Soon after I started my current role, I was introduced to AL, one of our service providers. As our conversation progressed and we peeled away our present, we realised we were school mates back in Klang. We’ve caught up many times since and on Friday, we caught up for lunch at a local Vietnamese joint, as well as coffee after.
While walking back to the office just after 2pm, I started getting messages about an incident which was apparently brewing in the city. Before long, the tragedy of the Bourke Street Mall driver hit me, like everyone else, with a sledge hammer.
On the way out of the office later that day, I said to a colleague to hug her two kids the moment she gets home. Driving from the station back home, I heard on the radio that one of the victims was a 3 month old baby. That baby was undergoing surgery but was to later die. When I got through the front door, I gave Tress a hug.
Life can be so fleeting. A walk through Melbourne’s CBD on a glorious summer afternoon can very quickly spiral into an ugly scene of the dead, injured and mayhem. 5 dead, and over a dozen injured, many seriously. At church yesterday, Mike McNamara started the morning service with a prayer for the victims.
On Saturday Tress and I spent the day cleaning and washing. She vacuumed and did tons of laundry. I cleaned the outside of the house and washed our cars. It was such a beautiful day and we had started a bit after 10, having been out to do some grocery shopping earlier. We didn’t finish till nearly 7pm and while my arm ached from lifting the hedge trimmer all afternoon, it felt good to just sit and watch the tennis later that night, confident and relaxed out home is cleaner and neater – at least for now…
It will be a short week, with Australia Day breaking up the week on Thursday. Many, including my boss, will be taking Friday off for a 4 day weekend. We’ll be having some people over for a traditional Australian Day barbie. I think for me it will again be a time of trying to get my head around what makes our present day psyche – the random acts of violence and the prevalent stridency we’re seeing these days, principally from across the Atlantic where Donald Trump’s ascendancy appears to have sparked so much vitriol and hatred from people who in recent past seemed to have made loud noises against such attitudes against certain minorities. People seemed to have put aside the willingness to speak nicely – giving others the benefit of the doubt – and objectively.
Ante 