hello, it’s been a while. for me, at least.

i’m home. it’s so good, good, good to be home again. i have to stop my mind from fast-forwarding to the inevitable end of the holidays – back to where laughing boisterously makes you feel like a public nuisance, where there are no tropical breezes to take the edge off the stifling heat, where… where i am, simply, not home… not myself.

but there, i promised myself that i would be an overflowing barrel of sunshine and positivity. self-pity, if felt, should surface only in the dark of the night, under the cover of many layers of blankets. not because i want to be brave, or any such nonsense. just because… well, i suppose things could be worse. that’s a cliche, but, really… things could be worse.

the weather has been lovely since i returned. blazing hot, yet breezy and peppered with the occasional squall. perfect tropical weather. perfectly home. i wake up when the household begins to stir each morning and lie in bed, listening to home sounds. i have my cup of hot milo while watching the morning news. i wonder why the same rituals can feel entirely different simply because you are in a different space and time.

there is much work to be done – that endless paper, all that music to learn, and housework, day after day after day. but all i want to do is sit still and soak it all up. this heat. this sensation of being home.

sakura season. harbinger of spring; of a time of departures and meetings, farewells and hellos, old things and new, in japan. there is something hauntingly beautiful about these flowers. perhaps it is in their transient beauty. or simply the ghostly white-and-pinkness that speak of things both happy and sad.

unlike most people who rush to see these flowers when they are in full bloom, my favourite time of the season is when they begin to wilt, when the wind catches them and the petals start swirling all around you like flurries of snow… there is a japanese term for it – 花吹雪. such a lovely expression, hanafubuki. if you take the three characters apart, they would mean flower, blow, snow. sometimes, the japanese ability to put so much into so little blows me away. just like how they manage to say volumes with just three short lines in their haiku.

many people have been asking me what it is like to be in japan again, and i can do no more than shrug. the truth is, i cannot, as yet, feel anything. beyond the initial disappointment at the dormitory (which, after a long self-lecture on being spoilt and the realities of life, i’ve since come to accept), beyond the niggling fear commingled with anticipation at doing research again… beyond these, i feel somewhat numb. if anything, i miss home. i miss home comforts, home cooking, and family warmth. i miss the weekly rituals of singing and singing, battling new music, and laughing non-stop during dinner. i miss the people, the sights, the sounds, the smells of singapore. but that is not to say that i am depressed and homesick. how do i put this across…? well… i feel more singaporean than i ever did, more of a foreigner now than before, perhaps.

there is a word that i’ve always liked, epiphany. i wouldn’t be so vain as to say i’ve experienced one (although i’ve always wanted to, just so i could use the word!) but in the long rambles i’ve been taking every day since i arrived, i have managed to sort out certain things in my mind (the result being that i lose the way home more often than not), see them more clearly, and i think, am all the better for it. this, at least, i am grateful for – the time and opportunity, at last, to put down all work and just walk, think, sleep.

i picked up a couple of new books that i really enjoyed, but i think i will let the juices sink in a little more before i write about them.

these sensations of homesickness are so surreal i cannot help but submit to them. is it age, hormones, or something else altogether?

the impossibility of bringing everything i have with me has finally sunk in; bit by painful bit, i remove pieces of myself from the trunk and put them back in the closet. it is rather difficult to explain why there is something so immensely personal and sad about this process. after all, i will be back here before half a year is over… but how can i convince anyone that it will all be the same, and yet different?

9 years ago, change was exciting. change was, then, a little like a roller-coaster ride – something you dreaded and looked forward to all at the same time. but it may be that these years have wrought too many changes; somehow, somewhere along the way, the bright-eyed wonder became wide-eyed fear. adjustment and ‘dealing with it’ became a chore rather than a challenge, and change… you start to wonder if you are simply looking for trouble. it really isn’t a necessary evil, is it?

it is just beginning to hit me that i have barely 3 weeks to get everything packed and ready to go. that sounded reasonable to me until last night, when i looked around my room and began taking stock of the colossal nature of this move. i exaggerate, i know, but i need to scare the wits out of myself so that the procrastinator has no chance to pounce. and despite sundry people assuring me that you can get everything in japan (oh don’t i know it!) there is simply something about items that you already own – that mark of ownership, of mine-ness - that makes it rather difficult to part with them. i cannot quite convince myself that the school library holds every single book that i so fondly believe i need, or that a closeted phd wannabe will only need so much clothes (certainly, i do not think i require five white shirts of varying sleeve-length and whiteness)… but i looked at the size of my dorm room and quaked inwardly. i suppose i will have to work harder to persuade the… hoarder in me (what is the antonym for minimalist anyway?) to give up these worldly thoughts and focus instead on entering that hallowed world of most-highest learning.

