What's in a name?

A crowfoot flower, tenaciously among the rocks.

I hate people who don't listen when I slowly spell my name for them: Oh, Ay, En, Aitch. "What? En, Ay, Oh?"; No! Oh [wait for them to say, yes?] Ay [wait for a yes?]; En [wait for another yes? they get impatient] Aitch. That's all. Then they say, "Okay, why did you not say your name was Ann?" Hmm, because it's not. My name is Oanh. It starts with an Oh. And is pronounced wun. Shall I spell it for you, again? "Oh, sure. That's unusual, isn't it?" Mmm, I murmur, without saying anything else. It's too much hassle to say, no, actually, it's not unusual. I have been patient, really, I have. Patient all my life.

I don't expect anyone to know how to pronounce or spell my name (okay, my family and friends I do expect to know). Hell, I even crack pretty good jokes about my name (if I say so myself). My best was when I rang my best friend in high shool and her father picked up the phone.

Me: Hi, Mr BestFriend. Can I speak to BestFriend? It's Oanh.

Mr BestFriend: Which Oanh? ho ho.

Me: The only Oanh of course. chuckle chuckle.

Mr BestFriend: Ha! That's great! [Aside and shouting] BestFriend! It's only Oanh on the phone!

Of course, sometimes I got sick of my name. Random people, usually men, usually on trains, would ask me my name and I would tell them: Two point four. I thought I was being pretty funny. They did not bother trying to chat me up any further.

I also used to lie - colourfully - about my 'ethnic heritage'. You know, in response to the "Where are you REALLY from?" question.

Sometimes, I would be an Inuit princess, seeking refuge in Australia from having to marry my sister's brother because she died, which was a custom of the tribe that I would one day lead. I was here, learning martial arts and survival skills, and I would return when I was strong, to overthrow my father, to re-create the matriarchal society we were supposed to be. That was my favourite story.

Sometimes I was just apathetic. Yes, I'm from China. It's a big place. Yes, I eat dogs. And lounge about smoking opium. Sure, I will amend the feng shui in your house. You should place the lucky dragon plant in the turtle corner well away from the phoenix roof. Not good for the monkey vibes. Although, it is the year of the oscillating octopus, so perhaps you should completely obliterate the turtle corner.

Or I would reply to people who called out, "Konnichi Wa!" with Origami! Toyota! Mitsubishi! and they would look at me, failing to appreciate the extent and sheer scintillating brilliance of my wit. Some of them even went on to speak more Japanese to me. Bless their misinformed hearts. Needless to write (but I'm going to write it), I did not date any of them.

And you know what? None of these people I spun stories to ever commented on my Aussie accent.

I used to want to change my name. To something easy. Something 'Anglo'. Something that, when a relief teacher was taking class I did not have to say, Here-ah when there was a puzzled pause.

I had one relief teacher who was extremely discombobulated to discover that I was named 'one'. I was sitting in the front row, first desk. He was a young teacher, and it did not help that my classmate (front row, second desk) piped up that he was 'two'. The poor, young relief teacher assumed we'd been allocated numbers, so he proceeded to call us by the numbers that our seating arrangements would have assigned us. We all tittered quietly but did not correct him. When the principal came in to check on how he was doing, our class got a stern scolding. Me, especially, for allowing it to happen (I was Class Goody-Two-Shoes (otherwise known as School Captain). The relief teacher never then did believe me that my name actually, really was Oanh. I had to ask the principal to affirm that, "Yes, her name really is Oanh", for the relief teacher to accept any more words that came out of my mouth, asserting anything at all.

Actually, I have strong recollections of wanting to change my name to Karen. I cannot now recall why the name Karen. She's not in any books that I can remember from my childhood.

I've been happily Oanh for a while now.

Growing Up Asian in Australia - the Book!

Last week, I cycled to the post office to pick up a parcel: a collection of stories, of which my Conversations with My Parents, is one.

The collection is called "Growing Up Asian in Australia", edited by Alice Pung and published by Black Inc. Books.

When I opened the parcel, and saw the book, I wanted to ride home immediately to start reading it. Instead, I had to ride to work and start work. I was bursting with impatient excitement for lunchtime, but I did not know where to go for lunch. If, as would usually be the case, I had a sandwich, I could just head to the Common and read my book on a park bench. Sadly, I needed to buy something to eat, so I decided to go 'next door'. I did not want to go any further afield, because that would reduce the amount of time I had to read my book. The main problem with having lunch next door, is that other work people are next door. I did not want to talk to anyone.

Luckily, no one I was actually friendly with was next door, and all I had to do was chirp "hi!" to some people, take my own seat at my own table and stick my nose into the book. There, I was transported to a world of stories - some comic, some poignant, some familiar, some less so. I was a bit discombobulated when a work mate said, "What are you reading?" And I mumbled into myself with eyes far away, so unlike my usual work self, "Just a book", showing her the cover and hoping she won't take it from me to flick through, to find me in there, to force me to be pleased about my inclusion in the collection with her, whom I care nothing for, when I have not told most of my friends nor indeed any of my family, except one of my sisters. Thankfully, she says, "hmm, interesting", in a way that indicates she finds it very UN-interesting. I walked off without saying anything else.

I'm not exactly sure why I haven't told many people. I told my sister as an afterthought, at the end of a telephone conversation, about two months after I knew my piece was included. I told friends at random, and I'm not even entirely sure who I've told, and who I haven't.

I wrestled with whether to give my full name to the piece, or a link to this blog. I kept most of the wrestling to myself, although I did precis my thoughts for my partner. As usual, he helped me order my thoughts, and come to a conclusion.

Reading through the book gives me the same odd feeling I have mentioned before, when viewing a migrant exhibition: a depressed sort-of lassitude mixed with urgent inspiration. I can do this, people are interested in my stories. But I don't have time. I'm not good enough. My writing is mundane, imprecise, amateurish. My stories are so similiar to all these. It will bore everyone. I'm just flailing about the place, pulled in a myriad directions. I'm not that passionate about my family. I'm not that passionate about my work. I'm not that passionate about my self, or the struggles I've been through to become happy about being me.

I love my family. But they deserve their privacy.

I'm okay with my work. And not stupid enough to jeopardise it on my blog.

