Wednesday, September 21, 2011

S.K. Jolley

That's the name that appeared on the blue envelopes that arrived for me every few months when I was a little girl. There's a special joy in receiving mail, even now as an adult I get a little thrill when I see a personalized envelope mixed in with all the bills. What was even more special was that these blue envelopes came to me all the way from England.

It might have been the Spice Girls, or a desire to find my individual culture and heritage, but I was an Anglophile through and through and the stamps bearing the Queen's cameo always struck a chord. What was more important than the content of these letters was what they represented: a connection to my Grandmother.

My Grandmother is a woman that I knew very little of, and yet, found a way to know a lot. She lived so far away and I was only able to visit her twice in the time that I was old enough for it to be remembered, but through our letters back and forth over many years I was able to get to know her.

She was a reader. A voracious one. She liked plays, and novels and she liked to watch her stories. She was someone intensely interested in the world around her and what the people in it were doing with it. She was intellectually very acute and I suspect she knew more than many people gave her credit for in her long years. Being a woman in her time may not have always been easy for someone with her intellectual fortitude but I suspect it was that fortitude that allowed her to draw such strength.

I still remember the last letter she sent to me before she suffered a debilitating stroke that left her paralyzed on one side and incapable of returning my letters. The tone was markedly different from her usual letters. She usually liked to commiserate with me about the tedious nature of housework, or encourage me to read a new novel she was particularly enjoying, or to inquire about what plays we were putting on that month at the theatre where I worked. This letter had the ring of a goodbye. It spoke more generally about the lessons to draw out of life and the things to keep my focus on. My grandma was no fool and I think she knew that stroke was coming for her.

Remarkably, she survived it and managed to carry on. (She was English after all). She went on to stay in a lovely nursing home where I was able to visit her two years ago over Christmas with my Dad and Marilyn. Though she could no longer write to me, I continued to send her letters and share my life with her. I admit that they were not as frequent as I think she deserved but I do know that she liked getting them and I liked writing them.

My last letter, sent last week and express posted had that same change in tone I suspect as the one that she sent me before her stroke. I spoke of how much she had taught me and how valuable she was to me. I don't know if she got that last letter but this time, I knew that it was coming to an end.

My trip to England in November will now be so that we can scatter her ashes. Though she is gone, I am still very grateful that I was able to have such a relationship with my grandmother, all the way on the other side of the ocean who showed me what strength and dignity can look like and that there is a root inside me that I can trace back to answer the question of why I've always loved to read.

Rest in Peace.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Hong Kong!

I am finally back in Singapore after 10 days in Hong Kong. I have lots to write about so I'm going to go chronologically because it's the easiest to sort out in my own mind.

http://s1105.photobucket.com/albums/h343/Bea_Jolley/Bea%20and%20Iain%20do%20Hong%20Kong/

My last two weeks have been vacation-y with a number of holidays here in Singapore with the Presidential Election and Hari Raya. As you know, I've been dealing with a rather confusing and complicated break up so I really needed this time to sort myself out and get my head around what's happened and changed for me.

I spent lots of time with my friends and Iain's solution to a broken heart is to spend as much time in the sun and swimming as possible because how can you be sad if you are sunbathing. The answer is that you can, but it's a lot better than being sad locked up in your room.

Singapore has a holiday called "Teacher's Day" which is a really cool day for the students to give thanks to their teachers and shower us with presents and gifts. I will say that Singapore teachers are some of the hardest working people I've seen and they really deserve it. Many spend 12 hours a day at school and often weekends too to put on CCA programs, exam preparations and to cope with the astronomical teaching load we all face. If any group of professionals deserved a day, it's Singaporean teachers. It was really touching to have students giving me cards and presents and saying thank you for what I've done. It being my first year as a teacher and being in a foreign context I spend a lot of my time feeling like I'm behind everyone else and trying to tread water and keep from drowning. I know I'm no where near an awesome teacher yet so it was encouraging to hear from students that they appreciate the work that I do.

Then it was off to Hong Kong with my good friend Iain. Now, in the interest of clarity, I will explain who Iain is and why we are friends. He is slightly younger than my Dad and from the UK, as my Dad is and so in a lot of ways he reminds me of my Dad. I'm in between his daughter and his son's ages so I think for both of us we are like family when we are away from home. We have a lot of fun and laugh a lot and people either think he's my Dad or I'm his concubine, but neither is the truth.

We spent the week with Iain's friend Ricky in Sai Kung which is outside of Kowloon. I will tell you that the side of Hong Kong that I saw was not the one I thought I would see. I was expecting bright city lights, tall buildings and fast paced Asian culture, but I found myself in a picturesque fishing "village" which was more like village meets city. They had a Starbucks, but they also had little junk boats that ferried people to the neighboring islands and beaches.

Iain and I continued our sun and swim therapy for my broken heart and ended up becoming very very tanned. We made it our goal to become racially ambiguous and hope that people will mistake us for African.

I managed to get some really great shopping done and found amazing deals and cool new clothes. I'm really pleased with the clothes I got and some are for work, some are for bumming around on weekends but all of them make me feel really good and comfortable.

Some notable places that I went were the Lady's Market and Flower Market, Dim Sum breakfasts, Trio Bay beach, Central up the escalator and Kowloon for shopping. I have posted pictures and videos up to my photobucket, I haven't watched the videos yet but I tried to take some of driving at night and being on the boat to the beach so it will be interesting to see how they turned out.

Hong Kong felt much more like China to me, with the lush green hills in the background and the style of houses it just seemed more like what I imagine China looks like (not surprising, considering it kind of is China...) and Cantonese was spoken much more than Mandarin so I went through the confused Chinese brain thing all over again, having just wrapped my head around Mandarin and Singlish.

This being my first real trip out of Singapore I got a little more perspective on what it's like back here. I realised just how accessible things seem here, I know at any time of night or day that I can get from one place to another and I know how to do it or how to find out how. Things feel more safe but at the same time more contained and in a way sanitised. Singapore seems to me much more like a fish bowl but at the same time much more culturally diverse and full of rich flavours and languages as well as it's own special brand of all of it mixed into one. I also realised this morning when I was woken at my friend's flat by a marching band practicing at a youth arts centre near their place that I feel more like I am in tune with the vibrance and life here on the island. I don't always know what's going on but there's more of a sense of harmony and a common moving towards something. I don't know if that really explains it, but it has certainly been an interesting experience.

It was wonderful to be travelling and relaxing and it's been really nice to come back and have friends waiting for me to step off the plane and go out dancing. Last night we went to an amazing bar called 1 Altitude which is on the 70th floor of a building in Raffles where you can see a panorama of the entire island. It was breathtaking, beautiful and the most fun I've had in a while, just dancing with my friends and feeling confident and beautiful and independent and free. It's been a rough go lately but I do feel that I'm coming out the other side only slightly the worse for wear.

Also: life just feels better when you go through it with a golden tan. ;)