girl from the woodlands

laura

2011

london

come on, you can't love london walking around the way i did. some dude yelled KONICHIWA to my face the first five minutes i set foot in the city. it made me realise, no matter where i am, i will get race related remarks, (maybe except for taiwan). by all means this stranger could have been whole heartedly welcoming me, like the way people in china yell out, 'HELLO HELLO' when they want a tourist to buy child laboured clothing off their temporary-set-up-store in the market; or when they see a non-asian in general.

i visited the tate modern every day in london. the rest of my time was spent eating bagels and being snobbed off.

berlin

people i met in berlin in a very short amount of time:

• a man (who was driving taxis in thailand when he met his german ex wife and moved to berlin, he now runs a really delicious thai restaurant) and cried when he told me about how he built the restaurant with his bare hands and how sad he was about the breakdown of his marriage and how he's going to close the restaurant early so he can take me for a drink. i told him i had friends. who i needed to meet. urgently. so we can all go feed our cats.
• a mexican girl who originally wanted to show me around but that plan kind of went astray when she lost her digital camera with all her 2 months worth of berlin photos within 30 minutes of hanging out and i am instead lead for a whole day on bike around every possible place she has been in the past 60 days taking photos of her.
• three australians who took the mexican girl's wallet and passport. i was not one of them and it took us a few hours to get it back again.
• an (omg so beautiful) palestinian boy from jordan who probably gave me lung cancer from second hand smoking within a close proximity (but he was absolutely beautiful).

basically i made no friends in berlin, but i want to live there. differences unite people, you know.

prague

prague was magnificent! it was almost as a couple city as paris. i kind of just took pictures for a lot of lovers and visited the exterior of churches as entry fees were now slashed from the travel budget.

cities in veneto i liked:

venice

asiago

vicenza

florence

i missed the bus to my accommodation, and spent the night in a tent with two sydneysiders i met on the street at around 10pm. they were lovely and i feel bad i don't even remember their names.

spain

i met some strange but nonetheless wonderfully kind people in spain. one person a friend and i stayed with in madrid had five pot plants growing on his balcony and a roommate with a cat that looked like victoria beckham.

gansu

over the past few years i've stopped making 'promises' unless i know they can be executed in the next few minutes. but one person i always promised to was my grandmother, and that one promise was to call her once a month, for five minutes.

i saw her last year in november, she told me again, 'i just want to know you are okay, just call me once a month and let me know how you are, so i know your healthy, safe.' this year i called her in january to say happy new year, i called her in mid february to tell her i have safely arrived home and will be starting school soon. the next time i called her was in june, i was about to leave for europe and i thought, i should call. i didn't tell her i was going to europe, just that school had been really busy. she started the conversation with 'i haven't heard from you in so long, have you been okay?' and it ended with 'please call again soon'.

i wanted to call her in july, august, september, october... but i didn't. was i busy? definitely not to make a five minute phone call. but when you're so caught up in every day things you always think 'i'll call tomorrow, she won't mind'.

november came and i thought, alright, time to call. i finished all my uni classes, had a summer job lined up, and that's something to talk about. my grandfather picked up as usual, and we asked about how each other were before i asked to speak to my grandmother.

'she's sleeping'

'this early?'

'she's been sleeping for the whole day'

'is aunty there? i can call her mobile and that way grandma won't need to get out of bed'

sure, i straight away suspected her health might have declined, and began to regret not calling earlier. but i thought, if she can't move i will move the phone to her.

'she won't be able to hear you'

'okay, i'll call back tomorrow when she's awake then'

'she might not be able to hear you tomorrow either, you should maybe call back in a week...'

'...what's wrong?'

my grandfather clearly wasn't going to let me worry, so i asked him to pass the phone to someone else.

by the end of the week i made my way to my grandparent's house, 10,000 km away.

she was gaunt—a dilapidated house held only by brittle bones, even the quilt on her was too heavy for her figure. she couldn't see, but her pupils reacted to light. she couldn't speak, but she moved her tongue sometimes. i wanted to talk to her because that was all she could do, hear. but for the first two days every time i was in her presence i couldn't say more than a few words, i just cried.

my cousin told me it was probably the last time i would ever see her again, but other people said a person could live for a few years in her current state. towards the end of my week long stay i saw she was getting better, sometimes it looked like she was smiling at me. i left telling her i'll see her again soon, i told her i was healthy, i told her i was safe.

a month later i received an one lined email from my cousin:

grandma passed away early this morning.

melbourne

sofia came to visit me in december just as i had visited her in stockholm past june. she spent majority of her time feeding kangaroos and going 'naw' at the koalas.

milestones:

• emma and i launched pocketto magazine in print
• passed all my subjects and will be graduating in march

i hope you all have an exciting year coming, let me know if there is anything you're really looking forward to.

much love!