I'm reconciled with my self, and if I'm completely honest, quite happy about being me, and for most of my life have been so. Hell, I never struggled very hard. I had a big, accepting, loving family. I went to school in a large multi-cultural community, where if you called me chink then I called you whitey, and we were square. The cuts never cut much deeper than skin, because I have a reserve of strength, because I fought, because I was me, and I have always been okay about that.

Don't buy the book for my story. You've probably already read it, and if not, just click on that handy link up top. But do buy it for the whole collection. There are some duds - there always are in any collection - and your duds will differ from my duds, because, you know, we're different people and we have different tastes.

A reflective moment

It's the season to be reflective. So this is me reflecting.

What a miserable blogging year I had. It started off oh-so well, with a blog every week. Every week! And then I discovered (in no particular blameworthy order) Facebook, Online Scrabble, and English summers. There was also the minor matter of my ongoing work-life crisis*, which I am still contemplating whether or not to blog about.

*That's crisis in the current newspaper language. In that it's been stop-start since the beginning of the year and no one is probably going to get hurt, who has not got hurt already.

So, Facebook. It's a great timewaster. I joined just prior to my "becoming a UK solicitor" exams, and spent hours prettying up my profile, loading the books I'd read and movies I'd seen this year and searching the likely and unlikely suspects whom I thought would have joined Facebook. There was a cacophony of internet squeals as old friends from high school and my uni years found me, and kept thinking I was in London. I'm in South East England. Not London. Following on from the internet squealing, I made a number of treks up to London where 'real life' squealing was indulged in, as well as delicious (but rather expensive) meals. My tummy and my heart swelled, and then I returned to my everyday life, one weekend and many pounds poorer. I have, more or less, kept in contact with these rediscovered friends. I am at best a sporadic correspondent (hard to believe, I know), so the mere fact of contact every few months or so is a reasonably good thing.

And then Online Scrabble (or rather, Scrabulous) found me. I don't remember how it all started (the whirlwind of the romance, you see) but, rather quickly, I found myself playing at least 5 games simultaneously. Indeed, I have not played less than 5 games simultatneously since I started playing Scrabble online. This is probably not all that many in comparison to other people. But my time is not my own. From the hours of 9am until 6pm most days, I am required to account for at least 100 six-minute blocks of my time (except for lunch). "Playing Scrabulous" is not a billing code for which I can, ethically, charge clients. I am learning to accept that I will not play a move in every game, every day. And I'm okay with that.

English summers came upon me as a strange, and very pleasant, surprise. Living in Queensland one is not privy to the joy of daylight savings. I guess when one is close to the equator, and generally without seasons anyway, the length or brevity of the day is not really that pertinent. But oh! the length of the English summer days! What joy, what bliss! All those hours to fill with hills to walk on and food to eat and drink to imbibe and friends to visit and music festivals to attend. I had a fabulous but exhausting English summer, in which every weekend - and most weeknights - was filled with some activity. This seeped into English autumn as well, because the trees changing colour was just oh-so exciting, that I had to be out there *looking* at it. And here I am, in the middle of English winter, still pondering the joys of seasons. I love the cold. I grin maniacally as I cycle to work, infecting or disturbing my fellow non-car commuters with my four-year old joy at the frost, the biting cold, and the hope for snow.

And here are some maunderings about me & my work, or my work & my life, or my life, which is mostly my work:-

I remember being quite passionate and *into* my work when I initially started in full-time employment. My job then was more research oriented. I then started work in a private practice firm - I had previously worked in a private practice firm as receptionist / research clerk / general dogsbody and quite enjoyed it. I would have wildly fluctuating levels of enjoyment of my work, but I was also given a lot of freedom to do what I wanted if there was nothing else for me to do. Some days I would be holed up in the library researching, or typing madly, and others I would be surfing the net or reading a novel.

In full-time employment, I worked efficiently and well (I think) and liked best researching an area of law to make a legal argument. My favourite piece was a successful submission to an appeal tribunal: my written argument was incorporated, almost wholesale, into the tribunal's judgment. It was also a great piece of work because I overcame some major personal issues with the client and the facts presented to me, to make that legal argument. I knew when I was able to do that, that one of my major concerns with being a lawyer - the extent to which my prejudices would affect my work - was overcome. That was a great moment for an articled clerk.

I also liked the client interaction and just fitting the facts of their problem to a legal solution. It was, mostly, satisfying work. But there were lengthy periods when I questioned the value of what I was doing. Who was I helping, and why?

Then, I started working in commercial law. Although the work was pretty dry and there was very little client interaction, I found the mechanical work satisfying in its odd way. And it was very clear who I was helping and what I had to do to help them. I was helping a company make more money. Simple. I could put up with it because I knew it was short term, and I got given smaller pieces of research to keep me interested in the law (my bosses knew I liked doing research, and that was supposedly rare). It was like doing factory process work: satisfying when it's done for the simple reason that it is now done. But there's no bigger meaning behind it. Or what bigger meaning there was, was much too long-term and big to be comprehended.

I am now in an area that I believe I want to remain in. But I am not always happy. As a matter of fact, I am sometimes bored. Part of this is my own fault, and not the fault of the work. I could engage myself in it, but I don't. I think some part of me has changed, and I don't love doing this as much as I used to.

The things I like about being a lawyer is fitting a factual problem to a legal solution. What I don't like is that you may not agree with the outcome that you are assisting your client to obtain.

I did say something in a random conversation with my boss which surprised me as being both accurate and true (in that I did beleive it). I said that there is no reason why the people whom we help have to be deserving of that help. If they have the legal right, than we can assist them to assert their right. They don't have to be deserving people. Money should not be the barrier to people asserting their rights - but it often is.

It is very clear who I am helping now - each of the individuals who come my way - and why. It is tangible. But sometimes, I don't agree with it. And sometimes, I don't like it. And sometimes, I'm bored of it. Each of those feelings happens to me every day. And each work day seems to involve some navel gazing on my part. (Navel gazing is also not billable time, in case you're wondering).

Working in the law, on the side of the individual, is not satisfying work. Because you have an almost insurmountable opposition (the case law, the legislative law, the sheer weight of resources on the other side), but you have to believe that your meagre presence is worth something. That asserting a legal right, even if the odds are poor is important to the whole legal structure.

