Blue

After an eternity of rain (50 continuous days), then the worst winter and snow in a hundred years, I went outside today to find Brixton lit up with brilliant sunshine and blue skies. I have been aching for some warmth since I arrived here a few months ago and today, finally, it was warm enough for me just stroll around my neighbourhood, soaking up the sun.

Perhaps I am fussy, but I don't mean the oppressive humidity of Singapore, or the bone-dry 44 degree oven of Melbourne, I just want a moderately dry 25-30 degrees, with a cool evening breeze, the weather my Brazilian friend is having over her summer. Thats the weather I want right now...

But perhaps I am just being overly wishful today under the blue sky...

I get that way sometimes :)

Walter x

Christmas Musings 2009

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love

It’s snowing. Cute little snowflakes are swirling all around me on an icy terrace in Hampstead as I stand here with a frozen glass of good champagne on this New Year’s Eve in London. This insignificant snowfall has gladdened my heart and made me feel that change and joy really are coming, that Christmas and New Year’s Eve have waved a magic wand over my world, and everything is softer and more beautiful :)

I recently went back to my home town of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, for a Christmas with the few remaining cousins that still have a house to live in or still have work nearby. It was a wonderful time, but it brought on mixed emotions – the sadness of seeing the ruined city, the dread of realisation that mum would not have survived, and the joy of hugging and kissing beloved relatives again...

The Nature of Things

Abruzzo differs from the soft rolling hills and sunburnt hayfields of Tuscany and Umbria. In the Abruzzo, nature is as untamed as tradition is undiluted. Only here do the Apennines assume truly alpine proportions, topped with Gran Sasso at 2914m. It is rugged sheep country rather than farmland, and mostly consists of tall craggy peaks, deep frozen valleys and wild untamed parks where wolves, wild boars and bears still flourish and roam. Rather than having a Renaissance or Baroque imprint, it has been shaped mainly by the harsher Middle Ages. It really is more like an austere “Tibet by the sea” than elegant Italy. And so it is against this craggy template that its people have been shaped – they are a hardy, stoic lot, joyous in celebration and their traditions, but with their feet planted firmly on the ground...

Aftermath

As many of you may know (Easter-Musings), at 3:30am on the morning of April 6, 2009, most of the people of L’Aquila in Italy were asleep in their beds. There were 3 major jolts they said, each one more powerful than the last. For a population somewhat used to earthquakes, the first 2 quakes gave most people enough warning to run from their beds and leave their houses in time to survive the last and most destructive quake. What happened that night gives many of the population of L’Aquila nightmares to this day - most earthquakes happen in one dimension, left to right, or front to back, or even up and down. This last quake was in all three dimensions, a truly horrific nightmare that lasted 30 agonising seconds; the top halves of whole Palazzi lifted and twisted in mid-air, crashing down to crush their bottom halves; scores of trees were uprooted throughout the region; massive holes gaped open between houses, swallowing dozens of cars like toys; and medieval L’Aquila was in some places reduced to piles of dust and rubble just 30cm high.

My large family (48 first cousins, 10 aunts and uncles, and so on.), were amongst the lucky ones, only losing property and furniture - just some of the 29,000 left homeless; just some of the 15,350 moved to 139 hotels on the Adriatic coast, and their homes just some of the 15,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Many other families were less fortunate. The night ended with 1000 people injured and 308 people tragically dead, many of them children and grandparents. In a country and a culture that venerates its aged and adores its children, L’Aquila still mourns both the loss of its past and its future. The worst hit was the small village of Onna - being closest to the earthquake’s epicentre, every building was completely destroyed and of the 300 people who lived there, a tragic 50 souls from this small community were killed.

Every relative I have spoken to has a story to tell of that Monday morning; when three massive quakes from below heralded three gigantic waves of destruction. The final quake destroyed every one of L’Aquila’s 99 churches (seen as a sign amongst the population), lifted whole palazzos from their foundations, and literally shook medieval buildings to piles of dust. The destruction remains there today, throughout the whole city and all the surrounding towns, a grim testament to the power of an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale - the energy of 50 x Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.

SO it was with some trepidation that I drove into L’Aquila 8 months on, not sure what to expect...

Silent Passage

It is an extraordinarily eerie feeling to walk through a city you love and know intimately, but in utter silence and completely alone. On my first morning I decided on a pre-breakfast walk. From my hotel, I found myself walking in a silent ghost town, every building cracked and leaning, propped up by wire and rope, scaffolding and steel bracing.

I found myself retracing the path of the evening passegiata that my cousins and parents and I would have wandered along in normal times - along the cobbled main artery of the Corso, wandering past smashed shop windows with art-nouveau lettering. Here the shops used to sell beautiful Italian shoes and handbags, elegant clothes, delicious Torrone (chocolate nougat), and confetti (sugar-coated almonds to be showered over Abruzzese brides and grooms). Thankfully there are still no global brands in sight, no chain stores, no cyber-cafes or fast-food joints – and that is a small but significant joy to my saddened heart. I wandered down each of the maze of medieval alleyways leading off from the Corso and again these were silent and broken, the holes in the walls allowing me to peer into the now crumbling palazzos, once boasting intricately carved facades.

