ST 14 Aug 2005

Take life as it comes, with its 'etc etc etc'
By Catherine Lim Suat Hong

WHEN she was 28, doctors told her she would not live to see her 30th birthday.

She's battled cancer three times. Just over a year ago, she gave birth to a baby girl with her, in her own words, 'handsome, younger Thai husband'. Marica is Australian and 41 years old.

Her family includes two children from her husband's previous marriage and her husband's 17-year-old nephew. He had turned up on their doorstep one day with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

About a month ago, her father- in-law was hospitalised and her mother-in-law came to live with them. He was carrying two jackfruits on his motorbike when he lost his balance and crashed. As
Marica recounts this story to me, she tells her smiling baby daughter: 'Yes, grandpapa has to stay in the hospital, maybe for a year.'

Life happens. There is a more colourful four-letter word that people use when bad things happen. But the word s*** does not convey the matter-of-fact tone that Marica uses when she tells me her life story.

She says that she moved to Thailand because it is a Buddhist country. More importantly, she had felt out of sync in Australia where life was, as she described it, compartmentalised into 'work, family and miscellaneous'.

There is no such demarcation in the life she leads now in Chiang Mai. Life is all encompassing; work is family.

Marica runs a cafe with her husband on a sidewalk leading to a well-known temple in Chiang Mai. It serves fruit juices that are said to promote mental and physical well-being.

The cafe also serves Thai-grown coffee and there is a tap where passers-by can help themselves to drinking water if they are thirsty.

The couple have another business in herbal and floral soaps and toiletries. They have a small sampling at the cafe.

They are not rich. They get by. The nephew helps out at the cafe. He is not book-smart, so they hope they can find him some vocational training which they can afford or maybe get him apprenticed into a trade. For the time being, he goes to a school at a temple where education is subsidised.

There is also a 20-something girl working at the cafe. She is an orphan. When they first decided to employ her, they had to pay her wages in advance so that she could pay for food and lodgings. Now, she is included in family celebrations. Marica's daughter adores her.

There is a homeless man who hangs out near the cafe. The family gives him fruits and he helps to carry the baskets of fruits and rubbish.

There is also an informal 'tuk tuk' terminal near the cafe where the drivers often gather. Marica seems to know them all.

Occasionally, she visits a home for abandoned infants which is run by Buddhist nuns. When I mention to her that I have visited a spa that is just a few doors away from her cafe, she says that she knows the owners. She tells me that if I had dropped in for coffee before the spa visit, she could have given me a 500-baht (S$20) discount voucher. 'Mai Pen Rai' or 'never mind', as the Thais would say.

So this is what Marica means by Work is Family is Miscellaneous or as the King in the King and I would say, 'etc etc etc'. Life is holistic, spiritual and compassionate.

I met Marica on my last day in Chiang Mai when I was killing time before leaving for the airport.
I chose her cafe because her husband had greeted me warmly when I passed by a few days earlier.

I don't think that Marica could have anticipated all that has happened to her since she left Australia for Thailand.

But when you have beaten death, isn't it a blessing that you are still alive and can deal with life and its 'etc etc etc'?

E-mail your comments to suathonglim@yahoo.com.sg