I believe this, and yet it is a hard pill to swallow. To put it into practise everyday is hard.

My 2008 looks set to be more of the same. I don't expect to come to conclusions about how I feel about my work. I do expect to post more often. Let's see how I go.

Happy New Year, all and sundry.

White Wash

I am slowly turning white.

Yesterday, I looked down at my belly while sitting on the toilet and there was a patch of white, roughly 1 cm squared, to the left of my navel. I scrubbed at it. It peeled away like old paint.

"Must have been toothpaste," I thought. "Will be more careful in future."

Throughout yesterday, I found patches of white all over me. Some of it was on my clothes, but most of it was on my orange-toned skin. I was perplexed. When I do my teeth of a morning, I can be vigorous. I am often running late for walking to work. But I certainly was not wantonly flicking toothpaste all over the bathroom and myself. Especially as I was dressed and ready for work (sort of).

Today, I was more careful in the bathroom. As I sat at work - reading, typing and surfing the net (I mean researching) - I notice a streak of white on my left forearm. As I turn my arm around, I see little spots of white. Whatever I have done now, I can't scrape these off so easily.

There are the tiniest spots on my right arm, too. I wonder if it's permanent, if it will spread.

People have described my skin tone as 'olive' and I cannot see how this is correct. No olive I have ever seen has been a kinda browny orange, with streaks of blue and some blotches of red. Olives are either green or a purple-tinted black.

Some have described me as yellow, but I am sure that my skin colour looks nothing like a banana, or the sun as drawn and coloured by children. And I don't think they were referring to my courage (or its lack).

I think that I am definitely orange(ish). Or brown. Or brown with an orange base. Or orangey brown. Anyway, my skin is definitely dark(ish) South East Asian coloured. I am not fair like most of my sisters. I am of fishing stock, and my colour pigment is there to protect me so that I can spend most days sorting through the fish that my father, brothers and cousins have hauled in. I was obviously meant to remain in Viet Nam, and live the fishing life. Or failing that, perhaps the farming life. My fairer sisters were destined for distant shores, less physical labour type lives. Oddly enough, my parents took all of us over with nary a thought for what our skin colour indicated we were fated to become.

These days, of course, I sit inside an office for much of the sunlight hours. The sun slants in through my office window (yes, I've got the window seat) but it is barely enough to warm me, let alone to justify my skin colour. Its greatest effect is in the afternoon, when it glares so horridly from the reflection of the other huge glass covered buildings that I am forced to close my blinds.

My mother wastes precious breaths telling me to stay out of the sun. I do not waste any breath telling her that I don't actually spend much time in the sun anymore. As a child I was often out in the yard, climbing trees and chasing after frogs (in winter) and lizards (in summer). I was a dark brown back then, and I would get darker as the days got warmer. Um often stuck her head out the back door and hollered for me to come inside. I always pretended not to hear her.

When I was in school and playing sport, Um always berated me for the colour my skin would become, darker and darker as the netball season drew to its exciting conclusion (we were never in the finals, but always made it to at least the quarter finals).

I tried to tell my mother that my skin tone was not my fault! I had no conscious control over what colour my skin was. If I was feeling especially rebellious I would tell her that it was HER fault, or perhaps my father's, if I was not beautiful rich-person white but dirty peasant brown. She would retort with the example of my sisters, very few of whom played sport or chased lizards and frogs. I would scowl.

Years inside an office and I might, after all, be turning white. My skin tone is still orangey-brown, brownish, orange-based etc. But I keep discovering these patches of flaky white.

My mother would be so pleased.

Who am I?

In my preparations for travel to Viet Nam last year, I made multiple copies of my passport details page, asked a workmate to certify the copies and then placed the copies in a variety of places – my 'personal items' drawer at work, in my filing cabinet at home, in my sister's filing cabinet at her home. I was fearful of losing my passport. Visions of me at the Australian Embassy in Ha Noi, attempting to persuade a bureaucrat of my identity and unable to do so drove me to this neurotic over-planning.

I have little proof of who I am. My father keeps a tatty piece of paper that was our travel visa to Australia. It has a yellowing photo of me as a girl aged about two, squirming on a chair. There are similar photos of a sister and brother, squirming on the same or a similar high-backed plastic chair. My mother is also on this flimsy piece of paper, younger and more worried looking, with a deceptively smooth brow and glossy black hair that will be shaved off as soon as she reaches Australia. My father is on a different piece of paper, with two other sisters and an uncle – a pretend brother. These slips of paper were kept by Ba with a pile of important papers inside an envelope stashed under his mattress, and it was only about a decade ago that one of my siblings bought him a folder, with plastic sleeves in which to place and hopefully preserve the documentary evidence of our existence.

These flimsy bits of paper were pulled out at intervals whenever we needed to 'prove' our idenity: opening bank accounts, enrolling in school, getting a job, renting a house. The fold lines are deep, and little rips creep along where we have not been careful enough.

I do not know if, in Viet Nam, we had identification papers. I do not know if these were lost. Whenever I hear or read about all these terrible persons arriving on Our Shores (not on Our Terms) without the correct documentation, I think: That's how we came – with nothing to evince who we were.

I accumulated identification evidence around me as I grew. When I was 7 or 8, my parents became 'naturalised', taking the citizenship oath that their English language classes had taught them. I am a mere name on the back of my mother's certificate – and this is all the evidence of my citizenship, my nationality. When I opened a bank account at age 11, it was my first independent evidence of me, unconnected to my family. Then, age 16, I got social security documents and my driving learner's licence, followed rapidly by my driver's licence. Soon after, I applied for a passport and out came the tattered, yellow travel visa. The only proof of my date of birth. I took copies of the visa and my mother's citizenship certificate, got them certified by a Justice of the Peace at a bank and have them still, stored away in my own safe places.

I did not apply for a passport because I had overseas travel plans. I wanted more proof that I was myself, but especially that I was Australian. Before I went to Viet Nam, I would pull out the passport and check its expiry date often – to ensure that I would renew it without trouble when the time neared.

