The world is short of secrets these days. Sometimes I wish I could travel not just to a different country, but to a simpler time, before the age of budget airlines, overcrowded beaches and camera phone waving tourists. And then, Nihiwatu happened.

A few weeks ago, on a well-connected friend’s advice, I flew to the deep, lush heart of one of the last Stone Age civilisations on Earth, to Sumba, Indonesia, an island twice the size of Bali, just south of Komodo island. More Africa than Asia, Sumba is a wild place that time has forgotten and nature has claimed as her own. Pure chromatic turquoise waters surround the island, itself a haven of emerald green terraced fields and unruly jungle.

This island has a pure, savage and elemental magic about it. The waves roar and dash eternally upon boulders on pristine sand. Villagers believe in the power of animal sacrifices of buffalo and celebrate festivals with outrageous displays of jousting with lances upon horseback.

Walking is the preferred mode of transport on the island, and you meet villagers carrying pots on their head, children on their waist, herding goats and cattle gently towards the pristine beach.

For years Sumba remained almost unknown to the developed world. Then in 1989, Claude Graves, a veteran surfer who built the first house on Kuta beach in Bali, decided to seek out fresher, less touristy waters and landed in Sumba. Immediately entranced with the land, Claude camped on the beach with his wife and newborn baby for nearly five years while laying out the plans for what would become Nihiwatu resort.

Over cold beer at sundown with the Nihiwatu team, I heard stories about how he survived warring tribal kings, assassination attempts through black magic and more than 30 bouts of Malaria.

Today, Nihiwatu, having changed hands to US billionaire Chris Burch, remains an enigmatic luxurious resort that redefines the concept of “eco-travel”, being totally off the grid, producing its food, electricity and diesel from coconut husks and enriching the lives of thousands of villagers through the anti-malarial efforts of it’s flagship charity – the Sumba Foundation.

Now it is perhaps the best place in the world to be in if you were to come down with Malaria, having a state of the art Malarial facility and reducing Malaria in the surrounding villages by 85%.  It has also provided clean water to almost 20,000 villagers in nearly 200 villagers in the island.

I flew to Nihiwatu to scout it out as a venue for Legacy Retreat, the holistic holidays of self-discovery and rebalancing which we have pioneered in the Asia Pacific. It was a beautiful fit for us, timeless, a million miles away from the noise, and full of pure spiritual energy. All this, just a one hour flight from Bali.

In my all too short time at Nihiwatu, I met new owner Chris Burch, a irrepressible big-picture ideas man and his right-hand man, James McBride, the authoritative and detail-oriented ex-manager of the Carlyle hotel and they brought me through their vision for Nihiwatu, expanding it to 30 villas while maintaining the bohemian family vibe.

Luxury with a wabi-sabi attitude, the resort is understated, authentic and tasteful. Talitha Getty rebel chic. Villas have expansive views, patios are littered with daybeds, ikats, local artifacts, you bathe in the open air under a thatched roof, steps away from the beach.

best outdoor cinema ever

Business aside, I learned to surf on one of the best breaks in the world with USA pro big wave surfer Mark Healey, a guy who is more famous for riding 12 metre waves and hitching lifts on bull sharks, and felt alive from an infusion of pure salt water and sun.

I walked through forests full of buffalo, goats and ponies and had breakfast of scrambled eggs, sambal and tropical fruit on a bamboo platform festooned with palm fronds, over looking a deserted stretch of beach.

I drank many many gallons of fresh coconut juice and buried my feet in the baking hot sand.

I had sundowners looking at the most dramatic, pigeons blood red sunsets which would make Photoshop weep. Dinners were either on the beach or in the stunning ocean front restaurant, eating unbelievably good home-cooking style dishes like Mexican Poblano mole or Ikan Bakar charcoal grilled fresh Mahi Mahi fish, which I had seen Mark & Chris, the resident pro-surfers, haul in on their fishing boat earlier on that afternoon.

Then afterwards, we talked late into the cool, ice-clear night, while others watched a movie at the best outdoor cinema ever.

It was utterly rejuvenating. A very different kind of luxury.  A deep, rooted, spiritual calm. Just what I needed. Sometimes serendipity happens and being at Nihiwatu was being able to live a golden memory of a purer time.

It’s with a lot of excitement then that I announce our next Legacy Retreat, a profound journey of self-discovery, in the luxurious, one of a kind, Nihiwatu resort in Sumba 31 October – 4 November 2014. We will fly far away from the crowds and find our crisp, clean consciousness. We will learn about the secrets of happiness, motivation and unlock our fullest potential while rebalancing our bodies, minds, emotions and spirit. Hike through jade-green forests and meditate under a secret waterfall. All this and much more.

Details to come shortly at http://www.thelegacyretreat.com, contact us at crystal@thelegacyretreat.com. (This post also appears at the Legacy Retreat blog http://www.thoughtsoflegacy.com)

Happy Mother’s Day! I’m supposed to be putting up my feet and relaxing to the sounds of the kids arguing over how to load the dishwasher and the Irishman dropping crockery, so this will be a short post!

This year the Irishman decided to put on a special treat that every Asian loves – Hot Pot!

There was a lot of surreptitious chopping and cursing going on this morning, I came out to find the two eldest Leahy men in the kitchen mincing garlic and freaking out. Sean thought it was a disaster of epic proportions that the beef-to-allothermeats ratio was less than 80:1. Much consternation over what utensils to use to dip and retrieve food, resulting in a table laid with bamboo salad servers and a deep frying spatula.

It’s ok, everything was salvaged with a liberal application of champagne.

The usual lively “Where the hell is my tofu?!” guessing game, fun for the whole family!

Quote of the day from Dylan “Sean, you’re talking nonsense. BOOM! You’re fired.”

Pirate Daddy

Thanks for a wonderful, novel and very messy Mother’s Day lunch guys! Someone give me a massage now!

14 years ago, in another life, I was a junior investment banker. It was a Friday and I had just been summoned for an urgent internal meeting to prepare for a government bond pitch. I was grumpy about the extra work, having 4 live mandates on my plate already. So I came late to the meeting wearing a denim jacket, clompy Miu Miu shoes and a sulk.

Across the table were the usual bunch of Debt Capital Markets guys from the trading floor, and one new face. A guy with Sean Penn-esque facial hair wearing a black shirt, black jeans, topped off with a bolo tie. Hello Cowboy! The sight elicited a smirk which Bolo Tie may have misread. Apparently Bolo was our new Head of Debt Sydicate.

Over the next week or so, Bolo sent me several nonsense emails asking me to come to his desk on the trading floor to make changes to the Term Sheet and bring him such a such document or other. Getting fed up, I dialed his extension and snarked “Hey Bolo, we discovered something called email. Ciao!”.

5 seconds later, I received a email saying “How about a micro-meeting over some champagne?” And so it began, our somewhat secretive inter-divisional office romance.

Over the next few weeks I ended up being mysteriously tasked on a lot of Debt deals.  One of the our colleagues in Fixed Income Sales who sat near Mark was a lovely lady everyone called Auntie Indira.  “Do you have a boyfriend Crystal?” she asked. “Yes Auntie Indira.” “Where is he from?” “He’s sitting next to y… I mean he’s an Irishman.”.  “Ohhh! Irish guy!!! Irish guys are nice!”.  Cue wiggling of eyebrows from Mark behind Auntie I’s back.

And then one day, I went down to the trading floor to pick Mark up for a lunch date. I walked over to his desk and Auntie Indira thought I was looking for her. “How’s your boyfriend Crystal?”  To which, Mark said “He’s pretty hungry! Let’s go for lunch honey.”

And Auntie Indira’s eyes opened really wide “YOU??? You are IRISHMAN? Mark you are not Irish!”

“Oh but I am, to be sure to be sure!”

“But you are Irishman!? Why?? WHY!??”

It was like that scene from Star Wars where Luke discovers Darth Vader is his dad.

…..

So cut to 14 years later, Irishman and I were in Rome to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Walking in thee magnificent Villa Borghese gardens, Irishman decided that we should rent Segways and have an adventure on wheels.

It was a startlingly clear Spring day, the air was full of life, squeals of children, apple blossoms bursting forth in luxurious profusion.  Whizzing past crumbling monuments on the broad generous pathways. I heard the sound of a jazz trumpet playing, and looked back to see Irishman doing a crazy little Segway dance in front of the busker.

People stopped and stared as he whirled in circles, jiggled and jibed. I just laughed. This is the man I fell in love with whose freedom and crazy ideas have lit up my past 14 years and whose laughter and light I see in my children all the time. I’m full of gratitude and wonder for this guy, my Irishman.

A chilly wind blew away the last of the golden Autumn sunshine this week and it’s well and truly Winter now. Being a Singapore girl, I relish the change of seasons. It’s still subliminally exotic to me after a lifetime of monotonous 30 degree C tropical humidity. My first proper overseas trip was to Perth when I was 9 and as the airport doors opened and blasted us with freakishly cold air, my brother and I screamed and ran about wild-eyed with joy. I don’t even think it was winter! What wusses we were.

Where was I? Oh yes, it’s Winter – the time of the year when we turn our attention inwards to heal, replenish and prepare for another cycle of growth.

Winter means that it’s time to fill the fire baskets with kindling and wood. To collect the last pine cones from the forest to use as fire starters. Bring out the fur lined Sorel boots. Swap the jasmine candles in the living room for the wood and incense ones that smell like an ancient church in Europe. Worm the sheep and trim the alpacas hooves. Rake, mulch and prune in the garden. And the list goes on.

While I was doing these things, it occurred to me that I love the rituals and rhythms our family has built over the last few years on the farm.

