claudine_c

Tomorrow I'm going to an Anglican Benedictine Abbey in Camperdown, western Victoria for three days. Then on Friday I will be grilled by have a few nice chats with a panel of people who will decide whether to recommend me for training for ordination. I think I am as ready as I'll ever be. Time has passed quickly -- when I started inquiring into this process about 18 months ago, I wouldn't have thought that I'd be ready to face the panel so soon.

The following Monday I leave for a Student Christian Movement conference in the Blue Mountains, followed by a few days in Sydney. I'll be taking my laptop and some work that I need to catch up on, but I don't expect to have internet access during the conference, so I will probably be mostly offline until 10 July.

To take my mind off the interviews, I was given 70 undergraduate essays on the history of psychiatry to mark last week, and still have five left to mark this evening. This is my first attempt at marking, and it's been an eye-opener; hopefully I won't be so anxious about my own writing, now that I see that a tutor can only give about 30 minutes' attention to each essay!

Last week I spoke to a group of people from St Paul’s Cathedral about my visit to India. I was asked to speak for 30-45 minutes. I’d never spoken on my own for that length of time before. When speaking in public, I generally try either of two strategies, both of which have problems:

- Write the whole talk word for word beforehand and read it, forgetting to look at the audience.

- Write a basic outline and notes and get nervous, lose my place and forget what I’m trying to say.

I didn’t have time to write the whole talk this time, so I prepared an outline with a few introductory paragraphs so I would at least be able to start. I brought some photos and encouraged the audience (about a dozen people, none of them strangers) to interrupt whenever I wanted. It worked! I talked without getting stuck; the audience brought up many interesting questions and comments; and I filled up my allotted time perfectly. It helps that I have a lot to say about the subject and 45 minutes is much better than being asked for a “brief summary” of the trip -- most travellers know that a few minutes with distracted friends doesn’t do justice to the experience! I’m much more confident about my speaking abilities now.

Notes from the talk are at http://chionh.org/travel/indiatalk06.html

My bank account statement arrived today. I came across transactions made in India, and I recalled the situations I was in at the time. Here’s the day when I got lost in Pune -- my first experience of wandering alone in a city where the street signs were in a language -- in a script! -- that I couldn’t read. It didn’t help that Pune’s street plan is nothing like the familiar grid pattern that Melbournians know and love. I did eventually find an ATM.

Here’s the night in Aurangabad when my partners in crime tried to hijack an autorickshaw while the driver was asking for directions. And there’s our visit to a textile factory, when I forgot about my lack of interest in shopping and actually bought some fashion accessories!

The bank statement is a reminder of what a disparity there is in the cost of living, between Australia and India. It’s disconcerting to spend 800 of something on an extravagant dinner in a 5-star hotel. But when it’s 800 rupees, and I remember that that is less than 30 Australian dollars, it’s clear that things are very cheap in India.

I thought that I would continue writing about my trip after I returned. I can’t say that I’ve “processed” everything. But 36 hours after I returned, I was back at work. I’ve had trouble remembering how to do simple tasks at work; writing often seems beyond me. Sometimes I feel that I’ve left my brain in India.

I know my taste buds miss India. Indian restaurants in Melbourne mostly serve rice, “curries” and breads, but there are a couple of places that serve dosa, idli and other snacks. Yesterday I had dosa for lunch (for about seven times what I would have paid in Mumbai); the restaurant was piping Bollywood songs; and I was ready to go back.

I'm gradually uploading photos from India to http://www.flickr.com/photos/claudine/tags/india/

The last week of the course at CRHP was like the headache of final exams/assignments, multiplied by 18. In the second week we began a group project on planning a hypothetical primary health care program. There was a four-day recreational trip to Aurangabad, the Ellora caves and Bhandardara, but when we got back the assignment was practically the only thing on everyone's mind. When I'm at studying at home I can take breaks away from my books and talk to people who don't have anything to do with my studies, but in the confines of Jamkhed we couldn't do that and it was very intense. The minor epidemic of colds and flu among students didn't help.

