Last day in Moulmain - one day in SIN

Thursday: Last day in Moulmain, last walk down from the Kyatanlan Pagoda, I've been here almost a week. (16Jul09) Wandering down the long covered, "shoes off " walkway from the Kyatanlan Pagoda, I  see a group of people stand around before me, monks, kids, and women. Coming closer one of the Ladies emerges from the group bearing a tray with a glass of red liquid in it. Ok that's nice. Bowing and thanking them I take the glass and have a sip. Nice. Real fruity cordial. There's a huge vat, almost empty nearby and all sorts of fruit float in it, the whole thing is red like wine. I've hardly finished the glass and I'm given a plastic cup, of more. Ok, it's good, I can do both these. There are smiles and chatter as the foreigner drinks and looks at the monks and kids. I'm by no means singled out, every passerby gets a drink like this. I've no idea why, but it is probably to do with doing something good for others.  I enjoyed my drink. BTW: glasses are never washed, 10 cups or do the rounds until the whole vat's empty. Yesterday in semidarkness with light drizzle in the warm atmosphere. One of the many passers by in the dark calls out: "Hey man", I turn around, I recognize him from the first day as he hurries past. "Hey Mr Old Bachelor" He called himself that when we first spoke almost a week ago. We keep walking our separate ways. Few people walk fast in Myanmar, I'm one of them, the Old Bachelor was another. Yesterday, Wednesday: up at the Pagoda, the Kaytanlan, the one that's closest to my guest house and has that 300 walk way up. I'm looking for candles. I have one so I can show what I want. But everyone I show them to thinks I want a lighter to light it, natural assumption. So I hold up the lighter next to it and point to the candle, speaking simple English, more as something to fill the void than because anyone would know what I'm saying. But now I get blank looks. Hm..... I know, I'll try the Lady at the other side, near the brass Buddha, bet she's  more 'with it'. I do my routine. Sure, she gets it immediately and produces some slightly used and recycled candles. I knew it, she's more switched onto these practical levels. She gives me the candles. "one ?" "yes." "Two ?" "ok, sure, even better." I get 3 in the end and decide to make a donation. I hand over 1000 Kyat note and say 300, I can even say most numbers and money values in Burmese even these days. "A donation ?" "Yes a donation !". What else would it be silly! -  I think. Well she's about to enlighten me. Everyone MUST MUST MUST give a receipt for any donation, carbon copy etc.... she writes out the fancy receipt and takes my 1000 note and disappears.  After a while she pops back. "Are you back here tomorrow ?" "Yea, probably, why ?" "Can I give you 700 tomorrow ?" "No!,  today !"  She immediately pops up the 700 all ready all ready. She's really more than just 'with it'. I'm intrigued by her technique. "Where are you from ?" "Australia." "You want me to come to see you in Australia ? I come if you want me to !" Woa! I'm thinking --  hold it girl. She's certainly with it, 300% with it. "What's your name ?" Now one is usually supposed to start with the name bit first, I think she's realized that too by now.  I don't usually give my real name if someone comes onto me that fast, and if they've first tried to play funny buggers, but hey, this is not Egypt. "Heiko". "My name is Matada (not sure anymore actually)" She spells it out nice 'n slow so I really get it. I'm amused. Anyway lets see how she's going to handle this. She holds up one finger. By now I know this means: 'are you travelling alone ?' Again I'd not usually admit that. I'm curious.  "I'm 29 years old. Single. How old are you ?" Matada looks at me. "Thirty ? I point to the sky. "More?" "Yes more" I tell her. 35 I gesture up. 40 ? I gesture up. 45 ? Now she's starting to get wide eyes. I gesture up. 50 !!! Shock and horror written all over her face. Yes kiddo, I'm no spring chicken anymore. sigh..... It takes her a while to come to grips with the idea, and put it into context. "My mother is 50. no, she's 53 and fat !" she gestures a rotund shape. I feel that the output power of the 'interested-in-you' beam has just dropped by half, not totally dead, but it's declining rapidly.  As an Engineer: that means the reach of this beam has decreased by the square root of the distance. Well that kind of finshed it, I thought it would. Sometimes honesty can be very effective. Matada  is exceptional, the other 15 attendants I've strolled past are mild and 'noice'. She stood out in her own way. She must have a real motivation to try anything to get out of this place. I can sympathize with her. Nice as it is as a tourist for me here, living her as a national would be pretty tough...! I can return to Australia any time. She is in a sleepy small town, selling donation tickets all day at a big temple. If she meets the right lamb for the slaughter - then god help the poor bastard. Still compared to some of her Thai sisters, in Bangkok, she too is a lamb. She has gumption. I wish her luck. Friday 17Jul09 Familiar Yangon. last day in Myanmar, just got in from a 9 hour train ride from Moulmain. The distance is not far, could be covered in 3 hours in Australia. But the tracks are such that the train bounces in simple harmonic spring motions as