Our gratitude ritual at dinner. Taking turns talking about our “high-lights and low-lights” of the day. Foraging for pine mushrooms in our secret forest spots. Filling jars with homemade spicy kimchi, so full of good probiotics. Taco night (though the kids are now campaigning for Chinese DIY Hot Pot night now).

I even cherish the silly little things that have become stone-set family tradition like yelling “Not McDonalds AGAIN!” whenever we pass by any branch of the Golden Arches (a ritual which originated from a trip to the Grampians when Daddy took the wrong turn on the highway and got lost which resulted in us doing many many circles around McDonalds)

And Dylan and Finn’s favourite – when they get cranky on long car trips, we bust out a round of “Dada’s Underpants” – a game which involves answering all questions directed at you with the response “Dada’s Underpants”. Any smiling or laughing gets you instantly disqualified. E.g. “What’s your favourite breakfast in the morning Dylan?” “Dada’s Underpants!”. Dylan is such a zen master at this game that she didn’t break form at a pit stop and when a Bunnings employee asked her how she was, she replied “Dada’s Underpants” with a polite nod.

Rituals, routines, rhythms are all part of the fabric of building a family. They are the things that make our kids feel safe and also part of something bigger than themselves. We quarrel less and feel more like a team when we built a common language. With any luck they will be passing some of these down to their own children in time to come and I will be hearing Dada’s Underpants for decades to come.

What are your family rituals? I’d love to know. Wishing you a peaceful and healing winter.

This is a public service announcement. It’s chestnut season and the markets are full of those tempting shiny little brown cuties.

Now if you do what I did and google “how to roast chestnuts”, every single webpage will tell you to use a “small sharp serrated knife” and “carefully cut an X incision on the rounded side of the chestnut.” to prevent the little suckers from exploding in the heat.

This is utter bollocks! After 15 minutes of ungainly and dangerous sawing, I assure you that using a sharp serrated knife to make said incision will actually result in a one-way ticket to the ER and you never ever being able to listen to that bloody “chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” song again without cussing like Azealia Banks on crack.

Instead, get out a big cleaver, like a Chinese chopper if you have one of those. Carefully put the chestnuts flat side down on a chopping board and fold your non-dominant arm behind your back so that you don’t chop it off. Now give each chestnut baby a judicious thwack with the sharp edge of the cleaver. I say judicious so you don’t end up splitting the whole chestnut apart. Don’t channel Hitchcock’s Psycho or you’ll end up with a pulverised mess.

Now put the whole bunch of split chestnuts either a cast iron skillet on the hot coals of your fireplace for 20 mins or so or roast in your oven at 200 degrees C.

Mmm, there’s nothing like the smell of those roasting chestnuts. Peel them while they’re hot with your unmaimed hands complete with opposable thumbs and enjoy!

Today I had a beautiful pink cashmere turtleneck jumper on. So of course it would be the day we needed to move the alpaca shed into the front paddock. Mandate and Blackadder watched with amusement and made derisive alpaca jokes as Sean, Mark and myself hoisted the canvas shed up the hill and bumped into multiple low hanging tree branches along the way. Glamorous Pink Turtleneck is now covered in mud, eucalyptus bark and the curious little spiky burrs that the kids call “Bidgy Widgys”.

Some of my country friends suggested that I wear “gardening clothes” around the house, but I find that idea a bit… blergh. Life is short. Wear the fancy stuff!

My mum tells me that when I was little, she tried to stop me from wearing my party dresses every day but I told her sagely that I was maximising their value, given that I’d grow out of them soon enough. Who could argue with that logic?

It reminds me of this story about Nora Ephron – apparently a reporter asked her if it was really true that she used her silverware everyday, and she arched an eyebrow and said “Every day is all there is.”

The winter sun is an elusive thing, but when it comes out, it’s so dramatic and beautiful with its low slanting beams. Our mudbrick house has a vine covered trellis running down the perimeter of its three wings .

During the Summer, the vines are full of lush palm sized leaves, the sun is high and the trellis provides a rich, dappled shade to the verandah.

During autumn, the trellis turns a stunning beautiful flame red. And then in winter, the leaves all drop off, exposing the stark twisted vines, and letting the sun beams flood through the french doors and the sunlights in the roof, drenching the house golden.

The birds are getting desperate for food now and the beautiful Rosellas, Cockatoos and Galahs forage around our lawn endlessly. Sometimes you might see a heron fishing near the dam or a pair of kookaburras sitting high up in one of the tall trees at the edge of the forest.

I’m not a very arts & crafty type of person, so we have other indoor pursuits like cooking (today I am testing a Ramen-crusted Buttermilk Chicken recipe ahead of my cooking class at the kids school tomorrow), reading lots of Roald Dahl classics (Finn is addicted to the BFG now) , playing “Hotel” (a game which involves pretending the house is a hotel, checking the guests into each room and bringing them milk and cookies for room service. A very useful way of making use of all those random hotel keycards we’ve accumulated!).

I must also admit that we’re running up quite a lot of iPad time as we are an internet and social media loving family. The iPads and Nintendos are getting a bit out of hand though so I shall have to get the scrabble board out this week. Btw, Dylan and I are addicted to that Iggy Azalea video “Fancy”, Dylan struts around the house singing to herself random Iggy-isms “Whodat whodat. I-G-G-Y… Dodat do dat…. You already know… From L.A. to To-ki-O!”

The kids still love walking in the bush, their gumboots cracking the dead gnarled branches that line the forest floor. There’s always something to do – a bit of rusty old chain that needs to be removed from a paddock, a patch of deadly nightshade that needs to be ripped out, a sheep that needs to be wrestled down so that it can have the brambles picked out of its wool.

Sometimes there seems to be no trajectory to our Winter days, just an ebb and flow of normality. I used to get depressed every time Winter rolled around in Australia.

No big social events, picnics, hanging out at the beach, impromptu barbecues, long outdoor dinners, but now I can really appreciate the quiet.

Hanging out with our family, being grateful for a perfectly ordinary day, appreciating the simple fact that our house is filled with love and light. Nora was right, every day is all there is, and it is enough.

Yesterday, ferocious winds of 130 kilometres gusted across the Peninsula. I drove home, feeling the car buffeted left and right by the waves of wind. It was like steering a ship. Power lines were down, the traffic lights were out and brave traffic police directed traffic in the lashing rain while cars flashed their hazards at each other to indicate fallen trees ahead.

A huge gum tree fell on the road outside our house but I managed to drive around it. Thank goodness for our reliable Toyota Prado which has had plenty of practice trampling through the thick bush surrounding our house to get out on the main road when the driveway has been blocked.

All day my phone beeped with messages from neighbours comparing notes on who had power and who didn’t. 76 year old Lilian called to ask if I had blown away in the wind. I thought it was funny that she was checking in on me. Then I called her back to ask if she needed to come over to ours for a sleepover. The water pump wasn’t working. I called the Irishman, who was in Darwin on business, probably sipping a pina colada, and he helpfully suggested that I “suck on a tube and siphon the water tank.”. I told him he could suck on his own fecking tube.

The dogs had drank the last of the San Pelligrino and were farting copiously from the sparkling bubbles. I ran to the grocery store and bought their last 6 bottles of mineral water and San Pellegrino.

We were one of the lucky ones, the electricity came back on at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, thus preventing Finn’s tropical fish tank from turning into sushi soup.

The first thing you do after your power comes back on is to fill up the bathtub with water so if it goes off again, you’ll have somewhere to do the dishes and wash things.

The second thing you do is to scream with horror when you see the disgusting kombucha tea like liquid pouring into your tub and realise that this is what you’ve got to drink for the next few months.

The next day, I dropped the kids at school which was still in black out mode. Teachers wrapped in beanies and layers of woollens stoked the wood stoves in the classrooms and the gleeful kids told stories about how they had to have a sleepover at their aunt’s house the night before, or how they had to read by candlelight or how they toasted their sandwiches in the fireplace. Half the families I spoke to said that their power was still down.

Finn and Dylan were thrilled, it was quite an adventure to see their school transformed into a shadowy cozy place and the teachers running around saying things like “The printer’s not working!” and “We’ll have to cancel cooking today!”.
As I walked out, I saw Finn sitting on the floor in the dark, captivated by the stories his classmates were telling about the various adventures they had in the dark. And then a teacher from next door burst into their class room with a scary face on and yelled “It’s a spooky day at school and all the teachers are wearing black and sneaking around so the kids can’t see them… Woooo!!!” and the kids fell about the floor in hysterics.

Back on the farm, I did a walkabout. Pooky the peacock seems to have had quite a few tail feathers broken off in the storm, but he was in good spirits and ate his oatmeal and the kids breakfast scraps gratefully. The ducks and chickens were fine, enjoying the muddy puddles in the orchard.

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Our courtyard garden is very sheltered so it was situation normal there. Some yellow daffodils had sprung up and were nodding cheerfully in the wind.

The forest was a different story. A few trees had come crashing down in the North East corner of our bushland, bringing down a large section of fence separating us from our neighbours property.

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The sheep were encrusted in bits of bark, twigs and brambles and glared at me accusingly, stomping their cloven front hooves when I threw them a fresh new biscuit of hay. The wind had blown the top off the pail storing the alpacas vitamin, grain and molasses mix and I gave them the sodden contents of the bucket as a special treat.

It’s funny but I quite enjoyed our little lock down yesterday. Whenever there’s a storm, our community pulls together and we feel that much more connected to each other, making sure that every one is ok, no one gets left alone in the dark. I read C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to the little ones at night and we wondered about passages to magical lands.

Sometimes when the lights go out, we go in, and there is magic waiting.