After the work, a small graduation ceremony, group photos and a party. The group was driven to Pune railway station this afternoon and split up. About half went on to a train to Mumbai, others flew to other parts of India, while I stayed behind in Pune for a night. There's only so much movement I can take in one day. Goodbyes were sad and gentle -- most of us are based in Melbourne and around April we will be meeting at the university to present our experiences to the next batch of potential participants. There is plenty of talk of other, informal reunions; time will tell whether these will take place.

Tomorrow I'll be in Mumbai, meeting some people at the Hilton -- a mind-boggling prospect after three weeks in modest, dusty villages. I return to work on Wednesday and classes for my next subject begin in two weeks. We were given some advice on re-integration into our normal surroundings. This has been the longest period of living in such different conditions that I can think of. I may outwardly, physically return to Melbourne, but I don't expect re-integration to really happen quickly.

Yes, there are beggars and homeless people in Mumbai. In my fevered imagination I thought whole streets would be lined with them. I haven't seen that but poverty is still disturbingly obvious here. I have seen people begging and sleeping on the streets in Melbourne, but not children. It is sad to think of people living entire lives this way, yet at the same time I recall warnings about children being used as props to increase earnings. It is horrible that such cynicism may be necessary.

Yet there are plenty of recent Western and Japanese cars on the road, plenty of young people blissed out on MP3s and mobile phones, sidestepping the beggars. There are liveried staff at the palatial Taj Mahal hotel. The coexistence of rich and poor, old and new seems so stark here.

I spent a good part of today getting lost in Mumbai. Some of the streets seem to have alternate names, and the Indian versions of the names can be quite long, for example Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg -- aka SBS Marg -- also known as Colaba Causeway. I met a friend of a friend at Melbourne airport. Today we headed towards Chowpatty beach and got lost in a maze of streets whose signs I couldn't see, and resorted to taking a taxi to the beach. The same thing happened on the way back to Colaba, but we got lost in a different area. I suppose I saw more of the non-tourist's Mumbai than I would have if I'd relied on a taxi.

Spending some time in Singapore gave me some warning of the chaos of Mumbai. The roads are no place for the timid -- cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians jostle each other with no regard for painted lanes. The constant honking of car horns has already become just background noise. Amidst run-down old buildings, expensive fashion stores and billboards advertising Western fashion and mobile phones.

I had nothing to be scared about. I haven't been partying or seen any major tourist sights yet, apart from the Gateway of India. (I will hopefully visit Elephanta Island tomorrow.) Just being here is a thrill.

My interest in family history actually began with the mystery of my surname’s origin. Through my parents’ and my paternal grandmother’s recollections I was able to trace the Chionh line to my great-grandfather. I was told (in my dreaded childhood Chinese lessons) that the Chinese character for my surname was Jiang. (I can write the character but I don’t know how to input it into Ubuntu/Logjam.) But no one could say how Jiang became Chionh.

Three previously unknown Chionhs have contacted me after finding my public family history web page. One of these is a second cousin -- we have the same great-grandfather -- now living in Australia. She was able to provide some details on my great-great-grandfather. The other two were Singaporean Chionhs for whom we have not been able to establish definite links. While in Singapore my parents and I met with them and their families. One of these men knew of my great-grandfather but wasn’t sure how they were related. The other came up with names that were completely new to me and we couldn’t find a connection, but I took a photo of him and my father side-by-side, and there seems to be a physical resemblance. So the mystery continues.

The main Tan reunion events were a dinner last Saturday and a tour of historic sites on Sunday. The Chinese in general have strong migratory tendencies. While most of the reunion attendees lived in Singapore, there were also English, American and Australian visitors. This was my first opportunity to meet Lawrence Tan, one of my English third cousins, who has overseen the compilation of a genealogical database numbering over 900 individuals. I began trying to compile my own family history about four years ago and, while searching Rootsweb for a different branch, stumbled on Lawrence’s data. I was able to reconcile my mother’s stories and recollections with the hard data that Lawrence had collected.

