Findings

Tidying years of accumulated papers and assorted stuff, I’ve found all sorts of things I’d forgotten I’d kept.

Some are important things, like my birth certificate, from which I learn that I was born at 5:25am (is this why I’m a morning person?). I’ve also found my certificate of Australian citizenship – I became an Australian citizen on 18 May 1988. I wonder why I have never ever commemorated this date. Celebrations might be in order next year, though, because I will have been an Australian citizen for twenty years – longer than I ever was a citizen of Malaysia, now I think of it!

Lots of things with sentimental value – photos and old letters. I don’t have as many photos as I would like, but still quite a few, including many taken the year I spent in China, and some old photos “borrowed” from Mum’s collection. I really ought to go through them and sort them into some sort of order. Some are also very interesting, and I might scan and share them some time. I have a whole boxful of old letters and cards. Then email happened, and there is quite an obvious decrease in the number of letters I received. I certainly haven’t been as diligent about keeping the emails I’ve received. This may be a good thing in terms of storage, given the huge amounts of email we each generate, but I wonder, as I look back, what I will remember of this time and how much I will have to jog my memory.

I found the vet’s bills from the time of Baubles the Cat’s accident – she lost her tail eleven years ago! The item on the bill: “Amputation – $89.00” made me pause.

I found lots and lots of old diaries, including two of jl’s (I’ll bring them with me to Sydney). No matter how “online” I get I still enjoy the practice of maintaining a paper diary. (Maybe, even if I don’t have a lot of letters, I will still have my diaries to look back on.)

I’ve thrown away bank statements, bills and receipts dating back all the way through to 1993. Fourteen years of holding on to these things is enough, I think. I don’t even know why I’ve kept them for as long as I have. Also gone: 90% of my university notes and papers. These, such as the illegible but strangely nice to look at notes written after an afternoon spent in the student tavern, are interesting to look at, but they have just been sitting in their respective boxes all these years, attracting silverfish. It has been very cathartic to throw away so much stuff. My room feels nicely empty now.

I have to hang my head in shame, though. Some days ago I blogged about the huge amounts of paper I’d accumulated in my office. Well – my home office is not much better. The picture shows the five stacks of paper – journal articles and stationery – I’ve squirreled away. As I said earlier, this year I am going to be a lot more careful about printing things willy-nilly. I’m also going to have to curb my stationery fetish and start using up all the note pads, note books and journals I seem to have accumulated.

As if to reinforce this point, I found, among all the stacks, a poster from the New Internationalist magazine: “A 20-step programme to help you kick your global-warming, energy guzzling habit”. Step number ten: “MINIMIZE PAPER USE” [emphasis mine]. The other points are useful too, of course, but the paper thing – sigh.

I also found a postcard depicting a variety of pen nibs. I’d definitely forgotten I had this! In the picture it’s perched on the bottom stack of papers.