Minus ten degrees celsius. It’s immaculately covered in white outside. Snow. The house stands between the garage and the outhouse within the area of thirteen acre land littered with eight assorted small trucks and cars, and a boat under an old pine tree. The first one you see at the corner of Two Queen Street. The only other couple of houses on the block are way out of sight. Dead spot for mobile phones — we live waaay down the valley, too low.
The hamlet of Fallis: where the houses are far apart, the doors always left unlocked, the lake’s frozen all throughout winter, the ground shakes with every passing train. Moose, foxes and squirrels are just around. Noisy geese fly by everyday. Colorful, different species of birds feed on whatever they can find in the yard. Street hockey’s played on frozen ground. You run after a dog for a hockeyball and have a snowball fight in a knee-deep snow (till your ears ache, nose freezes, fingers numbed, you get a runny nose and sniffles!) The labrador sprawled on the porch being licked by the big fat cat is an amusing sight. Birds chirping, cat meowing, dogs howling, geese squawking, train toot-ing, grandfather clock ticking, your own breathing are the only sounds you’ll hear. The country life. No public transport, no traffic jam. No reception, no use of mobile phones. No post office, no internet cafe. No fast dial-up connection! Peaceful but too quiet. A perfect get-away from the city life. Only for a holiday.
I’m a stranger in strange land, a foreigner in foreign soil, an alien on this side of planet Earth. There’s nothing strange, foreign nor alien about my feelings though. Jet-lag had passed, my tastebuds had grown accustomed to the foods (Gee, I hadn’t had a grain of rice in a month!), my tummy’s still getting used to the eating habits (We get three full meals plus two snacks in the Philippines. Not here, buddy.) Homesickness and silly loneliness creep in. Migrant workers cope, adjust and adapt. The journey never ends. This is just another ’stop-over’. After Taiwan and Hong Kong, Canada’s now my host.
The tiny village where I am now is my temporary home. As I cannot drive, the only way out of here is on foot, hike all the way up the hill for about half an hour till I reach the highway. From there I can hitchhike (bad idea). Until I learn how to drive, I’m stuck.
Have you been in a situation where you think you have no control or no way out of? Say, for instance, a domestic job in Hong Kong. It’s akin to a 7-11 convenience store where you’re expected to be on your feet twenty-four hours a day. One second more and you’re about to reach dreamland when the door suddenly opens and your ward’s head pops in, “Where’s my Hello Kitty sticker?” (Nope, it can’t wait till tomorrow. It’s just midnight!) As you’re snoring your head off at three o’clock in the morning, the doorbell rings. You get up in daze, open the door with a sore head. The lady of the house says, “Cook some noodles, prepare tea, cut some fruits for me, ‘che-che’, then you go back to bed. Later, go to China at six AM, pick up my belt — the one that got rhinestones in the buckle.” You could be anybody’s helper, too. The boss asks you to tend to a sick-depressed-bed-ridden sister of a friend (Yes, you clean up the pee and poop, sorry.), cook for her friend’s daughter’s birthday party, scrub-clean her bestfriend’s new flat, be a substitute for somebody’s helper who’s on a holiday. All for free. You don’t want to lose your job so you take it all in, grit your teeth, swear, whine to your friends, and wish your boss steps on a banana peel, slip and break her HK$400-newly manicured fingernails. Finally, you get the chance to let go of the job. The contract ends but you decided to renew. Why do you still hang on to a job you keep crying your eyes out for, complaining and whining about. You got your reasons, but it wasn’t what you first thought that it’s not within your control. People abuse you when you let them. You just have to speak your mind. State your limits, specify your boundaries. Just as you’re given a curfew on your restday, you ask not to be bothered in the wee hours of the night. Set your foot down, say you won’t work illegaly (with or without extra pay) for any of your employer’s friends or relatives again. If she respects you, she’ll listen to you. If the bad situation continues — take a chance, find another work, ‘kabsat’, unless you want to grow old unhappy in that job.
If there’s something you can possibly do in a certain situation, find the heart — do it. You’re not as stuck and helpless as you think you are. You’re braver than you believe you are.
So now I’m considering other options… learn to drive, take a hike, go for the ride, go with the flow — or go against the current. Whichever way I choose, it surely is a great journey.
*Published in eFootprints Magazine (July 2007 issue)
**the author took a hike, hopped into a 17-hour bus ride, and is currently counting snowflakes in British Columbia 
… 22 months since this journal entry.
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Minus ten degrees celsius. It’s immaculately covered in white outside. Snow. The house stands between the garage and the outhouse within the area of thirteen acre land littered with eight assorted small trucks and cars, and a boat under an old pine tree. The first one you see at the corner of Two Queen Street. The only other couple of houses on the block are way out of sight. Dead spot for mobile phones — we live waaay down the valley, too low.
