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| Lausanne, 2013 |
Saturday 2 March 2013: Switzerland. Lausanne Metro, Montelly en route to
Vigie. I was on exchange to EPFL and was on the way to town to see a
snowboarding contest. A guy who was drinking a can of beer was on the
same train. We had a disagreement on whether the window should be opened
or closed. He opened the window. The middle and ring fingers on m
y
right hand were on the hinge, and were trapped. I tried to pull them
out. He closed the window. I stared at him. The train pulled up at
Vigie. I got off the train muttering incomprehensibly - c'est bien...
c'est tout bien... - but the fingers were flattened and the blood was
dripping out from the cuts on each finger and made a mess of the
platform. I went up the steps to street level, but felt faint and sat
down. The blood dripped and made a mess of the steps. The other
passengers also went up the steps at this time, passing me by. One
person, two persons... I looked up and saw a granny. She looked at me
with fear in her eyes. She went on her way.
I was alone in the
metro station. I did not know what to do. I went back down to the
platform. I sucked on my fingers. The next train arrived shortly after
at Vigie, and out came Vincent, who was on exchange from NTU and knew
me. I asked him for help and he agreed. He brought me to a place nearby
where a bunch of Taiwanese folk were selling bubble tea. We asked them
for help and they agreed, pointing us towards the nearest pharmacy in
Flon. The pharmacists sold me antiseptic and plasters. I patched up and
we went to the snowboarding contest. We linked up with three other
exchange students at Place Riponne, where a huge crowd had already
gathered. I felt tired and asked to leave. The others knew of what had
happened earlier, but did not seem to understand why I would want to
give up the chance of seeing some random snowboarders. I insisted to
leave anyway.
The cuts took some weeks to heal. It's not clear if
this sort of thing happens to every other shithead who throw themselves
into this country for half a year and for no good reason, but it felt
like I had a bone to pick with everyone for a good time after that day.
It seemed to be that no one in the country can be expected to show
kindness, and no one can be trusted to understand. If you wanted to be
here to overeat, get smashed and forget about tomorrow, it was
completely acceptable; but at the moment you were hurt and needed help,
you were swept under the rug: silly foreigner, you were never meant to be here, go home.
I
looked for human places wherever I went: I wanted simply to live and I
wanted to be with people where they lived. I wanted to get to business
as a person and not as a somewhat lucrative intrusion into the local
economy. I found human places in many more places in Switzerland,
notwithstanding that earlier mishap. In the woods near my home
(Bois-Gondou) was a place where two strangers meeting on a path could
greet each other warmly, unlike in the city. In the underpass at Renens
station a young Chinese girl helped me with carrying my luggage when I
moved out, then a young man who lived at Brugg helped me with navigating
the town and gave good conversation during the bus trip. It seemed that
such generosity became more frequent and more dominant of the social
order the further one travelled from the megalopolises.
I am
always dismayed to hear of tourists visiting Singapore and returning
only to report that my country is a "shopping mall with an airstrip" or
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty". Maybe they judged our country by
the extremely attention-grabbing and glamorous Central District, but
this judgment is unfair because they have not seen the truly human
places in Singapore, the places where things like tourist revenue and
national reputation are irrelevant and human decency retains some
currency. I looked out of the 33rd storey of the Marina Financial Centre
into Downtown and thought despondently: This is not Singapore, this is Legoland!
How I wished I was looking at Pulau Ubin instead, or the Central
Catchment forests, or the towns where I grew up in! And how I wished to
point out to my visiting friends the routes and byways that traced the
stories of my childhood, and the charms of the people who simply lived
and were happy.
