Hello World!

I’m making my return to blogging!

I have been waiting for something to truly inspire me to write a blog and nothing has forced me to sit down and write for a long time.

The ad that started it all.

But then, our first issue of Vegan Voice arrived and as I lay reading it in bed Monday night, I noticed an advertisement for a new vegan and raw food restaurant in Melbourne.

Melbourne?  Really?  Are you sure you weren’t lying in bed in L.A or New York?

I could only wish.  No, for real – Melbourne!

I’m not sure if this is the first restaurant offering the fullest selection of vegan AND raw food options in Melbourne, I’ve been away awhile.  But I don’t care!  I have found my new home.

I have been thinking how cool it would be to have a little hide out where I could go and order my chai latte with home made nut milk and agave nectar and not be stared at like I spontaneously grew a third eyeball in the middle of my face.

Then BANG!

The business card.

Yong Green Food.  421 Brunswick St Fitzroy.  Right around the corner from Go-Go class.  Perfect.

So Fion and I trotted off to Yong’s (YGFs? Greenies?  I’ll come up with something..) and ate a splendid raw version of nachos.  Well, let’s be honest here.  I was all for it, Fiona was less than ecstatic, but she’s slowly coming around to dehydrated versions of typically fat-laden foods!  Home made guacamole, tomato relish and hommus.  Despite Fiona’s raised eyebrows, it didn’t last long.

We moved on to the gyoza – OMG.  Too good.  Better than Soul Mama’s gyoza for sure.  No need for chopsticks, we inhaled them right out of the steamer.

We topped it all off with a slice of raw pecan pie with cashew cream (“I think, really, I’m French inside.  I just want cream and butter.  The real shit.” Fiona) which I was happy not to share!  Delicious.  Chai and café latte with fresh almond milk and agave nectar and I was born again.

The staff are delightful and attentive.  That shouldn’t surprise us, but it does.

It’s a little on the pricey side (not much change out of $50) and the serves are a little lean, but really, who’s not prepared to pay for wholesome, love-filled food and have someone gently teach you what a more than adequate portion size actually looks like?

Go. There. Now.

Jade

x

When mum decided to voluntarily give me the answer to this question, I was about twelve years old and she walked me through the standard text “Where did I Come From?” by Peter Mayle.  There wasn’t much more to the story than biology.  I share the same chromosomes and culture as my mum and nan.  I knew the house my mum lived in as a kid and where my nan was married and where my extended family resided.  I already knew my immediate ancestry came from Essendon.

Throughout my life I have often contemplated adoption.  I can remember, as early as the time I read the aforementioned book, envisaging my future family including children who I innately knew were not genetically connected to me.

I now find myself a short distance away from the possibility of being able to adopt – an exciting prospect for someone who has researched sperm donors, haploidisation and other ways of creating an ‘alternative’ family – whatever that is in relation to your perception of a ‘normal’ family.

Independent of my underlying interest in adoption, last week I was asked by a volunteer to perform for the children at a local orphanage.  I was delighted to be asked and looked forward to meeting the children.

The orphanage is home for 80+ children, both disabled and able-bodied. The disabled children attend school on-site while the other children attend the local government school.  Though government run, an independent charity provides additional assistance to ensure all of the children have a quality of life, are given an opportunity to be educated and have regular health care.

I performed for around 20 children with varying disabilities including cerebral palsy, downs syndrome and hydrocephalus.  Their enthusiasm and joyousness were entirely contagious – not only did I perform some of Vietnam’s favourite English pop songs, but the children also performed for me, songs in English, Vietnamese and French!  What a treat!

Trying to sleep that night became difficult as two scenes from the day’s events played over in my mind.

As we left the orphanage, our host was kind enough to give us a quick tour of the grounds and we were able to say good-night to some of the children who were going to bed.  In one room however, the children were out numbered by Konica Minolta wielding tourists crouching awkwardly by the children’s beds, smiling for their Facebook friends.  I couldn’t believe it.  As we left the bedroom, in shock, we were faced with another two tourists in their early twenties – camera in hand – asking where all the children were.  Unable to assure my own diplomacy, I kept my mouth shut.

Through no fault of the independent charity, the government officials who run this orphanage have turned it into somewhat of a tourist destination in an effort to derive donations – which the administration undoubtedly receive.  How much of these donations actually reach the children directly is unknown, but in my opinion fairly self-evident.

What I just can’t get over is that there are people who, whilst on holiday, actually want to go and take a tour of an orphanage and have their photograph taken alongside an abandoned, disabled child.  Why?  I’d really like that question answered because I just don’t get why you would want to invade the privacy and dignity of these children for even five minutes – for the sake of what?  A happy snap to post on Facebook to create the illusion that they’re so caring they took time-out of their holiday to visit the disabled children’s zoo?  Maybe I’ve spent too long in a tourist town, but the ignorance displayed by so many tourists is simply embarrassing.

