An update and a small dissertation

Firstly, I must apologise most humbly as it has been quite some time since I posted. There are various reasons for this and the most outstanding one was that I got a bit carried away with myself. Although no one would have known it, there are certain things I keep rather close to my chest. Also, it became time to wrap things up in Singapore. I wasn't altogether happy about leaving Singapore, but I was also looking forward to getting going with life again - actually doing things instead of remaining stagnant and still. There was Christmas to consider and I wasn't altogether happy about not being able to spend it with my family.

That said, the last few weeks in Singapore were joyful and the Christmas lead-up and celebration was a great deal more fun than I had expected. One of the dinner guests unintentionally provided most of us with a great deal of entertainment and laughs. I really hadn't laughed so hard in a long long time. Joe and I had also organised shipment of our worldly possessions, though I'm not sure the cost of said shipment was worth the contents. We will be able to review that when they finally become available to us again I am sure. We also spent a bit of time savouring the last few moments we would have together for at least a couple of weeks, especially considering we were to be spending the anniversary of our fateful meeting apart.

We left Singapore and Richard and Ann-Marie to enjoy their newly married status alone for a change (and I daresay they were more than pleased about it too!) and I felt sorry that there was nothing I could possibly say or do that would repay their kindness. My determination was to show my gratitude by bouncing very high from the springboard they offered us. I also caught up with an old friend and a new one, the kindness of the latter overwhelming me to the point of tears. I am wont to blame recovery from too much alcohol, but I'm not sure that's all it was. The last few weeks I had been feeling very over-sensitive to just about everything good and as a result rather prone to a bit of a sniffle anyway. But such sensitivites had never left me in overload like that before. It made me wonder whether such outpourings of emotion were something just in me, a part of getting older and being able to relate to many more tearful experiences or something more. At any rate, I have put it down to something that is a natural expression of how I simply am right now and certainly have not worried about it.

One other joy that I had in the last days of my time in Singapore was that Becky, long time family friend, happened to be in the same place at the same time so we were able to catch up and have a really great chat. It reminded me how much I had missed my SGI friends - people you can talk to not only about the banal, but also about deeper things that relate to the core aspects of life. Although Becky does not call herself Buddhist, she definitely understands and can relate things from a Buddhist perspective since she has always been around Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. And by the way, this is not an exclusionary statement as I have many dear friends who are not Buddhists and who have often provided insight where I have been lacking.

So we left and enjoyed all the little niceties of Changi Airport - the free internet, the power points and the icy cold water - and settled in for a long-ish plane ride. It was actually rather good even though I did only get a couple of hours sleep. By the time we made it to Sydney I was fairly alert. Alert enough to sort out some Duty Free for that night (NYE) and some SIM cards so we could keep in touch. Poor Joe ended up in transit for hours before flying on to Auckland, so he proceeded to get as drunk as possible on "cheap" wine before boarding and, I later heard, being told off for talking to other passengers during the safety demonstration. I keep telling him he has a very loud voice, but has not learnt to moderate it when appropriate!

I arrived with Chel and Aaron at their home in Frenchs Forest and was delighted to see Yoda again. I chose to sleep in the old cats' room with both Yoda and Bloosh and it was so nice to have Yoda sleeping next to me again. Once I moved to the city, Chel called to tell me Yoda had been looking for me since I'd gone. So my goal is to find a place to live where I can have him. It is clear that he still knows I'm his mum, though I know Chel and Aaron will miss him greatly as they have, particularly Aaron, developed a great fondness for him. Chel and Aaron both spoiled me rotten while I was there and we three enjoyed NYE, though Chel and I did miss the fireworks on the TV!! We were too busy drinking and talking! It was so relaxing there I would so loved to have stayed with them, but my financial situation meant that being in the city would be easier as I could walk to interviews instead of paying to catch the bus.

As I write, I am staying with Megan. I have my own little space in the loungeroom and I don't mind it at all. The day after I 'moved in' I organised to go to a meeting, catch up with friends and attend a couple of appointments with recruiters. Not a terribly busy day, but certainly a lot busier than I had been used to! The first recruiter turned up some really good possibilities and I am pretty sure that if I get back into the insurance market, claims is definitely the direction I want to go. I do love helping people and although there are elements of that in underwriting, the satisfaction just isn't there (even if it does reside in the wallet). In order to get back to a similar position I was in before I left, it is clear I must take the Life route. Fine by me!

Anyway, I trotted off to Julia Ross, as recommended by Megan's other lodger, Kate. I did all my testing and went home to have a chat to mum. About an hour or so later, I got a call from Julia Ross telling me they had a temp position for me and could I start the next day? Now it is a significant drop from what I used to earn, but it is still money in the bank and it is fairly well immediate. Not something I had expected at all. It gives me breathing space until everything else is sorted out. I am also going to apply for Australian Citizenship. Yes folks, the perpetual kiwi is going to become an Aussie and start voting. And just in case you were ever in any doubt, I will probably vote Green. But that's open to fierce debate and I am yet to conduct my research on that matter.

Now for the dissertation: It's only a short rant, but I need to make it abundantly clear how I view the whole Palestine/Israel thing. Please keep in mind these are my views and are subject to change without warning or apparent logic, but you can rest assured that I continue to read and review in order to ensure I have a broad scope from which to draw my conclusions without neglecting the elemental problem that keeps being forgotten: People are suffering. It might be all well and good to look at the pure politics of such a complicated situation, but the fact of the matter is, the Palestinians are suffering every single day. They suffer during apparent cease-fires and they suffer during times like now when they are bombarded with sophisticated weaponry destroying the ruins in which they live, but the inescapable fact is they are still suffering. What I find particularly irritating is that for all the Israeli bullshit that is being propagated in our media, not to mention the outright lies - and trust me, there are lies. It would be foolhardy to think that everything we are told is the truth - there is very little balance.

Where is the Palestinian voice? "Hamas is the Palestinian voice," I hear you say, but they are a political group too. Like listening to the former Iraqi Minister for Information rather than the actual people. It is important to keep in mind that Israel has made it so dangerous for people to get into Gaza (or the West Bank) to be able to actually hear these voices, that it is very difficult for us on the outside to form solid opinions about the actual state of affairs. This is not an accident. It is not new and it is not a consipracy. It is how things are done for the benefit of Israel or any other country acting aggressively. Just look at how little we hear from Iraq or Afghanistan (not forgetting the scores of other countries that have and still do suffer aggression). But just because it is difficult and dangerous doesn't mean those voices are impossible to hear. Far from it. In fact, there are even voices we should hear from inside Israel itself.

So, in a nutshell, I am really very angry at the atrocities being committed by Israel. Did you know they have also started lobbing missiles at Lebanon? Nice to see that is front page news. But what makes me angrier is the complacency with which we rely upon our media. What you are force fed is never the entire story. Of course it is difficult to get the other side, and the more I read, the more I realise there are seldom only two sides. We get one. We have to find the others. Naturally, we are all too busy and the age-old question of "What can I do about it anyway?" rears its head. All I can say is be cynical, question what you read, don't just accept everything you see as fact and don't for one moment feel that you are powerless.

Now I can't just go to Israel and say "I think you should stop bombing the Palestinians" and expect them to do so. What I can do is make sure I am treating everyone I come into contact with with respect and value their individual dignity. I can make sure I am aware of the fact that there are always other things going on behind what we immediately see. And you can too.