The scale of the damage was too great to really take in; every single building and church and paving stone and archway and statue was broken - every single one. And there was no-one else around. I was walking in utter silence for hours, criss-crossing the city. It felt like a disused Hollywood movie set instead of a bustling, busy town that should be full of Christmas shoppers and families. Inevitably I would stumble into a Red Zone and some military policeman or worker with a red hard-hat would come out of the scaffolding to gently shoo me away from the very real danger of collapse.

At the end of my walk I found that I had arrived at my mother’s apartment. It was horribly cracked and ruined on the outside, completely collapsed within. The realisation that my mother would never have made it out alive caused me to hold my breath and I found tears running down my face. A few minutes later I ran into some surviving neighbours and found myself being hugged and kissed and asked all sort of questions about mum. In the face of such staggering destruction, they just wanted to know what mum was up to and when she was going to come and visit.

When I returned to the hotel, I just wanted to cry – it felt like I had been visiting a much-loved aunt in hospital, covered in bandages and bruises after a terrible accident.

But the people of L’Aquila are a hardy lot as I said, and Christmas with them was as loud and joyful and bountiful as ever...

Noisy Celebration

Apart from the religious foundation of Christmas, the other focus of Christmas in Italy is the food. The food of the Abruzzo tends to be hearty mountain fare, rustic with large portions and everything sourced regionally. Over the three days of feasting I was served mountains of rustic antipasti, maltagliati (“badly cut”) pasta with truffle and porcini sauce, beef lasagne, spinach & sheep-ricotta cannelloni, maccheroni alla chitarra (a homemade pasta cut by a guitar-shaped implement), served with a delicious sauce of lamb, pancetta and pecorino cheese. roasted chunks of local lamb, pork and veal, wild boar casserole, melt-in-the-mouth beef, braised in red wine and garnished with truffles, Italy's best lentils, stews of hot peppers and beans, spicy rice dishes, and a risotto made with local saffron. This was all mopped up with the best bread in Italy (I mean it) and washed down with the best red wines east of Rome. Later, with coffee and slices of homemade walnut cakes, chocolate cakes, Nurzia Torrone and endless chunks of Panettone, we had a variety of sweet local liqueurs like Aurum (made from made from rum, bitter orange peel and saffron) or Ratafia (made from wild cherries), to the knockout, dark green liqueur, Centerbe, with its 72 per cent alcoholic content... Burp :)

We ate, we played music, we played cards, discussed politics, played tombola (Italian bingo) and watched the world on television celebrate Christmas. A normal, happy, reflective Christmas with loved ones...

The Beginning
There is no end to this story, it is just the beginning...

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

L’Aquila is in transition now, the people passing from survivors to rebuilders, and as always with my stoic town-folk and family, carrying on as normally as possible while this progresses around them. The people of L’Aquila aren’t looking for a hand out, they’re looking for a hand up, they’re looking for help; they just want to go back to their homes. There is a spirit of optimism, defiance and solidarity among the mainly young people here. They have a simple demand: to reconstruct the damaged homes, including those in the centre of the city. They fear that Berlusconi's hollow promise to "build better homes" will result only in the cheap new housing estates (see below) being built on the outskirts of the city, and that the claims of the citizens for a proper restoration will soon be forgotten. Unfortunately for Berlusconi, the people of L’Aquila have very long memories and never give up on anything.

I might have driven into L’Aquila unsure what I’d find, but I drove out of L’Aquila knowing exactly what I had left. The people of L’Aquila are young, organised and media-savvy; they even hosted a special Christmas Eve mass for thousands in the half-collapsed Santa Maria di Collemaggio, pronouncing it the Cathedral of L’Aquila until the real Cathedral can be restored. They televised the whole event and used the moral and ethical leverage of the night, invited the Italian media and all the restoration workers to the front of the church, and held mass below the temporary plexi-glass roof and within steel-braced walls and columns. They wanted to leave no doubt in the Italian government’s mind what the city wants and still expects...

Unlike last Easter where I was just glad to be here, now I am very happy to be involved and going back, seeing my family again, checking on their slow journey back to their homes...

 

Happy New Year everyone – may your new year start as positively and joyfully as mine did :

Walter x

In the Skin of a Lion - A Christmas Tale

Shedding my old skin, trying on some braver ones…

It’s Saturday night, I’m home alone, too tired from my travels and my first week at work to move far from the sofa. It’s been dark since 4:30pm and its freezing cold and raining hard outside. I’m on the floor by the fire, wrapped in woollen armour, watching the clever show ‘QI’ on TV, a large mug of hot, sweet tea and a small tower of digestive biscuits for dunking. It’s a world away from the relentless heat and humidity, singlet and shorts of Singapore. But then again I have actually been around the world and back again in the last 8 weeks, so who knows what’s normal for me any more.