Viet Nam was my first trip overseas and out of Australia. The first visa in my Australian passport, although Thailand are the first stamps (we flew Thai Airways). When I told work, making light of my very real fears, about my concerns that I would be in Viet Nam, passport lost and having difficulty convincing the Australian embassy that I was indeed an Australian citizen, one of my bosses earnestly stated that I should call and he would help me out. My fear was probably overblown, a touch on the paranoid side. But I do have tendency to absent-mindedness.

We had no difficulties at any of the airports we passed through, although I was ramrod straight and alert, particularly in Ha Noi where my excitement at being in Viet Nam was quickly dampened by the austere and rather forbidding atmosphere. The customs officials took one look at my passport and knew I was Vietnamese. Clue number 1 – my name; clue number 2 – place of birth. They spoke to me, but their accent was so thick I had no idea if it was Vietnamese or English, or another language they were speaking, and I just stared blankly back. When I realised that the official was only exchanging pleasantries, I smiled ruefully and left the queue a little wild-eyed.

At every hotel we checked into, we had to pull our passports out and present them to reception staff. At the Saigon Morin Hotel in Hue, where we arrived dripping wet and bewildered after an incomprehensible exchange with our new tour guide, reception asked to keep our records for the duration of our stay and I refused. We reached a compromise whereby reception would take copies of our passport and return them to us – but we had to wait until dinner time. We left to visit the markets, dodging clingy vendors and then to the the elaborately rambling tomb of the emperor Tu Duc. When we returned our passports were safely handed back to us and I was relieved.

From Hue, we drove to Da Nang and into Hoi An. The drive had taken all day because we stopped at a few spots on the way (but thankfully did not go near any of the claimed 'China Beaches'). We were shown into the lovely reception area of the Hoi An Life Resort in the soft drizzle of non-stop rain we had encountered since flying into Hue. Staff at the Life Resort had, to my surprise, never before encountered Viet-Australians. They told us that no Viet-Australians had ever stayed there and were impressed by how rich we must have been if we could, like all the white travellers, afford their rates.

Because there were three of us, an additional arm chair had to be located for me to sit in while we went through the usual check-in procedures. First off – our passports. A young woman came with drinks for us but by this stage, I was frantically rummaging through my bag for the case that I kept my passport in. It was not there. I waved her away, panic setting in. My sisters, too, stared at me in horror as I patted down my person, then my bag, then my backpack, opening and closing zippers in increasing terror. One of my sisters sat me down in a chair and made me talk my way through what I had done with my passport. Rational thought was gone.

The Australian Embassy is in Ha Noi. I will have to travel there by car because you need a passport to fly. How long will that take? I am going to be stuck here. I am going to miss my flight. I can't go home. What if they do not believe me? I left my driver's licence, everything else at home. Only a passport (gone!) and my credit card (still on me). When did I last have my passport? I don't know. Where is it? Why is it not here? Where else could I have put it? No where else. It has to be here. I could not have dropped it. Could I have dropped it? But where? When? I've been so careful. Really, I have!

I must have looked as panic-stricken as I felt because our driver came into reception to ask if everything was alright, to see if we needed interpreting help. The last thing I could recall doing with my passport was taking it off reception staff in the Hue hotel and then heading off for dinner, intending to stash it away in its safe place after dinner. But I did not recall stashing it away. I pictured myself putting my passport into my pocket jacket and missing. Maybe it fell on the floor of the hotel. Maybe someone had picked it up and handed it in. What if someone picked it up and pocketed it? But I was not wearing my jacket when we returned from Tu Duc's tomb. I had not been cold. I had my raincoat slung over an arm, bag and camera straps criss-crossing over my chest.

I was readying myself to ask the driver to take my back to Hue. I turned to my sister to ask her to do it, because my Vietnamese was not good enough, too impolite. And all the while I was still thinking: But where? When?

The passport was in an inside pocket of my raincoat. I had put it there to protect it. And then I had forgotten and left the raincoat slung over the back of a chair inside the van at all our numerous stops. I was so relieved at finding my passport, I almost hugged the driver. All the potential mishaps from a lazily left behind raincoat crowded into my consciousness but I pushed them away. My sisters' sympathetic relief turned into the type of berating mothers are very good at after their child returns safe from some misconceived adventure. One of my sisters demanded that I let her keep my passport, but I refused.

I had no further passport misadventures during the rest of our time in Viet Nam and then our few hectic days in Thailand before returning home.
My paranoia about losing my identity was realised in Viet Nam by my own easily distracted mind, ever on the present and drifting away from practicalities. I still have a fear that I will be unable to prove who I am because of lack of hard evidence– everything is built on some other piece of paper. I have more now – a lease, my legal admission documentation, employment contracts. But I am still worried that if I lose one – the big one – , the rest of this identity house of cards will fall down around me and there will be: nothing.

Inspired by an Odd Traveller

Banh Canh

I am a little later than I should be. She said to arrive at 11am, which means to come at 10.30am. I come at 11.30, not entirely my fault. Maybe I slept in.

She hasn’t started yet, she says. Flustering around me, she pulls out two bags of rice flour (I’ve just been to the shops, it was so busy). Where did you go?, I say conversationally. With exasperation, she says ‘Inala’, as if there were any other shops nearby that she could go to to buy these bags of rice flour. They are each about 400g of fine bright white powder, in a clear bag with red writing all over. The writing is in a variety of languages: Viet, Thai, Chinese, English. I remember being little and being shown these bags, with careful instructions to come back with the right one (red writing for rice flour, blue writing for tapioca starch). I hesitate to tell her you can buy these at the local Coles; I don’t want to start an argument – today, I am being good. Minus the turning up late – she’ll forgive me for that.

I wander over to my father who is resting on his recliner chair, eyes closed. Shopping has clearly worn him out. Sitting down on the arm of the chair, I place light fingers on his knee. I used to sit on that knee but now I am too large, he too frail. He opens his eyes and I greet him - “Ba”. He acknowledges me with a grunt and closes his eyes again.

My mother (Um) has boiled some water and she pours some into a large bowl, into which both bags of flour had been emptied. With a large serving spoon, she mixes it in and tells me to ‘ne’ it – she will bring me the tapioca starch which she left downstairs. 'ne' is a word I had not heard before. She bustles off and I look down at a large tub filled with white dough. I have never done this part before. This has always been done before I arrive and my job is to turn the mountain of dough into large rice noodles. It is just like playing. I think about it and figure she must mean to knead it.

