Where is home?

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Auckland City seen from the North Shore

Image Copyright: Kath Liu 2011

For me, this one quote perfectly sums up what it feels like to return to your country of origin, be it permanently or for a quick visit, after a period of living overseas. For me, it feels like something has grown and it no longer fits like it used to, like a favourite t-shirt you used to wear all the time that accidentally got shrunk in the wash. Of course, the process of change from being overseas is a lot slower and more subtle than an overnight laundry incident and you often won't even realise that it has happened until you go back for your first visit. The process of trying on your previous life for size, as it were.

When I'm asked where I'm from, it's a challenge to answer in absolutes. I was born in Cornwall, England but I did all of my teenaged growing up in Auckland, New Zealand. I was already a bit of a mutt before I moved to Taiwan but now I feel like I've morphed into something else entirely but goodness knows what that actually is. All I know is that when I went back home to NZ for a visit recently, I felt different. Stretched. Slightly misshapen. A little odd. There were the obvious things that happen that made me notice, like the fact that I forgot that in NZ you follow road traffic conventions and keep to the left on escalators (in Taipei it's the reverse and you stay to the right-hand side) and I was shocked and appalled by the cost of living and how it had risen since I had last been back - mind you I don't think you need to have left the country to feel like that when  inflation is 5-6% per annum and wage increases are 1-2% per annum.

But there were other things that made me feel weird, like after having had a couple of glasses of wine at the wedding I was there for, I found Mandarin phrases bubbling up through. I found myself nearly saying "為什麼?" (wèishéme?) instead of "Why?" and other strange linguistic anomalies. I found myself feeling unusually intimidated by hoodie-wearing youths even though I knew that they weren't at all dangerous. I found myself feeling like a stranger in a place where I used to be absolutely comfortable - feeling exactly the same way that I did two years ago when I first moved to Taiwan. I guess if I was going to be staying in NZ longer than I was you'd say I was experiencing reverse culture shock but since I was only there for a week, I'll just call it feeling out of place in a familiar environment. 

It's a fairly lonely experience too. There you are, feeling like a fish out of water and everyone else around you has no idea you're feeling like that. Why would they? You've come back home. It's natural for them to assume that you feel like you've just slotted straight back into your old life and everything feels comfortable and familiar.  So how was I supposed to tell anyone? If I responded to "I bet it feels good to be home!" with "Actually it feels really weird and I don't feel like I fit in here anymore..." then I run the risk of accidentally offending someone or making it sound like I wasn't enjoying the fact that I was back in NZ which I was, absolutely. Being back and seeing all of my dear friends and spending time with family was fabulous. The ability to shop in regular stores who carried my size was brilliant. Going to the supermarket and seeing more cheese than you could shake a stick at was lovely. Nothing was wrong with New Zealand, what was wrong was me.

Living overseas changes you, it has to - you have to adapt to a new environment, usually learn a new language and get used to all sorts of crazy things. I mean, this makes sense logically but the emotional reality of these changes can sometimes be harder to accept. Going back to NZ pointed out to me that I wasn't the same person who left in 2009 and that felt very strange. If I wasn't that person anymore then who was I? Where did I fit in? Where was home really at? There is something rather unsettling in not really knowing which country is your home but it's also kind of exciting because it opens up all sorts of possibilities. If I can count England, New Zealand and Taiwan as my 'homes' of various types then doesn't that mean that ultimately anywhere we choose to settle could be considered home? Life without boundaries can be terrifying but also freeing. Maybe that old t-shirt no longer fits but there are many more out there that will.

Have you ever had this experience of going back to a place you used to live in and feeling like a stranger? How did you deal with it?

Sunday Salon: Home and books

Home. Where is home? What is home? For a good deal of folks, this question is too obvious to even give much consideration to but for those of us who have chosen the expatriate life this can be a bit of a tricky one.