My rant aside (I feel much better for getting that off my chest – thanks for reading), I was more personally stuck by comments made by another volunteer, on our walk home.  I inevitably broached the orphanage-as-tourist-destination question with her and this lead to a discussion about adoption of the children.

She passionately put forth the argument against international adoption for several reasons.  Many of the children of middle primary school age and above have developed extremely strong connections to their friends and carers, who are now essentially their family.  At the orphanage they have a sense of community, of culture.  They belong.  Children have been adopted from the orphanage, leaving siblings behind, breaking apart families, displacing identities.

When these children ask where they came from, though their biological parents may not be present, they are surrounded by their culture, the heritage of their country and their people dating back more than 4000 years.  Yes, four THOUSAND years.  As a resident of a country with a cultural heritage I do not belong to, I could never possibly fathom the impact of being removed from a life that runs so old through the veins of every inhabitant.

Is my desire to adopt altogether altruistic or am I pandering to my ego?  If I were to adopt, could I ever truly answer the question “Mummy, where did I come from?”.  What is ‘a better life’, what are ‘better opportunities’?

My Konica Minolta “we-just-came-to-check-out-the-orphanage” contemporaries probably gawk at the simple life so many millions of people lead here in Vietnam.  But the question needs to be asked, are they unhappy or discontented with their own lives?  In the case of orphans, to whose perceived benefit is it to remove a child from their family, their culture, their country?

These are questions I need to answer.

As a Western woman I have always had a concern for my appearance for one reason or another.  Weight, skin, hair, nails, clothes, shoes.  Not in a Sex and the City I-am-all-consumed-by-consumerism sort of way, but in the way that external self-analysis is almost impossible to be entirely rid of.

I have always wanted to be thin, but very rarely been.  As a teenager I thought that I would be more popular the thinner I was.  In my early twenties I felt that my physical size was an outward expression of my level of self-control.

My genetics blessed me with good skin.  I stopped biting my nails when I fell in love with Barbra Streisand (make what facial expressions you will…).  I’m still searching for a sense of personal style and when ever possible I wear shoes with sparkles – currently Slim Crystal Havaianas imbedded with Swarovski crystals (in all seriousness, I have trudged around India and Vietnam for the past five months and these thongs have very rarely been off my feet for more than an hour at a time – highly recommended foot wear for travelling, and much funkier than Tevas).

Now when I look in the mirror, I am still struck by my body size, considering I eat only two fresh vegetarian meals a day and am constantly zipping around Hoi An on my rented bicycle.  I rarely get close enough to the mirror to examine my skin, but I do notice the distinct colour difference growing between my upper and lower arm.  Having spent so little time in the sun in Australia, I have now developed a serious case of tan line, and not the bikini clad back-packer kind!

Yesterday I bravely went for a hair cut, manicure and pedicure, servicing my vain concern that my re-growth and nail polish were both at a point of being offensive.  I was struck by several moments.

My manicurist commented on the shade of the skin on my forearms, ‘so lovely, so white’ she said holding her arms against mine.  I’ve been paranoid about skin cancer and have always slip-slop-slapped in the harsh Australian sun, but I have never thought of my fair skin as any sort of asset.  Half an hour in the sun and I burn to the colour of a lobster. Consequently, I cover up.  In Asia my fair skin is seen as a testament to an assumed high-class upbringing, of one who has not had to work outdoors in the sun as a labourer but has had the luxury of staying indoors.  With fair skin, I must be wealthy and my life must be luxurious.

She grabs hold of my upper arm, almost unable to stop herself from massaging my bicep.  ‘Strong’ she says, ‘very healthy’.  I look at her slender arm, the same diameter from wrist to shoulder.  I think of all the clothes I could wear with skinny arms like that.  My ample body mass is seen as a sign of prosperity, my family having enough food to create additional muscle and fat on our bodies.  Apparently, it brings good luck to her family if she touches me.

While she enthusiastically cuts my cuticles, I try not to concern myself with thoughts of un-sanitised equipment and hepatitis contraction while also pondering how much this woman and I fantasise about trading bodies.  I would finally be able to buy clothes off the rack and have zero body fat.  She would be wealthy and prosperous, living in luxury.  The Vietnamese are such lithe people, their bone structure so much smaller than most Westerners.  For many of my friends I know this is both a mix of genetics and the struggle for most Vietnamese families to have enough money to buy enough food to eat every day, to find enough of a variety to provide all the essential nutrients for a growing body.

