First barbeque of the season
Today, on yet another beautiful, sunny, warm, clear April day, we had our first barbeque of the season, and the first barbeque in two years.
Oh, and what joy it brought me! (I know... I've been positively brimming with bliss recently, but truly, happiness is an extremely under-rated emotion!)
A couple of my housemates and I spent the greater part of yesterday hacking away at the jungle that was our garden - first chopping off the branches and clearing out the space, then cutting the branches into smaller pieces and packing them into black garbage bags. In total, it took about 6 hours yesterday and some additional clearing up today.
It had been a while since I did anything resembling gardening. The last time I pulled a weed was not too long ago, back in 2003, during a community service event over the course of my internship. But prior to that, the last time I did any gardening for my own family home's garden must have been during my primary school days. Probably when I was less than 10 years of age.
My mom has always loved gardening. And as a tiny child, I used to "help" her - just hanging around her being chatty and a general nuisance. So the tree hacking, plant pruning, branch breaking and weed pulling brought me back to my younger childhood days. It reminded of my mom, and I found it very comforting, therapeutic.
And for the first time, I realised how big our garden was! And suddenly, I'm find myself yearning for a house with garden, instead of owning a mere flat. (Increasingly, I have been gripped by a desperate longing to buy a little place of my own to settle down and be queen of my little castle).
That our neighbour lent us his shears was another thing that struck me deeply. Being not very domestic at all, our house had no gardening tools, and my housemate had commenced our garden clearing project by pathetically sawing away at a thick branch with an old, serrated kitchen knife, when our neighbour - an grey-haired man with a foreign accent - took pity on said housemate and offered to send him a pair of gardening shears. It warmed my heart, this very simple act of neighbourliness and human kindness.
You see, this is our fourth year at the same address, and in the course of the four years, we have never spoken to any of our neighbours (except for those from our community who live down the street from us, who we knew beforehand), not even our next-door neighbours. I suppose that subconsciously, our aloofness stemmed from us feeling like we don't belong, and our attitude that we are foreigners and are here only temporarily, and therefore there is no need to reach out, to build a community with our immediate neighbours. Furthermore, we are young people, and our neighbourhood is very residential, so there seems to be even less grounds for us to communicate with our neighbours. And anyway, London is a big city, and who expects neighbourliness in a big city anyway?
And so this man's unexpected offer, this natural reaching out, was beautiful to me. Again, it reminded me of my childhood, and the much idealised and promoted spirit of "village" warmth and neighbourliness that formed the substance of much of my primary school textbooks in Malaysia. I remember spending most of my days with my next-door neighbours in the care of Auntie Alice, with her six children. She had a daughter my age who I went to school with. I remember my mom and her talking over the fence. Passing extra food or tit-bits over the fence. (And our neighbour passed the shears to my housemate over the fence!) I remember the car-pools to get us kids to school. I remember my dad giving myself, this neighbour girl and another boy - a son of my dad's - home tuition with a little white board and marker pens.
I never realised it before, but in truth, oh how much I've missed that! Simple neighbourly interactions - co-operating, lending the occasional helping hand, sharing simple things in life.
The food-shopping, marinating, chopping, peeling, done with the company of my housemate(s) were also very therapeutic. While I do not make the slightest claim to domesticity, and would definitely Not be happy doing any of the afore-mentioned activities on a regular basis, doing them once in a blue moon is very therapeutic - it's simple, repetitive, and forces me to slow down, to take things easy and smell the grass. (Taking things easy is not a skill I have, but it is something I am gradually beginning to learn)
The barbeque itself was great too! I find, perhaps surprisingly, that I actually quite like entertaining, but generally find it quite stressful to be a host: there are too many details - is there enough food, entertainment, is the mix of people right, will they get along etc.
But because it was a fairly small, intimate gathering (c.20 people in total, spread across 5 hours: 3-8pm), most of whom I've met before and feel fairly comfortable with, it was a very low stress affair. Everyone behaved very well, was suitably sociable and mixed around beautifully.
Also from the perspective of it being part of my Spring Match-making project, I thought it was a relative success. Among the guests, we had 4 single guys, and 2 single girls (excluding one boy housemate, my girl housmate and myself), and I observed sufficient milling around for everyone to meet and make a preliminary assessment. So what we need to do is have another barbeque and invite the same people, which would give them the perfect opportunity to meet again in a social setting, and potentially take it further. Except that the next time I hope to introduce at least one more guy to the mix (Cavé - yes, I want to give him away), two more lovely lovely girls (one of whom is my housemate's friend who I have just recently met, and is probably the girl I have most quickly fallen-in-crush with - well I like her because she is spunky - and it is her that I most want to introduce to Cavé), and potentially my senior from work and maybe another boy too (my team member is thinking of introducing her boyfriend's brother to me). Although I have been told that I should keep some boys for myself.