In a nutshell: after Singapore I spent two weeks in hot Melbourne renovating my old house, then in the pursuit of love and good fortune and a new life abroad, I headed over the pacific, passed through extraordinary Brazil, landed in wintery London, hopped over to elegant Oslo, back to London, spent a week in exciting Paris, back to London, Oslo again, back to London, then on the brink of giving up on my chances, I received the nod to start work in London. So I then flew back to even hotter Melbourne for a week or so of packing up and closing down my life there, and after putting the house out for rent, I boarded yet another plane to find myself settled back in cold, wet London.

So I find myself sitting here writing this, truly exhausted, physically and emotionally drained and needing a quiet night in and a mug of warm sweet tea. Just perfect...

The Pursuit of Happiness

I wont go into any details of my love life here, but lets just say that sometimes it’s not the destination that’s the point, but the journey itself. I left Melbourne for love and good fortune. These are not painless pursuits, especially when navigating the tricky roads and muddy rivers of human emotions, faults and expectations (not to mention the ravine-like chasms of cross-cultural divisions). And if you drive as fast as I do and swim as badly as I do (and leap as blindly as I do), then the ways to the human heart can be either wonderfully rewarding or emotionally devastating. I eventually lost what I hoped to keep, but over the years I have learnt to hold dear the fact that for a while at least I ‘had’ what I wanted and this is better than not having it at all – so I am moderately, if not sometimes more-so, ‘happy’ As they say, “Love is blind, so you have to feel your way”. I am still feeling my way - the bumps and bruises are just reminders I think..

Away from the dangers of love, and onto the quest for good fortune, there is an old saying that ‘Almost everything comes from nothing’. Well I had to admit this whole journey has come from nowhere. Determined to push my way into London again, to be closer to the affairs of the heart, I initially spent a month here as my resume and my desire to work here, zoomed from one department to another, one country to another within the European arm of my company, until it settled on the London desk of the Director in charge of a massive contract here in London. I now find myself the Managing half the projects for a major Public Service organisation in London, just off Oxford street. Challenging in just the first week, with hundreds of Projects and Program Managers to organise and manage, but I am as happy as I can be for the opportunity that has come from nothing except my desire to be here…

A Tale of Three Cities

I will tell you that Brazil was extraordinarily beautiful, wonderfully complicated and sexy, but very difficult to define or understand. I need more time there, to understand it better and for it to understand me. Paris was, as always, a feast of the senses, the food and drink and sights I shared with my good friends from Melbourne were unbelievable. Oslo was as warm and elegant and beautiful as ever before, but hard to understand the changes there, so this trip may be my last for a while.

Walter in Real Life

I can also tell you that I am living with a cascade of friends at the moment, sleeping on a series of sofas and fold-out beds in attics and lounge rooms around London. Thankfully this is only until the obstacles of International Security Clearance, UK Bank Account creation, National Health Insurance Number and First Pay check have all been successfully navigated (about 4 weeks they tell me). After that I can think about getting a flat of my own and inviting those that are brave enough to travel here, to stay.

A Christmas Tale

Being a transient right now means I don’t actually know where I will be over the Christmas break, or even where I am spending Christmas or New Year's Eve, but with only 4 weeks to go, I can happily wish YOU all a very warm and Merry Christmas and a very safe and Happy New Year, hopefully surrounded by your loved ones, family and friends. May your turkey be moist, may your pudding be rich (with custard, of course), and may you truly appreciate the terrible ties, socks and underwear you get from under the tree – as a transient away from my own small family, even socks and ties would be wonderful :)  But after the deadly trials by fire and earthquake of my friends and family and the flattening of my poor home town this year, I am as I said before, just happy to be here, content in the fact that I am as happy and handsome as always (that was a joke, ok?) hahahaha…

“Love, Light and Peace” to you all…

Walter xxx 
Boun Natale a tutti e Anno Felice :) :)

A Christmas Joke:

I learnt a joke in Salvador, told to me by Brazilians, about Brazil, so I feel it is ok to re-tell it here :)

There was a Brazilian, an American and a French man flying all around the world in an airplane….

The French man stretched his arm outside the airplane:

-French: we are flying over Paris!

-Brazilian: how do you know?

-French: I felt the Eiffel Tower.

Then the American stretched his arm outside the airplane:

-American: and now we are flying over New York!

-French: how do you know?

-American: I felt the Liberty Statue.

Then the Brazilian stretched his arm outside the airplane:

-Brazilian: ok, now we are flying over Rio...

-French: how do you know?

-Brazilian: someone stole my watch...

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.

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They say that the first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. Well just a short while ago I decided not to stay where I was. It wasn’t a hard decision for me, I had spent almost two years in Singapore and it was time for a move back to my friends and family, back to the kind of life I have missed during my time here.

