A recollection of my first days Down Under, in Adelaide, South Australia. It was my first time to leave my homeland, the Philippines to study and live in another country. It was scary and fun!
My mother has always believed that I will go far. By that, I reckon she was thinking more literally rather than figuratively (as in the Tagalog idiom “malayo ang mararating”) although the latter has been a constant hope. Anyway, her belief in my eventual geographic destiny stemmed from her most unforgettable memory of me as a baby. That brief episode has been retold time and again to my growing thrive of nephews and nieces as they research their grandma’s earliest if not the fondest memories of us, her kids, their parents.
The story went like this: one morning, she was in the neighborhood “sari-sari” store across the road from our house when she heard the loud, successive honking of a bus which regularly passed our street. When she turned around to see what the fuss was about, she saw the driver craning his neck out and shouting to nobody in particular: “Hoy, kung kanino mang anak ire, ay pakikuha naman dine sa gitna ng kalye!” (Hey, to anybody whom this kid belongs to, please get her out of the middle of the road!)
My mother looked at the star of the public transport commotion and sure enough, to her utter 1960’s horror, it was nobody else but…MOI! Bow. Yes, me, the second kid who hadn’t learnt how to walk yet but by sheer determination, strong baby muscles and some guardian angel instructions perhaps, managed to crawl down the stairs without a hitch and ended up on the middle of Evangelista Street to check out the wider world out there.
“Oh, wow, what is this big monster coming towards me? Oh, cool…a bus!” Scre-e-e-e-c-c-c-h-hh! To the relief of the stressed-out driver, (bless him for not running over me), my aunt came rushing to my rescue. Yanked me out of the limelight and swore that she was just gone for thirty seconds to pee. And how on earth did I end up there when I still couldn’t walk…blah-blah-blah, excuses, excuses…haha. “Hello, Auntie? I was a Darigold baby, don’t you remember?” (Hmm…I think I just gave away what generation I belong to. Sh-h-h.)
Today, she fondly (proudly?), retells the story to her grandchildren. Especially lately, when I have officially made her forecast come true: I have gone far. Far away from home. I now live in South Australia, married to a local Aussie (slang for Australian).
But my adventure Down Under started when I fortunately snatched a chance to study here via a scholarship. Given the freedom to choose the university in which to complete my master’s degree, I readily picked Flinders University of South Australia. The decision was easy to make. Initially, a friend had bombarded me with descriptions of Flinders and Adelaide since she happened to have studied there, too.
Second, I knew I did not enjoy big city living (based on a four-year Manila stint). In short, I was more of the “promdi” (from the province) variety. Third, from the brochures given to us, SA presented the lowest living costs compared to the other states in Oz. Lastly (call it serendipity), I was facing this big framed poster of Adelaide while I waited for my turn at the screening interview for the said scholarship. Gazing at that vision for an hour while trying to calm down the butterflies in my stomach might have inspired me to blurt out splendid answers during the question-and-answer portion. I passed. My fate was sealed.
The flight Down Under went by like a dream. Or perhaps I was really dreaming for I slept the whole time in the plane going to Sydney, tired from completing tasks back home, “despedida” parties, last minute packing and unpacking, hurried goodbyes and the unspoken dread of unchartered territories. I was going to live in another country for the first time. I was tired, anxious, excited, sleepy_ all at the same time.
Before I knew it, the poster that was Adelaide had come alive before my eyes. Clean streets, neat houses, green yards, gardens, trees and flowers I haven’t seen before…oh yes, I was abroad! I instantly liked what I saw but after a while, a question popped in: “Where are the people?” I didn’t see people walking except for one old, white woman waiting to cross the street. Moreover, we breezed through traffic. I was in another planet! Pinch me, please.
After a quick orientation, we were most hospitably dumped at the university dorm which was to be our temporary accommodation while we look for a more permanent dwelling arrangement. I succumbed to sleep at once, dreaming of the household I left behind. I was awakened by pangs of hunger. I looked at my watch. Eight o’ clock. In the morning? It was still bright outside. No, that cannot be. I was sure I didn’t sleep that long. I looked out the window. Yes, the sun was still up. What the…oh, it was summer. Longer days, shorter nights.