You remember how I said in my last post that we were one of the lucky ones who only had a few hours of the power outage last week? Well karma’s a bitch. The very next day after I wrote that post, we were treated to our very own blackout for 48 hours, being one of the only 38 households in our district to be affected by the falling pines trees on our road.

Luckily the candles were just where we left them, and this time I had the Irishman in the house, who made himself quite useful chopping wood, lighting fires, boiling water and transferring it gradually into Finn’s tropical fish tank every hour to warm the poor buggers up.

I took some photos as well but the F1.2 lens that I have on my camera is so ridiculously good that all the photos look 10 times brighter than the reality. It was nearly pitch black in the house once we finished roasting the chicken in the fireplace, as Finn calls it, “caveman style”.

We all ended up in the living room huddled around the fire again, the kids telling jokes in the dark and occasionally glancing at the waning battery bars of their digital devices. You know what is really great in the dark? The sound of the grand piano echoing in the gloom.

This week I’m playing Hans Zimmer’s Time – the magnificent theme from the movie Inception.

I went everywhere with my trusty brass oil ship lamp, the most reliable, beautiful thing.

The next day we bought this monster of a generator which makes a terrific racket when on, it honestly sounds just like a jumbo jet taking off right outside your window, but apparently it is powerful enough to run the whole house. I’m getting an electrician to hook it up permanently next to the mains so that the next time the power trips we can just flip the switch. Very zombie apocalypse. But even though it’s nice to sit around the fire and tell stories, it’s not so pleasant to have a fridge full of rotting cheeses and a chest freezer of putrefying homemade chicken stock and slowly melting racks of our farmed lambs. Nothing more depressing than hearing that drip drip sound of your food melting away in the dark.

Look at that monstrosity! That completes the picture now. We have our septic waste treatment tank, dam, 100,000 litre water tanks x 4, LPG gas bullet and generator. If the zombies come, you’ll want to be on our team. BRAINS!

We’ve survived Kakadu National Park, 20,000 square kilometres of saturated blue skies, burnt gum trees, drenched wetlands. An area 28 times the size of my home country of Singapore. It’s  beautiful in its own starkness but just so mind numbingly vast, what they call the Top End of Australia.

In Victoria where we live, we’re spoilt by stunning, undulating, varied vistas. For example, on the 2.5 hour journey to Mount Buller from our house, you pass by the gorgeous beaches of the Mornington Peninsula, the buzzing hipsters in Melbourne, the golden tinged vineyards of the Yarra Valley, cute little country hillside towns like Yea and Mansfield, then the vertiginous snaking road up through towering snow gums to the top of the mountain.

In the 4 hour drive from Darwin to Kakadu, you just see monotonous blurry stretches of the gum trees on flat land for most of the journey with only the occasional termite mound or dishearteningly boring McMiners town to break up the scenery.

We decided to take things easy because after 3 hours on a bumpy dirt road, all the kids were car sick and the only thing we had seen was an army base and a small patch of swamp with magpie geese on it. Apparently it was another hour to the cultural centre, and then another 2 hours to a waterfall! My head (and bum) hurt just to think of it. I mean, if you drove that far from Singapore, you’d practically be halfway to China already! We gave the cultural centre a half-hearted exploration, had lunch at a truly tacky resort and beat a hasty retreat back to Wildman’s Wilderness Lodge where we were staying, an hour outside Kakadu.

Actually, as it turns out, we had a far better time exploring the area surrounding the lodge as it is part of the Mary River system and has its own billabong and wetlands. The highlight of our stay was definitely the airboat trip. An airboat is like being on a souped up V8 race car that hovers on a cushion of air over the water. It is dead fast, crazy noisy and a lot of fun. The kids screamed with crazy glee as the Macca, the airboat driver, deftly executed turns and chicanes on the swamp, scattering enormous flocks of birds in the air and alarming kangaroos, wallabies, wild buffalo, feral pigs and crocodiles.

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In fact, the airboat was so fast, I feared that we were practically going to crash into the wildlife half the time. In the photo on the below right, you can see the most bizarre stork called the Jabiru. This one was about 1.4 metres tall with a iridescent teal blue face and flamingo pink legs. He had just caught its fishy dinner in the billabong and calmly ate it in front of us as black kite birds circled over head screaming for him to leave some remnants for them.

Speaking of wild buffalo, we were lucky enough to come across two wild male buffalo who were sizing each other up, preparing for a territory dispute. As we watched with great interest, they charged towards each other, and when their horns locked, they both turned at the same time and ran, tangled up straight towards our airboat, no more than 15 metres away!

Luckily Macca had the good sense to whack on the reverse and get us out of their path in a hurry – nobody wants to be smacked by half a ton of wild buffalo! I can just see the headlines – Singaporean family turned into Buffalo Biltong at Kakadu…

Here’s the youtube video I shot of the entire alarming event. The kids thought it was splendid, educational fun though and spent the rest of the day practicing buffalo wrestling moves in the tent.

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The wild lotus flowers are magnificent, velvety petaled, geometric and unexpected, rising majestically out of the muddy swamp.

Oh and the crocs are everywhere. A few weeks before our trip, some unfortunate fellow as bailing water with a pail from a fishing boat when he leaned a little too far over the edge, and a huge 4.7 metre crocodile jumped up and dragged him down into the water as his horrified wife and daughter watched. It was so fast he didn’t even get a chance to scream, and he was never seen again. The police went out and shot 2 crocs and found his remains in both, according to the locals. “He got taken just at this spot here. Ah you know, these things happen.” our weatherbeaten Northern Territories cowboy guide shrugged, “we’ll be right.”

That’s the thing about Aussies. Half of the time they’re freaking out about applying SPF 50+ sunscreen, speed limits, making sure that swimming pools are fenced off like Alcatraz and such, but point out that they live in the most dangerous place in the entire world when it comes to wildlife and insects that will kill you and they’re all “No dramas! Throw another snag on the barbie will ya and mind that redback spider under your coaster!” Finn can recite a list of 20 things that will kill you in under a minute just on our local beach alone – coneshells, blue-ringed octopus, the list goes on…

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It’s a crazy, rugged, cowboy kind of place. Finn got to ride in the front seat of the jeep – seatbelt optional. We often didn’t see a single car for hours in the baking sun. There’s a town called Humpty Doo and its gas station is called Humpty Pump. There’s a place on the Adelaide river that trains crocs to jump 2 metres into the air to catch dead chickens suspended from rods on the side of the boat. I spoke to a teenage boy who pulled out his mobile phone to show me videos of him riding a rodeo bull, where he hung on for 2 seconds before he was flung off like a rag doll and stomped on. “Jeez, that was a bit hairy there!” he grinned.  It’s a mad place. And when I say we survived it, I mean that I’m on antivirals, antibiotics and antihistamines after being bitten by a swarm of insects which led to a dreaded staph infection.

Did I mention the kids had an awesome time though?  The things we do as parents. More to be continued in Part II of our Kakadu travel diary soon…
xxx,
Yours, feverishly,
C

I’m still in a weird, stream of consciousness mood from the steroids and antibiotics. While trying not to get sucked into the rabbit hole of the internet (too much negativity, click bait, comparing and crazy stuff going on that I can’t do anything about), I decided to finish posting my Kakadu photos.

On our last day in Kakadu, there was a knock on the door of our tent and we were informed that someone had cancelled their fishing trip and we could take the slot if we wanted. Finn was so thrilled because he had been told that the fishing boat was fully booked for the whole week. He changed in two seconds, and ran out of the door with me following behind. Then I heard a big thud – he had tripped off the raised wooden deck outside of our room and was shrieking from the mud below. He wasn’t hurt much, just some scrapes, bruises and tears.

This sounds terrible, but my first instinct was actually to feel irritated at him. It was the third time that day that he had fallen or tripped over something and my eardrums were just about to give out. I just snapped at his wailing face, “Finn, stop it! I have had enough of you being clumsy!”. And then I realised I sounded just like my mum. I remember my mother yelling at me throughout my whole childhood for being uncoordinated, clumsy, awkward as well, and I felt really rotten for something that he hadn’t intended at all. Amazing thing, the conditioning we pass down through the generations if we’re not careful.

I took a deep breath and pulled him into the shower, still wailing away, and washed all the mud off. I heard Mark calling the front desk to cancel the fishing trip, and yelled from the shower to hold on. I asked Finn if he still wanted to go fishing. Finn inhaled sharply, looked at me with his big, brimming eyes and nodded. So I squirted some antiseptic on his cuts and off we went.

It was coming up to sunset and the light reflecting off the water everywhere was enchanting. We were lure fishing so we had to cast and reel in continuously. There’s something to be said for repetitive activities. In this modern world, automation has removed the need for us to actually use our hands to do anything over and over again, with the exception of typing.

I found the repeated casting and winding the reel, feeling the sensuous pull of the line against the heavy water, so meditative and peaceful. Losing yourself and your mind in it. Unwinding the frustration and anger of the day.

We didn’t catch anything. Not a single nibble, although the barramundi were jumping all around us, and there were plenty of crocs eyeing us smarmily from across the river banks. And that was okay. Finn is very zen in his approach to fishing. We’ve been out fishing about 9 times and only caught things a third of the time.

I think it’s really healthy for kids to learn about frustration just being a normal thing, just part and parcel of the fabric of life. It’s good to balance out that instant gratification culture we live in where any game you can think of can be downloaded from the app store in an instant and just about anything procured from a google search.

It was also great for me to have that time to think about my own pent-up anger and how most of it was created by my own expectations of how things ‘should’ be, feeling disconnected when my life doesn’t live up to my standards, instead of accepting it as it really is, scrapes, bumps, insect bites, quarrelling, tears, randomness and other ordinary things. Sometimes things just suck and that’s ok too, even if no one on Facebook is posting about it.

