A Magic Mountain – first posted August 23rd, 2005.

I’ve just returned from (practically) climbing a mountain and my back hasn’t let me forget about it. What a walking cliché I had become: the soft-bellied “adventure-seeking” Westerner trying to drag a loaded 65L rucksack up a mountain, then needing to be dragged up by an old (but incredibly strong) local and his chattering, Makasae-translating nephew. And it wasn’t just once that I felt like Indiana Jones-lite or some other mainstream 80s movie character during my three day retreat from Dili, out east to the charming town of Baucau then inland to Mount Matebian, a guerrilla stronghold during the independence struggle.

As soon as we’d left Dili behind in our colourful mikrolet, I felt ready to take on almost anything. Sure the sacks of rice and various market-bound goods I found myself sandwiched between made physical comfort an impossibility, but that was “part of the adventure,” I told myself. If this is how the Timorese travel, then so shall I. That was my mantra, at least. And how could I concern myself with such trivialities with scenery as glorious as this.

Timor’s a small, skinny little island straddled by the two largest island nations in the world. It’s flora ranges from typically Asian tropical palms to dry, deserty gum trees generally found in Australia, an absolutely fascinating biospherical jigsaw cut out along steep cliff faces which fell straight into the ocean and idyllic turquoise blue peninsulas. During the roughly four hour journey, I was kept entertained by young men who pulled out Mission Impossible stunts, climbing down from the roof of he bus to swing inside for a chat, then climbing back on top, all as the bus carried along at a frightening speed.

Baucau was the overnight stop for myself and Julios, or Ameta, as he preferred to go by. A 19 year old who looks like he’s going on 30, Ameta speaks six languages (English being his sixth) and is the nephew of a Timorese friend who studies in Hawai’i. After wandering the deserted Old Town, with it’s bright, pastelled Portuguese architecture, snapping shots of dusty, rag-adorned boys rolling old tyres down a hill as we walked, we climbed to the top of the town lookout point. As with Christo Rei and other elevated destinations in Timor, it had a Catholic theme. Along the way, Jesus’ journey with his cross was commemorated by pious monuments, and St. Anthony in white plaster form greeted us at the top. Ameta and his brother, Fidel, pointed out to me the old Portuguese battalion, which was set by the sea to repel colonial invaders. I suppose they didn’t put up much of a fight when Japan swept through in 1942 however; it’s fort is much larger and more in tact, about a hundred yards closer to town itself. That evening, we played cards in the dimly lit concrete home of Ameta’s aunt, as she warned of leeches, green snakes, and various other local troublemakers Matebian has on offer.

At 4 am the next morning we set out. This was to be D-day for me. The maker or breaker, the final judgment. I write this because I was in some of the worst condition I could have tried to place myself in on the day of a mountain trek. Matebian, standing at 2315 metres and composed predominantly of rock, sounded awfully exhausting to me. You see, I’d just run into a crop of Traveller’s Diarrhoea, meaning any sustenance I attempted to absorb in to my body was hastily rejected. This, served with the return of a long-running cough and a horrible night’s sleep did not bode well for me at all. Anyway, we caught a mikrolet from Baucau to Calecai. If the length of this journey was spread out along I-95 at this hour of the day, it would have taken around 45 minutes. It took us about three hours. The terrain was mountainous, the road all pebbles and stone and – being Saturday - people were trying to get to the town’s weekly market. I slept through most of the ride, often waking when my back was thrown against a metal rail, rubbing it gingerly then looking around at the crowded busload of mothers and their sickly children, men holding live chickens and old women in tais before passing out briefly again. This is the only popular means of travel in Timor and it was an intimate, very humbling experience.