it goes along, bit like a ship at sea. If it went too fast, the carriages would bounce right off the tracks. So the train only goes a bit faster than cycling speed most of the time. The engineer talking: at the Harmonic frequency it takes very little extra energy to get HUGE swings, so the train would have to stay away from that deadly frequency by never going too fast.... Control engineers spend HUGE amounts of time figuring out the harmonic frequencies of things like planes, ships, bridges, because at the harmonic frequency things tend to vibrate themselves to pieces... literally. People died before this was fully appreciated - end of Engineer sidetrack, we return to our normal program now. Actually come to think of it: I went over a few long iron bridges, going across rivers. The beams are set up in the direction of travel, with a narrow gap, between them. Good for cars, but terrible for motorbikes. My motorbike taxi driver thought the lengthwise beams were stupid too, shook his head when I expressed my shock and horror. Bikes kind of have to snake around in 's' shapes to avoid getting their tyres stuck and falling over. Anyone who ever got their bicycle wheels stuck in tram tracks will understand. Also the same bouncing problem: when a big truck goes over the bridge the guards at the end of the bridge hold back the traffic because the beams making up the road surface have small hills and valleys, and as you drive over them you bounce gently up n down as you do on the train. So to avoid bouncing the bridge to bits at its harmonic frequency they dribble the traffic across. I didn't mind the gentle bouncing, it was the cracks between the beams that scared me. The guy driving me was used to it, not sure I'd have made it. Probably would have walked the bike across. (Note: every bridge has military armed guards, a boom gate and you pay 100 Kyat or so to cross. Don't know why, that's how it is. Even in its heartland, Myanmar is in many ways a lose conglomeration of little fiefdoms. Even long distance busses, between Mandalay and Yangon, 500km, stop frequenly before some boomgate set up in the middle of seemingly nowhere and hand over a small note.) Although the country drives on the right side, cars, busses can be left hand drive too. Many of them are old commuter busses, with Japanese and Korean writing still visible, the kind of subburban busses that run around a city. Now they ply their routes between local towns, doing rounds of 80km or so. Singapore (SIN), 18Jul09 Saturday: I've found a room, in a penthouse converted into a backpacker's place, part of a residential high rise tower near Chinatown, easy walking distance. The contrasts with Myanmar are more than the clean-ness. At the corner of Pagoda Street and New Bridge Road, at 7:30 pm, I've arranged to meet the brother of a family in Myanmar I've been friends with. I'm cruising the corner, checking out the people, I've no idea what he looks like and he's no idea what I look like. Interesting what one notices when one hangs around a corner of a busy street like this. All sorts of people are hanging around, and I wonder what they are doing there, what they are keeping an eye on... I get questioning looks, as if to say "...are you the one I'm supposed to meet for ...xxxxxxxxxxxxx.....? I've no idea what they are all hanging around for, but I DO know I don't want to know any details. Its getting way past 7:30. I have no mobile phone but the brother Hlaing, does. Trying to make a phone call from a public phone is REALLY hard in Singapore, every man and his dog has a handphone. There is simply no need for public phones, they are out of date, totally. There is one of the very rare internet cafe's right at the corner. "Can I use your phone for second ? I'm happy to pay." The girl minding the shop is totally thrown, she has no idea how to deal with this unorthodox request. She offers me internet time instead, thinking surely that must be what I'm after. "No the phone please?" "Really ? Uhmmm .... we don't do that ..." I explain that there is probably  someone waiting for me just at the corner 5m away but we haven't be able to make contact. She hesitates then rings up for permission to let me use the phone. I mentally resign myself to look elsewhere. A bit of talking, and yes, it's ok, I may use the phone. Great :-) The actual cost of local phone calls in Singapore is negligible. At the airport local calls to anywhere in Sg are free. At my backpackers, a phone is simply provided for free, for use to any number in Sg, including mobiles. Internet is provided for free as well. So the cost of a call, internet access, is not an issue not even for a backpacker's. Wireless internet is also provided free. This is what most strikes me as different from Myanmar, and much of the rest of South East Asia: in Myanmar people would simply decide for themselves, check me out, make a judgment and either do it or not. I'm trying to imagine what it must feel like to genuinely feel I have to ring the boss to let this guy use the phone for a local phone call. Hm.... Not a pleasant trip to stand in those shoes. Prefer my own shoes. THe internet cafe girl doesn't want to take any money so I just quietly put whatever change I have on the table and walk off. I eventually meet up with Hlaing and a mate of his. It took another phone call though. Phew.... He's on