I had recently finished my contract and became unemployed for the first time since I started working. And as scary as it can be not knowing how long you could be out of work for, I had made some applications ahead of time and took this as an opportunity to catch up on things and people that I haven’t had a chance to focus on: family, friends and to visit my dad at his farm.
My dad, though retired from official employment, had decided to pick up and leave his life in Sydney to start a farm in Adelaide. He's been gone for nearly a year now and though I had previously said that I would like to go visit him one day, I had always been too busy with my own life to schedule a time to go visit. Since I became jobless, what better opportunity to make a trip down and see how he was doing? I really didn't have any excuses. So, I spontaneously told him that I wanted to go over and the next thing I knew, I had booked my tickets to Adelaide.
Canola fields in Barossa Valley
I had a few days before my trip which I had spent in Jervis Bay glamping and then one day in Sydney before jetting off again. On that one day I was in Sydney I was able to schedule an interview which I was thankfully able to land. Talk about good timing! So, I had a total of 5 days where I didn't know where I was going to end up, which turned into a nice 2 weeks of stress-free funemployment before I started my new gig.
Family
Originally I thought I was going to be travelling alone, but Dad asked to see if my grandma wanted to visit. Being the avid traveller that she is, of course she wanted to come!
Most would find it annoying to be travelling with senior citizens. They're old, they're slow. Thing is, my grandma was the one that looked after my siblings and I when we were kids, cooking dinner and talking care of us when my parents were out working. Since moving out, I know I don't go back to see her as much as I should. Taking her with me was the least that I could do. Besides, it was a good opportunity to spend some quality time with my grandma.
My grandma is 81 this year and can't deal to well with walking long distances, so to assist her I was lucky enough to be able to book a wheelchair to transport her around the airport. Do you know what that means? Free upgrade to priority seating up to the second row!
One thing I noticed about travelling with my grandma was the increase in courtesy. It may the be case that I was now part of the special needs group, pushing my grandma around in a wheelchair, but people made sure to move out of my way rather than my usual ducking and diving to get through the crowds.
People were also a lot friendlier. Granted senior citizens with their life experience and wisdom deserve the respect they receive and perhaps travelling with her made me gain respect by association by playing the role of caring granddaughter.
Senior men were so open to chat with me, I guess as a proxy to my grandma. As I passed an elderly gentleman who was with his own grandchildren, he said to me, "Tell her that she is lovely and that people from your country only get more beautiful." I translated it to my grandma and she giggled and replied with a shy "Thank you", one of the few English phrases she knows. The interaction was so incredibly cute, I could not help feeling those warm fuzzy sensations. I told the story to my dad and he explained to me that our skin doesn't wrinkle as fast as theirs. That is, it's them Asian genes.
You know the meme
Source: Reddit.com
Later, whilst we were sitting at the gate, my grandma pointed out a lady who was dragging a bag along the floor which had no wheels. Another man in front of us also remarked and from there we had a good ol' chat about where we're off to and growing up in Campbelltown until we heard that our flight had changed gates and had to leave.
Even on the plane, another man was very forth coming in giving assistance to my grandma.
Maybe it's the difference in generation. Nowadays we are so used to avoiding eye contact with strangers. We are so self involved in looking at our phones or skeptical that people who approach us have an ulterior motive, it felt really refreshing to have honest, friendly interactions. We can learn a thing or two about being decent human beings from the older generation.
Dad greeted me with an awkward hug as he picked us up from the airport. With all that he's gone through you would understand why he's a pretty stoic man, but as little emotion I could get out of him, I know he was happy to see me and appreciated the effort I'd taken to go and visit.
It was good to see him. I didn't go there which much expectations of getting a tour of Adelaide since I know he's busy with his business, but he did manage to take some time out to spend some time with me and visit some local tourist attractions. Even though he's been there for nearly a year he's never actually had a chance to see much of the city. I ended up being the one telling him where we should go.
In the two days that he took time off, we spent one afternoon having lunch and taking a drive around Barossa Valley and one day exploring the city centre of Adelaide.
Unfortunately, Barossa Valley was not all filled with lush vineyards as I had always romanticised - we had just came out of winter after all. But we did make the most of our time there discovering vibrant canola fields in the backroads of the valley and wine tasting at the grand Seppeltsfield estate.
Established in the 1850s, Seppeltsfield Barossa is "the most historic winery and greatest showpiece of the Barossa Valley". Definitely worth the visit if you enjoy architecture and stunning gardens rich in century-old heritage.
Vineyards would have been nicer if they were a bit greener :P
Seppeltsfield - one of Australia’s oldest wineries.
The next day, I had asked my cousins, who were locals, about where we should go to Adelaide. The response? 'There's nothing in Adelaide'. I admit, coming from Sydney and having visited some of the other capital cities on the East Coast, Adelaide was indeed underwhelmingly small. It felt like the size of Parramatta if I was to do a comparison. We were recommended to go down King William Street for some shopping, but honestly, shopping and the consumerist lifestyle no longer appeals to me. My adoption of the Minimalist ideology and living with intention means I'm longer making impulse purchases just because I'm bored and looking for something to do.
When I visit a new city, I don't want to see things that I can find back at home, I want to see and experience its culture and what makes the city unique. I instead found myself talking a walk down North Terrance with my dad, the cultural precinct of Adelaide. For the 'City of Churches' I thought I would find a lot more. I can say though that I was really impressed by the University of South Australia's beautiful campus.