Sing Sing

When asked to describe Singapore in five words or less, westerners usually say "sterile, strict, shopping, steamy and sleepy". They are basically correct, although I’d add “safe” to the list.

It is a land where the law prohibits most things other countries actually enjoy: selling or importing chewing gum S$1,000 (you are actually allowed to chew gum though), littering S$1,000, dancing in public (includes pop concerts) S$5,000, skateboarding S$500, smoking in most public places S$1,000, busking without a licence S$500, vandalism S$5,000 and public speaking without a permit S$2,000. Jaywalking, indecent exposure and "unnatural sex" also risk punishment under the Public Environment Health Act.. There is even a law here that you cannot be naked in your own house and can be fined heavily if someone sees you and complains! hahaha

It is also a place where the authorities organise loud and colourful campaigns to teach people to “be nice to each other” (“Hey! It’s Smile Week!”), and they actually line up for miles to receive sober instruction on how to do this by people wearing Smile for Singapore badges. It may be apocryphal, but a senior official here is once said to have remarked in all earnestness that Singaporeans needed to work a lot harder at having fun. My personal observation is that any government urging people to be happy only ends up with people grimacing instead of smiling.

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Singapore is just a little too unhappy, just a little too controlled and too damn hot and humid for me to stay on any longer. And really, any place where you can see women eating croissants or pizza slices with chopsticks is a little weird for this little Italian :)

Another kind of home

When I left Melbourne 2 years ago to come and work in Singapore, I didn't really bother with a going-away party because I thought I'd return sooner, rather than later. After 2 years I seem to have been badly mistaken. And sadly after all this time here, I haven’t really moved much around Asia, been too busy working almost every night, almost every weekend (another Singapore trait I can’t wait to leave behind). You can easily recognise other Melburnians in Singapore: an obsession with espresso coffee and cricket, a thing for "little bars" and a longing for long breakfasts on weekends, gives them away.

In London, after two years, it had become ‘home’ it had become “my flat”, but here, each new month that passed still felt uncomfortable — it could never become home. This apartment still feels like someone else’s hotel room.

Don’t get me wrong, beside the obvious – the clean, safe, green environment and the lovely friends I have made here – there is much in Singapore to seduce the passing Italian/Australian; on certain days walking around the magnificent Singapore Zoo or stunning Orchid Garden, or sitting serenely in a cool evening breeze on the East Coast eating Chilli Crab, or drinking lychee martinis at a late night jazz bar surrounded by beautiful Singapore girls in mini skirts, you really do think about staying on.

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But then at work or at a (very rare) group outing, people would talk nothing of joy or fun or art or travelling, only of property prices (they pretty well know how much a square foot cost in any apartment building in Singapore), or car leasing agreements or argue (again) about where the cheapest Chicken Rice was, and my mood would be ruined. Then my heart would yearn for another ‘kind’ of home and I would plan to leave Singapore.

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In London, I adjusted easily. After all, I had felt Melbourne in zero degrees and had stood on the platform at Richmond station on countless bitter mornings and experienced some arctic Anzac days that were not worth living through. In London my body instinctively leant away from the wind from years of long Melbourne winters, I already knew how to tie a scarf and make pea and ham soup.

In Singapore, I have adjusted with great difficulty. I does not even feel firm underfoot, it is a ‘porous’ city, absorbing and losing expats with ease, without any ill feeling. You're meant to leave, they say. You leave and go where the work is, they say. And no matter what I wear, no matter how I stand in the breeze, nothing saves me from the relentless heat and humidity every day. I have to live in unwelcome and unnatural air-conditioning to survive and sleep.

It is a strange observation that I have found that people from Melbourne actually express ‘anguish’ at returning home: they don’t so much as have homesickness here in Singapore, as its opposite - dread. And I can actually understand it: They talk of all their friends getting married, mortgages and babies while they were gone and they half-fear, half-yearn for the same fate. I know this fear well…

And I will have to adjust a lot more now, London to Melbourne was ok, but Singapore to Melbourne will be a shock: $20 for some noodles? $3o for a taxi ride? And through my Singapore-sanitized eyes it will have become a loud and grubby place populated with hoodies and street rubbish. The traffic will seem bad and the drivers will seem aggressive. Furious, drunk men screaming obscenities at people in the morning won’t be unheard of.

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The last time I was in Melbourne, passing through, the feeling of falling back in time was so intense that I couldn’t go back to some places without feeling dangerously nostalgic and seriously melancholic. I had to avoid some places that drew me back too deep. The old Leonard Cohen line: "I ache in the places that I used to play" was what coming home felt like.

But I digress, as I often do…

Nature’s Trail

Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.

The Romans had a saying: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” In my case, the baton of Singapore soon passes on to the new leg of the next journey. The plan is to head back to Melbourne for a few months, catch up with all my lovely friends and their families, fix up my poor decaying house and rent it out, then head to Brazil to meet someone I dearly adore, to see what future (if any) she may hold for me, then head on to Europe for another chapter in my life.