St Austell, ©2003, Myra Davey

I was born in Cornwall, England and lived the first (almost) thirteen years of my life there. I lived in the same town the whole time, went to school with pretty much the same people the whole time and had all of my extended family within shouting distance. It was comfortable. I loved Cornwall. I felt connected to the place that included but went beyond the ties of family and comfort and Cornish pasties. Even now, if I see a picture of a Cornish coastline I get a little lump in my throat - it's not only the people who were important it was also the land that I felt connected to in a way that's hard to really put into words.

Auckland's Sky Tower
© Kath Liu, 2008

Then, three months before my thirteenth birthday, life got flipped on its head and we moved to New Zealand. We spent the first few months wandering around, seeing where we would settle. This involved me going to three different schools within six months. Luckily, by the third school, my family had decided where we would be and I ended up staying at that school for five years. As soon as I knew we were staying there I was gripped by the desire to settle again, to grow myself the roots I no longer had. To grow a history with people - I had known all of my friends in Cornwall since I was seven years old, sometimes younger - became my primary objective. Here I wasn't sure yet where I belonged, whom I could call 'friend' and this left me feeling incredibly unmoored. I felt like a tiny boat, bobbing around in the sea with nothing to anchor me down. It didn't help that my parents were going through exactly the same thing as I was and were a touch pre-occupied with how they were dealing with settling in a new country to see how it was affecting me or my brother.

Soon enough though, I started to feel settled in New Zealand. I found connections and started to grow back those roots, little by little, into the soil of my new home. My confidence level was not what it was in Cornwall and so I shied away from clubs and school plays (something I had always been involved in before) and I retreated more into the world of books. Reading became a major source of comfort for me and even though what I was reading wasn't anything of literary note (Sweet Valley High, anyone?) it helped me navigate the treacherous waters of becoming a teenager in a new country. Without anyone to guide me on the intricacies of female interaction, I devoured this sort of book and took mental notes on what sort of things were expected and which sort of things were not. Reading almost became the replacement Aunties I no longer had access to (remember this was the late 90's and email and Skype and Facebook were not there to help me out!)

Me in front of Taipei 101
© Art Liu, 2008

Sixteen years and another move to a different country (Taiwan) after that I am finally going back to Cornwall. Ever since the day I left, I have not been back. I planned to on a couple of occasions but family circumstances held me back. Now, these circumstances no longer exist and I am returning to England.  I left as a 13 year old not knowing I would not return for such a long time, not realising I would never see some much loved family members ever again, unaware of the life and adventures that lay ahead of me. I return as a 28 year old, knowing what I've missed and what I have lost, but also what I have gained from being in NZ and Taiwan. It's going to be a very emotional trip but one I just cannot wait for.

So the concept of 'home' for me is a very fluid thing. It is the place I was born and spent my childhood, it is also where I grew up and became a woman and it is the place where I currently live. All of these vastly different places, Cornwall, New Zealand and Taiwan, are all 'home' to me. The 'why' and 'how' changes but the fact that they are all home doesn't. I feel a strong connection to each and every place. This makes me sound splintered but actually I feel enriched. There's something from everywhere that makes me who I am and I'm really grateful to have had the life I have and through it all, I have had books by my side, providing an escape, providing guidance and being at times the one thing I could rely on.

Where is 'home' for you and how have books helped you through some of life's challenging times?

Sunday Salon: Thinking of Christchurch

This week has been a very sad one for everyone who is connected with New Zealand. As you will no doubt have heard, on Tuesday 22nd February a 6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch, NZ's second largest city. This quake was smaller than the 7.1 that hit Christchurch 5 months ago but it caused infinitely more damage as the quake was shallower, buildings were already weakened by the previous quake and this time it struck in the middle of the day. As a result, a lot of my reading time has been directed towards keeping up to date with the happenings on the various news websites and on the BBC World's news updates.

Photo credit: Richard Cosgrove/The Press

Thankfully, the few people I did know down there are all alive and well but many aren't. The latest numbers put the death toll at 147 but there are still many people missing. As a Kiwi sitting half-way across the world it's really hard to know that there's nothing much you can do. There are thousands without the basics of power or clean water, one third of all buildings are likely to be condemned and torn down leaving people without homes and there are more injured people than the medical staff know what to do with. I strongly wish I could go back and help them out but I know I'd only get in the way. I've donated money of course but when something like this happens, I really just want to roll up my sleeves and help out.

