Chris Martin's voice sings to me as I write something for school. Nostalgia flows through my cells as I focus my attention on academic words. And just like that, I am here, in the present, on the 9th floor in a student accommodation in Carlton, doing what I had dreamed of doing years ago.
It is happening now. This is the moment. This is my life.
It is always easier for me to focus on what is not there, on what is missing. Perhaps being negative has an interesting effect on my bipolar gratefulness of today. And I am grateful. I was dancing Bollywood songs with a group of Indians from my university just minutes ago, and I felt it, again: the present... colliding with memories of my past, those years I spent in Ahmedabad in my twenties... but that Indian energy and liveliness prevails in this new generation of Indian youth that adopts me as one of them today.
And I was grateful.
For a moment, as I was jumping and sweating, imitating the moves of a superstar Indian dancer, I thought: why am I so obsessed with understanding what Australia is, what Melbourne is? Perhaps my research persona had taken away the sparkle of the oblivious joy of simply being in a new place. And the truth is (as I write this) that when I think about everything that has happened in the last eight months, I can't help but let tears roll, roll through my trembling smile.
I am so grateful.
Thinking about things more carefully, I can just say that Melbourne has been a mesmerizing and devastating mirror of my life. For the first time, I found myself living in the middle of all the cultures that have shaped my persona, in the midst of a group of people from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. All of us, looking for our place in this land of promises and koalas, of ideological progress and wallabies, of nature, of footie, of coffee before 3:30 pm, and a constant search of the casual conversation with an authentic Melborian. I have to say that talking with 70 or 80-year-old Australians has become one of my most beloved hobbies and treasured memories.
And I am more grateful.
There are many days that I still wake up and wonder if this is my life. Still today, I am not sure if I feel as if I belong to this marvelous land. Remote land. Complex land. Ever-changing land. As I said, perhaps the fact that I have been researching cultures has made me too observant. I have started to realize that I have unconsciously detached myself from this country, as researchers are supposed to do when analyzing their objects of study. And in my detachment, I have tried multiple times to come to my own conclusions about what Australian culture is. And in my detachment, I somehow concluded that I could not become a part of it because I was not born or raised here.
Is that true, though?
On various occasions, I find myself talking to other expats and realizing that they are mesmerized by these lands, lands where they attest they belong now. I find myself feeling discouraged when I do not share the same feeling yet.
Am I ungrateful, then?
So, as I am amending my Human Research Ethics Application--something that most Ph.D. candidates will retell as a frustrating experience--I had a glimpse of nerd, enigmatic hope. I am finding great pleasure in trying to make myself clear to other researchers (the Ethics Committee) about why what I am doing is important. I find a great sense of purpose in thinking about continuing my research career and finding the answers to the questions I formulated 3 years ago when I applied for my placement here.
And it hit me, just like that, as I said. I felt it: I am here; I am in Melbourne.
So grateful.
Perhaps joining a strike last week, where I supported the cause of fighting for better working conditions, more permanent jobs, and more significant salaries, obscured the feeling of gratefulness that I have to this country for giving me the opportunity to spend these years in its lands and its uniqueness. For funding my research and allocating fantastic researchers who guide and encourage me. It is not that I believe that things cannot be better or that it was not worth supporting my faculty in its rightful search for fairness, but I do not want to forget how far I have come to even be able to stand next to other academics or faculty staff as we chanted: "Mooore permanent jooobs!"
It has been a long journey.
I have been chasing this feeling for a lifetime now. I cannot even remember when this quest began. The last time I tracked, it was during the summer of 2019 when my destiny started to reconfigure itself again. I was staying with a Chinese family, as an English tutor, thinking about what would follow my master's degree. I remember that night, in the wee hours, browsing through Unimelb's website; analyzing the Creative Writing Ph.D. program. I remember calling my best friend and telling him, "If I am admitted into this program, all my life will finally make sense. I will finally become a real writer". It feels like a lifetime has passed after that night, a lifetime that included a global pandemic, closed borders, and the normalization of the digital era.
I made it here.
I crossed to this timezone and this dimension. Perhaps I am digressing now, but memories of me enrolling in the university and starting my Ph.D. studies in Zoom blasts my brains right now. For years, Australia remained as a land that lived inside Rosy Apple (as I call my rose gold Macbook Air). My future awaited inside that 13' screen... my classmates, my supervisors, my professors...
And now they are real. And Mexico is now trapped behind screens that I carry on my wrist, in my hand, in my bags...
I survived. Little Lau, Little 罗抒梦. In that little room with a little window. That faced a little stream with little fish. Inside a little apartment in little old Quibao. In big, gigantic, impressive Shanghai. Everlong, evermissed, everloved China. You changed me forever and I never thought that you would still be here, in Melbourne. There is a Dragon Hot Pot in the opposite corner of my building, there is bubble tea on campus, and there are Chinese students in my classrooms. I teach them and wonder how they feel in these foreign lands, in this foreign language... --Digressing again-- Little Lau, Little 罗抒梦, would have never imagined all that would follow that night when she decided to come to Australia.
Little 罗抒梦 should be proud now.
The chase is over. I feel it. I got the feeling, and I cannot explain it. I just know it feels like a contention of oceans in my eyes and fireflies in my chest. It feels as many lives lived in a few days and multiple futures diverted in a few months. It feels like potential. It feels like progress. It feels like change.
Perhaps I belong here.
I cannot say that I am really religious, but I believe that God has brought me here. I cannot say that this next stage of my life has been easy, but I can attest that it has been the furthest I have pushed myself at every level. Australia has brought to the surface my greatest fears, my deepest questions, my clearest mirrors. Little did I think that coming to a first-world country would be my most significant cultural shock. When the phrase one hears the most in Melbourne is "no worries," one wonders why one is worried all the time. And I mean it in the best way possible. Living here has made me realize that reality can be different. It can be better. But it doesn't get any easier.
And I want it to be magnificent.
"Postera crescam laude" is the motto of The University of Melbourne. It means: "Grow in the esteem of future generations." And that is precisely how I feel now. I feel for my students, I feel for my research, I feel for my country. I feel for myself.
I have to grow.
And I am still grateful.
I am.
I am going back to the start.The Scientist, Coldplay.
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