Um does not teach me to cook. She does not show me. I often ask her to cook things with every intention of coming by early to watch how she does it, to learn before it is forgotten how. She always starts too early for me. I have resorted to downloading recipes for Vietnamese dishes from the web. Tradition expects that my mother in law will show me how to cook, teach me how to look after her son. The notion is obsolete.

I am also the youngest. My mother had shown some of my elder sisters her cooking – they helped her in the kitchen. I did too but I did the odd jobs, the jobs you could trust the youngest kid – easily distracted and petulant – to do. You should never give the youngest kid a time consuming task, unless the reward was great. Something like “fetch me the butcher’s cleaver” was about what I could handle. Maybe rinse the vegies and herbs and sometimes, put the rice on. Nothing too involved. Beetles, praying mantis’ and lizards always needed to be found and homes built for them (they often also needed supervision so they would stay in the insect mansions). I could rarely be expected to stay in the kitchen long but I could always be called in for those urgent fetching errands.

There were exceptions. Fresh tofu was one: I could stand and curdle that tofu for happy, anticipatory hours; my taste-buds eager for the silken flavour of home made tofu, my greed overcoming my need to rescue unwilling insects or climb frangipani trees in the neighbour’s yard. Banh canh – today’s lunch – was another. The store bought noodles were nothing on the flavour and texture of home made ones.

Um comes back: “Where would you like to make them, on the floor?” No, I say. I’d prefer the table. Better for my back, used to sitting at computers all day. She looks at me strangely and says – it is easier on the floor. “Oh, I just prefer the table”, I say diplomatically. “That’s why your back aches, Um”, I don’t say.

I spread out the bowl, a chopping board, a plate and another serving spoon. I wish for music, but not aloud in case Ba hears me and turns the Vietnamese radio on. Um has gone again and it’s just me and a large bowl of dough. I put my whole hand into the dough, only to withdraw it and run to the tap. The dough is hot. After running my hand under cold water for a while, I come up with a plan. I go to my bag to get my book. Using the serving spoons, I turn the dough over, break it into bits and generally mush it. Then, as the steam rises, I bring the book to my nose and read. When the steam subsides, I repeat.

“Is it ready to ‘se’?” Um says. I guiltily put the book down and say – no, the dough was too hot and I could not knead it. She looks at me again, to inspect whether I really am her daughter or some hopeless Australian who just looks like her daughter. I’m both, honest. She looks at the book. I show her my splotchy red hand – a hand that reads books more often than it plunges itself into hot dough. “You put hot water on it” I accuse. “Of course I did”, she says impatiently. Pity we came to Australia for a better life, education, opportunities. Look how I’ve turned out – unable to knead dough.

‘se’ is a verb. It is in the present tense. All Viet words are in the present tense. Yesterday, I se the noodles. Today I se the noodles. Tomorrow I se the noodles. It feels as if I have always se the noodles. You use the same word and it does not matter what the time structure is (although if you are my parents, early is best). Context is important to ascertain meaning. Context is all you’ve got to go on. Unfortunately for the dough, my context is higher education and a professional job. My hands weren’t toughened in the context of bonded labour (traditional Viet marriage). Context is also my family.

After about an hour of lonely ‘se’, my sister turns up, both kids and husband in tow. She sits down beside me, youngest kid on her lap and starts chatting. I invite her to join in the fun, but she declines. Her husband helps instead. They are a liberated family. In another hour, another sister turns up. This time, the kids are in the lead (they’re older). They too sit down. I invite them to join the fray – to speed up lunch. Luckily, they do with enthusiasm.

To ‘se’ is to roll small parts of the mound of dough into smaller, long, noodle-like parts. Picture yourself playing with playdough as a kid. Remember making worms? Just like that, only not colourful and hopefully hygienic. Repeat. Repeat some more. It is better, if you can manage it, to have family turn up and arrange themselves around you. They should start chatting, the louder the better. Some should join the ‘se’ and others can outright refuse to. For added interest, the kids could cry. Maybe one of them should be super cute, and say something precocious, preferably bi-lingually. Another is probably on the cusp of being an adult and she’ll want to talk about hair, boys and clothes. You will try not to be disdainful, but you won’t succeed especially when she tells you she is reading magazines instead of books. You will despair (even though you were that way yourself).

Um is downstairs, making the soup to accompany the noodles. I always miss out on this part because I am the person who ‘se’. As if telepathically connected to the mountain of dough, Um turns up with the soup when there is one tiny hill left. We divide it and ‘se’ in excited conclusion – the last few are thinner and less consistent, but made with more laughter.

The noodles are cooked in soup (it has crabs and prawns – we were fishing folk ‘back home’). Bowls are placed in front of flour dusted people, and we sit down elbow to elbow to eat. Fresh eschallots, coriander and pepper is added to your taste. Ba likes large pieces of pepper so he takes the lid off the grinder and places whole peppercorns into his soup. I mimic him and discreetly choke on one behind a cough. We have banh canh for lunch. Its flavour is enhanced by our work and the warm chatter.

Census Night

The ABS records the languages we speak at home. I will not know how to answer this one, when I am faced with it on Census Night.

I do not want to answer that English is the language I speak at home because I know what the question is trying to elicit. But it is an inaccurate way of recording my ethnic diversity to answer, untruthfully, that Vietnamese is the language I speak at home.

And I am always confused by 'home'. I have made my own home with my partner – it's a workers cottage in inner city Brisbane (you'd love it) – and my parents have visited me there only once. But I will regularly say, while I am at home with my partner, that I am going home for a while. What I mean is that I am going to my parent's house in the suburbs surrounding Brisbane. The house I experienced my teenaged years and the rising racism of Pauline Hanson and ilk. The house I still consider home.