Photo credit: Don Scott/The Press

Natural disasters happen all over the world and affect hundreds of thousands of people every year. Luckily, New Zealand was fairly well prepared for an earthquake (although I think it's fair to say that up until the September 2010 quake, nobody would have dreamed it would strike Christchurch) and is a prosperous nation with a stable and effective government. It could definitely be a lot worse, but it's still a nightmare for those stuck in the thick of it. These people are in my thoughts and have my sincere sympathies. Kia kaha, people of Christchurch. I know you will make it through.

If you would like to know more about what's going on, check out:
Stuff News Website
NZ Herald Website
TVNZ Website
Twitter and search for the #eqnz hashtag

If you would like to help out, have a look here:
TVNZ donation information page
Stuff News Website donation information page
Julie at Anglers Rest
Join in the 2 minutes of silence on Tuesday 1st March at 12.51pm (UTC+13) wherever you are and send good vibes, prayers and love to those affected.

Small country, big talent

Image credit: Here

The question "Where are you from?" often causes me problems because it's not an easy answer of just one country. My identity is split between the land of my birth, England, and the country I feel is home, New Zealand. To make matters worse, I now live in Taiwan which is rapidly becoming 'home' also. By the by, the answer to the question is that I'm a British Kiwi - which sounds simple enough until people want to know how much British and how much Kiwi. But that's another story.

Image Credit: Here

The Kiwi part of me was stoked to recently read of two literary successes from our small part of the world. The first was that Mr. C.K. Stead has won the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award in London. This is a new literary prize worth 25,000 pounds sterling building on previous success of the Times' short fiction pieces that appear weekly in the Sunday Times Magazine. Our Stead was up against some stiff competition - the complete long list includes some of our finest contemporary fiction writers:

• Richard Beard - James Joyce, EFL Teacher
• Nicholas Best - The Souvenir 
• Sylvia Brownrigg - Jocasta 
• John Burnside - Slut's Hair 
• Will Cohu - Nothing But Grass 
• Joe Dunthorne - Critical Responses To My Last Relationship 
• Petina Gappah - An Elegy for Easterly 
• Jackie Kay - Reality, Reality 
• A.L. Kennedy - Saturday Teatime 
• Adam Marek - Fewer Things 
• Charles Mosley - Constraint 
• Chris Paling - The Red Car 
• Ron Rash - Burning Bright 
• Simon Robson - Will There Be Lions?
• Kay Sexton - Anubis and the Volcano 
• Helen Simpson - Diary of an Interesting Year 
• C.K. Stead - Last Season's Man 
• Rose Tremain - The Jester of Astapovo 
• Gerard Woodward - Legoland 
• David Vann - It's Not Yours

Mind you, he's been around the block. Born in Auckland, New Zealand (my second hometown) in October 1932, CK Stead (CK stands for Christian Karlson has been writing since his twenties and has a long list of published work covering short stories, poems, fiction and literary fiction. If this local hero wasn't academically intimidating enough, he was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Auckland until he retired to write full-time. 

Image Credit: Here

The second Kiwi who has won international acclaim is kind of the opposite to CK Stead. She's female, young and the work that has gained her all the attention is her debut novel. Eleanor Catton's novel The Rehearsal has been causing a stir in literary circles for a good while now and this won't be the first big prize she has been up for. In fact, this stellar novel has been given the nod for the UK Society of Authors' Betty Trask Award, named best first book of fiction in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards as well as being long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Now it has been long listed for the Orange Prize. 2009's Booker winner Hilary Mantel is on the same list. I think "Phwoar" just about covers that! I've been wanting to read this novel for almost 2 years now (it was published in 2007) so I have finally taken action and ordered it from the university library. It will be showing up here as a review in a month or two, no doubt!


My heartiest congratulations to both of these Kiwi writers. You prove once again that although we might be a small country, we've sure got some big talent!