We were encouraged to wear traditional Peranakan dress to the dinner. I’d seen older women like my grandmother wear the sarong kebaya (tight-fitting sarong and jacket) but neither my mother or I had ever worn this. The authentic outfit requires brooches and a belt (silver, to be really authentic) and small slippers. My grandmother’s jewellery was in Melbourne (oops!) and the sarong and slippers did not seem intended for serious walking or standing. So we compromised and wore kebaya and trousers.

I’d met or been told about many of my mother’s relatives when I was younger but had trouble remembering where they fit into the grand scheme. Lawrence brought along an eight-foot printout of the Tan Tock Seng family tree. The reunion organiser, Roney Tan, presented a talk on Tan Tock Seng and his sons and grandsons, and screened a documentary about Tan Tock Seng. TTS is most famous in Singapore for the hospital that bears his name. My mother has said that when she was young she would tell people that she was one of his descendants and would sometimes be rebuked for being too proud. In Australia I’ve sometimes been accused of crypto-aristocratic behaviour -- and this was before I was fully aware of how much of an impact Tan Tock Seng made on Singapore. But while the reunion might have been mostly about celebrating our ancestors, I also learned that many of my relatives are continuing his example of good works (as well as making money).

On the tour the following day, we visited: Tan Tock Seng’s grave; a temple partly established by him, the Thian Hock Keng; a temple partly established by one of his sons, the Po Chiak Keng Tan Si Chong Su; a huge house built by one of his grandsons; and of course the hospital. The CEO of the hospital took us on a tour of some of the wards and the main building. The Tan Si Chong Su and the hospital treated us like stars, which helped with the ego-swelling.

Overall the weekend was packed with meeting relatives and hearing lots of different people praise Tan Tock Seng. I don’t cope with large groups of people very well, and it would have been easier on my nerves to have had all this in smaller doses; but still it felt good to be part of a great and continuing family tradition.

I’ve recently returned from eleven days in Singapore. One of the main reasons for going this time was to attend a reunion of descendants of Tan Tock Seng, a pioneering Singaporean businessman and philanthropist. Tan Tock Seng was born in Malacca, moved to Singapore soon after the colony’s establishment in 1819, made a lot of money and helped build a hospital and a Chinese temple in Singapore.

Some of Singapore’s old families (such as the Tans) identify as Peranakan or “Straits Chinese”, used to distinguish the Chinese who settled in the colonies around the Straits of Malacca from those who have arrived from China more recently. The Straits Chinese have a distinctive culture which borrows from our Malay and European contacts as well as Chinese tradition. It can be easy to identify Peranakan architecture, traditional costume and food, and while they may speak the Queen’s English when it suits them, Straits Chinese tend to casually drop some Malay or Hokkien into their conversation.

My parents both speak English and Malay and only limited Hokkien or other Chinese dialects. When I was at school, twenty years ago, children were required to learn, in addition to English, the language that belonged to their official ethnic background -- Chinese, Malay or Indian. There was no acknowledgement of the kind of cultural subtlety and mixture that characterises the Straits Chinese. I was forced to learn Mandarin, effectively a foreign language to my family, but it never sunk in.

Peranakan culture may have been neglected but is now being recognised by younger Singaporeans. Singaporean builders are a bit demolition-crazy but a few Peranakan buildings are being earmarked for heritage protection. There is a Peranakan museum which seems to have a lot of support. And on flicking through a Rough Guide to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei I found an entry on the Straits Chinese in the “People” section, so hopefully we’re not about to be written off as a dying culture yet.

I had a frantic few weeks and couldn't keep my mind clear, let alone settle down to write. I'm now in Singapore for eleven days, for an international family reunion and catching up with other family and friends of my parents. I might not be writing much, but you can see some of the photos I've been taking with my new camera:

http://flickr.com/photos/claudine/

I have lived in Melbourne for 22 years and have only visited Sydney twice, so it is tempting to fall into the trap of comparing Sydney unfavourably with Melbourne. But I didn’t see much of Sydney on my last trip, only a few tourist sights. I did walk a fair bit, though. As well as being hilly, Sydney can be confusing for a walker. I’m used to the well-defined grid plan of the streets in Melbourne’s central business district. The streets of Sydney’s CBD run mostly north-south or east-west, but at slightly different angles in different places, and minor streets are more likely to terminate abruptly than they do in Melbourne.