Home is where the Heart is

Back on Nature's path...
Walter x

Travelling Light

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

As I look around my "Superior Double Room with Preferred View" on the 23rd floor of the luxurious Park Lane Hotel in Hong Kong, I am looking around my 'home' for the next 3 weeks. It's a large, plush and relaxing room, filled with soft striped sofas and chairs, muted colour tones, a large flat TV, and a luxurious black and gold marble bathroom with spa bath. Room service is fast and efficient (tonight's grilled salmon salad was truly delicious), and the crisp, white, King-sized bed with 4 oversized pillows is enough for me and two friends. And of course the view is amazing…

I am in Hong Kong, unexpectedly, working on a confidential bid for the duration, coincidently giving me some well needed distance from the relentless heat and humidity of Singapore, and from my own attempts to coerce logic from my recently trampled feelings...

As many of you have pointed out, I've been way too sad of late, all wrapped up in a cheerless cocoon from the disasters affecting those around me; the sad passing of friends and family; the burnt and buried lives of Australian and Italian loved ones; and the newly exposed wounds from falling heavily into unrequited love, blinded by great beauty. But I have decided to go on an emotional diet, leave a lot of baggage behind and smile a lot more. Walter, travelling ‘Light’…

Reasons to be Cheerful Part III

Taxi:

When I called the Comfort Taxi Company on Monday morning to get me to the airport, I wasn’t expecting to wait twenty five minutes, sweating profusely in my steamy basement car park. I also wasn’t expecting to hear the continuous braking and revving of a taxi, rabbit-hopping its way down a wide, gentle ramp towards me. I also wasn’t expecting my 73 year old driver ‘Wu’ to tell me he was too scared to come into the car park because he was Blind: “Sorry, blind, too old!” I was also not expecting Wu to not understand the words “Airport. Terminal 3.” telling me he was Deaf: “Sorry, deaf, too old!” So obviously I wasn’t expecting to have to keep shouting “AIRPORT!!! TERMINAL THREEEEE!” until he nodded and smiled into the rear view mirror. I also wasn’t expecting for us to take 15 minutes to turn around in the spacious car park – Wu being too scared that he might hit something. I also wasn’t expecting to take 40 minutes to get to the airport, crawling along the freeway as the whole of Singapore seemed to pass us by. But Wu was a lovely old man, smiling all the time, loving life and cheating death as Singapore’s only deaf and blind taxi driver.

7-Eleven:

Against all logical reason, 7-Elevens are very popular here. Unlike London and Melbourne where they are staffed by quiet, polite Indian men, the one near me is like a Japanese soup kitchen, young girls nasaly screaming "welcomesevenelevennnnn!" at you when you enter, nasaly screaming "thankyousevenelevennnnn!" when you leave. At lunch time with a continuous throng of people coming in and out, the cat-like din is fantastic. My particular branch is a little different than most, with a very masculine, darkly tanned, deep-voiced woman, obviously of recent male origins. Her very 'male-in-a-dress' features took some getting used to (the pink lipstick clashing with her blue eyeliner), but we have an 'understanding' now, and I can get a can of diet coke without being overly bothered by such terrible make-up. People hang around outside my 7-Eleven, milling around like fans after a concert. Mostly groups of smoking men, or texting teens, but sometimes i have to tip-toe through sitting daisy chains of pretty Chinese Goths, or giggling circles of Little Bo-Peeps with long socks and frilly mini skirts.

Supermarkets:

These are also a little different here. In London the cashiers sit down, moan about the weather and you have to pack your own goods (although see Julie at Checkout 13 at Pimlico Sainsburys and she'll pack for you). But here they stand up, pack like their life depended on it (re-arranging things in each bag to almost Porsche-like aerodynamic efficiency), insisting on a plastic bag for almost every item. And unlike most places in the world, the very pretty checkout ladies are almost painfully polite; smiling sincerely, apologising to you for the delay, the lack of exactly the right bag, and for taking so long to run to the other side of the building to weigh and price the banana and plums you were meant to weigh back in the fruit section. Wonderful.

Toilets:

Japanese electronic toilets to be exact. These large white, nuclear-powered contraptions usually have a control panel on one side, with a confusing array of pictogram buttons and displays. I have never been game to actually push anything while using one, and certainly never tried any of the advanced options- the alarming arrangement of hoses focussed on my ass is a little too 'personal' to be inviting. But then I’ll spent about 25 minutes standing safely to one side, pressing all the buttons in every combination - warm seat, wash seat, wash male parts (two hoses), wash female parts (three hoses), steady stream, machine-gun pulse, and so on. The last time I encountered one of these babies, I was about to try the “warm water, random pulse flow, cold blow dry” combination when the thing froze up on me and all the lights started blinking. I hope it was under warranty.