Where I've been

Mucho apologies for being AWOL for so long! I've just spent three glorious weeks in New Zealand after having been away for eight months. I'm now back in Taiwan and trying to get my head around being here again which is proving to be a little more challenging than I first anticipated. I was worried that a trip home would throw me out of whack and send me tail-spinning back into culture shock when I touched down here again but it's actually done something worse: it's landed me in Limbo Land.

Limbo Land is the place I'm sure all expats end up at one stage or another, that weird space of not quite belonging in one place or the other, not knowing where exactly it is that you feel most at home and feeling utterly torn between the two places. I am there. New Zealand has old friends, familiarity, a language I speak, a culture I understand, beaches, fish n' chips and greenery. Taiwan has new friends, opportunities, a chance to become a more interesting person, convenience, excitement and the most kick-ass food you will find anywhere. It's an emotional tug of war between home and adventure.

I know it will settle down as soon as I'm back into normal routines and life but until then I'm just going to have to put up with floating around here in the undefined. Never mind - here are a few shots of the beautiful New Zealand for you to enjoy. If you've never been, seriously consider adding it to you places to see before you die. It's something else.

Browns Bay, Auckland New Zealand

Bethell's Beach, West Auckland

Balmain Reserve, Devonport, Auckland

Unashamedly JAFA

I was stuck in traffic on the Southern Motorway this afternoon on my way back from Parnell when I was suddenly struck with how much I love Auckland. Which, I admit, is not the first place you expect to be when caught by this kind of realisation, but there I was, on an on-ramp, waiting behind about 50 other cars for the ramp signal to turn green for me. It obviously helped that it was one of those stunningly flawless Kiwi summer days where the sky is startling blue and the sun is searingly hot even through the windscreen. Undeniably, on days like this Auckland is at her best.

It's funny how much you take for granted when you get used to a place. It's really struck me this time upon my most recent return from overseas exactly how bloody lucky us Kiwis are to live in this country. There are a stack of awesome countries out there but on the beauty front, I think good ol' Noo Zulland has it. I was on the MOTORWAY for the love of God. Possibly the least attractive place in all of Auckland, or even the whole country... but still gorgeous.

Those of you who live in this mighty city and those who live in the rest of NZ - I strongly encourage you, next time you are out and about to look again. See it like you're seeing it for the first time. If you can't do this, you need to get out of the country to come back and truly appreciate it. Those of you who don't live here - come and see it for yourself. If the motorway in the biggest city looks this good - imagine the rest. 

New government in NZ

Photo source: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/polling-booth.

So National won the election and today Prime Minister Elect, John Key, announced his new Cabinet. It's not the way I wanted the election to go, but the voice of the people has spoken and this is reality for the next three years so I guess I will have to put up with it.

On the "voice of the people" - I have to just make one comment. Voting for a party based purely on the fact that you fancy a change and you're bored with the current government who has done nothing drastically wrong in the last nine years or because you don't like Helen Clark for purely superficial or personal reasons is NOT a good enough reason to vote her out of office. But ah the joys of democracy when even the least well thought out and impulsive voice is heard alongside the others at equal volume.

Perhaps we were swept up in the excitement and calls for change in the American election which was only three days before our election. Perhaps the calls for change spilled over into our psyche and "change" for change's sake seemed like a good idea? Who knows - it would be interesting to see if you could quantify the effect that had on our election outcome. It's hardly the same though is it - changing from Bush to Obama is barely comparable to our situation. Helen Clark was a thoroughly competent and intelligent leader. One who kept us out of Iraq, one whose party has improved the welfare state, abolished interest on student loans, set up KiwiSaver and KiwiBank. I take my hat off to her.

I have no problem really with the direction of people's vote - so long as they make and intelligent and well-informed vote. Not one that goes something along the lines of "I think Helen Clark looks like a man so I'm voting National". In a world where not everyone gets to have their voice heard, it's important, I think, that we take this kind of thing seriously. Especially when electing a bad government can have such a devastating and lasting effect on the country.