We reached Celicai during mid-morning, it’s weekly market was lively and colourful. I wasn’t in the mood to wander the market lanes with my hulking pack, and had little desire to buy anything. More critically, a small but quickly growing crowd of children had spotted the “malae, and began to stare me down with hard, rather intimidating eyes. Ameta’s reunion with his grand-Aunt gave them an opportunity to close in, and at one point, a semi-circle of 25 or so encircled me, no more than two feet away. I was tempted to bust out my digital camera and film the spectacle but feared that such action at this stage would incite near riot. Never in my most creative moments could I have imagined that one man with a bag eating Home Brand salted mixed nuts would attract such intense, prolonged curiosity. Not feeling all that much love from this recent elevation to freak show status, I made light of the attention, attempting to chat with Ameta as his Aunt found us our local climbing guide, while munching discretely on cashews.

That is how my long-awaited ascent of Matebian began. Marsinilio, a man in his sixties, with a wide grin and a wiry, muscular frame, led Ameta and I up the road, away from town and up the foot of the mount, shrouded in mist, just a I had read. Now Marsinilio’s a particularly interesting chap: for one, he climbs mountains barefoot. I’m talking about large, unstable, ankle-twisting rock and the toughest, most bullet-proof pair of human treads I’ve ever seen. I’d soon learn that most people living atop the mountain go without shoes. Additionally, he only spoke Makasae, the local dialect of the region, and frequently shouted “Hai fouti!” ("Strength") at us, his two sweating, straggling young disciples. On one of our water breaks, I asked how long the climb might take, to which he cheekily shot back: “For me…one minute.” I tried to laugh in between wheezes. At one point, he broke into a nimble, hunched trot – akin to a Cossack horseman dancing (sans horse) – a humorous display of Marsinilio’s remarkable “fouti.”

The journey in hindsight was not that difficult. Marsinilio commanded a brisk walking pace and we reached the tiny village of Waibitaeh approximately three hours after departing. There were moments wen I stopped, internalizing whinges like “You have got to be kidding me…” as we crossed a river of large rocks, for example. But for every steep section there were gentle, sloping grass plains. At my darkest moment, I listened to Ameta’s advice and whipped out some old-school meditation to see me through. Beforehand, I’d been thinking all manner of non-constructive fantasies like how good a pina colada slurpee would be, or wandering if there’s a Burger King round this particular cliff face. It’s amazing how quickly a patch of sudden material depravation can transform a veg-friendly, “organics please” anti-corporate food snob into a whimpering, craving child with “Big Mac” bursting in speech bubbles above his head. But after some centring thoughts and a bit more personal “How many times are you going to be able to do this?” cheerleading, I’d convinced myself to finish the job. Which, soon enough, we did.

Waibitaeh, I suppose, was my Jeremy irons moment. It’s been a while since I watched the classic epic – “The Mission” – but I remember a waterfall and some Hollywood-styled “natives.” Well, Waibitaeh’s inhabitants, the Dos Santos family, and the liurai (village chief), Agostino, invited me in with great warmth. A hundred years ago, perhaps the liurai would be wearing an elaborate head dress or a couple of nose piercings; on this day he was wearing a military fatigue jacket from his FALINTIL[i] days and cut-off denim shorts. It was 80s hair rock meets leftist guerrilla-wear, and he did it with a nonchalance and self-assurance that no indie-hipster could ever pull off. We dined on port, roasted on large skewers and drank tua sabu, the traditional brandy. If I were to describe my experience with Timorese food in general, I would have to characterise it as being “strong.” In this case, the pork was extra greasy and salty; the spirit particularly high in alcohol content. After refilling our water bottles at the nearby river, I took part in the commemoration of a family member who had died the previous year. His extended family recited prayers in Portuguese, then purple and pink wreaths were scattered across his gravestone. They had to bundle dozens of candles together, to create a flame strong enough to resist the blustering mountain wind’s efforts to extinguish it.