So until the next one, I continue to daydream and plot... :)
Oh, and what joy it brought me! (I know... I've been positively brimming with bliss recently, but truly, happiness is an extremely under-rated emotion!)
A couple of my housemates and I spent the greater part of yesterday hacking away at the jungle that was our garden - first chopping off the branches and clearing out the space, then cutting the branches into smaller pieces and packing them into black garbage bags. In total, it took about 6 hours yesterday and some additional clearing up today.
It had been a while since I did anything resembling gardening. The last time I pulled a weed was not too long ago, back in 2003, during a community service event over the course of my internship. But prior to that, the last time I did any gardening for my own family home's garden must have been during my primary school days. Probably when I was less than 10 years of age.
My mom has always loved gardening. And as a tiny child, I used to "help" her - just hanging around her being chatty and a general nuisance. So the tree hacking, plant pruning, branch breaking and weed pulling brought me back to my younger childhood days. It reminded of my mom, and I found it very comforting, therapeutic.
And for the first time, I realised how big our garden was! And suddenly, I'm find myself yearning for a house with garden, instead of owning a mere flat. (Increasingly, I have been gripped by a desperate longing to buy a little place of my own to settle down and be queen of my little castle).
That our neighbour lent us his shears was another thing that struck me deeply. Being not very domestic at all, our house had no gardening tools, and my housemate had commenced our garden clearing project by pathetically sawing away at a thick branch with an old, serrated kitchen knife, when our neighbour - an grey-haired man with a foreign accent - took pity on said housemate and offered to send him a pair of gardening shears. It warmed my heart, this very simple act of neighbourliness and human kindness.
You see, this is our fourth year at the same address, and in the course of the four years, we have never spoken to any of our neighbours (except for those from our community who live down the street from us, who we knew beforehand), not even our next-door neighbours. I suppose that subconsciously, our aloofness stemmed from us feeling like we don't belong, and our attitude that we are foreigners and are here only temporarily, and therefore there is no need to reach out, to build a community with our immediate neighbours. Furthermore, we are young people, and our neighbourhood is very residential, so there seems to be even less grounds for us to communicate with our neighbours. And anyway, London is a big city, and who expects neighbourliness in a big city anyway?
And so this man's unexpected offer, this natural reaching out, was beautiful to me. Again, it reminded me of my childhood, and the much idealised and promoted spirit of "village" warmth and neighbourliness that formed the substance of much of my primary school textbooks in Malaysia. I remember spending most of my days with my next-door neighbours in the care of Auntie Alice, with her six children. She had a daughter my age who I went to school with. I remember my mom and her talking over the fence. Passing extra food or tit-bits over the fence. (And our neighbour passed the shears to my housemate over the fence!) I remember the car-pools to get us kids to school. I remember my dad giving myself, this neighbour girl and another boy - a son of my dad's - home tuition with a little white board and marker pens.
I never realised it before, but in truth, oh how much I've missed that! Simple neighbourly interactions - co-operating, lending the occasional helping hand, sharing simple things in life.
The food-shopping, marinating, chopping, peeling, done with the company of my housemate(s) were also very therapeutic. While I do not make the slightest claim to domesticity, and would definitely Not be happy doing any of the afore-mentioned activities on a regular basis, doing them once in a blue moon is very therapeutic - it's simple, repetitive, and forces me to slow down, to take things easy and smell the grass. (Taking things easy is not a skill I have, but it is something I am gradually beginning to learn)
The barbeque itself was great too! I find, perhaps surprisingly, that I actually quite like entertaining, but generally find it quite stressful to be a host: there are too many details - is there enough food, entertainment, is the mix of people right, will they get along etc.
But because it was a fairly small, intimate gathering (c.20 people in total, spread across 5 hours: 3-8pm), most of whom I've met before and feel fairly comfortable with, it was a very low stress affair. Everyone behaved very well, was suitably sociable and mixed around beautifully.
Also from the perspective of it being part of my Spring Match-making project, I thought it was a relative success. Among the guests, we had 4 single guys, and 2 single girls (excluding one boy housemate, my girl housmate and myself), and I observed sufficient milling around for everyone to meet and make a preliminary assessment. So what we need to do is have another barbeque and invite the same people, which would give them the perfect opportunity to meet again in a social setting, and potentially take it further. Except that the next time I hope to introduce at least one more guy to the mix (Cavé - yes, I want to give him away), two more lovely lovely girls (one of whom is my housemate's friend who I have just recently met, and is probably the girl I have most quickly fallen-in-crush with - well I like her because she is spunky - and it is her that I most want to introduce to Cavé), and potentially my senior from work and maybe another boy too (my team member is thinking of introducing her boyfriend's brother to me). Although I have been told that I should keep some boys for myself.
So until the next one, I continue to daydream and plot... :)