I wish John Key and his new government all the best and hope that he can keep up the good work and build on the solid foundations that Labour has put in place. I also wish that some people would be a touch more thoughtful and mature with their vote, but like I said earlier - such are the pitfalls of democracy - there's no accounting for the 'idiot vote'.

Book Review: Relative Strangers by Emma Neale

Ever since the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11, 2001 there has been an ever increasing body of literature which has come to be referred to as "Post 9/11 Literature". Although my investigations into this field have only been cursory so far, it has captured my attention. As part of a wider field of trauma literature, post 9/11 literature deals with the Western world's processing and making sense of the atrocities of this day.

The majority of critical attention paid to post9/11 literature has been focused on American literary responses, however when I read Relative Strangers by Emma Neale, a NZ novel, it seemed to me to fit this field.

Relative Strangers starts with Chloe being found in Colin's lounge. She has wandered in there in a state of shock after a series of traumatic events have unfolded in her life. Colin, whom she has never met before, comes home to find this strange and bedraggled woman with her infant son, sat on his couch looking through his personal effects. This the story begins as the reader unravels the narratives of both Chloe and Colin. Coming together under unusual circumstances they find solace in each other - each are survivors of their own particular tragedies - and begin to work through their respective traumas. The glue in this pseudo domestic arrangement is Toby, Chloe's son. The privileging of the domestic and parenthood in this novel appears to be typical of post 9/11 literature - possibly the retreat into the comforting and familiar in the face of death and terror - and is seen as the avenue to healing of both the personal traumas of the protagonists and also the collective trauma of the post 9/11 world.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, Neale's prose is a delight to read - one of my favourite sentences was garnered from this book - and the positioning of New Zealand in the fall out from the 9/11 proves that although our little country may seem remote we are as connected to, and affected by, world events as anywhere else in the world.

I give this a book a solid 8/10.

The Six Pack Three: Buy this book!

September is NZ Book Month, a celebration of all things literary in this great country of ours. This year I managed to get a copy of The Six Pack Three, the result of a short story competition which closed in late March this year. This year is the third year this competition has been held and the third year this book has been a best-seller. It's hardly surprising. This little book is, in my opinion, an absolute gem.

The six winning writers are:
Marisa Maepu, Sue Wootton, Aroha Harris, Ian McKenzie, David Geary and Kate Duigan, appearing in the book in this order.

Each of the stories adds a little more to the ever-growing collective voice of New Zealand, sharing insights into our society, our lives and our existences. From the childhood experiences of racial tensions in South Auckland in the late Eighties, to a brief biographical tribute to "Gary Manawatu", an "ideas man" to a psychological thriller in 'Mirror Mirror'.

So what kinds of issues are bubbling up through the NZ conscious, if we are to take this as a slice of the NZ conscious, that is. Recurrent themes of race, childhood disability and psychological issues pop up throughout the collection - the darker side of the sunny "clean, green" New Zealand existence, perhaps? Or as the judges write in their foreword, despite the "dark moments" in the collection, there are "beams of bright New Zealand sunlight". It depends which way you look at it I guess.

No matter what, though, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this book should be on the bookshelf of anyone who claims themselves to be a book-lover. It's a slice of New Zealand's literary history, a collection of damn good stories, a great read and only six bucks. There's no good reason not to buy it!

Related Links:
New Zealand Book Month
Author Information
Six Pack Success

To Veitch or not to Veitch, this, NZ, is the question.

(JOHN SELKIRK/Dominion Post)

Well since everyone else seems to be espousing their views on the Tony Veitch Assault case, I thought I may as well throw my hat into the ring.

There seem to be two camps on this one. The first is the That is Not On camp, who want full consequences to be felt by Tony for his actions. The second is the Give a Bloke a Chance, He Said Sorry, Didn't He? camp who think that, fair call, he copped to it and he seems very sorry and he's a good bloke really who just had a moment of lapse.