Olives:

In a land where people eat Durian, (that spiky fruit with the horrible drain-like smell that evokes reactions of intense disgust, banned from hotels and public transport), or Laksa (thick, hot sour coconut milk soup full of paprika, cumin, turmeric, chilli, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, shrimp paste, and coriander), and every form of crunchy dried fish, buried black ‘century’ eggs and pig organs stew on rice, if you try and feed my lovely friend BB a small green olive, she will spit it out and turn up her nose! :)

Bits of Time
My mate Champak loves watches – he knows the inside and outside of every important timepiece since the 50’s and takes me around the exclusive watch houses of Singapore, cooing over every new arrival, drooling over a “Rare 1960'S Breitling Cosmonaute 809 model, hand wound mechanical, 3 register chronograph with 24 hour dial” as he describes it :)

But I prefer the moments when the watches are all in pieces, with every cog and spring and wheel laid out carefully on smooth black velvet. It is like looking at time, dismantled and controlled. I wish my life was more like this; being able to reduce it to all its bits, spread them all out, clean and oil them properly, then put them back together so that my life can spin on as it was supposed to. But I am an incompetent craftsman, and I seem to end up with left-over parts after each major event or heart-crush, after each major rebuild.

Life can make me lose sight of things, but when I travel, everything seems to balance out for me. I am hoping that sailing in Greece with Nina, Andre, the crew and little Isabelle will balance me out, help me put back all my parts, getting me running smoothly again. So Greek Islands for 2 weeks, here I come :)

“Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.”

Taking my travel very seriously...

Walter x

Easter musings - L'Aquila 2009

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow"

At Christmas I wrote how blessed I was, in the way of Buddha, by the string of good fortunes bestowed upon my friends in their own successful journeys and emotional milestones. Now at Easter I seemed to be blessed all over again, by the altogether greater, more mortally-threatening good fortunes of my friends and family. But for me, the price of my inherited blessings seems far too great - the loss of so much life and the environment that shapes and identifies us, taints these good fortunes too much, stained with the soot and cement dust of destruction, the blood and tears of despair...

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Matter
As the world now knows, at 3:30 am on Monday morning, my home town of L’Aquila, an elegant medieval city nestled gently into a valley of the Apennine Mountains, was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. The earthquake caused serious damage to the whole central Italian state of Abruzzo, killing 290 people, injuring over 1,000 and leaving 28,000 homeless, including all my relatives. Despite the dangers from a week of massive, continuous aftershocks, the search for survivors under the rubble continues, day and night, until tomorrow, when the sad decision will be made to stop looking for ‘life’, after which the daunting tasks of cleanup and reconstruction will begin. It has been my own personal 9-11, terrifying every time I looked at the news, petrifying every time I called or emailed a relative to find out if they were still alive…

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Yesterday, I watched as a firefighter from Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, collapsed in tears after finding the body of his stepdaughter, who had been studying in L'Aquila.

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Today I watched the funeral of all the victims – I owed my people that much at least from my safe Singapore apartment. Like most of the 5,000 people who walked to the parade ground, I gasped at the sight of so many coffins covered with flowers, including many small white coffins covered in toys. More than 800 aftershocks have rattled the region since the earthquake, and they didn’t stop for the funeral. As the earth shook below them, I watched as everyone held onto each other, but no-one moved, no-one left the funeral. You have to admire the pride and bravery of the battered people of L’Aquila.

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Then I watched the families of 205 of the 290 victims lay their loved ones to rest after the ceremony. I listened to the awful outpouring of grief and the heart-wrenching sobs of the mothers, cascading in overlapping waves as each coffin was raised and pushed into the burial niches of the nearby hillside cemetery of L’Aquila. I know this cemetery all too well. Overlooked by the snow-capped peaks of Abruzzo, it is where my Father, and my grand, great grand and great, great grandparents are all buried.

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To my own personal relief and joy, although my 100 or so direct relatives have all lost their homes to piles of rubble and dust, their limbs and lives are all safe and sound. As all my Uncles and Aunts are between 70 and 85, my heart was in my throat every time I rang to find out how and where they were. Stories of amazing luck left me smiling during the sadness, like one courageous aunt (75) who ran down 10 flights of stairs as the tremors started, just leaving her building just as it collapsed behind her.

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The rebuild of the historical buildings, the medieval identity of L'Aquila, is another thing all together. It is not a trivial thing, almost as important to the city as the lives that were spared. The city dates back to the 12th and 13th century, with the only Pope to be buried outside of Rome and many historical buildings of architectural importance, with archaeological treasures dating back to 10,000 BC - mostly all piles of dust.

