The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (20 page)

I was feeling pretty dejected after my first attempt at being an employee but I still wanted to somehow make money and help out Mum. The solution came in the form of a large male Siamese fighting fish.

My dad had bought a fish tank at auction many, many years ago, and the previous Christmas Uncle Dung had bought Khoa and me a few fish to stick in it. We had a few guppies and swordtails, but what I really wanted was a couple of Siamese fighting fish. When we were kids we would often visit a pet shop for a look, and Dad was the self-proclaimed expert on these fish. Within a few seconds of spotting a male, he could tell you whether it would win or lose in a fight against another male.

‘The long colourful fins are for show and get ripped up easy, causing body injuries. What you’re after is the ugliest one with short stumpy fins and a fat body.’ Dad would point to a blocky little nugget of a fighter at the front of the tank.

‘See that one? Not much to look at, but it will beat all these other ones easy. That one there—he is the fish-world’s Mike Tyson.’

His theories sounded plausible enough, but he could’ve been making the whole thing up. One day at the aquarium we decided to test out his ideas. My brother looked for the most beautiful long-finned male, and I picked the short stumpy Mike Tyson one. We planned to let them loose on each other. We figured we wouldn’t get them to fight to the death or anything like that; after all they were $9.95 each. But maybe they could fight just till you could see who was winning, then we could send in a pack of goldfish to drag them apart and say, ‘Leave it out you two. It ain’t worf it.’

As an adult, I have to say I am appalled at the thought of getting animals to fight, but we were young teenage boys back then. We took the beautiful one and the Tyson one home and plopped them into the tank, separated by a glass divider screen so that we could feed and fatten them up—prepare them like heavyweight contenders before the main event. In our young minds they were staring at each other like two prizefighters before a weigh in. I imagined mine was saying in fish-talk to psyche out the other one:

‘What are
you
lookin at, fin boy?’

The other replied: ‘Float like a butterfly-fish, sting like an anemone.’

We took it pretty seriously. About a week later our fish were plump, glistening with muscles and raring to go. Khoa was betting that his beautiful long-finned one was going to win; it was much bigger than mine. But I
knew
mine was going to win. I had the nuggety one.

We lifted the tank divider screen with anticipation… 

Wham!

Straight away, Fin Boy chased mine into the corner, and then… totally lost all interest.

Huh?
we thought.
That’s it?

‘Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!’ we chanted.

Nothing.They just swam around with the other fish and didn’t even notice each other at all. We were absolutely shattered. What a disappointment.

Khoa was especially pissed. ‘Dad’s full of it, man. That guy’s probably never even seen a fish-fight. He’s full of crap. There’s more crap coming out of him than currently trailing behind Fin Boy.’

Khoa and I grew up never really knowing what to believe and what not to believe about Dad. So often we had heard him tell us about something he had done and not really believed it, or thought that he was exaggerating. Later we’d overhear others talking, confirming his truth. He was such a larger-than-life character who lived in the exaggerated circumstances of a war. We eventually learned not to doubt the length and breadth of his adventures or, at times, his stupidity.

‘Should we separate them again?’ my brother asked. ‘Just in case they fight later?’

‘Nah, they’re not even taking any notice of each other.’

So we left them there and went and played with our footy cards.

The next morning Khoa and I woke up to find Fin Boy and Mr Tyson embraced in an intense lock of fins and scales. But rather than looking aggressive and violent, it seemed more… beautiful and affectionate. They were engaged in a rolling dance, spiralling down to the bottom of the tank and then rising again, like a yoyo with red fins. It turned out they weren’t fighting at all, they were breeding.

Mr Tyson was a Mrs Tyson, and our two Siamese fighting fish were making babies. When they were staring each other out, it wasn’t the fighting talk like I’d imagined. Fin Boy was saying, ‘Hey, gorgeous, how you doin’?’

Before long there were babies everywhere. We raised the young fry up until they were shop size then took them down to our local aquarium. Three dollars per fish!
Whoo-hoo!!!

We made sixty bucks. I quickly did the maths and discovered that there were other breeds that had several hundred babies at a time. So three bucks times say, four hundred babies—that’s one thousand two hundred big ones! Get a bunch of tanks happening and you could have twelve hundred coming in every month. And the best part of it was the fish did all the work for you.

I was starting to think just like my dad—fast, big and over the top. Pretty soon we had about twenty fish tanks. We didn’t have enough money to buy the tanks so I built a heap of them myself. Any glass that was left out on the road I brought home. If someone left out an old window to be taken away, I’d chuck it into the back of the car, set to it with a glass-cutter and some silicon, and turn it into a tank. Then came my piece de resistance: an enormous display aquarium, nearly two metres wide. It carried almost a thousand litres of water and was decked out with heaters, lights, filters, rocks, caves and plants. It was like Disneyland for fish, with everything a fish could ever desire. They didn’t care if it was made from second-hand freebies from the local aquarium club; to them it was a luxurious honeymoon suite, designed and tailor-made to put anything with fins in the mood for loving. And it accommodated about a hundred of my biggest and best-breeding adult specimens, who were going at it like Catholic Spaniards on their wedding night.

