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| while Sam had dinner with her Assunta friends, I sat at a ice cream parlour nearby and read about the Sydney Opera House |
One of the highlights of this trip is to see BW again, after more than a year - I have always preferred to see him on his own so that we can talk without the distraction of his active young son. He picked a place in Brickfields, perhaps I have been looking forward too much, because the food is mediocre (for the first time, I cannot finish my lunch).
He seems physically fit, but as we talk it appears that he has a lot on his plate; mostly in dealing with his son, and his wife taking the opposite side. It is a stress on the marriage, he says - and as a result perhaps we sense that he has also grown a bit more cynical and withdrawn. He has sold his family plot - hundreds of square kilometres, so he is a very rich man. We jokingly suggest that he should return to Kuching where we first met him (through squash, etc). He muses about travelling to Europe with us. But later on, when Sam and I think about it, he has no contacts in Kuching anymore. He does not make friends easily and has such a rigid way of looking at things which makes it hard for him to accept new situations.
He seems alone, this quest to bring up his son. But trying to impose discipline single-handedly is no easy task.
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