I heard it takes 1 day to adjust for every hour of time difference -> that means 17 days for us? I think that’s just an exaggeration (well, at least for me). I feel quite well after a couple of days of returning to Melbourne. But on a second thought..! Mom and aunties are still battling it out fiercely in Indo, so may be it just depends..

When I said I was going to the Canadian Rockies and then cruise Alaska, many friends exclaimed ‘Wow how fun and exciting!’ imagining I’d be roaming and having an adventure backpacking in the wild. But no, it’s actually a guided tour with a group of 30 other uncles + aunties from Indonesia. Not personally a fan of a guided tour myself, but since that’s how the aunties roll in Indo and the whole point is a holiday with my Mom and aunties, that’s what it’s going to be.

Not that it’s not fun/exciting, but that it is a different kind of fun/excitement.

First Impression

So I flew to Vancouver to meet my Mom + aunties and the others in the Indo tour group. I arrived in Vancouver airport 6 hours prior. The first impression was ‘Vancouver looks just like Melbourne!’ With time to kill, I looked for a prepaid card. To my disappointment, in the whole international and domestic airports, there was only 1 store selling it (it wasn’t even a shop, it’s a currency exchange booth that also sells sim cards on the side). There was a 7-11 that normally sells it, but they’re out of stock. The lady at the currency exchange told me their system is down, so that left me no options to get a prepaid sim card at all.

I couldn’t believe that’s all they have and went to ask a few of the Information counters around the airport. One of them raised her eyebrows and hands and said ‘I know. Unbelievable! I know.’ So I know.

Initial disappointment in this country, but then I didn’t know what await me in the coming days and weeks. That tells me first impression doesn’t last. For that matter, any impression doesn’t last. It comes and goes, changes and changes back all the time as you learn, see, experience and think more about something/someone.

Reverse Culture Reminders

Finally the Indo group arrived and we had dinner and were brought to a hotel. There’re about 30 people in total and the tour guide tried very hard to arrange families/friends to have rooms one next to the other. But for us (Mom and I, and 3 aunties), our 2 rooms are separated – by 30 sec walk 😛. To my surprise, the tour guide later called me up to apologize that he didn’t manage to have our rooms next to each other. I told him it’s perfectly ok, some distance might be good. I didn’t understand the big deal of having to all come together, even the rooms we’re in have to be next to the other. We’ll be spending the daytime all together, some personal space at night time may be good. But then I forgot this is a collectivist culture where my family and fellow countrymen are from.

The same thing happens throughout the tour during meal times. He tried not to ever separate the seating for families/friends. He shared how he was reprimanded in one of his earliest tours. A father told him ‘You must be new in this. Do you know this trip is the very few times I get to sit and have meals with my children? Keep us together.’ So, meal time is a very personal matter.

Lessons Learnt on the Rockies

Which has nothing to do with the Rockies. Hahah.

Lesson #1 is on GINSENG. Yes, guided tour, surely they will bring you to places like this, I was told. But I do learn some things. Apparently Asia’s ginseng and North America’s ginseng have different benefits. Here’s a summary of what I remember:

More related to the Rockies, we went on long journeys by bus overlooking very pretty scenery. The tour guide told us one day to pause and look at the scenery first before rushing to take photos. Also, as the bus ride along, some didn’t look at what is beautiful right beside them left and right, but they looked at their mobiles instead. Aren’t we like that in life sometimes, ignoring what’s good and true and been offered right in front of us and engrossed in the trivial instead?

Having said that, even the best scenery gets boring after some time, although the time it takes varies between people (Mom was unimpressed after awhile, meanwhile one of my aunties was mesmerized from the start to the end in an 8 hour Glacier Express scenic train ride in Switzerland a few years back). Mountains again,.. mountains again. Greens, and more greens.. Glaciers again,.. and glaciers, again! Now that’s just true with everything in creation. The beauty runs out, as it were. Eventually it will. Because they’re only pointers to what’s ultimately beautiful and actually infinite. The creator, not creation – purer, higher, ever more increasing with time – God is inexhaustible. He’s the endless end everything points to. If you’re able to see that, then every enjoyment in life carries you beyond the enjoyment in themselves and you’re then able to truly enjoy them. As Matt Chandler said in one of his talks, the joy doesn’t just remain in the gift alone but it rolls up to the creator who’s the giver of all that’s good.