Agostino and his 8 year old son, Johnny, (whose name stood out strongly in a family of Portuguese “Anselmos” and “Christianos”), then took Ameta and I on a delightful little stroll around the village plains. We weren’t too far from the peak, but Agostino declared it too dark to make the final ascent, where stints of harness-less rockclimbing were apparently involved. In my current state, I certainly didn’t object. Besides, the views from here were breathtaking enough, with the two peaks (male and female) looming over us and views which stretched all the way out to the sea. The liurai pointed out particularly spiritual sites, such as the stream where many FALINTIL captured sacred water which assisted in making them unassailable to Indonesian attack, and more painful ones, such as a large crater where US fighter planes “with American flags painted on their bottom” dropped bombs on the many Timorese who fled to Matebian to escape the worst of the massacres. Though these planes were flown by Indonesian pilots, it was all under the auspices of the Henry Kissingers of the time, who wouldn’t let the invasion of a “small gang of Communists[ii]” sour America’s strong ties with the Indonesian military, one of the great purveyors of human rights atrocities in our time. Indeed, after spending a night with the Dos Santoses, one of the most generous families I’ve ever guested with, I see the Kissingerian distinction. They’re Communists alright, if you want to call subsistence farmers who’d sooner give you the shirt on their backs then sell it to you. But how all this took place could almost have been forgotten on me, as we lounged in the sunlight, partaking in the Australian joys of Uncle Toby’s muesli bars.

I bathed in the chilly, sand-bottomed river and laughed as Johnny dragged a goat home before sunset, offering to carry my clothes on the goat’s shaggy back. At night, we exchanged card games under flashlight, and I introduced a little magic of my own, one borne of the ruthless tech battles of Silicon Valley as opposed to the centuries of Christian-Animist cross pollination which has taken place in Timor. Her name is iPod and the chief took to the little brick immediately. I’m convinced of the universal appeal of Bob Marley, and started things off with “No Woman No Cry,” to which he was receptive. I then tapped the laid back island eel of Waibitaeh with some Jack Johnson, but it was the sultry Norah Jones which had the head man really grooving. It was like DJing some intimate, invite-only Washington cocktail party, except instead of overpriced drinks we ate sweet potatoes and drank locally-picked tea.

The following morning I was starkly awoken by an ear-piercing wake up call, well before our projected start-time. It came courtesy of the large black rooster located about a foot above my head, clucking around in the wall space I suppose it made its home in. Ameta groaned. I compared the people and location of my cut-short dreams with my current shelter. From then on in, I would grab chunks of sleep in between cock-a-doodle-doos; at one point I think I dreamt of a rooster crowing seconds before the real life one did.

Soon enough, Ameta and I began another long day of travel back to Dili, from where I was o fly back to Australia the following morning. Now the trials of this journey, involving more torturous mikroleting and one particularly harrowing 4 ½ hour stint in the back of a crowded cargo truck, are another tale. I’d much rather end my story of Matebian where it was always supposed to finish – at the top.

[i] Timorese independence guerrilla force, literally in English: “Armed Forces for an Independent East Timor”
[ii] paraphrase

Where art thou now Faith? - first posted August 22nd, 2005.

Hi team,

I wanted to let you know that I am safe and on track to return to theStates on time, after a minor/major scare which had me imagining nightmare situations, namely: being stranded in East Timor with not enough money to get back to Australia! It all revolves around a number. That number is 9, as in 9 o'clock this morning, when a small plane left Dili heading for Darwin, minus one passenger. The problem for me is its misinformed replacement: 12. I, and for the life of me I don't know where this came from, believedthat I was flying back at 12pm today. I was so convinced of this thatI didn't even take the thirty seconds it would have taken to check last night after returning to Dili to make sure of my flight time.

In fact, I only checked my itinerary at 9:20 this morning, just before I was about to leave my host family home behind for Nicholas Lobotau airport. It was only then that I read the small black digit on the print-out e-ticket itinerary my mother had so diligently preparedfor me:

9:00.

looked at my watch.

9:19.

I started to sweat. A lot. See, I sweat a lot in general - it's not something I take enormous pride in, but I blame it on Asian genes -but at that moment, I started to drip like a rat off a ship. I found myself repeating a new mantra: "Breathe," one which I attempted to fulfill as regularly as possible. I walked out into the kitchen and tried to explain my predicament to Amau and Jesuinhe, the two adults in the vicinity, with broken English and much self-chastisement. We raced to the airport, turning two lanes into three, me holding little Ronaldinho extra-tightly and planning for the worst.