On the other hand, public transport in Sydney’s CBD was a dream compared to Melbourne. In some ways, the trains and trams (‘light rail’) in Sydney remind me of the good old days of Melbourne’s old-school public transport system, the Met. One of the lamentable ‘reforms’ applied to our public transport system was the removal of conductors from trams and guards from trains. In Sydney, trams have conductors or at least live human ticket-sellers, and there are guards either on the trains or on railway platforms who signal to drivers when it is safe to leave the station. Having these extra staff makes public transport safer as well as easier for passengers to navigate. What amazed me is that Sydney’s trams are run by the same company that operates Melbourne’s trams and trains, Connex. How could the outcomes be so different in the two cities?

I ate dinner twice in Sydney, and these were both at the Darling Harbour/Cockle Bay complex, which reminds me of Southgate on the banks of the Yarra. Hyde Park is much like the public gardens of Melbourne, and seemed to be full of tourists when I was there, on Thursday afternoon. I didn’t go to Circular Quay (not taking any ferries after that plane trip!), the Rocks, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Mrs Macquarie’s chair, etc., etc. I had seen all of these sights on my first trip, and guessed that they wouldn’t have changed much in fifteen years.

( Feel free to skip the rest of this article if church politics bores you. )

If I only looked at my recent holiday to Sydney and the Blue Mountains from the point of view of my physical wellbeing, I’d have to say it was a bit of a mess. It all started with a ninety-minute plane flight; I spent about eighty-five minutes feeling sick and managed to wait till I landed in Sydney before depositing my pizza brunch in an airport toilet. That was one lesson for me: pizza with strong cheese just before flying isn’t a great idea.

I think the best way to discover a new or unfamiliar city is on foot. I hadn’t been to Sydney in fifteen years, and it was my first time there on my own, so I was quite eager to explore. I learned pretty soon that Sydney, like Hobart, is very hilly. After checking in at the Railway Square YHA, near Central railway station, I set off through Chinatown, across to Hyde Park, then back through the CBD, getting a little lost before finding myself at Darling Harbour/Cockle Bay. After a nice Thai dinner I realised that I wasn’t prepared to repeat the journey back on foot, and I was too disoriented to find a more direct walking route back to the hostel, so I acquiesced and took a tram back.

The next morning my legs were complaining about the previous day’s meanderings. Not a good start to my Blue Mountains adventure. I should have paid more attention to the Blue Mountains tour brochure, particularly the part about a three-hour walk along the Grand Canyon (in the Grose Valley). I’ve been quite sedentary since returning from Tasmania in February and really wasn’t up to this walk; I was fooling myself. The first incident was a twisted ankle about half an hour into the walk. Whatever I did, I had to go upwards eventually, and I decided to continue with the walk. I was actually quite surprised that I managed to complete it, and the visual and aural environment of the valley made up for the pain. However the climbing took its toll and my knees are still sore, three days later. I later learned that this particular walk was graded ‘Medium—Hard’. I’ll stick to ‘Easy—Medium’ for the time being.

The next morning was spent mostly with my feet propped up on ice packs at the Katoomba YHA. In the afternoon the tour continued with a visit to kangaroo territory. It was quite exciting to see kangaroos in the wild. Unfortunately getting there and back involved sitting in a bus on very winding mountain roads. It was almost like the plane trip all over again, but this time my lunch stayed where it belonged.

The flight back to Melbourne yesterday went smoothly (apart from the little bump on landing that has been part of my experience of all Virgin Blue flights). I had the foresight to take some ginger-based anti-nausea tablets first, and I think that may have been the solution. Yay for ginger!