The artist and the avocado tree

MALAYSIANSKINI | She moved to Port Dickson 10 years ago into an old bungalow built with stone and bricks, located in a secluded residential area surrounded by spacious land and vivid, unruly green.

There was a tall avocado tree in the backyard, but it did not bear fruit for the first six years after she planted it. This was where Sharon Chin, her partner Zedeck Siew, and their little cats hid from the hustle and bustle of the city to concentrate on their creative art and writings.

"City life is becoming impossible," said Chin, an artist born in the 1980s who grew up in Petaling Jaya. She recalled her busy life in the city and how she was chasing one projects after another after she graduated from Melbourne in 2005.

Chin said that by around 2011-2, she felt that she was losing herself to the hustle and bustle of daily life.

"I was working so hard, but I wasn't getting anywhere financially. I wasn't getting anywhere artistically. I had lost the trait of doing things that came from me."

She drew an analogy between herself and the people who walked away from Omelas, a wonderful and prosperous city that exists because of an abused child in the dungeon. In the story by Ursula K Le Guin, the city's inhabitants are aware that it will collapse should anyone save the child.

Eventually, Chin and her partner decided to leave their 'Omelas' and move to PD to find themselves again.

"I think it was really a step into the unknown...