Before that house, we had another, smaller home near to where I now have my current home. In my dreams, that house is our family home – it is the house of my earliest memories: a kind of cosy mish mash of too many bodies, too few rooms and a stronger community. In that home, we hosted many families – either more recent arrivals from Viet Nam or family visiting from interstate. Family that my parents had to draw airborne diagrams to explain the connection to our family before I would call them by their appropriate title (uncle on my father's side, great-aunt on my mother's side), aunts who were younger than me, nieces who were my age but had to call me aunt, cousins I called 'older brother', 'older sister' and whom I begrudged giving up my bed to. This house is my archetypal home. There, I started school and made my first friends who were not family. There I developed a sense of myself, separate from my parents and siblings. And there, I refused to bathe in the bathroom where I had once seen a slug. (Until we moved out, I bathed in the laundry sink.)

On census night in 1988 when I was old enough to interpret for my parents and answer the questions with my brothers and sisters, the question about how many people lived in our house worried me. Why did they want to know that? I knew enough to know that the census form was for The Government and had experience enough to be fearful of authority. I had an inchoate concern that if we told them just how many people lived in that falling apart three bedroom Queenslander (what would be a 'Renovator' today), some person would descend and move a distantly related uncle, aunt and kids, away. Perhaps they would even take a sibling.

My friends at school did not have as many people in their family as I did – no, neither Naila's Muslim Lebanese family nor Ellen's Irish Catholic family had so many people under the one roof. The logic behind the fear had something to do with knowing that other households had fewer people and that the Government had power to help, and hurt. My parents received social security from the Government, and so did some of my older siblings. But I never understood why we received it, why it would occasionally stop and cause my parents an array of anxiety I was not a part of, and what was done to regain it.

By the next census in 1994, we had moved to a larger home and I was a teenager who was much less fearful of Authority arriving in white shirt and tie to take me, or my parents and siblings away. Indeed, I was vocal, political and unafraid to thumb my nose at Authority although I was still afraid to thumb my nose at my parents. By then, I knew that people in white shirts and ties who turned up on our doorstep were either Mormons, or people from Telecom trying to sell us pay TV. All were turned away politely. When I was younger I slammed the door and hid. By then, we were also Naturalised – Australian Citizens – and I was ready, willing and able to wield the force of that category against our enemies (usually more perceived than real).

That house is now largely empty and on Census night in 2006, my parents will ask one of my siblings to assist them to fill out the form. In my new home, I have reverted to impolite refusals of unexpected guests, who these days telephone rather than turn up knocking at our rotting wood door. I no longer hide. But I still cannot come up with a satisfactory way to answer what language I speak at home.

Traditional Costume

I had never really considered the phrase 'traditional costume' before. I have certainly thought about my traditional costume – the ao dai (long dress/shirt – it's a long tunic, with long sleeves and slit either side up to the waist to reveal long culotte-like trousers worn underneath). What I had not thought about was the diminutive word costume, and the way when stressed – traditional costume – it sounds somehow dismissive, derogatory. The speaker could be saying: the ao dai is not real clothes – it's a get-up; a costume.

When I wear the ao dai, I do feel as if I am in costume. I have only worn it thrice in my 26-odd years on this earth: once to my cousin's wedding when I borrowed one of my cousin's ao dai because I was in the bridal party and her mother was horrified that I would be the only woman not wearing an ao dai – even one of the whities was wearing one!; once to my sister's wedding when I was bridesmaid and master of ceremonies – my sister had asked me to wear another outfit that she really liked but another sister had recently traveled to Viet Nam and had returned with an ao dai just for me, so I donned that instead much to my sister's, her new husband's and myriad family members,' friends' and strangers' amusement; and last and most recently to my mother's 60th birthday party where my eldest sister thought Um would be chuffed if we all wore ao dai. My eldest sister was right, Um was chuffed. Most of the women wore ao dai that night, and when a female guest turned up not in ao dai, she turned around and dashed home again to change into one.

Firstly, the ao dai is not suited to an indelicate person such as myself. I forget to flick the back skirt out when sitting down and find myself standing up again as the collar chokes me. The trousers are too long – they are meant to be worn over and covering high heels. I wear them with flat shoes and trip all over the trailing hem. The press-stud buttons that run up one side are not made for women who gesture wildly when talking – mine invariably pop at inopportune moments and I am faced with subtly pressing studs shut against my chest, or making frequent trips to the bathroom. So something happens to me. I find myself paying more attention to my outfit, smoothing it out, checking the buttons are still done, moving more carefully. I talk less, and not so volubly, because the state of my conversation and volume are directly related to how excitable I am and if I can remain calm in my conversation, my clothes will not attempt to eject me into the unsuspecting world. I sit more upright, with hands clasped in my lap, neck and nose held high – it is difficult to slouch in an ao dai, you pull at the fabric at your back which you are sitting on because you forgot to flick the back skirt out and you are afraid the press stud buttons will burst at any moment.

I am in costume when I am in ao dai. I am pretending to be the Viet girl who knows what to do in a wedding train, the bridesmaid who dutifully follows the bride around and the daughter who hasn't forgotten her heritage. But I'm not. I tripped along in that wedding party hating having to be there and carrying the red-cellophane wrapped mock dowry as an offering; I was a better master of ceremonies than bridesmaid, highlighting my discomfort for others' amusement but completely forgetting about the bride; and I might be wearing an ao dai at my mother's birthday bash, but I cannot converse with her friends.

And what is traditional about it, for me? It is not part of my tradition. I never wore one to school, nor did any of my sisters, who never got that far in their schooling before my family came to Australia. One of my sisters did wear one throughout her early years at the Viet community school that she attended and was briefly the poster girl for. I stomped my way out of Viet community school after the second week of classes when my precocious comparison of English and Vietnamese (I was taken with how the word No in English meant No but could mean full in Vietnamese and gee, I just would not shut up about it) earned me a ruler across the back of my hand. I recall telling the teacher that the English school teachers would never do that; to which he responded that I was probably not so naughty with the English teachers because I could not be sassy with them. I was sent out of class to ruminate over my terrible behaviour and I ruminated my way home, to announce to my mother that I was never returning. She did not try to persuade me of the errors of my way (although now, I wish she had) because I was a stubborn child who knew her own mind. In some measure, that incident is why I am so 'well-integrated'.