The quiet times in the afternoon were my favourite parts of the trip. Watching Dylan drawing outside the tent at sundown, her little cheeks flushed satin-pink from the day’s activities.

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Watching Finn play football (I refuse to call it “soccer” like the Aussies / Americans) in the fading light with the other kids, weaving around the massive termite mounds which are everywhere in Kakadu. It’s cute and touching, how easily kids form these transient friendships when they’re on holiday.

Full disclosure – the Irishman did arrange for us to go out in Darwin on a proper fishing boat the next week and we ended up catching 9 fish between us – golden snapper, salmon, batfish, flathead, cod… Finn was thrilled.

The best thing about Darwin was the magnificent agate red sunsets and the dinners we had on the deck at Hanuman, a casual Indian / Thai restaurant. Otherwise the town was curiously devoid of charm and people. It reminded me of the heartlands in Singapore, monotonous concrete slab buildings, bland urban sprawl, soulless malls.

As you may have gathered, it wasn’t the best holiday ever – I was too itchy from being bitten by insects and not sleeping well at night in the un-airconditioned tent, and the kids were really scrappy for most of the trip. I ended up yelling and losing my temper a lot more than I’m happy to admit. The Irishman was on business phone calls half the time, stomping about on 3 hour conference calls even when we were in the middle of nowhere, looking most incongruous talking about financing and balance sheets in the middle of the outback while the birds cackled in the background.  As in Dylan’s favourite book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, sometimes it’s just like that. Even in Australia.

So I was so happy to get home to the farmhouse this week. Even though it’s chilly here, my bed has got exquisite, soft linens on it and a heating pad underneath. The fresh brisk eucalyptus air is insect-free and I don’t wake up with kamikaze mosquitoes going ‘WheeeEEE!” in my ear. I’ve got a library of fascinating books to read and cookbooks to work through and an abundance of friends to have tea with. I love my adventures and all, but my favourite place in the world is always the ordinary miracle I call home.

You’re in cognac diamonds and a midnight blue silk dress, striding around the vineyard in the howling wind. And then, pretending to prune fuchsias in hot pink silk while the rain drizzles relentlessly. A friend has asked you to appear in a media article and send over some glamorous pictures. The photographs look beautiful but as they are nothing but a fleeting instant in time. A celebration, not a summation, of life as you know it.

If the camera were to pull back and the frame extend to the edges, it would show the tangled mounds of bedclothes, half-filled cups of water and soft toys on the living room floor, for the children have been sleeping next to the fireplace since the boiler gave up the ghost four days ago, precisely on the coldest day of the year. You can see your breath hang in the air and smell the tinge of sour milk from Finn and Dylan’s 4 day-long stomach flu experience.

There is a dead rat decomposing at a leisurely pace in my bathroom wall, and another one, stuck and mummified in my bedroom air conditioner, henceforth christened the Rat-con, waiting for the electrician to get around to him sometimes next week, always next week. In the meantime we turn on the rat-con to take the edge off winter’s bite. And then we turn on the air purifier to take the edge off the dead rat smell. And then we go to sleep praying we don’t die from hantavirus in the night.

Under my dress is a blotchy mess of yellow, blue and purple bruises under my arm and ribcage from when I slipped on a huge puddle of dog urine in the living room after the greyhounds decided that it was too cold to relieve themselves on the frosty ground outside. Mark heard a loud crash and came running, startled to see me on my back, the ends of my hair floating in the dog urine, looking up to the ceiling, quite still. Just like a beetle, he said.

And don’t talk about the horror of the mail which has piled up on the dining table, lying in huge wretched snowdrifts, bills, taxes, scams, advertisements, crumpled and smoothed over, sodden, waiting for our attention when we have more strength, good humour, lighter hearts and are able to feel our extremities again.

But this afternoon, I sat in a chair by the window, bathing in the welcome heat of a sudden sunny spell and watched a little thrush hop from branch to branch of a magnolia tree, every hop fluttering the masses of pale pink blossoms, the colour of satin ballerina shoes. I returned to my book but I kept looking up to see it splashing in the birdbath, the little sprays of diamond droplets glinting in the sun. So much depends on a little thrush playing in the sunshine.

And I thought of Mary Karney, the octogenarian pioneer woman who built our mudbrick house by hand more than three decades ago. Mary visited us this week, in our week of epic squalor. I apologised for the lack of central heating and she shot right back at me “Oh that’s perfectly fine. I never had anything other than the wood stove when I lived here anyway.”

Then she told me a story of a little thrush who used to sit on her shoulder when she lived here. “I used to feed it leftover beef mince, it would eat out of my hand while I sat on the porch. They’re carnivores, you know, the thrushes.”

And Mary looked me in the eye and said “Do you like it here?” and I said, I love it.

p.s. You can read my interview here http://www.gnossem.com/women-we-love/crystal.html

This week was one full of tears and hard lessons. After many months of searching for female companions for our peacock Pooky, I finally found a guy who had two beautiful white and blue ones for sale and I was so excited that I jumped into the car the next day and set off on a solo adventure to Gippsland to collect the girls. I’m not a very confident driver, especially in unfamiliar territory, so I was really proud of myself for being brave and for the gorgeous pair of peahen girls that Pooky was sure to be thrilled with.

By the time I got back home, the winter light was fading fast. I didn’t want to traumatise the peahens by putting them in the rear coop, amidst all the ducks and chickens in the dark. The girls were already quite weary and nervous from their long car journey, so Mark and I decided to leave them in the enclosed orchard, which has a mesh 2 m high fence all around it and a net that goes over the top. They would be safe there until morning, when we could move them, we thought.

And then the morning came, and I heard Mark yelling from outside that the peahens were gone. He thought that they had flown out through the top of the net where there was a hole.

I had that familiar horrible sinking, churning feeling in my gut and I headed straight for the fence to inspect it. There it was, the remnants of carnage. Three fox tunnels. A bitten hole in the wire mesh of the fence. Feathers everywhere marking the last struggles of the peahens. I found bits of wings, bone fragments under the lemon trees, and still refused to believe. And it wasn’t until I saw the stomach of one of the peahens, a soft glistening beige mess in the grass, and its small pearl of a scarlet heart nestled within, that I screamed. The towering eucalypts around the forest held their twisted arms up to the sky and I sat on the cold wet grass and felt like a very bad, careless mother.

This was our first fox attack in the five years we have been here, we had previously been so vigilant with the barbed wire, automatic fox-lights and greyhound patrols. Everyone in our neighbourhood hates the foxes. Even animal lovers, or I should say, especially animal lovers. Our builder who lives across the road from us, would later tell me that the day before the foxes killed my peahens, they broke into his chicken coop. He woke up in the morning and went out with his cup of coffee to feed the beautiful brown chickens and saw 14 headless chickens in his coop. Necks snapped, bodies left untouched.

Noone knows why they do this, all the wanton bloodletting. If you lost a chicken or two to a fox trying to feed herself and her starving cubs, you can understand that. But what sense do you make of the stories that come out of our neighbours? Foxes that sit patiently watching while a mother gives birth to a baby lamb during the night, labouring tediously to bring a tender bundle of limbs and hot breath into this world, only to have the foxes eat the face off the baby and leave the maimed thing to die a slow agonising death while the mother bleats through the night.

Who knows what their reasons are.

Lilian told me that mother foxes sometimes bring their cubs to chicken coops to teach them how to kill. Like training for terrorists. Perhaps why I find the foxes most unsettling is for their resemblance to humans. Other neighbours tell me that the foxes just sit on their patio, watching the people in the house through their beady eyes, an unnerving sight for mothers with small children.

Pooky roosts in the tall trees in the forest every night, safe from the foxes, (the peacocks are much better at looking after themselves than the peahens, who lie in their nests on the ground) but he must have watched the slaughter and he went missing for days. We searched everywhere and we couldn’t find him. Normally every morning he comes to the patio and sits patiently waiting for his breakfast. And he comes running, head a-bobbing if he hears me playing the piano. It all sounds very romantic, but actually peacocks like loud noises and I’ve also seen him follow the lawnmower about transfixed.

Anyway, I played all morning for days, looking over my left shoulder, hoping to see his inquisitive little head cocked to one side, bobbing about with the music. But nothing, just an empty armchair.

Finally on the third afternoon, I came back home after lunch, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of cobalt iridescence and a little expectant face looking at me through the window next to the piano.

Pooky was home. And we’re doing our best to make it a safe home for him. More to come on that, but I thought you may like a video I made of Pooky’s homecoming. I’m playing one of his favourite songs – Spectrum, by Zedd.

Yesterday evening was what Dylan had been looking forward to for weeks –  her school concert, the Penbank pantomime.  She practically shimmered and smoked with excitement the whole day, like a wok full of hot oil.  Last year, we were travelling and we couldn’t attend it, but this year, that injustice would be righted. This year her parents would be there, rapturous and transfixed when it was her turn to glide onstage and shake her bon bon in a feathered toucan outfit, what joy!

Finn was also in the concert, but his attitude was more one of tolerance than enthusiasm. Finn does not like big audiences or dancing.  When I swabbed his face with makeup, he had the same placid gritted teeth expression that our greyhound Coco has when you put her muzzle on. In contrast, Dylan wanted Eye Shadow! Lip Gloss! Cheek Colour! Sparkles! so by the time we finally managed to get out of the door we were horribly late, which resulted in our being squashed at the back of the school gym far away from the stage.

