III.I.III – Rose-Coloured Glasses
III.I.III
ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES
I was never a summer person. You know how everyone just goes bonkers at the simple mention of the season? Not me. I’m a sucker for autumn. I think I have Gilmore Girls to thank for that – is that a more autumny TV show out there?
There’s just something about autumn that makes me feel as if everything’s right with the world. There’s this nostalgia… a note of melancholy, a bittersweet taste to it. Leaves of gold, scarlet and crimson. Their dance, as they sway back and forth, meeting the ground as if drawn to it by a sense of unseen longing. The gentle drizzle that accompanies those grey, gloomy days where you want nothing more but to embrace that same wistfulness within you. The blissful sunshine and crisp morning air. Mellow, soulful, mellifluous.
But summer? Five words. Sweat, sand and skin cancer. Genetically intolerant to heat, summer is a perennial nightmare to me. I’m not kidding. I’ve been known to sweat oceans. Pretty sure my name’s what comes up whenever anyone Googles ‘Oceanogenesis’. As sexy as that may sound, it’s not the only bane of my existence. That’s how we come to the second ‘S’. Sand. Sand is the Toby to my Michael Scott, the Cersei to my Arya Stark, the Darth Vader to my Luke Skywalker. Speaking of, even the dark lord himself has a vendetta against sand.
As cringeworthy as this scene might be, he is right. It does get everywhere. Everywhere. From bodily orifices to your grandma’s pie, it manages to infiltrate every single damn space it can occupy. Don’t ask me how but I still have sand in my car from the previous three summers. You’d think I’d avoid anywhere I can find my mortal nemesis, but sandy beaches are kinda my go-to place. I love the beach. I love the sea. I love to swim.
In fact, all my dreams revolve around the sea . My biggest yet most impossible dream ever since I was a kid is (present tense) to transform into a merman. Then there’s also that of becoming a pirate. Not just any pirate of course, I’m talking a One Piece kinda pirate here – the ones who travel to the sky island Skypiea or to the underwater Fishman Island. Not the modern Somali kind, mind you. So yeah, quite impossible. But until the day I’m either a merman, a pirate or both, I’ll think of sand as one of my mortal enemies.
Next up? Skin cancer. Do I really need to elaborate on that? Yeah, don’t think so… So anyways, there you have it. The three S’s.
Oh yeah… There’s also a W – work. Having just finished my third year of studies, all I could wait for was to enjoy a long break – instead I’d have even more work waiting for me.
It’s not that I don’t like hard work. It’s that those previous nine exams had fried my brain and I was burnt out. Luckily enough, I got myself a job I was kinda in love – teaching English to foreign students. That job broadened my horizons in more ways than one. Not only was I teaching them something so essential while making some moolah, I also got to meet some incredible people and learned all kinds of things about their countries and culture along the way. Plus, I got to conquer my fear of speaking in front of large groups.
But it was still a job, and a very tiring one at that. During the worst of the tourist season, we’d have twelve hour shifts and I’d have to prepare different lesson plans for students of different levels. By the end of the day my voice would be a chirp at most and I’d go home all drained and ready for bed. And this was the best job I had ever had, mind you. Before this, I used to work at an appliance store (decent), in a grocery store (horrible) and, (leaving the best for last) as a door-to-door magazine seller (quit after one shift). I despised those summer jobs with a passion. I loathed almost every single minute I had to be there. But teaching? I still miss it to this day!
So, it should come as no surprise when I say I hated summer. That is, until summer became synonymous with travelling. Now? Now I’m impartial to it. Okay, I’m partial to it. Fine, I like it. I look forward to it. With rose-coloured glasses, Baywatch-style swimming trunks and a beer in my hand, I learned to embrace the islander lifestyle, sand or no sand. My summers aren’t all work and no play anymore. My summers are now full of opportunities, fun, and most importantly, travelling. And so, the summer after one of the most difficult years in medicine, was one I anticipated dearly.