There is a new tradition, of course, for those of us in Australia (and other countries that are not Viet Nam) and whose family desire that we remain 'Vietnamese'. (I do not think I've ceased being Vietnamese just because I wear the ao dai so uncomfortably.) But we trot out the 'costume' at important life functions – the wedding, the milestone birthday, the lunar new year and family photo opportunities. It seems that the ao dai becomes the formal dress of the emigre Viet; where in Viet Nam it is indeed the formal dress as well as a work and school uniform. Was it once, traditionally, worn more ubiquitously than that? My mind vaguely recollects reading an article about the sari in India. A part of the article discussed the changing context of wearing a sari – where once it had been worn everyday (and of course, nicer saris worn on special occasions), it was becoming relegated to only special occasions, and sometimes work. Is the same thing happening in Viet Nam? It is certainly happening in the Viet community of which I am a part, in Brisbane.

Occasionally, I contemplate wearing the ao dai to a formal work function. I usually disregard that thought pretty quickly. I already feel enough of a fraud wearing the ao dai without the added complication of appearing 'authentic' to others who do not necessarily know better. I do not want to represent myself as knowledgeable about Vietnamese-ness (Vietnamese-dom?) and the wearing of the ao dai might suggest to others that I have retained more of my ethnic 'heritage' than I, in reality, have. I have, once, worn a mock-up of the ao dai to a friend's new year party. I wore the tunic with low-cut jeans, revealing my pierced navel because the ao dai was split down the middle, rather than the more traditional splits either side. An affectionately drunken friend was flabberghasted at the exposed belly, repeating admiringly oft and to many – oh, they'd never wear it like that in Viet Nam. Shocking, just shocking. I enjoyed wearing the ao dai that night; I was more comfortable in the tighter jeans that allowed my freedom of movement without forcing a false grace on me.

And what of the traditional costume of central and northern Viet Nam? Why has the ao dai become THE Viet costume? Not merely because emigrants from Viet Nam are from Southern Viet Nam in statistically significant numbers. I found myself disappointed when in Viet Nam to sense the disappearing significance of the traditional costumes that belonged to the various regions of Viet Nam. I was saddened by seeing women staff in hotels and restaurants wearing the ao dai, even in Ha Noi. The depth and richness of traditional Viet clothing is falling away and no one is trying to arrest it because a women in an ao dai elicits such powerful responses about culture and beauty, grace and tradition.

Why is it only women's traditional clothes that are retained and imbued with this significance? My theory is that women, because of their child-bearing and rearing role, embody the continuation of culture. Thus, the vision of women in the clothes of their country of origin is a powerful statement about how they have retained and will continue to retain the connections with that country. How women dress is also more scrutinised than how men dress. Women are more symbolic. Men can transgress from – and return to – a minority culture more easily. Plus, men's costumes were less attractive anyway – but this is complicated by the fact that our notions of attractiveness have been developed through the male perspective.

What about the costumes of the ethnic minorities within Viet Nam? I am reminded of images of Sapa girls in their colourful highland dress, the red Hmong, the blue Hmong, the Khmer who all live in the many mountainous regions of Viet Nam and who are disparaged by the 'true Viet' (and I include myself and my family here) as not really being Vietnamese when these communities have lived, worked and loved in those mountains for generations. My father tells me of the smaller 'tribes' who lived around the Delta where he grew up – the ones chased away, scapegoated by other Viet families in the region when times got tougher. I wonder where they 'escaped' to?

Calling certain clothing 'traditional costume' has an anachronistic ring to it. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the word 'traditional'. It is certainly inaccurate – what about the blouses and pyjama-like trousers worn by Viet farmers, men and women. That has not become 'traditional costume'. I can see the appalled mouths of my mother and my aunt should I ever arrive at a wedding clad in the peasant trousers they would have all worn most days as young women and claiming that I am wearing my traditional costume. I smile at the horror I imagine lighting their eyes, and the way they will whisper to each other, and how my mother will march me into a room to start off berating me only to end up laughing or merely giving up with her incorrigibly inaccurate daughter.

Anonynmity in Hoi An

This is one of my favourite photos of me. Mostly because I don't really look like that. And it's such a well composed picture, don't you think?


Taken at the delightful Mango Cafe in Hoi An town. There are chyrsanthemums in the foreground, the window is painted in bright blue, a palm tree and Hoi An's main river just outside.

I had a splitting headache but loved the town. My sisters wanted to do more shopping but I wanted to watch the world go by. I'm just not into haggling when a little woodpecker is jabbering away behind my right ear.

I sat outside for a bit and chatted to three male tourists at the opposite table. The Accountant took this photo while I wasn't paying any attention.

I smile a lot - happens when you grow up and your mother is telling you always to smile. The three men were nice enough and I told them a little of my history. They were a ragtag bunch of travellers - little in common except that they were on the same tour. The youngest was Greek and had been in Australia a few months prior, the two older were from the UK and America. They were intrigued by the fact that my sisters and I spoke a mish-mash of English and Vietnamese.

After I told them we had been Viet refugees and were now Australians, the American delighted in wanting to know if I was going to visit My Lai.

I was short with my response. No, I said. Why not? He said.

I stared at him.

I don't think it is appropriate, I said primly.

He stared at me. It's your history, he said.

I looked at him quizzically, my ire growing. I could not really articulate why I did not want to see, and that it had never occurred to me to visit, My Lai. I had been shocked by his asking. Although an important part of the American War, and an iconic turning point in the rest of the world's understanding of who was really being hurt in that war, I could not bring myself to contemplate visiting a place where so much horror and agony had occurred. I can't imagine making it a place to visit, on a tour of a country. Just like, though it is not part of my culture's pain, I would never vist Auschwitz.

It was difficult enough to contemplate reconciling myself to the Viet Nam of today, let alone the Viet Nam of 1976. And what about my history beyond the war that got Viet Nam to the notice of the rest of the world? Just because the Viet Nam / American war and the My Lai massacre might be part of this man's guilt and understanding of Viet Nam - it wasn't mine. I didn't quite know, and don't know still, what is my understanding of Viet Nam. (My guilt is more explicable.) But there's more to it than the War.

I don't recall my answer after that. Some muttered politeness and we left.

Banshee Welcome Party

It seems that every time I visit my parents – and perhaps it is because those times are becoming rarer – I am inspired to write about it.

