Spring holiday

This has been a good start for us.



For starters, it has been wet over the last couple of weeks, and this brought a relieving supply of water to the dams of Melbourne. Water storage in dams is up, and there is so much snow in the Southern Alpine regions that the snow season is extended.





It also has been a good time for the family. With the last couple of weeks of leave at home, we get to do more baking and cooking. My second loaf of bread looks much better. My daughter was ambitious; she made raisin bun, Scottish crumpets, drop scones, chocolate puddings.


Our old friends from Malaysia visited us, and we went up to the Dandenongs together. The tulip blossom was incredibly beautiful. The kids had a wonderful time feeding parrots, parakeets and cockatoos. The towering gum trees stretching hundreds of feet into the sky was awe inspiring.



Thank God for such a time.

Thank God

Malaysia and Singapore are blessed lands. Surrounded by disaster all around, both countries remain safe and sound. To the west is the 8.3 Richter scale earthquake and the accompanying tsunami that devastated Samoa and some surrounding islands; to the east is another 7.3 scale earthquake in Padang, Indonesia. To the north in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is Typhoon Ketsana, and further northeast, another typhoon is on the way to northern Philippines and Taiwan.

And nestled right in the middle, safe and sound, is Malaysia and Singapore.

Praise God for that.

Stories of new migrants

There are a lot of misconceptions about migration and new countries. We often imagine the new place to be better in every way, from career to quality of life, to financial situation of the family, to almost anything and everything else.

Reality is often crueler.

We have not been here long - less than two months, and we have heard many stories of new migrants. The commonest problem is job.

We know of dentists who works as student dental nurses, just to scramble enough money to sit for the incredibly expensive dentist qualifying exam. The annual income of a student nurse is about 24k, the cost of the exam and its accompanying course is more than 40k. Often husband and wife, both dentists, have to work for years to save up enough money for one of them to sit for the exam. The passing rate? Less than 20%. Be prepared to work for a few more years and come back the next round.

There is also a thoracic surgeon who is working in the country 4 hours from here just to qualify as a general practitioner. Even after that, he cannot claim medicare rebate for 10 years - meaning he can't have his own practice but will have to work for an institution.

There are also doctors who work as medical laboratory technicians.

There are high level managers and successful businessmen who have their family here but they would keep their business at home and fly in and out monthly, often for years.

There are many more engineers and managers who have to study to become teachers, insurance agents or simply remain unemployed for protracted period of time.

I have yet met someone who is doing better here than in his/her home country.

Why, then, do people still come. Perhaps they didn't know better before coming. Perhaps what drove them away from their home country is worse than what they face here. But many of them come not so much for themselves, but for their children. They come for a dream.

For their hardship and their sacrifices, I pray that their dream will come true.

Spring

Spring is finally here.

Spring may have been a couple of weeks late, but it is finally here.

The flowers on my neighbour's fence blossomed beautifully. The bold tree that we thought dead produced a wonderful blossom.

The kids are on holiday, too. In their holiday, they managed to make roti canai and pizza, from flour, oil, salt etc.

Yet, this spring is less than happy for me. Soon I will start work, and the kids will start their term 4. I will have less time with the family, less time with the children, less time for cooking a hearty meal for the family, less time to spend in the kitchen with my daughter, or in the park with my son.

They, too, will have to depend more on themselves - from taking a bus home from school all by themselves, finding food once they reach home; and hopefully, quarrel less between the two of them in the midst of all these.

I will look back at these two weeks as one of the happiest time of my life. One of the hardest thing with having children is that you know for sure that one day they will leave you. And before that day come, let me store up my store of memory with the taste of pizza and roti canai that my daughter made, and the smell of fresh pine with my son by my side, and when the day finally come for them to leave, I will still cherish these moments and re-live them again, and again.

Bread

One of my ambition is to bake a loaf of bread from scratch - yes, from flour, margarine, salt, sugar, yeast, water and milk; knead the dough by hand, and bake it in an oven.

So, one day, when my daughter returned home from school screaming that she was bored because there was nothing to do, no home work to be bothered with, no book to read, no text book to revise, I suggested that we bake a loaf of bread.

That cheered up her day, and presto, here's the result.

The whole house smelt fantastic! It has been awhile since my house smelt of that wonderful, fragrant, fresh loaf of bread. Well, it didn't taste perfect - the crust was a bit too thick and hard, and the dough did not rise 100%, or was it because we punched it down too much and did not let it rise the second time? Well, it didn't matter. We had a wonderful time together as father and daughter.

I have not spent as much time with my family in the last 14 years as I have been doing now. Not just because I have not started work, but also because my children are free, too. They don't have so much home work that they don't even have enough time to sleep.

My son just told me the other day - his school bag is empty, except for a change of his sport uniform and his lunch box.

Should I be worry about their academic advancement? Should I be worry that they may not catch up with their friends back home? Well, perhaps not. Perhaps life is more than that. Perhaps, life is that fragrant smell of freshly baked loaf of bread that lingers in your house. Perhaps life is that cracking branches underneath your feet when you walk through the brisk lush green forest reserve on a glorious morning with your son. Perhaps life is that chit-chat after dinner. Perhaps life is that plate of spaghetti that you taught your daughter how to cook. Perhaps life is those small things that fall through our grasp of significance, but nonetheless fill it with small joy, small pleasant surprises, small memories that will endures when all other things fade away.

Spring is late

I am about to start work in a few weeks time. Without me around the kids will have to come back from school themselves. They suggested to walk back, just to familiarize themselves with the neighbourhood. So, after school yesterday, they walked back.

They walk back through a beautiful reserve/park on the way from school. Though it is officially spring, the weather was still chilly, with drizzle, but they enjoyed the 2 km walk tremendously.

The reserve is indeed beautiful, with the small, brown Mullum creek meanders through the heart of it; on the one side is the buck reserve and pony trail, the other schools and houses. Right in the heart of it, you would think you are right in the middle of the bush.

There are quite a number of wild ducks, parakeets, magpipes and other birds in this small reserve. Some of the wild ducks even wander into the backyard of the nearby homes.

Well, officially, it is spring here in Melbourne, but the weather is still damp and cold, just like in winter. I guess, spring is late this year. And the park is still cold, fresh, and beautiful.