Another thing that struck me aside from the light was the…silence. God, I had never heard silence that silent. As in you could hear a pin drop, the contracting of wood beyond the ceiling. What planet is this? Some unfamiliar chirping from outside broke the novel sound of silence. The sun finally set around nine in the evening. Welcome to Australia!
By the third day inside the university campus, my two new-found Filipino friends (other scholars who chose to study in Flinders as well) and I were feeling something unknown to us before. We were sick of eating bread and biscuits. We needed…rice! Our native intestines might have been wondering why they had not seen the staple diet for what seemed like forever. There was only one thing to do: get out of the uni confines and look for rice. So where was the nearest sari-sari store? Out of this desperate craving came my brilliant idea that we should venture out in search for dear, precious rice. “Ibalik n’yo kami sa Pilipinas!!!” (Bring us back to the Philippines!)
We walked around until we saw a bus stop in the distance. Aha! We crossed the very empty uni road and stood on the pathway, hoping that a bus would soon come by. Fifteen, thirty minutes, one hour passed. No bus in sight. At last, one came but just sped us by. We didn’t know what to do next.
On that third day in Adelaide, we were totally clueless about bus schedules. That in order to board a bus, you have to be at the right bus stop at the times specified in the schedule; that you have to hail the bus so that it will stop for you, and that on Saturdays and Sundays, you have to wait one hour for the next one to arrive. It was a Sunday, the uni was on summer break, and we didn’t really fully master our welcome kits (where some copies of bus skeds were). All we knew was we had to satisfy our Pinoy tummies or else we would forget the lyrics of the Philippine national anthem. “Bayang magiliw…where are you?”
But then, by some stroke of luck and impatient wandering, we stumbled upon another bus stop a block away where a bus pulling in just in time with a sign that read “City”. The new world beckoned. I had to remind my two comrades-in-rice that we had been walking in circles for two hours already so why not board this one and get somewhere.
Assimilation by observation, that was my plan. We followed the persons queuing to buy tickets from the driver himself. Another new discovery. Here, they have no “konduktor” plying to and fro to collect bus fares. Like robots but with senses on cue, we followed the other passengers. We saw them inserting the ticket they bought into this rectangular machine near the driver before taking a seat. Aha, technology! Feeding the ticket machine was peanuts, but I was mortified when it made a sound, vomited the ticket out and blinked at me with this red X light.
The old driver told me to insert it back again. The same thing happened. What the…why didn’t it want my ticket? I was getting uncomfortable standing there and everybody was facing and looking at me from their seats. The driver glanced at my ticket and said, “Follow the arrow”. Oh, gee…so there was an arrow to tell me which direction I should put the ticket in! Hello, scholar? Okay…there, ticket validated. Out of the unwanted limelight and unto the nearest empty seat, quick! Wow, the bus was spacious and clean, quickly changing my trend of thought.
Inside, we became silent. The three of us were unsure of how to go about the next segment in the day’s bus adventure. After about thirty minutes, the houses metamorphosed into big buildings, the street became wider and more vehicles were on it. My friends looked at me, as if asking, “Ano na?” (what now?) I looked ahead. The bus slowly pulled into another designated stop and several passengers stood up to go. I looked to my right and lo, and behold…Chinese images of lions and dragons were waving from across the street. My IQ went on hyper mode. Chinese. Chinatown. Asia. Rice! (“Para!!!”)
I quickly stood up and happily signalled to my friends to just follow. When we got off, that was when we read the sign, Central Market. I excitedly told them my joyful deduction that there should be rice in there. Like kids on their first day of school, we nervously crossed to yet another unchartered domain. Minutes later, guided by our heightened sense of smell and rumblings from our Asian tummies, we were wolfing down plates of rice with an array of familiar greasy Chinese delights. For the first time in three days, we had rice and we had noise around us. Never mind that they were a collection of varied accents in English. We all drink Coke, anyway. Burp.
My first encounter with a bus and that first trip in an Adelaide Metro bus were, of course, followed by other journeys. Other modes of transport, other modes of thinking and feeling, other quests. Not for rice. But for rise of the self.
My mother’s right. This is far. Far away. Far out! Now, I talk to myself. Yes, soliloquy, that’s the word. I write some of them. It helps quell the noise in my mind amidst the wonderful silence of this place called Down Under. Kaya’t__ “Abangan ang susunod na kabanata…” (Stay tuned…)
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