Our walk concluded in the Botanical Gardens, a place I knew my dad would appreciate since he loves plants and nature as well. It's probably where I got it from.
Wanting to check out an Adelaide beach, our day of exploration finished up at Gleneg. I noticed that many of the beaches in Adelaide have these really nice long piers. This one in Gleneg is 381 metre long and was originally built in 1859. The coastal towns in Adelaide have a lot of heritage, many featuring architecture of colonial times. We also did a drive through Port Adelaide which looked really quaint, but unfortunately did not have time for a pit stop.
Outside of catching up with Dad and cousins who had come from Sydney, we discovered that we had some more relatives who lived in Adelaide. After learning that my cousin's wife's cousin ran a pharmacy over here we tracked them down and they immediately invited us over for lunch. It's something that I still can't get over. Our generation, we're pretty distrusting of people we do not know. Family or not, unless you are introduced and have been able to build some form of connection, you generally wouldn't be inviting strangers into your home. But with Cambodian culture, family is of utmost priority. No matter how distant you may be they welcome you with open arms.
Farm
To get a feel of what my Dad was doing day to day, I spent one day helping him out on his farm. Last year my parents and a few of my relatives all chipped in to buy land in Adelaide to start their own separate farms. Though my Dad is a newbie at large scale agriculture, in his first harvest, his farm has grown the best produce.
Truss cherry tomatoes at my Dad’s farm
The work day starts early. By 8am we already had breakfast and had made our way to the farm. I was given a hat, some work boots, a new set of gloves and garden shears and a custom made trolley my dad had built to load and transport my harvest. I was given a quick lesson on how to pick the tomatoes, got assigned a row and off I went.
My trolley was a smaller one, holding up to about 10 boxes of cherry tomatoes. I had to pack the cherry tomatoes like a game of Tetris to ensure maximum use of space. Each box should weigh around 5.5 kg. That meant that if I carried a full 10 box load, I would be pushing around roughly 55 kg. I was asked if it was hard work pushing all that weight. This was easy compared to pushing a 70 kg sled at the gym that has no wheels. All that prior exercise really came in handy because if I weren’t as fit as I was, this work would have been a lot more taxing. On saying that, after 2 hours of repetitive reaching up and cutting, you do start to feel it in the shoulders. By the end of the day my back was aching from all that bending over and lifting.
The mornings were cold so I had layered up, but after a few hours of labour in the greenhouse I had stripped all layers to just my tank top. In the end, after a days work I had managed to fill 4 loads of my trolley which I thought was a pretty good effort.
Repetitive cutting of the truss.
My view for the day
Dad’s handmade bespoke trolley. Custom built to fit the boxes perfectly with rugged wheels to handle the bumpy terrain. The boxes did jump about sometimes though which required me to periodically catch and rebalance my load.
When you’re working in the greenhouse there really is not much besides you and the tomatoes. It would be quite lonely to be the only person within hectares, working the farm by yourself as my Dad had done for months before he had gotten an extra pair of hands for help. For me, I took this day of solitude as an opportunity to reflect and listen to my podcasts for life inspiration. I was on funemployment so had no work to occupy my mind. Doing this for a day for fun was all well and fine, since I knew I would be going back to my easy life once I got back home. But for some people, with the lack of English ability, they don’t have the opportunity of getting a cushy office job like we do. Hard work is the only option to survive and make a living.
Now if I’m to be honest, I was against this whole plan of starting up a farming business to the point of holding what felt like a family intervention. My dad should be retiring, taking it easy and going on holidays, not working to exhaustion from dawn till dusk each day. When we were younger, he had always encouraged us to get a job so that one day we would be able to open a business where the whole family would be able to help. To be our own boss and not rely on being employed to make a living. None of my siblings went in that direction because we all know how hard it is to run a business and want a life outside of work. Don’t work hard, work smart right? And so with none of us to live out his dream, he’s had to do it himself.
In investment terms, risks should be taken when you are young so that should it fail, you have time to recover. Starting a business at retirement to me sounds like crazy talk. My dad has been hustling hard all his life that I actually don’t think he even knows how to relax. But is guess with all my siblings now grown up and my grandpa no longer with us, he doesn’t have any dependants relying on him and holding him back from living this dream of self sufficiency. For a lifetime it was about survival, duty of care and needing to play it safe to get by and provide for the family. Now, he finally has the opportunity to take risks without impacting the family, so I guess he’s taking it.
Seeing the fruit of his labour gave me some satisfaction knowing that he’s doing ok. He may have physically aged more years than the one year he’s been away, and as against this as I was, it makes me proud to see him have a dream, go for it and follow it through with conviction no matter how difficult it may be. He is truly one of my biggest inspirations.
“It makes me proud to see him have a dream, go for it and follow it through with conviction no matter how difficult it may be”
Friends
Coming back from Adelaide, I had an extra free week before starting my new job. Outside of getting into this whole blogging business, I took the time to catch up with some old work mates and friends from all different phases of my life. As little as I may be able to see them, it is always great catching up to see where they are up to in their lives and careers and reminiscing of good old times together. It’s important to remember take the time out keep in touch with the friendships that impacted you - you never know when the connection could come in handy.
It was a great two weeks of funeployment: one of appreciation and discovery. It was nice to have the time off to focus on some of the important things in life that we too often neglect. Now I’m ready to start the next phase in my career feeling relaxed and refreshed.