It all came down to this: Can I transfer my ticket for this morning's flight to this afternoon, or will I have to buy a new ticket?

In addition: Do they have space on the afternoon flight?

The major caveat to this dilemma is this: I don't have enough money to buy a new ticket back to Australia. I...am...flat...broke. There's less than $100 in my major account, and my other two back accounts don't work.And with no flight back to Australia comes the consequence of missed flights to Sydney from Darwin (set to take place in about 14 hours) and from Sydney to Los Angeles (in about four days).

---You know how you see middle-aged Westerners wearing visors and fanny packs perform over-the-top freak-outs in public areas when they go on international vacations?---Yeah, that was me. Well, not that bad. When the lady at the counter said you're gonna have to buy a new ticket, then punched the number 513 (as in US $513) into her calculator, I've got to admit I shit a few bricks. I busted a nut or two. Literally, I put my head in my hands and said "Oh God."

Now thoughts started racing into my mind,thoughts we have when we're over-reacting in over-reactive situations. Like me working as a bus boy for foreigners in a Timorese restaurant trying to save enough quarters to buy a ticket home. Me sitting on the streets of Surik Mas with dust all over my face, coughing up yellow and bleeding black. Me dead, a washed up, no hope, boy without a home about as far away from home as he could really get, culturally and geographically (using Howard County, Maryland, USA as home).

But then a bright vision--akin to seeing a Virgin Mary statue weep--appeared before me. Her name was Mum. She has money. And she will be my ticket home. I mean, it's not the first time she's bailed me out. There was the time I left my Bank of America card in an ATM in Budapest. And then that time I left my passport in a safe at a hostel in Edinburgh while I was in Bournemouth, West England. She is well accustomed to saving her reckless and rather expensive son, and this time was no different.

One extremely serious -
"Hi Mark, how are you?"
"Ahh...not well. This is very important..." – sort of phone conversation and then one additional, highly relieved confirmation call has breathed relief through my hyperventilating soul.

I'm still coming home, baby. And I have somebody, or at the very least, something special to thank.

East of Eden - first posted August 16, 2005.

"Well momma, I know I act a fool/But I'll be gone 'til November I got packs to move"
-K. West

It struck me yesterday as I watched Filipe’s brother carefully hammering away at the transistor of his old truck that I will never be a tradesman. My hands, from a tender age, have always been lithe against piano keys or picking a set of guitar strings but staggeringly play-doh-like when turned toward anything involving repair work or construction. It then struck me that this is pure bullshit. Take Filipe’s brother: he’s a small businessman, selling designs for school uniforms to make ends meet. He’s also very poor, a condition which affects almost every Timorese family I see. He’s repairing his car with his own hands because he has no choice, jus as I undoubtedly would be if I was from Timor, instead of Australia, a mere hour and a half plane’s journey away. And even that is only the case because my parents happened to be more industrious and fortunate than their peers.

I then thought about my utility in this world, as spoiled artsy college kids tend to do when surrounded by economically depressed, pragmatic men holding greased tools. I didn’t have to think back too far to imagine a more likely destiny. The previous two weeks have been spent with old family friends in Western and Northern Australia. Of one family I grew up close to, the three children have become dentists, pharmacists and future mechanical engineers respectively. Such careers have tangible rewards like blinging jeeps and decked out bachelor pads. I know this because I just came from one in Darwin, where a six figure salary straight out of Uni means a whole lot of fun for one. And continuing down this list of where-are-they-now peers, one sees telltale signs of the “Yellow Peril” that racist Australian immigration officers spotted many decades ago. The diseases have course names like “Computer Technology” and “Neurology,” their symptoms ranging from studious responsible character to over-achiever-itis.

