereas I'm better with technical stuff. So perhaps it became a role reversal, when I took up photography, and he followed not long after. By this time, we're probably a bit too old for competition, yet I did feel a certain pride that he'd ask me for help in stuff photography related.

And more so, when he came over to Brisbane last year, played some casual basketball with me, and commented that I'm playing a lot better than in the past.

We've been brothers for 20-some years, and we're old enough now that 3 years age differnce is hardly a poofteenth of difference anymore. We're old farts, sure, we can still play on any given day like we were 18, just don't expect us to jump out of bed the next morning ready to go another 3 hours of basketball.

He'd hit a rough patch recently, and I've had to try to bring him out of it. I'm still trying. After all, he was there holding my chin together, while I was half conscious, lying somewhere in the middle of nowhere, my blood on his hands. He even paid for the 5 stitches the doctor had to put on my chin in order to close the wound up.

We have quarreled and fought in the past, and we still do have arguments. But at the end of the day, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.

posted by Chung Leong @ 12:50 AM 0 comments

Ockers splashing roots

She'd come into the weekly lab meeting, bubbling and chirpy, with a sh!t-eating grin, talking about the most wonderful dream she had last night.

I turn my head, cock my ear, and by way of including myself in the conversation, said, "Hey, if its that good, I want to hear about it!"

She slid me a conspiratorial grin, and said she'd tell me later back in the office.

But then it wasn't a dream, because she told me with a straight-but-verging-on-grinning-face that she'd gotten rooted last night.

Rooted?

As it turns out, that's an Australian slang term for getting laid/making whoopee/having sex.

I guess I'm lucky in that sense, having to attend classes all the way out here in Gatton. The campus isn't as international as the main campus in St. Lucia. As a result there's perhaps 10% internationals vs. something like 50% in St. Lucia. The Australian experience is a little bit more intimate. I recently found out that the Australian equivalent for the quintessential American redneck is Ocker. Like how Crocodile Dundee, and more recently Steve Irwin is. That thick accent, the unfamiliar words - common ones like bloke (man) or sheila (woman), smoko (that's tea break), brekkie being breakfast, getting rolled is to be robbed.

But the one that really tickles me, is to "splash your boot".

Leave a comment if you're interested to find out. ;)

posted by Chung Leong @ 12:45 AM 0 comments

Chicken in a biskit

A bunch of turkeys live in a nest in my backyard, poking and scratching away at the ground looking for food all the time. As my housemates used to feed them stale and mouldy bread, they've cottoned on to the fact that humans mean food, and one or two of them would usually hang about while I'm out in the backyard hanging laundry.

From the recently hatched brood of chicks, there's this particular one that has an injured leg, and thus has to hop around on the other leg looking for food.

Though I normally don't ever feed the turkeys, today, perhaps as acknowledgement for its spirit, I tossed it some biscuits and watched it hobble over and greedily peck away at it.

I guess everyone could use a break every now and then, especially when they're down.

posted by Chung Leong @ 2:47 PM 0 comments

Wanderlust

So when I finally confirmed my enrolment and placement in Brisbane, a few other things came along with it - one of which was my aunt's car. It promised something I had to date hadn't been able to enjoy, and that was the total freedom of movement.

Of course, the police had something to say about me doing 79 on a 60kph road. Liked me enough to take a nice photo of me.

Anyhow, that being reasonably certain, I filled my mind with intentions to travel as far as the petrol tank would allow (or gas stations to fill up at). In other words, get lost, and have fun while doing it. At some point of time, however, you want to find your way home, so I reckoned a GPS was the way to go.



For a product that's been around for at least the past 10 years, its still a relative curiousity among my friends, though I do notice more and more cars on the road packing one hanging off the front windscreen. In a country as large as Australia its fast becoming a necessity.

While my aunt's car has come and gone, reasons for which I won't go into here, and replaced by my trusty red rocket, the formula remains the same - car, driver, street directory or map, and the trusty GPS. We've been on adventures, this intrepid quartet: driven to Australia's easternmost point, crossed four states, did 1000kms in a single day, had a clogged air conditioner pipe create pools of water in the footwells, and simultaneously blowing two tires at the same time. I could go on, but perhaps you get the idea.

We had adventures together. The GPS pointed the way, I steered the car, and the car brought all of us there (and had the pictures to prove it).

And you know, its the best time of my life. Its was something I've always wanted to do, and, damn the petrol prices, if I wanted to go somewhere, this ragged bunch of misfits would probably get me there. Along the way, I rigged up the GPS so it would run off the car's cigarette lighter, and (dodgy but true) I learned how to read a map while still driving the car. I think that's a little bit more dangerous than talking on a mobile, but the cops haven't gotten wise to that. Yet.

But after a while, it gets lonely travelling alone. Recently I made an impromptu last minute trip to Sydney (booked an 8pm flight at 3pm) and then practically gatecrashed the place. While I enjoyed the freedom to walk as I pleased, I couldn't help but to wish there was someone to talk to.

Perhaps Sydney's too big a city, too metropolitan, too fast, too impersonal. It wasn't till evening that my friend got off his cycling coach course, and I could get some long-awaited human contact. I'd never really expressed it, but I did look forward to having someone to have dinner or a beer, or even to just stand at a club and watch a bunch of people calling themselves The Beatels perform a series of songs commemorating the original Beatles.

Every time I set off from Gatton, I'd set the GPS for home. But home is where the heart is, and for sentimental reasons, home is still back in Singapore. But on a different level, I've gotten over my wanderlust, really.

All the places I've discovered, I now want to have someone to share it with.

posted by Chung Leong @ 2:23 AM 0 comments