The school gym was packed to the rafters with parents and relatives. The ceiling was festooned with great swathes of parachute material which changed colours in the theatrical gelled lights. A giant backdrop of Melbourne inspired street art made by the students dominated the stage, and pairs of shoes dangled from the rafters in a whimsical installation.

It never fails to astound me, the size and ambition of these Penbank school productions given the scale of the school.  I almost can’t believe that Penbank with its 217 students, is about a twelfth the size of my old primary school, (2700 pupils in two sessions spread across 52 classrooms!). Much of my childhood was spent standing in the hot sun with a thousand other uniformed children, a sea of shiny black ants on a parade ground, either being lectured or hectored. And when I had school concerts, my mum would be lucky if she could glimpse my bobbing head onstage for a second,  especially considering that I was always strategically placed at the back due to my inclination towards general tomfoolery.

Coming back to the Penbank pantomime. I was thrilled to be there. It was really the most charming concert I have ever been to. And, BIG PLUS, there were just handful of song and dance numbers instead of the usual Dead Sea Scroll-length programme I was bracing myself for.

The children had been asked to select electives as part of Arts Week, and the performances were grouped depending on what they had chosen and children from different year levels were interspersed in each performance.

Finn had chosen African drumming so he ended up doing a rhythmic bongo routine with the only teacher on-stage as his dance partner. Yep, that boy is my son. I was always partnered up with a teacher for any high-risk school activity so that if I went off-piste, a swift taser-like correction could be administered before it got out of hand.  To Finn’s credit, he was rather more cooperative than I was, and actually danced or wiggled with a bit of prodding! This is major, for Finn.

And then Dylan the Dancing Toucan made her appearance, resplendent in her tremulous feathered headpiece and fluttery black skirt. She shimmied and smiled so hard our eyes watered and our hearts burst. Afterward she said to me “Mama, I was trying to act cool but I couldn’t stop my face from smiling!” Bless her little face.

My Asian Tiger Mum instincts betrayed me and I zooted up to the front of the aisle as soon as my little ones came on, practically hobbling on hands and knees trying not to block anyone. These school concerts are always a mix of camaraderie (Oh my god, your child was so divine onstage!”) and every man for themselves (Oops, sorREEE!!! I’m just trying to take a photo of my kid!).  Finn was mildly relieved to see me waving manically and Dylan was overjoyed when her wide eyes finally found my face.

After their dance numbers were over, I slunk to the back of the hall and hung out with some parents I knew to watch the rest of the concert.  I could recognise so many of our friends children, and it was  gratifying to see the Prep and Year 1 kids blossom and grow.

My favourite part – the teachers did a dance at the end and Katherine, the concert choreographer declared that they had mucked it up, so the school principal Vivienne made them redo it! I’ve never seen that before! Moral of the story – there’s always a second chance to get it right.

Everyone was so proud and so present.  Sometimes we get so busy that we forget that we are human beings, not human doings. That night, it was all about being. Being there to watch, being there to give, being there to receive. Being part of something full of love and community.

I could just end here. But something else happened that evening. One of my friends was telling me about what a fantastic job that Katherine, the lady who masterminded the whole concert, had done. Then my friend got all choked up and tried to tell me about Katherine’s sister Mandy.  I couldn’t really understand much of it over the noise in the gym hall, apparently Mandy had been very ill and ended up having her arms and legs amputated. The community at Penbank school had raised an incredible amount of money for her, which I had completely missed while we had been away.

This morning, I remembered to look it up on the internet and read about Katherine’s sister, Mandy McCracken, a woman who came down with what she thought was a simple flu bug, but turned out to be invasive Group A Strep which had turned her limbs gangrenous in a matter of days while her husband and children watched, helpless against its toxic spread.

I say “story” not to trivialise or dramatise what happened, but because Mandy and her husband Rod have narrated this sudden twist in their lives in their own voices with such candour and authenticity. In support of Mandy, the wonderful Penbank children made things to sell, donated their earnings and wrote messages of hope.

I know I’m very late to this but if you have a few minutes to spare, I highly recommend you read this Australian article  which is simultaneously disturbing and tranquil, beautiful and gory, prosaic and sublime. And then to say a silent prayer of gratitude for all that we have, to ask that we may heal the past and focus on the present, and our presence. You can also follow Mandy’s progress and get details of how to donate at http://www.facebook.com/InspireMandy

Love & Peace,
Crystal

Last week I turned 35. The Irishman organised a wild Spanish themed fiesta (The Fiesta Dos Virgos!) at our house for myself and my fellow Virgo friend Karen. Karen said that she would cook some Pooky for my birthday and I freaked out. It turns out that she meant something porky, and was referring to an original recipe for Berza Chiponera, a bean, pork and chorizo stew given to her in 1992 when she was in Chipiona, Spain. It tasted much much better than it sounded!

Normally when I hold a party I’m running a hundred different programs simultaneously in my mind’s processor. Checking the progress of the various dishes in the kitchen, making sure the candles are lit, the entryway tidied, the powder room in ship shape, playlist weeded of the Irishman’s guilty pleasures and so on, all the time fending off the Leahy children from messing up my work. Someone once said that cleaning a house with kids in it was like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. That person must have been a Virgo.

So it was a real juicy pleasure to do absolutely nothing before a party for once in my life except to lounge about in my bedroom with an eyeshadow brush and a cup of tea. The irony is that I think everyone almost enjoyed it more that I wasn’t being my usual anal, hovering party mistress self! I had a great time and I think the Irishman can be promoted to co-party organiser from now on, that is if he promises not to wear any more $4 girls outfits ferreted out from the depths of the op shop.

I love that my friends are such amazing cooks. Scallops, prawns poached in oil, stuffed mushrooms, gazpacho, homemade ice-cream, everything was made with such love.
Actually the food could have been takeaway pizza and we would have still had a ball. Our friends are amazing, period.

I’m very blessed to have this crazy Irishman in my life. He has pledged to fill my days with silly ideas, jokes and drama.

Sunday was Father’s Day so it was my turn to stage something festive. We kidnapped or dad-napped Mark and brought him to a secret location. When he uncovered his eyes, we were at the Puffing Billy station in the Dandenongs. The Puffing Billy is an antique steam train established in the early 1900s which ferried passengers from Melbourne to the rural towns in the Dandenong Hills. They had a 3 course Father’s Day lunch special in the first class carriages with lovely old silverware and starchy white tablecloths, which was pretty much the best thing you could say about the lunch other than the old world ambiance. “I’ve always loved boiled dishwashing liquid potatoes and plastic cream sauced fish!” crowed Mark mirthfully as we chugged past the sun-drenched hills and eucalyptus forests.

The kids had “the best day ever” where the highlights were being allowed a soft drink on the train, squashing pennies on the train track (with approval from the train conductor – only in Australia!) and paddle-boating around the lake at the Emerald Lakeside station stop. We actually managed to leave home with zero cash between all of us and while we were waiting in line for the paddle boat ($15 bucks), Sean found a crumpled $5 note in his wallet, I discovered $6.80 in coins at the bottom of my handbag and the Irishman did his part by lamenting loudly about our plight. So loudly and piteously that the bloke in front of us took out his wallet and gave us the remaining $3.20 that we needed and wished us a Happy Father’s Day. Best Day Ever! And Most Shameful Irishman Stunt!

Here is the ecstatic Irishman, full of good tidings to the world and to the charitable bloke in the boat behind him.

And my favourite photo of the day, Dylan and Sean sharing earphones and a sibling moment on the train ride on the way back home.

Happy Fathers Day to all the wonderful, strong, loving, funny dads out there! And thanks to my husband for my birthday party-  growing old isn’t fun sometimes, but somehow you always bring out the funniest, best side of life there is, and for that, you are the Best. Person. Ever.

x,
C

We tumbled out of the airplane like a sack full of puppies onto the steaming hot tarmac at Tambolaka Airport in Sumba, accepted the huge drinking coconuts pressed upon us by our smiling driver and set off on our way to Nihiwatu resort, our home for the next 6 days. The road wound past terraced paddy fields, cashew plantations, villages made of clumps of thatched roof huts, craggy mountains and cliffs falling away to reveal crashing surf in the distance. Pressing our noses up against the window, we watched scenes from within a time machine.

Goats, dogs, chickens and toddlers ambled across the arbitary path with nonchalance. A wedding procession of men in ceremonial ikats led a buffalo towards a sacrifice table, their parang swords swaying from their waists as they strained with the great animal. A bunch of tiny knee-height pranksters jumped out of bushes in front of our car and screamed HELLO and then dashed off giggling. I pointed out to my children the Dr Seuss-like towering kapok trees by the road with their football sized wads of cottony fruit, used to stuff bedding in the tropics. My 7 year old Finn sniggered and said that it should be called the rabbit tree as it looked as if someone had hot glued bunnies to its branches.

When I’m in Bali, the Indonesian phrase I use the most often is “Berapa harganya?” What’s the price? How much? Which is swiftly followed by “Yang mahal!” Too expensive! While travelling in Sumba, the phrases I use the most are “Awas!” Watch out! or “Hati Hati!” Be careful!. And sometimes at particularly thrilling times these phrases can be combined to form a continuous AWASHATIHATIAWASAWASAWAS!!! Maybe I’m fretting too much. Everyone else is chilled. As the Malays in Singapore say, Jangan Tension! Hang loose!

I watch as a man climbs out of the passenger window of the moving truck in front of us and clambers onto the roof to join the 5 small children already crammed on top of the bouncing vehicle. A minute afterwards, the truck passes under a broken electrical cable dangling overhead, sparking with live menace. Somehow the people on top of the truck survive. At this point, Finn turns around and tells me that he must spend the rest of his life in Sumba.