Then I turned to myself (figuratively, mind you) and I wondered what golden rule in Guanyin’s Book of Prospering Asian Parent No-Nos my parents possibly broke to wind up with me as a first son. See, when other good Chinese kids read Fortune or Science magazine, I read John Pilger and Matthew Jardine. And where your typical travel-budding 21 year-old chooses Italy or Morocco (or maybe Cambodia if she feels like really “getting ethnic[1][i]”) as their summer destination, I chose East Timor, a country about as tourist-friendly as a wild boar trotting along side your car, of which there are many and by which I mean not very. And where paid internships, yearlong cooperatives or other colorful resume stuffers fill many near-graduates’ virtual post-it note walls, dilapidated matchbox homes and militia-razed rubble currently fill my visual landscape.

The financial incentives for a career in international development are…well, non-existent, and the physical consequences? Say, how do malaria and tuberculosis sound as your two options? So there has to be something satisfying to make up for such depraved deprivation, one might ask. At this point, some hippie save-the-world kick is supposed to come in. The “it-was-all-worth-it-for-that-one-person” fuzzy schmaltz you got bored with in Year Two Christian Ed.

Well, sorry to burst your bubble Beryl, but I don’t have one. If anything, it’s about finding my own peace, just as investment banking is about making your own million or truck driving is about driving trucks. For me, my motives in coming to countries like East Timor are as personal as any other self-interested college student. And that’s all I can tell you, Mum. Sorry if I wasted your hard-earned money and best of luck with your other son.

What I can say is that there’s something undoubtedly serene about the way Jesuinha holds her three-year-old in that brief evening respite from house work.

And I can try to describe how ironically tranquil a beach filled with howling teenage men playing soccer using rubble for goal posts is, as they retrieve their ball from the same warm shores that their countrymen were bring dumped in by Indonesian special forces a mere six years ago.

It’s kind of like the first time you try on a pair of two hundred dollar Bose noise eliminating headphones. Or that split second of aquatic white sound between your outstretched body cutting through the water and your first kick to the surface in your high school swim carnival. It’s the feeling I felt watching Ronaldinho tear off a piece of sate I had bought (30 sticks for $3) with his tough little molars then grinning, peanut sauce all astray. Which is actually a close relative to that contentment I felt holding his tiny body in my lap as we trundled across the pothole-strewn roads of Dili back home from the beach.

East Timor, I must admit, is a sad place. A stroll at sundown through the suburb I am in brings hundreds of photo-ops for World Vision pamphlets. The dirty girl in torn clothes who peers through her shambolic front gate was on my left. The disease-ridden dog rummaging through filthy rubbish could be the neighbors. After 24 years of drip-drip genocide and the murder of between 200 and 300 thousand of its pre-‘75 one million people, recovery comes slowly to this island nation. Dili, the capital and only major town it possesses, reminds me of the worst poverty I saw in the mountains of Bali when I was 13. Except that night I slept in a tourists’ hotel overlooking a volcano. Tonight I sleep in the room that Salvador’s children normally occupy. Yesterday, I gave them my Lem-Sip and Advil medication from my travel-kit, because the proposition of children coughing without cure bothered me a whole lot more than my occasional flu.

Carlos, my driver and travel partner, is unemployed, like approximately 60 percent of East Timor. He sounded almost apologetic when I asked how he supports his family.

“Salvador, my brother,” he replied.

This is the Salvador whose wide grin I spot in Carlos’ son “Ro,” – named after a Brazilian soccer player –the same Salvador whose compelling storied of home I listened to in near disbelief in the common room at the International Student House last year. It was these storied that rekindled my interest in East Timor, five years after I cheered on the Australia-led UN Peacekeeping Force in ’99 which drove rampaging militias across the western border with Indonesia. Salvador’s English training in seminary school made him employable as an interpreter for the UN and then USAID in 2000, and ultimately a marine biology student on scholarship in London.

