RA: I find myself sitting back, 

watching life with a bemused attitude.

It is like I am in it, yet separated from it.

That I engaged in it, yet am not fully given to it.

A bemused attitude.

For instance, I was at Costco, standing in line,

When a woman came up behind me.

Instead of staying behind me on the queue,

She stood parallel to me.

Her cart suggested she was ahead of me.

It the past, I would say, no way,

No way is she going to break the queue.

However, yesterday, I thought, I could let her go first.

It would not affect me any.

Or I could watch what she would do next.

I moved my cart an inch to show her I was ahead of her.

She moved hers.

I thought, she was giving me the message;

She was ahead of me.

It intrigued me,

What made her think she has the right to go before me?

Could it be the migrant thing?

I obviously look very Asian.

At any rate, I waited.

I wanted to see what she would really do.

The door opened,

She pushed ahead of me.

I laughed silently to myself.

She is a tough one.

It takes a tough one to get past me.

I look mild but I am not mild.

I have streetsmart sense of survival.

I used to think, if my late husband and I,

Were in survivor times.

I would survive, he might not.

For instance, waiting with a crowd to get into a bus,

I would not be left behind, he would be.

I have done that, been there.

Fresh out of the monastery,

I was waiting with a crowd for the bus.

When they rushed in, I got on also.

It was such a jammed pack,

I did not have to stand.

I could just let go and the bodies pressed against

Me would hold me up.

In the heat of Malaysia,

One could smell the sweat in the warm air.

Did it bother me?

No.

I am a fighter, a survivor.

I remember an incident,

Where my mother brought us to visit another town,

Traveling by a cargo ship.

There was no space to sleep on.

We had to wait until the lid of the cargo hole closed.

And snatched places to sleep.

I waited, mat in hand with the others.

As soon as the lid came down,

I, an eleven year old, fought with the others for a slot.

I got my mat on and secured a spot.

And then looked at my adversary,

A man I fought with for the slot.

He looked at me, amused.

Later, I saw him in town, he was a policeman.

I bested a policeman.

Rather, he likely let me have it.

I am a fighter because of my roots.

We were a family with thirteen children.

My parents had to struggle to feed us,

And got us all educated.

There was no one to help us.

My father had to beg for the slightest bit of help from his father,

Who was well off according to those days.

My father’s mother died when he was small.

He had a stepmother.

His father was a mean man with a terrible temper.

When he crossed his father,

refusing to marry a girl with rubber plantation,

His father went after him with a kitchen chopping knife,

Ready to cut him down.

He ran away and was homeless for months,

Living on things he managed to fish from the river.

My family was a unit alone,

We had to do it alone.

It taught me early in my life to be independent.

To depend on myself.

Alas, it did not give us much faith in humankind.

Those around us, growing up.

Few were truly loving or genuine.

It did not help that my mother taught us,

That friends and neighbors only want one thing,

To use us.

That was her experience,

And it was true for her growing up,

At an orphanage and later.

But it made us strong.

No water, no electricity,

camping out in the wilds,

I am able to do it.

Very little faze me in that area,

I am not one of those,

Delicately brought up.

I grew up, like a wildflower.

Pretty much on my own,

With my siblings for company and support.

And little parental guidance.

My mother had too many children,

My father was always busy traveling,

being a salesman.

We actually prefer it that way.

For when he was home, he was a tyrant.

He learned from his father.

As he grew older, he wanted relationship with his children,

Whom he terrorized with his anger.

And it was too late.

The fear he instilled was too deeply rooted.

I kept saying, I am very simple and very ordinary.

Spirit just told me,

I was judging according to human standards.

Measured by wealth and status.

But no, I am a rare breed.

One of the dying ones.

I came from the old school.

We are tough, and strong.

We are able to endure a lot.

In times of adversities,

We pull through with strength unparallel.

Then at age seventeen,

I insisted and entered a monastery.

After I left, without giving it much thought,

I acquired a tourist visa to this country,

Met my husband and stayed.

All that is not too ordinary.