a company sponsored visa, he can only stay in Sg as long a he works for that company, as a fitter and turner. He's not able to move and get a better job. It's that company at their rates or else go home. I don't dare ask what he makes. We have dinner at a restaurant, my shout, they are both very polite and order simple dishes. I hand over some sweets and food from his sister MuMu. Did I see her kids ? Yes I did, including the 2 year old boy. We chat about his father who had a stroke but is getting better. We talk about Myanmar weather, locations such as the Golden Rock, where we've traveled to,  before going our separate ways again. We all agreed that the tea houses of Myanmar are a great institution. One can just sit and watch the world go by for however long. There is not pressure to move you on and make room for others, really no pressure at all. Chinese tea is free, it's provided as a given. Morocco has a similar tradition of tea houses, different style, but same idea, buy one glass of mint tea, and you can sit for hours, and people do just that. "Here, you have to pay for everything," Hlaing remarks. Yes, that's true. Come, eat, go. That makes me realize, it's the lack of time, people don't have time, they don't dare sit and just relax, and be, doing nothing much. Run, rabbit run Dig that hole, forget the sun, And when at last the work is done Don't sit down it's time to start another one For long you live and high you fly But only if you ride the tide And balanced on the biggest wave You race towards an early grave.         Lyrics: Breathe, Pink Floyd What also strikes me about SIN, is that I have no desire, I'm simply not in the mood to sit for hours in a tea shop, somehow the whole atmosphere is not conducive to that. I've turned into the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, with his pocket watch under the arm, "must run, must run..." Note: In Myanmar a few years ago a SIM card cost USD $2000, more recently I heard it's only 1000. Not sure it's true though, does anyone know ? Foreigners can buy SIM cards  - rechargeable ones - for USD 20 I hear. But that's foreigners. Well one more day to go, then back to Oz, back to lecturing. Compared to 99.99999% of the people I've met, I have a dream job, and I'm even more appreciative of it... well for a while anyway, until I forget and the temptation to bitch and grumble gets me again. :-P   Sunday 19Jul09 Singapore (SIN): 0630am I'm up and typing again. Since returning from Myanmar I've noticed how I behave and what goes on in my mind more. In Singapore I've spent way too much time on the internet, doing my internet check in for the flight to Melbourne. Apprehensions about the imminent re-entry to 'normal' life in Australia manifest in worry about "what if this and what if that...?" But what strikes me as strange: is that I'm more aware of these things than before. It's because I've stepped out of 'normal life' for a while. The trick is to keep that perspective. Just posted this blog on xylantheum.blogspot.com "This is just preventative, to take care of you, so nothing worse happens to you."   "I'm doing this to prevent further and more serious problems." This is how thoughts go round in my mind. It only slowly came to me, the voice that said those things was really the voice of fear. Sure, there is reasonable commonsense taking care of things, locking the front door, keeping your money safely out of sight, taking care crossing the road. But there comes a point, and only I know when the point comes when it gets ridiculous.... that point is hard to spot, because there are no signs, there are not major fault lines to tell me I've crossed that point. The thing that does tell me though is my body, the mental climate within myself. If it gets obsessive about an issue, or if the feeling is simply 'bad' then chances are I've let my mind run away with fear. Fear of the 'what if this..... or that ..... happens ?' What if she leaves me... ? "What if he does this........ or that .........?" "What if my health .... ?" etc.... etc... etc... This is a  very neat trick that fear does to the mind. Fear gets me running around, thinking I'm doing something useful to prevent bad stuff happening. It makes me think I'm fully taking care of myself, that this is a positive thing. Yet the real trick is: fear is a great liar, its a distractor. The real damage is done now. Right now. This INSTANT, in the NOW. There is only one thing I've been told to do about it:  Awareness. Not to change it, just to be aware, not dislike or fight it, just to be aware. That awareness will change it by itself. Fight it - and I get what ?  A war inside. An argument: "oh but I'm just making sure, that this or that bad thing won't happen to me... come on that's reasonable, EVERYONE is doing it!" Awareness. What is the climate inside ? right NOW ?  Sounds very Buddhist doesn't it ? I'll let you know how I go .... Monday 20Jul09 Just off the plane, unpacking, time to get back into the groove. thanks for following these email, there won't be much for quite some time now.... cheers Heiko 'dance me to the children who are asking to be born....'  - Leonard Cohen Haiko's - blog list here or direct: life42  or backpacking or  stories I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings.... I hear the sound of her wings.... and the darkness lifts from my soul...