five

My female owner arrived on Sunny Brisbane exactly five months ago. When she first arrived, apprehensive and somewhat reluctant, she wished she was able to look into the future to see where she would be in one month’s time and half a year’s time. Knowing how the future would unfold can be soothing to the nerves at times. Of course, if you look into the future and realise that you are going to end up in an accident, that’s not particularly exciting. Some would argue that you can then take precautions to prevent or minimize the outcome.

So, five months sped through. There were ups and downs for her. Most of her downs were related to school work or missing her hometown. The ups were times when she could tell that she made a difference in her clients’ lives or when her friends from Singapore sent messages to ask how she was and to encourage her.

Five months on, my female owner can’t say that she knows Brisbane very well. She still gets lost in the city, doesn’t know the bus schedule, and hasn’t bought more than 10 clothes/ bags/ shoes from the shops (excluding groceries or food, or the time when she went to Gold Coast for a getaway). She watched a grand total of one movie in the cinemas, half-watched one full programme on Aussie television (The State of Origin – Aussie football or something), and only knows one radio station (ABC Classic). Even then, she doesn’t know what FM it operates on. She wonders what “Modern Australian Food” means and catches no ball with much of the slang. She muses at the locals who think that Singaporeans speak Singese and are thus, impressed with her “fantastic” English. She is genuinely amazed at the number of clients who can tell that she is from Singapore (looks like her attempts at sounding more aussified have failed miserably). She walks around like a true-blue Singaporean, with minimal extra clothings (i.e. no sweater or warm clothings, because she forgets to bring them out) and causes others to wonder why she's not cold. "Sufficient fats" she explains.

According to what she set out to do…

She has renewed her relationship with God and has been spending more time praying and reading the Bible. Of course she still struggles with being consistent, especially when the day’s busy or when she had a bad day. Sometimes, her negativity comes back and she gets depressive or emo but the frequency and intensity are not as severe or debilitating as previously.

She has not really honed herself musically. The occasional practice on the flute, but not as intense as previously (lucky housemates!). But, she probably made it up by being more adventurous in trying out new recipes. So at least she is picking up some new skills.

She hasn’t really served in any area in church yet, although she did sign up for an outreach ministry. But then, they needed her to get her bible study leader to agree to that and my female owner never got down to that. So it’s still status quo. However, she has been using MSN to help some of her friends think through some of their struggles. Some has feedback that she should venture into MSN counseling. Hur hur. Combining work and play?!

Slowly but surely, she is aligning her life and values to be more Christ-like. Definitely not an overnight change, but a life-long process of being a better Christian.