Once we’re safe in the luxurious and serene surrounds of Nihiwatu resort, we settle into our villa like feet sinking into warm sand. The shoes are unpacked and never worn. Our gracious, enthusiastic butler Reuben is quickly adopted into the family and becomes Uncle Reuben to the children. Reuben brings the children an endless array of treats, from french fries and swimming floats to a pair of beautifully hand carved miniature replicas of the parang sword he wears at this waist at all times. Finn gets sword fighting lessons and thumps the bougainvillea outside our room half to death while Reuben eggs him on. Reuben later comes back with an ikat cloth which he carefully wraps around Finn’s waist and inserts the wooden scabbard into. Finn doesn’t take it off for the rest of the holiday, sleeping with his sword under the pillow.

Nothing is off limits here. Finn gets to drive speedboats, ride in the front of a Land Rover, and even gets a diving lesson with a real adult sized air tank, jacket and regulator. My 5 year old girl Dylan signs up for a cookie baking class, has a hair smoothie at the spa, wades around rockpools and makes up cocktail orders. On Day 3, she tells Natalia the Guest Relations Manager that she would like to have a job at Nihiwatu running the Kids Club Programme. Dylan thinks that she can teach children cutlery balancing, flower hair weaving and of course (deep breath) MAKING COOKIES!

Our teenager Sean is the most sedentary of the bunch, initially circulating on a closed circuit of bed, computer and pool, but Nihiwatu works its spell on him and he ends up busting some cool moves on the dance floor at White Party Night and the next morning, he decides to go for a breakfast hike with his dad across the cliff tops to a secluded beach at Nihi Oka.

Unlike Bali where everything has is neatly packaged, parcelled out and available for sale, in Sumba there are no compartments, no separation. You are at one with everything and everything is one with you. Food is handed to you in banana leaves and as soon as you pull the toothpick out, rice bursts out over your ungainly tourist hands and you end up licking your palms without a trace of shame. Chickens and pigs live in houses next to grain stores, toddlers and parents. At the market, piles of sweet potatoes, betel nuts and bananas spill over each other on the grass. We walk around barefoot all day whether we’re hiking across the paddy fields or waterfalls (flip flops just get stuck in the mud) or going for lunch at the beachside restaurant, and at the end of the day the soles of our feet are indistinguishable from the land, darkened with mud, grit and sand. This is life without makeup, at its most raw and vital.

Nihiwatu resort must surely be one of the most beautiful resorts on earth, with its pretty thatched roof villas, panoramic ocean view and hot pink bougainvillea lined rock paths. But more importantly, Nihiwatu is also one of the most responsible. The resort buys coconuts from locals, and instead of throwing away the husks, they feed them and the oil to their biodiesel fuel processor which powers the generators, air conditioners and hotel equipment. Fish is caught by traditional methods by the staff in the morning and turned into free flow plates of sashimi at the bar in the evening. Organic gardens, chickens and compost heaps are a given.

The Sumba Foundation is the resort’s charity and it has reduced Malaria infection rates by 85% in West Sumba since its inception, supplying more than 16 primary schools with supplies and water. Every time we venture outside the resort on hikes, we see the big yellow water tanks with the red Sumba Foundation tank in the surrounding villages, the foundation having provided more than 240 water stations across the land and healthcare to over 20,000 people.

On Thursday, we are invited to a presentation at sundowners on the Sumba Foundation. Health Program Director Dr Claus Bogh, also a senior adviser and malaria expert for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, talks to the resort guests about two of the latest patients the Sumba Foundation has helped – a pint-sized girl, born blind, who can now see again after her cataract operation, and a 13 year old boy who they are helping get a prosthetic limb to help on his arduous walk to school. My children stuff their faces with hot sea salted popcorn offered to them by Reuben and ask us many questions long after the video ends. Why does that boy have only one leg Mama? Where are the parents of those children? Why does everyone in the family share the same bed in Sumba? Why can’t I walk to school by myself like all of the other children here? Good, big questions for little people.

As the days go by, Sumba works its magic and the tight knots in my neck, shoulders, and gut loosen. I start to feel languid, going along with the flow. Even though I’m not remotely sporty, I sign up for a long hike to Blue Waterfall, one of the many glorious waterfalls in the area, and the Irishman and I trek for hours through the rainforest, the sweat rivulets down our neck merging into a continuous wash in the heat. Just when my ankles are about to give out, we hear the soft white noise of crashing water in the distance. The canopy of trees thins out and we arrive at a majestic waterfall, spraying explosively from a hole in the cliff side and churning a whirlpool into the surface of a topaz blue lake.

I have never been one for swimming in natural waterholes, but I can’t get peel off my sticky shoes and t-shirt fast enough. Plunging into the crystalline pool, the Irishman and I swim out towards the spout and climb onto a boulder just out of its torrential path. Overhead, the cliff face is covered with thick, dripping moss. Little water icicles dangle off the emerald covered rock, eternally forming and reforming, as beautiful as diamond shards on a Christmas tree. The waterfall roars high over our heads and sends iridescent arcs of droplets which drench us from head to toe as we shriek with laughter.

The next day, I wake up early and clamber onto a fishing boat with the Irishman and Finn and head out to the Fish Aggregating Device seventeen miles offshore, which we have heard so much about from Chris, Nihiwatu’s resident fishing expert. The FAD sounds fancy and we expected something akin to a floating Death Star in the ocean, but it turns out to be a bamboo raft, anchored with oil drums to the seabed with a weight. Algae forms around the FAD and that attracts small fish, which then draw bigger fish. As soon as we put out the lines, an entire shoal of about fifty huge mahi-mahi fish turn up for the bait. A French guest on the boat reels in the first one. The Irishman has a go at the second one, but not without a good eight minutes of wrestling with the fish, a huge female mahi mahi.

I decide to have a go. Chris hands me a rod with something tugging gently at the end. It feels deceptively easy as I start turning the reel, but that’s because the fish is still far away and swimming towards the boat. And then all of a sudden, I feel a giant yank at the end. “What’s that!” I yelp. The supremely capable Chris leaps into action, shouting orders in Bahasa to the boatman to steer towards the fish and simultaneously issuing me a rapid-fire stream of instructions. Hold the rod upwards, stabilise the end against the rail, lean over to let some slack in the line and quickly reel it in on the downward motion of the rod. Don’t stop reeling! When the fish starts another violent bout of struggling, let him have some more line and when he is exhausted, start the process again. Don’t stop reeling! Ok, stop reeling! Put the rod up! Now point the rod down.

This is like ballet, a technical dance with its own peculiar rules and rhythm. I learn to waltz with my fish. Forward I go, spinning like a maniac, backwards I arch, feeling the fish take my weight like a tango partner. My left arm cramps and aches as the fishing rod is on the wrong side for a right-handed person, but the show must go on.

After what seems like an epic struggle, the fish tires and allows me to gain on it, pulling it closer towards the boat. It makes one final leap in the air, and we all gasp. It is a giant dolphin-like creature, golden with blue spots. Chris bellows more complicated instructions to the boatmen, manouvring the boat into final position, as I bring the fish as close as I can to the side. It thrashes and flashes just under the surface of the water. Chris runs over grabbing a spear and stabs my dance partner in its side and brings it up to the deck and hollers for everyone to stand well back as the giant fish spasms all over the floor. He manages to wrestle it into the ice chest and one of the boat boys quickly slams down the lid and sits on it as the fish thumps angrily inside. Finn watches with fascination, and perhaps a touch of morbidity.

Later on, back at the boathouse, we measure my fish and it is the biggest of the haul, 11 kilos and 1.3 metres, as long as Finn. Its glorious neon yellow colour has faded out of its skin. I feel a shard of sorrow. Over the past few years of living on the farm, I have become intimately acquainted with my food, learning to slaughter our free range chickens, ducks and sheep. So why does taking the life of this fish feel so different? It was a wild, abundantly available fish who had lived a long healthy life, caught in one of the most ethical ways, due to become food for the resort with not a bit of it wasted.

But I was connected from my sternum to this magnificent creature with a taut line vibrating with its energy. It was a worthy opponent. As I remembered the glory of its metallic cobalt and gold skin, I thought about our pet peacock back home and said a prayer for the fish. And for us, that we would not waste the precious, worthy life that we had taken.

So many more memories. Having a bath with Dylan in a gigantic bronze outdoor tub. Watching a boy not much older than Finn learn how to use a harpoon. Seeing horses and buffaloes bathing in the waves. Watching the ruby red sun sink into sea from the Nihiwatu yacht. Eating the freshest fish on earth with rice and a fiery tomato sambal on the beach.Learning to surf with the Irishman under the watchful guidance of Chad and Kaieve, Nihiwatu’s two bronzed resident surf gurus, in the famous Nihiwatu break, one of the best in the world. The wave is a thing of beauty, a perfect tight roll, running left to right along the reef. When it gets big, it hurls against the boulders, smashing into a fine mist. I swear you can taste the negative ions in the air.

On our last night, the staff of Nihiwatu arranges for a special surprise dinner for Sean’s 16th birthday. We are led to a special birthday table, ensconced within walls of palm fronds and with a giant bougainvillea rising out of the centre of the tabletop. When we go around the table, taking turns to say what we are grateful for. All of us have our own highlights;- diving, hiking, fishing, cookies, but the children agree that this has been the most amazing holiday they have been on and say that they never want to leave. Sean says that he is most grateful for Reuben, and just then, Natalia, Reuben and the rest of the staff turn up with a birthday cake and sing him happy birthday in English, and then in Bahasa. Sean is presented with a wooden birthday plaque, an ikat sarong, a pair of board shorts and big hugs from everyone.

