Thank you for welcoming me to your pages. Being a blog-virgin I’m not quite sure how to proceed.

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Greetings and salutations! Take me to your leader!

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Hi my name is Tania and I’m an omphaloskeptic.

Currently, when I’m not watching the day go by in light patterns on the wall, I obsess about the ubiquitous palm tree.  Why does the human mind equate the palm tree with paradise/relaxation/holiday/happiness? Being half-Mauritian, I have seen the nefarious effects of palm tree preponderance.

This deep dark obsession of mine has even begun to ooze into my writing. Last year, I spent three months in San Francisco. I am trying to write about the city and, just like when I visited a good friend in Ontario, Canada in the dead of winter (she had to be a good friend to get me to brave the ice) — out pop the palm trees. Along a snow-stormed highway, strewn in fairy Christmas lights, there they twinkled in the night — palm trees! And as I slodge my way through the tempests of my notes and travel-writings, lo and behold… once again the palm tree raises and shakes  its pineapple head… Copied below is the poignant proof in the pina colada pudding of my palm-tree potted mind.

Fake enough to feel real

Visiting San Francisco, I swim in an outdoor heated city pool; pretending I bathe in the tropical waters of my island home. Easy enough, as the plain blue floor, minus the stripe, resembles the empty sea of Mauritius’s once full-of-fish-and-colourful-corals marine life. Dead beautiful.

And the poolside palm trees look like the ones plastered along our hotel-happy coastlines, new ones freshly stuck into sand-eroded beaches after every cyclone season. And the nearby steady tap-tap of tennis balls could be mistaken for the ubiquitous hammers dotting our in-construction isle.

Just as I’m about to become a dolphin, an American falsetto asks me ‘Mind if I share a lane?’, plunging into my dreamscape like a thrown rock agitating stagnant waters. And so, I’m back here in a city far away from home, enjoying myself instead of feeling angered by the destruction of my natural habitat. The poet, Milosz when on holiday in Hawaii, felt guilty to be sunning beneath palms. Not I. I was born into self indulgence island-style. And here, it’s fake enough to feel real, just like home.