tamara_in_jakarta

After a long search, many referrals, cross checking with friends, colleagues and other doctors, we sat in the oncologist's office.  She's a native Singaporean, about 160cm (5ft) tall, around 50, and very chic.  She lays out the road ahead of us in Oxford English, detailing what the next year or more holds in store.  Still numb from the diagnosis, I'm coping by compartmentalizing and going into health emergency manager mode.  I've already started a binder full of copies of tests, notes, everything, backed up in PDF online, with a standardized file name system of date and subject, sorted into both a chron folder and copied into subject specific folders.  He's all business, taking this on like any treaty negotiation, looking for a win.  But there may not be one.

If you're going to have lymphome, Hodgkin's is the one to get, but the stats don't matter much when you're in the office.

Are we going to be ok?

"The escalated BEACOPP protocol is difficult, and more toxic, but highly effective." she says.

"Just like you." he says and winks at me.  We're going to be fine.

"Do you have any other questions?" she asks before we go back to the rental apartment that will be home base in Singapore during treatment.

"Um... What about sex?  If you can't get the chemicals on your skin because they can be corrosive, does it secrete in semen?"

She looks down, bites her lip, smiles a bit, laughs.  "So few people ask this. Yes, precautions are a good idea. There's not a lot of data."

I see her on the hospital campus one day when I'm taking a break from the arctic air conditioning of the chemo suite.

"How long have you been together?"

"About two years."

"Ah, lah, the real deal."

"What do you mean?"

"People come in, together for decades, this can tear them apart.  People together later, smarter, after you stop running against anyone but yourself. That choice sticks.  Smile, we fix your man."

I remember not long after we met and he asked if he was competing with my future ex husband. "No, you're competing with me."

"Let's go then!" and he winked.

My kids call it a blip in the matrix. I don't know what to call it.

You visit family, even in a war zone, although it was a white war zone, and still had a happening bar scene and ice cream trucks. Childhood memories visiting family in Belfast ranged from air band contests and ice cream headaches to learning what kneecapping meant, getting the hell out of town the week of 12 July and learning from (barely) older cousins that you had to put dish soap in with the petrol in a molotov cocktail so the flames would spread and stick, allowing for better photos in the press. That one cousin worked at the Europa Hotel bar, the most bombed hotel in Europe at the time (33 times between 1971 and 1994). This is my baseline.

As an adult, living in Switzerland, I went back, while dating a guy who was working there, and spending quite a lot of time in Belfast. The city was alive, great nightlife, culture, there was a mosque on Landsdowne Road and the barriers in the walls were all open. Everything seemed normal, but just a bit off. There's still a bunch of kids setting furniture on fire where the Ulster Youth Militants used to hang out.

My Belfast man (who was Greek actually) had a shit car. It died one night on the way to the cinema and we pushed it off to an empty parking lot. Called the auto club, no big deal. Until an armored police van pulled in and two police in full riot gear stepped out, clubs drawn, asking what we were doing. Once it was clear we were just stupid, not dangerous, they told us we couldn't leave the car there or it would be removed and detonated and had to move it in an hour.

While driving, I found myself in the wrong lane and had to cut across three lanes of rush hour traffic. Not a single honk, everyone just stopped, waved me past. Where can anyone do that?

A red panda kept escaping from the zoo and going to a shopping mall nearby. I saw it once standing by the claw machine peering inside.


Blips. Just blips.

I am a long-term expatriate, having lived outside of the countries issuing any of my 3 passports for the majority of my life. I currently live in a dirty, crowded, sinking, megacity with terrible traffic, poor air quality and a taste among the expatriate community to love hating life here.

My apartment is large and luxurious, with an immaculate gym and pool at my disposal and a short walk to my well appointed office. I do not hate it here, not very often anyway. I have a great circle of friends, good work/life balance for the most part, and can afford to outsource the mundane tasks that lengthened my mental laundry list in "more civilized" places, whatever that may mean.

This is the sin. The locals are weird, housing is crap, traffic is terrible, schools are expensive, it’s almost impossible for an expat to get a job, there aren’t a lot of people who speak English- it is unfashionable, unfathomable, that you would make the conscious choice when waking in the morning to not actively hate where you live.

I was that person, long ago in Moscow, in another century even, so many postings back and ignorant of how good I had it, sick of the endless cold and dark of winter and the hearts of my coworkers. Nauseated by the stench of wet fur and the vodka fumes being sweat out of the pores of others when sandwiched between some random Ivan and Natasha on the endless escalator down into the metro. It’s easy to hate a place for the hard parts. Any place. It is more fun to embrace the lunacy and strap in for the ride.

Complaining is easy and entertaining, few want to hang out at the bar and listen to how delighted someone is that their cleaning lady folds all their laundry into perfect cubes and organizes their clothes by type and color. Or that mango and avocado, plentiful and cheap, left on the counter in the morning are transformed into cubes in neat boxes in the refrigerator when returning from work. Affordable massages and friendly spas are not cause for celebration. An array of world class beaches reachable for the weekend is nothing to smile about. Enjoyment is inappropriate in this place of despair, frustrating and utter different-ness. Do not love this damaged place. We did not move here to fall in love with damage, we moved for a perfect life and it has fallen short. Again.

I understand the ease of this, and the amusement that can come from it, but I no longer have the ability to wake up, choose to be unhappy every day and just survive until nightfall. So now I am boring. I am watching the distance grow between myself and old acquaintances. My willingness to just be here, to learn some new words, to laugh off feeling like a giant white monster when shopping for clothes, and to revel in the pleasures afforded here that may not be present at the next posting. I sin every day, committing myself to loving the damaged bits, making every place home instead of longing for that perfect place that may not even exist.