Andrew X. Pham in his book ‘Catfish and Mandala’ (a really wonderful and inspiring read) talks of his trip to the Cu Chi tunnels.  Having crawled through the purposely widened tunnels, for large Western bodies last week, this scene made me chuckle:

After half an hour tunnelling on our hands and knees, we escaped to the surface, gasping.  Another group headed down.  A well-fed British woman in her fifties was desperately wiggling into the opening.  Her male companion and a Vietnamese tour guide struggled to help her into the passage.  One tried to keep her from getting stuck, the other tried to keep the woman from falling through.  Standing next to us, two Vietnamese soldiers watched with amazement plain on their faces.  They were both about five feet tall and a hundred pounds – roughly the size of the Vietnamese Rat People who built the Cu Chi tunnels.
“How do Westerners get so fat?” one soldier asked another.
After due reflection, the man replied, “Eggs and butter.”  His companion nodded in deep agreement, both of them mentally calculating – the wealth – how many dozen eggs and pounds of butter it took to amass a three-hundred-pound body.

We envy each other for very different reasons.

Getting from A to B can now no longer be taken for granted. India. Hailing an auto. Full. Full. Full. Empty – wonderful. Vasanth Nagar is home, but however you pronounced that in your mind just then is wrong. Try it slowly. Clear diction. Inexplicably the driver finally understands and replies “Vazzanagar”. Yes, Vasanth Nagar. He shakes his head and just drives off! Maybe second, third or fourth time lucky. It’s the same process every time.

Okay, so not all strangers are kind but I have had an exceeding number of encounters in such a short time that my faith in my fellow human animals is very quickly on the increase. Certainly, multiple daily encounters with questionable auto drivers are far outweighed by these deeper experiences. I’d like to tell you about one of them.

Fiona and I have spent the past three weeks living in a foreign country with someone we had less than half a dozen conversations with two months ago. We met Amrita at the Sivananda Ashram and like us she was there to find some peace and answers to her inner questions. And now I’m sitting on her couch in Bangalore as I write this. So I asked her what in the world came over her when she decided to say “when you come to Bangalore, come and stay at my place” to two Aussie girls she was sharing a drink with at Beatles café in Kovalam.

Amrita has a depth of trust in her own intuition, which I find fascinating and inspiring. In my life, I have not been one to take huge risks, trust strangers easily or make big decisions quickly based only on my gut feelings. I’m slowly learning that there are great experiences to be had if one oscillates to the other side of one’s own cautionary brick wall of life occasionally!

The decision to let two foreigners live with her was based entirely on the vibe Amrita felt when she was around us. In contrast, there were other travelers who would have also benefited culturally from a local home stay, however Amrita is insistent that she would not have extended the same invitation to any other tourists she met at the Ashram. Why? She just felt she wouldn’t gel with their personalities.

I’m not trying to define a special characteristic in my and Fiona’s personalities, but was genuinely interested to know why someone would make such a generous offer to two complete strangers. I feel I have been taught to be so cautious and I wonder, if the roles were reversed, would I invite two newly arrived Indian tourists to live with us indefinitely in our apartment in Australia? It’s an interesting question to ask yourself.

In some ways, Amrita says her invitation was an exercise in self trust. In the past, she has made regretful decisions when she has not followed her own instincts. She wants to make deep and connected friendships with likeminded people and she views meeting us as an opportunity for her to do this.

It seems she didn’t question her own judgment, and didn’t concern herself with worrying about potential problems. Amrita strikes me as a decisive and forthright woman who would have had no qualms in moving us along should we have had disagreeable personalities. I have admired and been inspired by her ability to advocate for herself in an intimidatingly masculine culture.

Some might say Amrita was lucky in her decision as it turns out that Fiona and I are not sadistic murderers, in fact we’re not even messy! We are considerate house guests – although a daily maid makes light work of keeping house for all of us. And the three of us get along famously. My question to myself for the next few weeks will remain – why am I not certain I would take the same risk Amrita did? Why do I perceive it as a risk more so than a wonderful opportunity for connectivity?

So now we are the three musketeers of Bangalore! Our names, painted on rice earlier today, are hanging around our necks symbolising our life long friendship. Osho says, in his book on Intimacy “Trust is possible only if first you trust yourself. Trust has a magic in it. If you trust in yourself, you can trust in me, you can trust in people, you can trust in existence.” Amrita is my realised example of these words. She seems to easily differentiate between trusting her developed instincts and falling into situations naively and with no desire to manipulate the moment.

I hop into the fourth auto I have hailed, once I have agreed on my destination with the driver. He turns to me and says “twenty rupees”, indicating he is now placing a surcharge on top of the metered price for my trip. “No, meter only”, I reply. “Ten rupees, Sunday Ma’am”. “No, meter only” I say as I exit the auto. “Meter, meter okay”. Not knowing the city roads, I can now only trust that my journey will actually end at my current home, Vasanth Nagar. Vasannagar. Vazzanagah. Vahzahnaga……