Another thing I noticed as I was gazing at the passing mountain ranges – the enormity of it. As I looked and looked, I think I lost sight of how big the rocks really were in relation to us. That big enormous rock, how big is it in relation to say, a car, if I were to place it on it? Have you ever felt that way? Say you stand looking at the vast ocean in an endless horizon, or in a huge space of nothingness in the desert, or something like the Grand Canyon. In one sense you know they’re of course big, but how big? You lose sense of their proportion in relation to you. That’s what I felt. We’re like that with big things, you get used to it and you forget its size (and your size for that matter). I’m like that with God.

On another day, I was sitting at the front in the bus. When I woke up, I saw the windscreen stained all over with insects’ carcasses. As the bus traveled 100s of km, multitudes of insects at different times flapping their wings towards the bus happily to be smashed to their deaths. Aren’t we like that too, sometimes just flapping happily, unknowingly crushed to our deaths because we don’t know better. In things that matter, ignorance isn’t bliss, is it?

Remember how the tour guide worked hard to keep us in our family/friends groups? I saw the unhappy faces of the receptionists in one of the hotels when he insisted on reshuffling what’s been allocated in the system so that he can keep rooms next to each other for the different groups. Everything else aside that can be said about this, I see this person knows his audience. Never mind the looks people give you, the arguments you’ll have in the guests lobby, the impression you leave, you’re single minded in getting things done a certain way. For him, it’s keeping the tour group happy. Not just in hotel stays, but in meals, he carried and distributed cabe belibis!!

Many in Indo eat things with that chili. Could it be an offence in other cultures for you to bring that to the restaurant tables? Of course, especially in fine dining – I heard he’s been chased out once as the chef said ‘are you saying my cooking is tasteless? Get out and go back to your country Indo if you wanna keep eating your chilies!’ That’s why as I said, he knows his audience and whose approval he’s seeking. This peculiar situation aside, I think I am reminded to know my audience too, especially when things aren’t easy.

Some things learnt from the tour guide. Now the driver. There’s actually another Indo tour group in this trip. But we usually arrived earlier at a destination because we’ve got a fast driver. In one of the times we passed the border between Canada and USA, he got angry saying we’re behind time because people keep going to the toilet. Before that, someone in the group had initiated an additional tips for him for individuals who want to give extras (the tips were already included in this tour package so there’s no obligation to give more). So we passed around an envelope on the bus and then that kind someone sealed it and it’s passed to him. When he got angry later on at the border, someone said it’s because what’s in the envelope was too little. Not sure if that’s the case, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. It’s logical to get angry thinking people who don’t blink to rampage on branded goods will skimp on tips, what lowly characters, he may think. Just may be.

One thing it reminds me though is that it is work based (getting something because it is earned). Isn’t it how things operate in this world, you behave because you’re after something? Say, you do well and be helpful because your wage is at the end of the service. Or say, you give so you will be served well for your upcoming trip/stay etc. I earn it because I work for it. Or, I earn it because I give. Therefore if at the end of it, you don’t get what you think you deserve, your attitude is changed just like that. Likewise when you’re not served as you think you should be. Your response is decided by the others because your principle is work based. That is only natural in this world. What is unnatural and from a different world is the concept of grace – unmerited favour – and that happens to be what I’m taught because I hold to the Christian belief (grace is a distinctly Christian concept). Because I have been extended grace by God who loves me when I rebelled against Him (knowingly or unknowingly, actively or passively), I am to extend grace to others too. Because I have been given not what I deserve but what I need, I should do the same and pass that love on so others may see the source of true goodness. Difficult and counter-cultural, so it is good to be reminded now and then.

The Family – the Purpose of My Trip

Having left my hometown since I was 11, I haven’t spent much time with my family. I remember being homesick in the initial years, but as my mindset is molded to align more with the individualistic society I grew up in, I got used to being away and independent. Sad to say, I had also gone through the period when I looked down on the ways things are back home (not to say there aren’t indeed better cultures than others – i.e., not all cultures are equally right and good, as Ravi Zacharias said that in some cultures they love their neighbours, in others they eat them – but that I was wrong for dismissing their ways of thinking and doing things without first making the effort to listen and understand where they’re coming from). Thankfully, I think (I hope) I treat them better now.