Later that night, I look at Finn as he sleeps bare chested, one hand on his wooden Kris, and think who is this Robinson Crusoe child? Will there still be golden monster fish in the ocean for him to dance with when he grows up? Whether it is possible for this Sumba to exist in a rapidly changing world. The night air is velvety and outside a frog starts his baritone chorus, breaking the crisp stillness. The next morning we pack our bags in a surreal stupor, six days went by in a heartbeat. As we walk out of the door, I notice that the kids have erased the sand door mat outside our deck which used to read “Welcome The Leahys” and have written “We LOVE Reuben” in it. Nihiwatu, we will be back. In the meantime, we are happy just to know that you exist.

x,

Crystal

*All photos with the Nihiwatu watermark are copyright of Nihiwatu, all other photos are mine

Every spring soft bursts of magnolia flowers erupt like flower popcorn on the row of trees in our garden, exploding forth in glorious profusion day after day until the branches are completely laden with beauty.

Magnolia Grandiflora. Even the name is beautiful and stately.

There is a term in interior design, “visual reward”, and I always think of it when I walk down the corridor linking my office to our kitchen with my cup of tea, where a magnificent magnolia tree is the visual reward at the end of that well trodden axis. It is most stunning at dusk when the fading light turns the huge blossoms a surreal luminous silvery pink.

All forms of happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition and renewal. Our driveway is now lined with lush, velvety petals each the size of a baby’s hand. They fall in droves now, lying in the snowy drifts, until the Irishman rakes them into the compost pile, where they will rot, break down and be spread on top of the roots of the other living things in our garden.

We will not feel sorry when the magnolias are gone. They never really leave us, but just change manifestation, dissipated into the good earth of our garden and tinting my nighttime dreams the palest pink of springtime hope.

A farm is like a jealous lover. I’ve been travelling for the better part of the past two months to Singapore and Indonesia, and when I finally returned to Cable Car Estate, oh what fun lay in store! We were busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.

First the alpacas needed to be sheared. If you have any doubts about the transformative powers of a haircut, just look at our alpacas! This is them before, all plump and happy in the orchard.

And this is the very traumatic shearing process, where they have to be hung and drawn like a scene from Game of Thrones while the shearer gets to work. I was told many times that this is the safest and most humane way to do it because if they aren’t bound up, they can seriously injure themselves. Did you know that alpacas can kick in ALL directions unlike horses? Well Mark found out when Mandate gave him a nice shiner on his left leg.

And these are our boys after the shearing, two scrawny little embarrassed deer like things! They didn’t recognise each other at first and spent a long time spitting in each others faces, which was quite funny. There must have been so relieved to get all that furry wool off themselves though. There’s now 4 big bags of alpaca fleece in our shed, ready to be spun into something. I’m think a lovely big throw for our library room couch to snuggle under while watching a movie.

Leave us alone, the alpacas convey wordlessly.

And then the next drama was the arrival of baby lamb Sparkle (Dylan’s idea of a name). We found poor baby Sparkle all neglected lying by himself next to a rock in the field and our alpacas standing over him nudging him gently and trying to get him to stand up. Not knowing which one of the sheep was his mother as both of them seemed equally clueless, we bundled the little guy in a towel and brought him into the house to feed.

The little guy loved being hugged and stroked, and followed the kids around wherever they went, until we thought we’d have to change Dylan’s name to Mary.

It was really cute but stepping in steaming warm puddles of lamb pee in my kitchen tempered my enthusiasm a bit. Thankfully over the next few days we managed to reintroduce Sparkle to her lackadaisical mother in a catch pen and she’s working hard on being a better mother. We’ve renamed the mother Britney Spears as she still spends most of her time smoking behind the shed, dragging Sparkle around from place to place randomly while he’s trying to take a nap and being a general Loo-La.

Poor Sparkle! He (or she) needs a bit of therapy I think. Speaking of therapy, Pooky our peacock then decided that everyone else on the farm was acting up so he decided to run away the day after Sparkle arrived! We got a call from a friend who was having coffee down the road who had spotted him causing a commotion across the main road and it took 5 grown people, the Irishman and two vineyard nets to catch him.

We put the silly bugger back into the covered orchard and the first thing that happened was that one of the Muscovy drakes came over, jumped on his back and attempted to give him a good shag. Who needs to watch Prison Break when you have Farm TV here??

So I apologise for the long break between blog posts recently but sometimes, life just gets in the way. In the meantime, here are some photos of the beautiful weather we’ve been having. Just last week we had a technicolour sunset so extraordinary that my entire instagram feed was full of the Mornington Peninsula sky. Sometimes when the farm is kicking your ass, it’s good to be able to look up and just breathe!

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When I was a kid, my little brother used to follow me around the house asking me questions. “Why?!” he would say. “Just because.” I would reply, my nose buried in some how-to manual or Gerald Durrell novel. “Why?” “Because!” “But why?!!!” “I said BECAUSE!!!!”. It would go on and on, driving my mother absolutely demented.

Well this Christmas was a pretty existentialist one. Why? Because.

The day before Christmas Eve, Mark and I had taken the kids to a circus in Melbourne and we were driving home when I received a call from Sean. “Mooom.” he said. He sounded really groggy and strange. “Mom I’m really hurt. I had an accident on my bicycle.” “Are you going to be ok Sean?” “I don’t know Mom.” And then this lady came on the phone and said “Hi, your son is covered in blood on the side of the road, no cars were involved but I need to take him to hospital now.” We didn’t have time to think and just sprang into motion, calling our neighbour Tony who was down the road to pick Sean up and turning the car around and heading for Frankston Hospital.

Sean ended up needing 3 operations and 2 nights in hospital between then and Christmas Day but thankfully nothing major was damaged, except for his face which needed plastic surgery having 3 deep gashes and 4 smashed front teeth which require root canals over the next few weeks. He looked like a huge wet mess though.

Once word got out about Sean’s accident, everyone kept on texting me, why? How? Sean doesn’t remember skidding or hitting anything. What we do know is that the two metal front spokes that attach the wheel of the bike to the frame appear to have had a manufacturing defect that made it snap. He went over the handle bars and hit the road on his face, making impact with his helmet, cheek and chin. Thank goodness for that helmet.

Sean’s biological mother and her family flew down from Hong Kong on Christmas Eve to see him arriving at 2 a.m. in the morning on Christmas Day and we checked Sean out of ER at 9 a.m. sharp. after the kids had opened their presents. Dylan rushed in and gave him a very solemn hug. All the damage is on the other side of Sean’s face so you can’t really see it in the photo below, other than his swollen lips.

It wasn’t a perfect, Kumbaya, Martha Stewart Christmas by any means. Christmas was a maelstrom of driving to the hospital, buying last minute presents, wrapping things, carrying on with our Christmas eve party for 17, frantically making guest beds and moving furniture around and runs to the pharmacy, cooking for two families, cleaning more crap than you can believe, dogs getting into the rubbish and kids going batshit crazy everywhere. Every two hours Sean’s wounds needed to be swabbed and sluiced, every four hours he needed to take a cocktail of meds.

Dylan watched three episodes of Eloise when things were crazy busy and I was feeling sort-of-but-not-really-guilty about using the TV babysitter but then again she tottered out of the TV room and pronounced “Christmas is about sharing and caring for your friends and family.” and went off to check on Sean. Which it really is when you think about it.

So shit happens and you ask the universe Why? But the answers are as changeable and subtle as the wind.

Because on one level this was a horrible, terrible, no-good Christmas but yet within it Sean had one of his biggest wishes come true – that he could spend family with both of his families instead of having to choose.

Because Dylan saw Sean’s mangled bike but she still said that she wanted to learn how to ride anyway.

Because Finn made a new best friend in Sean’s little half-brother from Hong Kong and more importantly, learned to forgive when he deleted Finn’s Terraria world on his iPad that he had spent a year building.

Because the amount of help, support and friendship that poured out from our friends and community around the world has been frankly quite staggering. I guess Facebook can be a good thing too. Thank you thank you and thank you everyone for everything.

Because we did our gratitude ritual around the table and everyone had something to be sincerely grateful about.

Because it was actually really cool to have Sean’s mother’s family with us and show the two little Hong Kong city boys life on the farm.

Because life goes by too crazy fast with kids sometimes and this Christmas every day felt like an eternity.

Because life is so precious and so bloody delicate.

Because Sean knows that he is so loved.

Mark wrote me a note when we were dating many many many years ago. I still keep it tucked into the frame of my mirror. It says “Beautiful things do not come into being easily, but are formed by intense heat and lots of pressure.”

This Christmas I asked Why and and the answer was because there was beauty, despite everything. Happy Christmas everyone.

When we were kids, my dad’s favourite saying, which was always dispensed at the most inappropriate and ironic times, was the exclamation “One Happy Family!”. It drove us absolute bonkers.

I could be launching myself off the railings of our split level dining room to perform a WWF piledriver on my howling brother, yelling “CALL ME UNCLE OR ELSE!” and my dad would saunter into the living room, glance over and pronounce “One Happy Family!” and shuffle out of the door with his doctors bag. Or all three of us kids could be scrapping in the back of the car like an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, pulling hair, kicking and screeching at the top of our lungs and in the front seat my dad would reach over and pat my mother’s hand and say “One Happy Family!”, a irritatingly beatific smile on his face.

Now that I’m a mother of 3 Itchy & Scratchies, I often roll my eyes to the heavens and think “One Happy Family!”, and this week has been a never-ending parade of One Happy Family moments!