The noise of visiting my family and the change in my posture, tone of voice and laughter never fails to provoke bemusement as I drive away again. As music blares out from my scratchy speakers, I edge further away from that strange creature who is mostly me, but louder in tone and quieter in opinion, more easily irritated, blander but more generous with my loving.

Today I am greeted by one of my nieces, Grump. She is standing behind the fly-screen door as I pull my little red car onto my parents' front lawn. I call out to her joyously as I get out of the car, slamming the door shut while waving. Grump shrieks, turns and pelts down the corridor screaming my name and wailing like a two year old banshee. In turn, Bouncer runs in the opposite direction (towards me), also screaming my name but more happily. He bursts through the screen door saying – I opened it for you! And I thank him and bend down for a kiss. Another nephew and a niece also come running out and I feel as if I have a welcoming party, all at knee height. The older niece – Princess – proudly displays some new pink thing and I murmur something that I hope she will assume is approval. Spiderboy is prattling on about his swimming classes. Although there are only three of them I feel as if I have walked into a bewildering crowd of yapping, nipping insects.

As I walk into the lounge room, the Teenager is lying back on my father's recliner chair with a blanket over his head. I kiss him on the forehead, which he hates and I know it but it is my attempt to keep him grounded. The Teenager never knows whether I am going to treat him as an adult or a kid, an equal or a nephew. Honestly, I never know either. I delude myself into thinking that he appreciates the uncertainty. At least someone occasionally treats him as an adult. The Drama Queen is asleep in one of the now empty bedrooms; empty since all my siblings and I have deserted the family home, which nevertheless seems fuller now than ever.

One of my brothers-in-law is sitting on the couch watching some Saturday afternoon sport. I greet him in passing as I move into the kitchen and dining room. Ba is in the middle quietly and determinedly eating while all around are my brother, sisters, brother-in-law and sister-in-law – a chaos of conversation back and forth across the table, in English and Vietnamese. I look around for my mother as I say hello to everyone. Before I see her, I sense Um ushering me towards the dining table. “Yes, okay. I'm eating, of course I'm hungry.” I say impatiently instead of greeting her like I intended to.

There's nowhere for me to sit. The table is covered in food – raw beef, prawns, fish and calamari, a steaming hotpot, bowls of vermicelli and platters of fresh vegetables. I go outside to find the foldaway chairs and come back with nothing. I stand around uselessly for a bit until my grandmother comes. Grandma exclaims about how wonderful it is that we are all here and how festive it is. She also tells me to sit and eat, in a similar tone to my mother's. When she says it, it just amuses me. I obediently go to search more intrepidly for extra chairs.

When I return with two stools, my siblings have rearranged themselves so that additional space opens up between Ba and my brother, the Black Belt, and between two of my sisters. I pass the stools over and take my seat beside my father. I am hemmed in now and I have forgotten to get myself or Grandma dipping bowls, plates and chopsticks. The Black Belt is deep in rolling a transparent vermicelli roll so I ask one of my sisters who is presently refilling the food on the table to get me all the necessary equipment so that I can fulfill the dutiful daughter role of eating ravenously.

Two of my sisters – the Accountant and the Big Boss – are planning their future business together and are discussing when and how to do pamphlet mail-outs. The conversation ebbs and flows, children interrupt with tears or demands and other conversations (like how busy at work I am and how slowly my sister-in-law's (the Banker's) new building is progressing) intersect. Someone is always at the bowl of water, softening the rice-paper wraps and someone else is usually dropping more raw food into the steamboat which is the centrepiece of our family lunches. Ba reaches across me as I am making a roll and I dodge his hand and continue. I also dodge conversations and placate Um about my partner not being present. The Black Belt and I chopstick duel over a prawn in the steamboat sauce to his wife's and Um's affectionately disapproving glances. I win because the duel is rigged – the Black Belt always lets me get the nicest prawns even though he pretends not to.

Grandma keeps murmuring about how festive it is and how tomorrow she is going to an uncle's house for crab. Ba asks if this uncle invited her over and she says calmly no. Ba tries to dissuade her and will later ring this uncle to tell him Grandma will be visiting and expects crabs and Ba will tell this uncle where best to get them at this time of year. Grandma is becoming senile and Um complains about her to us the same way we complain about Um to each other.

The Black Belt and the Banker leave early, to take the Teenager and the Drama Queen to some sporting event. Their youngest, Wide-body Camry, eagerly and cheerily waves goodbye at all of us and departs before the rest of his family. The Black Belt tries to get my brother-in-law's (the Technician's) attention to move the car. It takes a while and the chaos level increases as the logistics are negotiated but eventually, they are gone. Other noise flows into the gap, the youngest Grump and her older sister Princess now hungry. Spiderboy and his younger brother Bouncer are still full of hyperactivity and would not eat even if you had the energy to force-feed them.

Throughout all this Ba and I eat, participating in the conversation but blissfully unaffected by all the waves of childhood drama; Ba because it has never been his role to muddy himself in the child-rearing arena and me because none of them are mine. I stir them up (especially Grump) but their demands are met by another.

After the Accountant, the Big Boss and I clean up, we all sit in the lounge room, chatting. I listen to Um tell me the story (for the fifth time) about how she and three of my aunts mistook some other Asian girl with long hair and glasses for me. It was only when one of my aunts said, “Now OTT is a lawyer, she drives a really nice car.” Um said (knowing me too well), “She must have borrowed it or something – that's not her kind of car.” Um looks over and, thankfully as my mother, she realises that the girl in the nice car is not her daughter. It's a hilarious story she says. I try not to tell her that she has told me already but I blurt it out in annoyance as she begins to repeat bits to make me laugh. I didn't really find it particularly funny in the first place.

Ba has fallen asleep even with the kids screaming and three conversations going on around him. I gently wake him when I leave, squeezing his arm. I also give Um a kiss – to show her that I love her even though I speak to her so disrespectfully almost all the time. As I am pulling away in my little red car not very suited to up-and-coming-very-rich-lawyer, Um rushes up with fruit from the garden – guava and dragonfruit – and a bag of Vietnamese veggies like spinach called 'morning glory'. I take it and drive off waving, promising to be there again sooner than last time. The tunes of Augie March draw me back into the outside world, which seems somehow drab and less real then my truest home – my family.