Alien Speak

We had a new addition to our team last week. It is pretty surreal to have another person in our little crusade. Suddenly, we can do so much more than before. We don't have to juggle our lives with work with little leeway for sudden changes that will ripple on to our clinics for weeks on end. It has given us a little more breathing space; a second more to use the inhaler before plunging back into the chaos.

This has also brought home the fact that it is bloody hard work. I tell people to come to Cantoland to live and work with me. And I don't realise how difficult it is to adapt to this life. The new addition has broken down a few times in the past week due to a variety of factors including the language and culture barrier. The intensity and the speed of life here is also a hundred times faster than what most people are used to. I am glad I am able to adapt to this place in a relatively short span of time. I remember feeling lost and disorientated when I first got here. We do not realise how difficult it is to uproot ourselves and plonk ourselves smack bang in the middle of another country, exceptionally so if we are working at grassroots level.

I will never laugh at my friends' Cantonese ever again. Neither should they at mine. And if anyone decides to move here just to entertain me, I shall be eternally grateful and promise to be nice to them for the rest of my life!