Everything was going well, until about 2 a.m. one fateful night when I was woken by an enormous
Boom!
that sounded like New Year’s Eve fireworks. Except fireworks don’t have just one boom followed by an even louder scream from my mum.

Khoa and I jumped out of bed and sprinted into the lounge room. The giant fish tank had split in the corner. Fishworld had opened up because I hadn’t put enough silicon on the joins. We watched, stunned, as a thousand litres of water poured onto the carpet, fish flopping everywhere.

Mum and Tram raced around the kitchen and found every single pot, pan, cup and bowl they could. Soon every container was filled with bewildered looking fish, who stared at me like angry hotel guests who’ve been sent outside when a fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night.

Suddenly there was a pungent burning smell and I could hear a buzzing noise. I looked into the corner and saw the water lapping up against two four-way power boards stacked high with cords.
Fizz, fizz, crackle.

‘Oh my god, electricity! Everyone get out!’ Mum screamed. She was worried about her children; I was worried about my fish.

‘I’ll turn it off,’ I shouted. Everyone else screamed, ‘No!’

I reached my hand in and flicked the switch. An almighty shock tore up my arm and sent me flying backwards, landing on two Chinese takeaway containers, and sending a family of bristlenose catfish flying against the wall. Mum ran towards me but Khoa held her back.

‘Mum, stop! Don’t touch him.’

Luckily, I was all right. All the lights on the left side of the house went out as the safety switch kicked into gear. I got up, still feeling that strange, jolting energy pulsing through me.

‘No worries, the electricity’s off.’

Then we packed all the fish into containers. The floor was covered in water. We stayed up for a few hours mopping it all up, and finally went back to sleep. The carpet stunk of aquarium water for over a year, and for all that time the air remained damp and foul. But I am proud to say that not a single fish died that night. My mother was relieved that not a single child died that night either.

Every now and then Mum likes to bring up the electric shock story.

‘Why does Anh drink too much beer?’

‘He got the shock when he was fourteen.’

‘Why did Anh come second on
Dancing with the Stars
?’

‘That time he got shocked… makes him jerk around like a frog when he dances.’

‘Is that shock why Anh is so good at comedy as well?’

‘Oh no, that’s ’cos he takes after his mum.’

One of the best things about St Aloysius was its focus on developing the ‘well rounded’ young man. So rather than just offering academics and sport, it encouraged a lot of co- curricular activities as well; chess, for example.

I represented the school at chess for exactly one game. The Year 9 chess team was missing a few guys, even the reserves were away at a camp, and we would’ve forfeited a loss if no one could attend the event. Terry, Phil and Lloydy were playing and, although I’d never played before, they said they’d teach me at lunchtime.There are quite a few games you can learn in a school lunchtime. Noughts and crosses, snakes and ladders, bullrush—you can learn all these in about ten minutes. Chess, however, takes a bit longer. In the afternoon the school team from Trinity arrived and, rook me dead, I still didn’t know my knight from my pawn.

In the chess comp the players would be ranked one to four—one being the best player and four the worst. We would then play the other school’s corresponding one to four players. Of course I should’ve been number four. But I came up with a plan.

‘Why don’t I be number one?’ I said to the boys. ‘That way I can cop a loss to their number one player and our number one player would play their two and have a better chance. Our number two would play their number three, and so on.’ I figured I was going to lose anyway, and this strategy would give the other three boys a bigger chance of winning because they were effectively playing against someone ranked lower than them.

Brilliant!

Trinity’s chess team rocked up and I was introduced to this lanky Indian kid with a huge gap between his two front teeth. Having only been in a competitive situation on the footy field before, I tried to stare him out like you do when you line up against your opponents in football
.
He clearly didn’t quite understand why I was giving him the hairy eyeball, and his puzzled look was so disarming I gave up my intimidation tactic. We sat down, flipped a coin and he made a move. He then switched on a little timer clock to make sure I didn’t take more than sixty seconds to decide my move. I looked at the board and figured I’d take as long as possible—I stroked my chin, furrowed my brow, tried to look like I was thinking of a king-hit manoeuvre. I picked up a piece and plonked it down on a square.

He stared at it in dismay.

Yeah, take that buddy!
I think to myself.
I’ve got the guy rattled already
.

‘You can’t do that,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s against the rules.’

‘I was just kidding, just seeing if you know how to play,’ I said, taking my horsey piece back and moving it elsewhere.