Aussie Throwback

18 October 2013

Oh Best Beloved,

We dropped by Mom and Dad's office today. By we, I mean QY and I. They were having a celebration for the October babies. Mom thought it would be fun if bro and I would also take part in the festivities.

Since there was a lot of stuff on top of Mom's table, Dad, QY, and I ate in the office pantry area. Mom was out buying cake and ice cream. But, when she came back with the sweet treats (and when she cleared her table clutter up), we eventually took our places at her desk. There I found a whole collage of throwback pics:

A postcard Dad sent. Armidale.
This would become our home for two years.

When then 70-plus-year-old Lola paid us a visit.
We went to Sydney, seven hours away from Armidale.

The customary family portrait. With bro playing with a helicopter.

Sandon Schoolkids.

The pictures above, Oh Best Beloved, are snapshots of our life in The Land Down Under. We stayed there for two years, while Dad went through PhD. We would have stayed longer, had it not been for some unforeseen circumstances.

We lived in Armidale. 5/54 O'dell Street. Who lives there now, I wonder? Our neighborhood had one Indonesian family, one from Fiji, and another from Papua New Guinea. The kids - Aresha, Terri, Priscilla, Michaela (I'm not sure if it's spelled correctly), Judy, and Anua were our regular playmates. I wonder what's become of them now?

Armidale is a quaint town with a small city center, a look out point, and a big university (where Dad studied in). And they had an awesome town library! At first I thought Armidale would be like the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) because of the deceptive rootword "Armi" but I'm glad it was nothing like a military school. The town had plenty of parks where Dad would "toss another shrimp on the barbie" (i.e. grill food) while us kids would fly on flying foxes and Mom would take photos and home videos.

Life there was simple. I'm not sure if I had any concept of homesickness then. I wrote some of my best friends letters and postcards though - there was no Skype, no Facebook, and only Dad had access to the Internet with the nostalgic dial up tone.

One day I might go back to Armidale again. Maybe I'll take you with me. That would be nice, wouldn't it? And we could tour through other places in Australia, too.

Oh, I can't wait for that one day to come.

Till then,

Mari