For instance, our Cost Centre #1 Sean Leahy, whose daily chores include retrieving duck eggs from the coop every morning, seems to have overlooked his duties for no less than 5 weeks, and we have now got 17 new ducks in residence after we’ve spent the last 6 months trying to get rid of our existing ducks… Sean was informed that his new task was to get rid of the entire brood of ducks and hence has become very proficient in Gumtree advertising skills and screening calls from random weirdos.

And then there is Cost Centre #, Dylan Emerald Leahy, who despite being told numerous times about the dangers of medicine, was caught snacking on grape flavoured kids antihistamine tablets in the middle of the night and washing them down with a little chaser of a bottle of Sambucol syrup. Dylan is now on a complete Screens & Sugar ban and is now doing manual labour in the apple orchard as penance.

And of course not to be ignored, is Cost Centre #2 Finn Leahy, who is also on the Screens & Sugar ban after a large variety of misdemeanours involving tree branches, poking, water guns and not listening. So far he has adjusted marvellously to his new life and has discovered new ways to annoy his sister. Such as discovering a box of hair extensions which he realised was key to his transformation as Smugolas, the Self-Satisfied Elf Princess, cue prancing around tossing his extensions in his little sister’s face, declaring “I’m the prettiest princess in this house!” and tons of waterworks from his dejected and very threatened-feeling sister who spent the morning yelling “No you’re NOT A PRINCESS!” and bedecking herself with more tiaras and princess accessories than a Barbie convention.

Behold, Smugolas in all his glory…

So we had lunch today, cooked by CC#1 Sean, whose new chore is to make family lunch on Sunday. The lunch comprised of extremely spicy red Thai chicken curry, some slightly soggy rice, and a liberal dose of screaming.

Finn: “Oh I’m so pretty! Why did you make me so beautiful Mama? I’m the loveliest princess in the house!”

Dylan: “NO YOU’RE NOT!!! I AM!!! YOU’RE NOT EVEN A GIRL!!!!”

Finn: “I’ve decided I’m going to be a PRINCESS now! Because I”m the prettiest child in the family!”

Dylan: “NO YOU’RE NOT!!! LET’S HAVE A VOTE”

Sean & Mark: “We vote for Mum, that’s a majority Now shut up and eat your lunch.”

Finn: “So that means you tie with me Dylan! And I’m still the prettiest and you know it….”

Dylan: “WAaaaaaaAAAAAaaaaAAAA!!!!!!” (massive waterworks)

ALL: “SHUT UP DYLAN!!!! STOP IT FINN!”

Me: “One. Happy. Family.”

The End.

This week I wanted to write about our vineyard’s bumper crop of grapes which we harvested on Tuesday, the novel that I’ve finally completed and the massive wooden sculpture that Mark built in the garden. I tried to write but nothing came. Instead, I sat at my kitchen table this week with a bowl of fat figs, tearing at their soft flesh in a dull fog of tangled grief.

On Monday this week, Lee Kuan Yew died. In other words, for all of us Singaporeans, there was a death in the family.

Lee Kuan Yew, LKY, or The Old Man as many Singaporeans called him, was the founding father of modern day Singapore and reigned for 31 years, won 7 elections and continued to influence our politics until this Monday, when he died at 91 years of age.

He was our cranky, brilliant, ruthless and charismatic Asian father who hectored, chided and guided us our whole lives, pushing Singapore relentlessly over the course of my childhood from Third World to First.

By the time he stepped down in 1990, our tiny city state had become one of the most prosperous, orderly countries in the world, lauded the world over as an economic miracle.

Over the past week, tributes have poured in from around the world. These past few days we’ve seen US President Barack Obama hailing LKY as a “true giant of history”, British PM David Cameron recalling Margaret Thatcher always said that Lee Kuan Yew was the leader she admired the most in the world. Henry Kissinger said that it was one of the great blessings of his life to have had a friendship with the great man, and this weekend Kissinger will be flying into Singapore for the funeral together with Bill Clinton.

India has declared a national day of mourning for Lee Kuan Yew on Sunday with their flag flown at half mast and all entertainment withheld. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/asiapacific/india-declares-day-of/1747620.html

It’s all everyone in Singapore can talk about and my entire facebook feed is covered in eulogies from Singaporeans of all races and religions.

However in the corner of the Australia I live in, I grieve alone. Most people here have only the foggiest notion of who he was. “Nope,” my physiotherapist said, bending me into a pretzel. “Don’t know much about that guy.” Neither did my neighbours, the school mums I bumped into, or my friends in Melbourne.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Australians regularly goggle in disbelief when I tell them that we speak English as our first language in Singapore (their 5th largest trading partner). The Australian newspaper, even went so far to write a column criticising ABC for being so dumbed down that it had failed to cover such a monumental story. “Our ABC asks Lee Kuan Who?” the article headline goes. Which prompted an indignant retort from ABC today, saying in essence, oh yes we did, or at least we did more than any other Aussie media outlet.

Anyone who knows me is familiar with my views on Australia. How beautiful I think it is. How privileged we are to live there. How much I admire Australian values of love for community, environment, sport and work-life balance.

But of course it’s not an utopia. Take Australian insularity for instance, the schools my children go to do not offer Chinese as a second language option. Instead, they offer Bahasa Indonesia. This is sheer myopia. China is Australia’s number one trading partner. Indonesia is not even in the top 10. “Oh but we’re close to Indonesia.” some say. “It’s useful when we go on holiday.” Unfortunately, too many Australians only think about the existence of the world when its time for them to go on vacation. And don’t get me started on the sad state of opinion poll politics here. If I were to agree with Lee Kuan Yew whole-heartedly on anything he said, it would be these words “I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of mind – an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow.”

What most fascinates me about LKY are the paradoxes.

1.) Insignificance breeding significance.
All our lives Lee Kuan Yew told us how insignificant we were. Singapore was but a speck of dust on the windshield of the world. We had no natural resources, no common history, no common racial ties to bind us together. Because we knew we were insignificant, we had to work harder, faster, smarter and constantly look outwards at what other countries were doing to emulate their successes. In 1960, Singapore’s GDP per capita was US$428. Today it is US$56,284, higher than America’s and one of the highest in the world.

2.) Lack of freedom on one level and freedom on another.
The West has always been horrified by what they view as the loss of inalienable freedoms in Singapore. But yet most Singaporeans feel like they have much more basic freedoms than the West. As a young female, I was free to run down the streets of Singapore by myself to meet friends at whatever hour wearing whatever dress I liked without fearing for my safety. I could withdraw money from street ATMs at midnight without even looking over my shoulder. My parents never worried about me getting killed by a gun, taking drugs or being raped. As Lee famously said. “You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.”.

3.) Hyperarticulation leading to Inarticulation.
Lee Kuan Yew was a champion debater, known for his articulation and wit. Watch him take on the American press when they ask him about Vietnam and marvel at how he dances, dodges and lands his killer blows. My favourite part, 7.45mins in, when an interviewer attempts to put words in his mouth and Lee Kuan Yew says “May I say what I mean myself in my own form of words? I think Americans have — I think it is a friendly habit of trying to help a person think for himself but I would rather do my own composition if I may.” He was our Original Gangster, even rejecting a US$3.3m bribe from the CIA with style, asking them to give Singapore US$33m in aid instead. However his style of leadership discouraged debate and critical thinking. Singaporeans have few chances to exercise their muscles of critical thinking without fear of recrimination or stern rebuke. Today Singaporeans lack soft skills in the workplace and struggle with expressing independent ideas and criticism.

In 2014, Singapore topped 131 cities globally to become the world’s most expensive city to live in, a pulsating city studded with Michelin-starred restaurants, monumental shopping malls, sky trains and futuristic parks.

Success however, comes with a price. In our case the trade off was a growing soullessness, sterility and obsession with material success. In a vacuum of ideology and ideals, most of us are motivated by the blunt instruments of greed and fear.

A Gallup poll in 2012 reported that Singapore ranked as the Least Emotional Country in the World with only 36% feeling either positive or negative emotions on a daily basis. The countries closest to us are Georgia, Lithuania and Russia. Emotions are just not an accepted feature of Singapore life. And don’t tell me that it’s an Asian thing because Hong Kong and China rank far, far higher than Singapore, in fact they are right smack in the middle of the list of 150 countries.

In fact, it could be precisely because we are so emotionally repressed and have so few avenues to express healthy emotion, that the death of Lee Kuan Yew has galvanised the entire country into a 24-7 spectacle of outward grief.

Right now as I write this, there are people who have been queuing for 8 hours to pay their last respects to the man. Most of my friends have been in that queue at some point this week. I’ve seen their photographs on Facebook, looking happy even though they are in the sweltering tropical heat. The line snakes for kilometres, extending all the way into Chinatown.

Was he perfect? No. Was he feared? Yes. Was he loved by Singaporeans? Indisputably. That includes me.

I belong to a generation brought up by absentee fathers and he was a substitute father to all of us. After having run therapy retreats for a few years, I observe that most people are more damaged by fathers that didn’t care than fathers that cared but were too harsh.

Yesterday at family dinner, we cracked open a bottle of our own wine to celebrate our harvest. Swirling the wine about in its glass, Mark asked our six-year old to sniff it and identify the notes. “It smells like strawberries and… maybe Lee-Kuan-Yew.”, she pronounced emphatically, uttering a sentence never heard before in human history. She must have overheard myself and Mark discussing his death and legacy this whole week.

I hope that Singapore finds its feet again. Even more so, I hope it finds its soul. Our great leader has passed and this week I mourn for our nation’s loss but in a balanced way, I hope. While I admire the man, I also see how things could be different. I do not want my wine to smell like 91-year-old authoritarian, but today I raise a glass to you Lee Kuan Yew, our supernova, our goliath-fighting David. Respect, love and gratitude.

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All pictures from The Straits Times