A moment of lapse? He broke her spine in four places and fractured her skull! She was in a wheelchair! She had a breakdown! It wasn't like he lashed out and slapped her once, which in and of itself is totally unjustifiable and despicable. No, what he did was beat the living daylights out of her. Think about it. To have gotten to the point that he could be kicking her repeatedly so her spine fractured, she would have had to be laid out on the ground already. This wasn't a moment of anger, this was a prolonged and vicious beating. The kind of beating that get people rather substantial jail terms. I don't care how many hours you work in a day, or how tired you get, if you're sprightly enough to be able to sustain that kind of violent attack on someone, you're with it enough to walk away.

I will admit that it is good that he has gotten help for it and that he has (finally) publicly admitted to it and accepted that it was inexcusable. But the fact remains that he did it, and that he paid her to keep quiet. Under what kind of circumstances Ms Dunne-Powell accepted these terms, we won't know unless she tells us, but it would be fair to speculate that she was heavily leaned upon.

However, the fact remains that he is a public figure. His conduct, on and off screen, is fair play for consideration in terms of his job position. And no amount of mea culpa will be enough to have him back on our screens, in front of the nation. No matter how many times he says "Sorry, I know it was wrong" people will still associate his face with the violent act he committed. A stand needs to be taken, especially in a country which struggles with domestic violence as an ongoing issue.

So, sorry Tony. My vote is very much with the That is Not On camp. Ms Dunne-Powell has had to rebuild her life, and now so will you. Actions have consequences, even if you're a celebrity.

Book Launched!!

Home and Away: Life Writing Three has now been launched!

This book is a collection of pieces from both the Life Writing and Travel Writing papers at Massey University, submitted by the students and edited by Jack Ross (the coordinator for the papers) and myself. It's a fantastic voyage through the lives and experiences of a wide variety of people, from an ex-cop's traumatic experiences of attending cot deaths to the search for an extinct NZ bird, the huia; from tales of trips to Waiheke and Tirau, to places as far-flung as South America and Asia.

This book is truly an achievement for all those involved in it - for many of the contributors it is the first time they have been published, and given the quality of contributions, I really hope it won't be the last.

Copies are only NZ$10 and can be ordered through the School Administrator for the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, or through my co-editor, Jack Ross. I am also told they are available from Bennetts - Massey's campus bookstore. If you are interested, please let me know.

Links:
New books reveal bold approach to writing life.

Iconic Losses

It was a tranquil, golden morning on the drive to work that day. Smiling at the morning show radio DJs' banter and thinking of nothing in particular, I pulled into Albany Village. The autumn leaves swirled across the car park as the early morning sunlight reflected off the children's swings in the park... Why is it so quiet?

BANG.

I rounded the back of the back of the North Shore Library Building as I heard the gunshot. Greeting me in this usually benign "Village" car park was the sight of a police car and five men dressed in black marauding around the car park toting gleaming black rifles. Snatches of "Elephant" dashed through my mind's eye as my pre-caffeinated logic tried to figure out what on earth was happening. I only wish I hadn't. I only wish I had not been so brutally let into the reality of that morning.

It was 8.40am and the North Shore Council, in it's infinite wisdom, had thought that now would be an excellent time to strut around a public place where people were arriving for work, walking their dogs and arriving for their classes, shooting point blank the roosters and chickens of Albany Village. I got out of my car in a state of shock only to turn and see not four metres from where I parked, a trigger happy council worker bending to pick up his spoils, a rooster I had once nicknamed Elvis for his shaggy legs that looked like flared trousers. He flung this poor, helpless and now definitively dead creature in the back of the unmarked ute and went back to his morning sport.

These chickens have been an integral part of the identity and charm of the Albany Village for over thirty years. They are part the last bastion of rural tranquility in the increasingly urbanised Albany area but appear to be falling victim to a bun fight between the North Shore Council, Albany Village Business Association and the SPCA. But is the solution a dawn execution of these poor birds? It was a harrowing and pitiful sight, especially for those like myself who are hopeless sentimentalists and get very attached to living things in my environment. I say either leave the chickens be or for goodness sake come up with a better solution.

See above for a video of the events.