What you must know before diving in:
The story below is 12 years old. I wrote it during a class by award winning writer Bernice Notenboom. Bernice is a polar explorer, climate journalist, author and filmmaker. Someone I hold in the highest regard.
It was a special time. I was climbing my way out of a long-poor-choices period in my life and was very much trying to find the answer to: “What am I supposed to be and do, because I don’t see it?”
When I read out Gone Bamboo in front of the class audience, Bernice gave me one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received. She urged me to keep writing, to keep sharing my words. And it propelled me into a writing career that’s still going strong 12 years later.
Gone Bamboo is dear to me. It is a ‘sliding doors’ moment. A redemption. How that whole story came about, how it was anchored in vulnerability by exposing it to a group of people, the praise received from someone I admired. It became a tipping point, a slingshot into a new reality. A new story.
My life would have looked vastly different had that moment played out any other way. Right there I found self-belief. Something that had been missing for such a long time.
It shows the significance of encouragement. It shows what happens when we truly encourage someone for their talent or heart. And how a small act of cheering someone on, at the right moment, is no small act at all.
What I’m trying to say is this:
Revisiting the defining stories of your life, remembering who was there to encourage you, remembering the depth of your emotions, can still, even to this day, years later, alter your reality and create a life-changing shift.
If the story below sparks something in you, join me in Bali, this Sunday 9th of October and on the 22nd of October for a 1-day writing intensive to Unearth Your Story. Sign up using the code ‘BAMBOO‘ and receive 30% discount.
Without further ado…
GONE BAMBOO
Am I imagining that everything surrounding me spirals at the speed of light? Is this dazzling feel just the realization that my exploration time is limited to hours? Is it the honking icy blue cabs? The fiery red crabs? Is it the intoxicating green tea, that gives me the cloud-nine feeling of being free?
The vast blur of flavours, colours and sounds try to pull and push me towards a new emotion at every corner I cross.
Singapore is the city where expats “Go Bamboo”. They blend in the local life, become part of it and have no room for thought of returning to their homelands. In other words, like bamboo that spreads and grows wild anyplace it wants once the conditions are favourable.
As I’m wandering through this metropolis my perception of time is distorted. I only have 50 hours but they seem to tick away like minutes while my brain does an honest attempt at processing the sudden shifts in scenery.
Chinese temples, Buddhist pagodas, Hindu relics and Arabian mosques appear out of thin air as if your brain guides you on a trip around the world with every street you pass. Although the map in my Lonely Planet likes me to believe so, there appear to be no cultural borders within the city. Hindu temples reside in Chinese districts, Persian rugs are sold in front of English colonial mansions and Arabs cross the street to converse with their Malay neighbours, all the while English is the indigenous tongue.
There is a Chinese tea house here, said to serve a certain type of green tea that lifts your spirits unlike any other beverage the city can provide you with. Exhilarating as wandering the streets of Singapore is, I’m in need of a friendly cab driver who can take me to this mysterious elixir.
As my hand reaches out of my pocket, ready to be aimed sky-high like an eager schoolboy, the deafening sound of a horn startles me. I swiftly turn around and my eyes meet a rusted icy blue taxi. The window rolls down and I see the pearly whites of a Hindu cab driver. “You’re waving to the wrong side mister, in Singapore, we drive on the left”. Forgive my stupidity but didn’t I already mention the spinning surroundings?
I hop in and he introduces himself as Raahi.
- which just so happens to be the Hindu word for ‘traveller’.
I told Raahi there must be an explanation for the harmony between all these cultural diversities, as I stared at the Hindu deity glued to his dashboard. “Look outside mister, it is found on every corner throughout our city!”. It suddenly hit me like a Buddhist gong. The fuel and glue of Singapore: the chow, the grit, the grub, the goodies. In plain English: the food. All these cultures borrow dishes from each other and fuse them with their own flavours. We drive past the Seafood Market on the east side and he tells me no trip to Singapore goes without having Chili Crab. A dish typical for Singaporean cuisine, fresh-caught king crab drenched in a sauce that is neither a curry nor a broth but something of a wild mix that is literally finger-licking good.
Raahi pulls over in front of a row of English colonial buildings, except they are all painted as if the construction workers put together the wrong windows, doorframes and walls. Nothing seems to fit in style. In the midst of this urban rainbow is a building that, surprisingly, only has one colour. Raahi points towards the green pagoda.
It’s late in the afternoon and the tea shop seems to be abandoned. A whiff of incense calms my nerves as I step inside. The Chinese wallpaper decoration is clearly flaking, the floorboards beneath my feet are squeaky and the overall silence is a bit eerie. A few rays of sunlight break through the window shutters and land on a wall with faded newspaper prints that picture Queen Elizabeth, Bono and Michael Jackson drinking tea with a gentle-faced Chinese man who, I presume to be, is the former owner.
The smell of incense is suddenly more present.
I follow my nose (as I have been doing the entire day) and in the far left corner of the ill-lit shop a crooked old man stares at me with a kind look on his face as if he were expecting me. In his hand: a large teapot. On the table in front of him: 14 porcelain teacups as big as a thumb.
“Please, sit down”. - Somewhat stunned by this scene he sees me struggling for words. “No need for talk, drink first cup, slow.”
“This tea doesn’t taste special! – man, I am thirsty! - why are these cups so small? – how did he know I was here?” My thoughts are all over the place until I notice I’ve drank the cup in a matter of seconds. Ignorant! Surprisingly, my fumbling tea-drinking skills do not upset him one bit as he pours two new cups and his words begin to fill the room.
“Tea is a cup of life”
“Some drink it fast and risk burns”
“Some drink it slow and lose happiness over its cold”
He sips his tea, the heat briefly fogs his glasses, places it on the table and awaits my response. Never shy with words, I say:
“So if tea is a cup of life, then drinking tea is finding its balance?”
A look of understanding accompanied by the widest of smiles is followed by his wisdom on how one can achieve this balance. He interrupts his story only to pour tea, thus allowing me to take in these new thoughts. Amusing, how the eerie feeling I experienced when entering the pagoda has made way for a sense of lightheartedness.
As we finish the fourth cup my mind strangely becomes light as a feather. Brain and body have never intertwined as much as today.
The 5th cup sends a light shock through the nerves, leading to awareness of all the muscles in my body. The 6th has my spirit hovering above the scene in the room, witnessing it from a distance. By the time the last of the golden elixir flows from the teapot and fills the seventh most decorated cup, I gain control over every cell, sense, thought and action. I can’t help but feel that now I am both the rocket man ánd ground control. When all fourteen cups are empty he sends me back into the concrete jungle with a final thought-provoking idea:
“The essence of finding happiness in a cup rests not in its substance, but in the thoughts you accompany with every sip.”
Whether it was the old man’s philosophy, the pure synergy between cultural differences, the vibrant colours that burst from the city streets or simply my stomach craving Chili Crab…
Singapore, I might just go bamboo.
SPECIAL OFFER
This Sunday, the 9th of October and Saturday the 22nd of October, I’ll be co-facilitating a storywriting workshop in Bali. A 1-day writing intensive to unearth the defining moments in your life. If this sounds like the right thing to do for you, then join me.
Sign up using the code ‘BAMBOO‘ and receive 30% discount.
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I absolutely love this story. I was really there drinking tea with you. Magical.