To me, he reflects the indomitable resilience of the Timorese people, as described by a Peace Corps volunteer from Delaware I met earlier today. His three-year-old, Clara, is a bundle of knee-high energy. She repeatedly runs from the eating area into the living room at a brisk rate, often pulling the green door drapes along by her face. She also cried for two hours today after I left, because her still formative mind had turned me from a “malae[ii]” into “apa.[iii]” But as sad as this made me feel, and as wrenching as it was when Carlos took me to visit their sister’s grave at Santa Cruz Cemetery, I am still able to sleep with a degree of peace tonight. A sort of peace that College Park keg parties and Perth nights on the town won’t ever bring.

Because when Salvador returns home in two years, he’ll bring the sort of capacity and skilled labor that Timor needs so badly in order to lure Western investment to its shores. Folks like Salvador, be they Timorese, Global Southern or anywhere across this small globe, inspire me to dream of a thousand Claras in local universities becoming the sort of dentists and pharmacists that parents like mine yearn for. The financially secure sort that only lasting peace and successful post conflict reconstruction can bring, and almost enough hope for me to think that perhaps studying development really isn’t that misguided at all.

Boy, I might even risk getting my hands dirty on this one. And that, more than anything else, could be enough to offer my parents a slice of peace tonight.

[i] My term, not ‘hers’
[ii] Tourist/Foreigner
[iii] Father

On Liberalism - first posted August 4, 2005.

The Yarra river is not all that wide. In comparison to the Thames, Seine or Hudson, it would probably more suitably be deemed a stream, or better yet, a puddle. Similar to many of the world’s finest metropolises, it cuts right through the heart of the local inhabitants’ city, splitting Melbourne into north and south. And Melbourne—the first destination in my return journey home after four years—much like its primary waterway, also pales in size when compared to the Londons and New York Cities of the world. But it is this very compactness and small-town charm which provides Melbourne with her own distinct personality, offering visitors a microcosm through which to understand the enigma of Australia.

Melbourne, like all of Australia’s major cities, features a small, pedestrian-centric city centre (referred to as the Central Business District, or “CBD”) couched in a number of close surrounding suburbs. While there is a reasonably interesting mix of high street shopping and some of Melbourne’s well-documented café chic in the CBD, the soul of the city is found outside the clear bounds of the city in districts such as Carlton, a monument to Italian style and up-turned nosery, and Fitzroy, a former-boho-turned-yuppie hotspot.

My short stay in the city revolved around time spent catching up with my newly discovered second cousins, Grace and Michelle, running around the city for coffee (which I labeled as “thesis research”) with various Melbournites involved in work in East Timor and hunting down all the finer things we Antipodeans pride ourselves on, such as steak pepper pies and frothy lattes.

Upon arrival, I found myself in a state of subdued rapture, one heavily by my having spent the previous 15 hours in a cozy airplane cabin watching Qantas TV. I had giggled with over-enthusiastic ardor at “Cath and Kim” episodes; watched former Aussie cricketer Michael Slater spill his personal life with feigned interest and offered hostess-directed gratuity with grinning “Cheers mate” and “Good on ya!” Ockerism, all seemingly devoid of irony. And now I was here. Home. Five years since my bumpy transplant to the States, I found myself once more basking in the glow of the warm Australian sun, its cool breezy air, its lovable amateur television advertising.

And even better then that, there was family involved. After spending the first two decades my life believing the false notion that the only blood I shared in this country was that between my brother and our parents, two months ago my darling mother nonchalantly dropped the bombshell that her cousin Emilee and two daughters Grace and Michelle have been living in Melbourne since I was five. Now to most people, this might be something to say “Oh yeah?...That’s good” to before carrying on eating their low-carb chicken salad. To me, it was nothing short of an internal psycho-filial transformation; akin but slightly less revelatory to discovering that you have a twin sibling, while substantially more positive than being told that you’re real parents live in Nairobi and that you were raised by their mates from Karate practice.

And what family they are. Emilee, doting mother and expeller of the sort of Confucian wisdom I imagine her great grandmother learned while making rice noodles. Michelle, diminutive in stature perhaps but abundant in cigarette-enhanced relaxed cool and dry wit, a distance (vertical, mostly) apart from Grace, four years her junior but significantly bigger. She is arguably the largest Chinese girl I have ever encountered, standing a good 6-1 tall. Grace, the same age as me, is already manager of one of the more popular bars in the city, named “Lounge,” has movie-making friends and listens to Kraftwerk. “Could this girl be cooler?” I asked myself, jotting down an internal memo which read “Listen to more Kraftwerk.”