It is easy to despise your origins when you’ve gone to places faraway, experienced much and presumed you are in the know in every aspects of life than them and that their perspectives are faulty therefore aren’t worth your time. It may be right, but even then they are worth it and it inevitably involves you being patient and listening in. Also to bear in mind, to a large extent you owe it to them to be where you are. There’s no credit to take since you don’t choose to be born into a family who is able and willing to send you abroad to study. For one, I know all I have is given, so it is for me to give back where I can.

And hey, it doesn’t even take much. Very early on, I already see how small favour to you can be a big help to them. Simple things such as helping with directions to their room if it’s not right next to yours, taking the time to go over to their room and help them with the WiFi setup on their phones, speaking on their behalf when they’re buying ice cream and don’t understand English. Just try to pay attention to what might be helpful to them.

Needless to say, it is not always easy to live with your family, even when it’s just a few weeks of holidays on the move. I guess people struggles with different things. For me, I find the Taiwanese TV series playing at the background very annoying 😡. Baffling to me, but Mom enjoys it somehow, although I believe it is actually bad for her (or anyone else for that matter) to fill your mind with hundreds of episodes of utter nonsense. I am especially averse to the hysterical women of no reason in those shows. I don’t actually watch it, but their screams and shrieking at the background hurt my ears each time. What’s worse is I have actually seen a correlation between the drama in the lives of people who watch it and the hours they spend watching those shows. May my Mom never follow suit to replicate in her life the foolish nonsense that is Taiwanese soap opera. Anyway, enough with the soap opera talk.

During one of the lunch times, I heard Mom and aunties talking about the past. Person A starts comparing her life with person B, mentioning that her married life was full of duties for the big extended family while person B is free of all that. Person A had to do the laundry by hand for the whole family when the maids weren’t around. Then person C weighed in saying that’s nothing, her life as a commoner is nothing like you fortunate people with good lives. The conversation was more animated than I can recount here, but you get the idea.

I said to them it is meaningless don’t you see? You think your life is hard, but another person thinks your life is good and hers is worse, and so on and so on. Firstly it is an endless trail. Secondly, (and actually firstly) there is no use to even start comparing because you don’t really know what the other person really goes through. I may think I would be happy if only I’m in your shoes, but the fact is you yourself are not happy when you’re truly in your own shoes anyway. All it does tell me is that firstly we don’t know, and secondly we are chasing after the wind if we’re counting on a change in outward circumstances (i.e., exchanging with someone else’s life situation) to finally make the day for us. It never does for anyone anyway, just look around.

Anyway, the main purpose of my trip is to spend time with my Mom. On one of the nights, I told her since it’s my birthday, can I request something? She said sure.

Melly: I’d like to ask for your time, that on every night, you ..

Mom: Every night I give you a back rub??

Melly: (I was thinking lol, that would be nice 😆) No, read a booklet with me.

Mom: Oh.. what booklet..?

She wasn’t very keen because she guessed it’s probably some Christian stuffs (which is correct – it’s ‘Two Ways to Live’ written in Chinese). But then, in the case of giving someone a gift, your performance shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not you like it, should it? I mean if your intention is purely to please the person and not yourself in doing it, then you would be willing to do one thing or another regardless. And that’s what Mom promised and what she did later 🙂 (though it’s not every night, but we did what we could).

As a means to get to know each other more, we also played Get-to-Know games, one question per night. It is good – what a simple way of knowing someone better! Here’re some that I can share:

Qn: Would you rather be blind OR both deaf + mute?

Mom: Deaf + mute! Blind is torturous, people may let you eat poop and you don’t even know. Or laugh at you you don’t even know. (What about deaf, you won’t know either?) You can’t hear anyway, that’s fine.

Melly: Deaf + mute. Sight is precious to me since I have bad eyesight since young (probably after winning staring into the sun competition with my cousins! 😣).

Qn: Would you rather lose all past memories or being unable to form new memories?

Mom: The latter. Past memories with Dad were beautiful ones.

Melly: The former. Past memories are better forgotten.

Qn: A nickname you had?

Mom: A-lang (from the word ‘Holland’, because her eyes were blueish as a baby)

Melly: Chua Peng Tang (Tjoa Rice Bucket, because I ate a lot of rice)

Qn: Secret talent?

Mom: Can wake up at 4 am to go to the wet market.

Melly: Can seriously eat loads of rice.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about my first week of the holiday – the Canadian Rockies trip. I’m likely to be as long-winded with the second week of my holiday – cruising Alaska. 😬