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I can't actually recognise the city from the ‘After’ photos, only when they overlay the ‘Before’ photos does it begin to make sense. My family (which dates back to 1673 in Italy, originally from Spain), have lived in some of the same homes for 100's of years. The house where I was actually born is gone and the house my mother's family lived in for many generations has also gone. Yes they are only buildings, but they were our buildings, they gave the city and its people an identity and collective soul. And for me personally, to picture my old Aunts and Uncles in shiny temporary flats for their final days, instead of their 800 year old apartments with the worn down terracotta floors, solid walnut doors, and ancient plumbing, seems such a shame to add even more heartache to the human loss. Tomorrow is Easter, the day of rebirth in the Christian Calendar. I can only hope for the rebirth of L’Aquila from the rubble..

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I don’t believe the Vatican, that it was an act of God, a spiritual divination conferred upon the city. I believe that sometimes reality can blithely exhibit the most terrifying coincidences and events that no credible fiction (or divination) could convince us of; only reality – mindless matter – can be so unthinkingly cruel.

I didn’t get any presents for Easter this year, but like Christmas, I don’t really care about the presents, I’m just happy to be here, still...

So, take care, keep safe and love and courage to you all:

Happy Easter
Buona Pasqua
Hyvää Pääsiäistä
Joyeuses Pâques
God påske
Feliz Páscoa
¡Felices Pascuas!
Glad Påsk

Walter x
Photo Link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=88795&id=621580247&l=d28a663994

Norwegian Christening

Did you ever go to a place - I think it was called Norway?
No. No, I didn't.
Pity. That was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges…

It's late on Friday night. I am exhausted from long, long hours at work this week and very little sleep as although my work follows the globe, my nap times can’t keep up. I am lying on my very comfortable lounge (tan with white piping), listening to the hot and humid wind outside and the cool and mellow voice of Sarah McLauchlan inside. I have a tall cold glass of bubbly Italian water on the floor below me and a diminishing piece of 70% chocolate in front of me. It's a perfect time to take a sip and a bite, and recount my recent time in Oslo for the Christening of the engaging Isabelle - daughter to my lovely friends Andre and Nina, and now God-daughter to the equally lovely Merete and yours truly. I feel blessed by the privilege and responsibility bestowed upon me. There is an Old Norwegian proverb - "That which is loved is always beautiful”. Isabelle has captured the heart of all who have met her and as you will see, she is surrounded by three generations of love and attention, so as a consequence she is as beautiful as a baby girl can be...

Elegant in White

Norwegians believe that here is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. That's a very optimistic outlook on the type of weather they can get in this little 'crinkly' country. On the day I arrived I must have been wearing very terrible clothes as it was -8 degrees and snowing hard. I had left hot and steamy Singapore just a day or so before and here I was in a landscape, frozen, silent and elegant compared to the heat, noise and chaos of Singapore.

After Andre and I landed, and sped blurrily across Oslo on the fast train, we received the always gracious, always warm and happy welcome of Nina's family; Kai and Katrina, Anne and Roger (he’s family now), at their Oslo home. It was here that I met my little God-daughter for the first time, and I was immediately smitten. It was also here that I was put to work :)

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I found myself cutting the crusts off a few thousand (well it seemed like it), loaves of Norwegian bread, to then slice horizontally to make massive rafts of soft white bread destined to float on lakes of cream, packed with prawns, caviar and smoked salmon. I found out that Nina was making the old fashioned Norwegian 'sandwich cake' called smörgåstårta (popular also in Finland and Sweden they tell me). Three of these huge, multi-tiered 'sandwiches' were enough to feed 40 people. These were the T-Rex of sandwiches, humungous homage’s to bread, cream and fish – Norway in a creamy nutshell.

Vigeland

Later that day, colossal cream creations fully assembled, we all rugged up in ‘good’ clothes and headed off into the weather to spend the afternoon walking around Oslo’s famous Vigeland Statue Park, now covered in an elegant blanket of snow.

I had been told about this park many times over the last few years, making it one of my travel ‘musts’. So I was downstairs in my woollen armour, wearing Kai’s snow boots and standing in the snow before you could say “Det er en herlig dag i Norge!” (It’s a lovely day in Norway!). It was a wonderful 20 minute walk from the apartment, through the dry, squeaky snow, passing all the kids and families sledding down the gentle slopes coming off the back of the nearby school.

Nothing prepared me for the wonderful feeling of peace and humanity that the park’s statues radiate into you - you almost feel as if you are intruding on something intimate. In the dead of winter, with the eerie silence that snowfall brings, I felt as if I was alone and I was singularly captivated: The most obvious feature is the towering, 17m ‘Monolith’, surrounded by radiating rings of life-sized nude statues in poses from everyday life – mothers with children, arguing couples, old men just chatting, boys playing roughly and so on. This true monolith - carved from one single granite block (‘mono-litho’ means ‘one-stone’) - has carvings starting with birth on the top, down to old age and death at the bottom. The obvious interpretation, and the one given to me on the day, is the ‘cycle of life’. Perhaps it was the purifying snow, or the overdose of creamy seafood, but I found that if you stand on your head, look ‘up’, rather than ‘down’, it seemed to me that the spire was a finger pointing up, not spiralling down. It occurred to me that this might actually depict man’s (women’s) longing for the spiritual and divine. If you think of this as ‘life aiming towards heaven’, these stone people then actually seem drawn to this lightening rod, drawn to some personal quest for heaven and the divine. In any case (and I will leave it up to you to make your own interpretations when you get there), there is a real feeling of humanity, togetherness and belonging when you walk around these statues, you feel part of something. It’s hard to describe on paper, but let me just say that it is a very spiritual place, not just a good place for picnics in the summer. Oh, and the stupendously rich mug of hot chocolate at the coffee shop & bakery at the end of our walk, was pretty wonderful too :))