And so we newly united cousins traversed the city streets, me filling them in on American slang (“Yes, we really do say ‘blazing’”) and they dropping local knowledge on Australasian race relations, alleyway street art and the best local concert venues. Melbourne is a seductive city, all outdoor coffee consumption and bustling tram lines. Released from the cramped confines of the Mid-Atlantic, I cherished the open space and gentle pace of even popular thoroughfares such as Flinders and Swanson Street. A walk along the Yarra revealed a skyline and urban aesthetic indebted both to Victorian and Modernist schools; a merry marriage of olde British grace and glass-lensed future-facing orientation.

Melbourne is Australia’s city of the arts. As Carmela—a documentary-maker herself (http://www.talibancountry.com/) - informed me, Melbournites “prefer to sit inside and discuss film and books” while Sydneysiders dance with Eurotrash. I’m cariacaturising, but the distinction is apparent: the city overflows with independent bookstores, art houses and nightclubs such as “name,” which makes it a point to support local multimedia artists. Its street art scene is burgeoning; I read a feature article in one of the city’s major newspaper magazines whose spin was completely pro-artist and welcoming of Melbourne’s increasingly democratised wall space, a world apart from the hostile character assassination of “Borf” artist John Tsombikos in the Washington Post* (whose work I gleefully discovered outside of Melbourne).

The art, however, is but an extension of the city’s philosophy of fully embracing socio-cultural liberalism. Voted the world’s most liberal city multiple times, Melbourne is a current haven for the unusual, the inventive and the Left. Traditional stronghold of the country’s unions and influential post-Marxist journal “Arena,” it now offers a politically receptive breathing space. In a global climate that is increasingly xenophobic and hostile to cultural (symbiosis), Melbourne’s inhabitants offer hope that Australia’s great ship Multiculturalism will sail soon once again. On a bus headed for suburban North Melbourne, I witnessed an elderly Chinese woman, clearly lost, asking for directions in loud, thick Mandarin. She was animated, smiling, laughing and at turns lambasting the bus driver for not being clear enough, apparently unaware of the fact that nobody had the faintest what she was carrying on about. Having been on the receiving end of much racist carry-on and banter as a child, I mentally braced myself for the impending storm:

“This could be interesting…he doesn’t understand her, and she doesn’t understand him,” noted a man sitting near me to the bus at large.

He received several nods of what seemed to be good-natured amusement. Though the bus stood still for several minutes, the lady walking back and forth and continuing to cheerily orate in Mandarin to the whole bus what seemed to be her plans for the day, not one person made a disparaging remark. No “Get off, gook!” or “Fucken boat people” mutterings, but rather, only the patience and humility which for me has always characterised the finest Australian traits. Though late for my appointment with John, a freelance journalist whose kidnappers had recently released him in Iraq (“If I was American, they would have killed me” he told Radio Australia), I felt fortunate to have observed such a gratifying encounter.

As an introduction to many a visitor and a “welcome home” to one earnest son curious to see how his Motherland is aging, the city on the Yarra comes through with flying colours. Be they the studious Asian hitting out in the cricket nets at Melbourne University, the Greek party crowd at Stalactite standing in line for two A.M. souvlakies, or a lighthearted world-recognised academic eating breakfast with an American undergraduate she has never met before, Melbourne’s populace makes this country proud. Like my cousin Michelle, she is undersized in comparison to her Western peers. But, like my other cousin Grace, who has since set off to spend a year touring Europe and the United States, she has much to teach the world about what it means to be “Liberal.”How good it feels to be home.


*William’s article actually approaches Tsombikos in a far more balanced way than other Post writers have attempted to, and I should highlight the fact that he is from Oxford, not a journalist for the Post.