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At home with Merete

That night we went to Merete’s mother’s house for Merete’s birthday celebrations. I hadn’t seen the lovely Merete since Nina and Andre’s wedding and now had the chance to wish her Happy Birthday and also to give my best wishes to Merete and her new husband, after their own wedding just last year. Merete’s mother was just as she has been described to me, full of life and energy and a desire to please – she reminded me of my own mother in many ways. And you have to like someone who loves dogs as much as she does. Everyone was relaxed and fun and there was lots of laughing and harmless humour (mostly at my expense :) ). The wine and food was wonderful, including the much prized reindeer which was delicious in its creamy mushroom sauce. At the end of the night, Merete cut everyone a piece of that Swedish delicacy ‘the world’s best cake’ (delightful custard-filled creamy sponge cake), and after some great coffee we eventually drove home through the snowy streets of Oslo.

At Home Away from Home

I was billeted out to another family for the night (the family home was full), and my attic bedroom next to the floor-warmed bathroom was warm and welcoming. The house was part of a group of heritage-listed wooden homes, and it was an architectural paradise when I woke up in the morning and explored the house and surroundings. I actually woke up at 4am (jet lag) and took some photos, before the sun eventually came up and allowed me to have a long, happy breakfast with my adopted family and to photograph the frozen boats on the frozen fjord outside, and the local deer that actually live at the end of the garden. Architecture aside, I always miss this normal familial interaction, so to have a family breakfast with all the noise and chaos that ensues, was very welcome. It was a magical start to a magical day...

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An Amusing Baptism
Showered, shaved and suited up, we all headed to the darkly austere and frankly very pointy Lutheran Church down the road. Seated on the left, next to Merete with all the others involved in the Christening, we were fronted by a young female Priest with a nose stud and a posse of pretty young female seminary students. On the right side of the church seemed to be general members of the public, here for a formal Sunday High Mass: This wasn’t going to be the sort of Christening I was used to...

Pretty soon I was completely out of synch with the ceremony: As a good Catholic boy I kneeled to pray (they all stood up), and I stood to sing (they all sat down), and then as Father Bruce taught me back in Sydney Sunday School, I said a deep and solemn ‘Ah-mennn’ at the end of every read passage (they all remained silent). This was very confusing, and a little embarrasing, (my Norwegian Hymn singing has to be heard to be believed). And I am ashamed to admit it, but Merete and I were giggling a lot through the long, preceding High Mass – the atonal squeaky singing voice of the female Priest, and the terrible lisping speech impediment of her only male assistant did little to keep me from laughing, but when main assistant girl read a long and quite detailed account of something grave and solemn, then started to cry half way through it, it was too much for me and I had to bite my lip hard to hide my guilty smile and giggles. I am probably not going to heaven now.

But Isabelle was the perfect baptisee, happy to be dampened by holy water and happy to just watch while people milled around her with lit candles, prayers and speeches. She just smiled and gurgled and was happy to see everyone, and then went to sleep :)

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After two hours of very serious mass and baptism, it was time for Champagne and cake, so off we went, with our young, newly christened bundle, to the nearby Senior Centre.

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Let them eat Smörgåstårta

As we arrived at the reception, Nina welcomed us all and said nice things about her choice of Godparents, and then thanked me for coming all the way from Singapore. Then out came Nina’s smörgåstårta and after two lovely pieces of creamy goodness, I was treated to a piece of the most glorious chocolate cake you’ve every seen or tasted.

Beautiful

It’s hard to describe how it felt, walking around the noisy, crowded room, holding this little bundle of love, watching people’s eyes light up and their smiles grow wide as she arrived at their table. We were creating a tsunami of love, flowing throughout the crowd, everyone focused on little Isabelle, and as a consequence she was indeed the most beautiful girl in the room.

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Later that afternoon, as they proudly assembled four generations of Nina’s family, with Isabelle’s Mother, Grandmother and Great Grandmother, I knew my God-Daughter was in good hands, literally...

…or perhaps I was just overloaded on feelings of love. I do that sometimes.

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Norwegians say that "Adventure is just bad planning"
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Until my next bad plan :)

Walter x

The Photo Links

Norway 3

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75273&id=621580247&l=693ba

Norway 4

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75315&id=621580247&l=9d7d8