but it becomes a little more difficult to leave with every passing day, and i almost wish i had not put out all these little roots in the past year. home feels like home at last – i know my way around (a point of contention, i know, but i meant, at least sufficiently for my own purposes), i speak singlish, know about the little nonya, and have heard all the local grouses, those adorable oh-so-singaporean-type complaints… better yet, i actually know and feel enough to contribute to these grousing sessions if i so wish. and i bring a cardigan, water bottle, and foldable umbrella around with me. how much more singaporean can you get, right?

tokyo is fascinating and kawaii in its own way, but (whatever else anyone around me may think) i am, after all, not a japanese. i cannot strut around tokyo because i do not own it – i cannot quite rant and rail at it; i feel as if i have to submit to it passively, quietly. it is not mine to love and hate and attempt to change. singapore, on the other hand, is.

and having written all this, i feel a little resentful, all over again, about the fact that they did not consider me sufficiently qualified to teach in singapore schools. and they let non-citizens teach national education! it riles me, it does. but you can always count on family to let you down once in a while, and at the end of the day, you cannot help but love them all the more for it.

i did not do all that i set out to do in tokyo. what i did, i shouldn’t have, but i have no regrets anyhow, so we shall leave it at that.

i grimaced at the 31 degree heat when we first hit the airport, but now, sitting at my desk, my trusty old fan spinning away some steps away, i cannot help but embrace this warmth. perhaps it’s age, but boy… is it good to be back.

much work awaits, but i have to hop into bed before that dastardly flu makes a full-blown comeback. it is nice to be snuggling under a single sheet, listening to the tv blaring away (in mandarin) in the hall, and sending irreverent messages back and forth.

ah, home.

i was woken up at half-past three in the morning by the gentle whooshing of rain outside. i left my windows wide open, snuggling into the blankets as the wind swung the curtains this way and that.

it is a lovely feeling to be awake at that time of the night (when you are not dead tired, that is). to be conscious as the world sleeps; to feel safe and cocooned in the midst of a storm; to let your mind wander far and wide as you take your time to fall back into unconsciousness, rocked to sleep by a cool tropical storm.

after many months of sleepless nights spent rushing through senseless translations, i am enjoying this rare lull in work pace (although i might not be saying the same if it goes on. after all, one has to eat to enjoy anything at all). i mean to savour this time, even as i try to silence the voices that play on loop in my brain night and day, day and night – when will i know about the scholarship?

but there are many things to be done in the meantime; i cannot allow myself to fret over things i cannot control. news to catch up on, (text)books to dig out and fresh ideas to give birth to, music to learn and love, bridesmaid duties, movies, birthdays, blogs… a whole country to get myself re-acquainted with – to try and understand, all over again, the physical and social fabric that makes singapore, for it is the understanding of self that feeds the understanding of others.

yes, it should be an exciting few months ahead.

home at last! i thought that flight would never end. i do not like air travel. hunkering in a tiny space with strangers who, when asleep, take up half your seat space, is in no way pleasant. inflight entertainment and shopping do not even excite me the way they used to. i have grown old and hawkish, and like those predator-like middle-aged men and women, i now focus on looking for an empty row of seats to stretch out on. the merit of being old is that you really do not care about how others look at you anymore. not when your comfort for the next ten hours is at stake.

it is so nice to bask once more in our tropical warmth. i don’t think i have given our weather due credit in all my years here. but the past week has been especially miserable with the rather unexpectedly chilly weather in nyc, and what with sinuses and chronic coughs, i really did miss the constant summer sunshine that we (oh ingrates!) whine about endlessly. i know i will forget this when the next blazing hot day comes along, but for now, i am all meek gratitude.

flying again in less than 12 hours. i am no jetsetting executive, so this is rather too much for me. i wish i could just finish my hot milo, curl up in bed, and spend the morrow getting ready for practice as always. but reality dictates… that i start packing, all over again.

some lead right back to where you started.

i was wandering around the financial district today and getting rather hopelessly lost, as always. that was when this post happened.

you know the movie sliding doors? i think about that sometimes. where i might have ended up if i hadn’t done a certain something in life. let’s say i had not listened to mum 15 years ago, and studied french instead of japanese. i might speak a little french now, but i don’t think i would have ever made it to france. i think i would have stayed in singapore and gone on with my studies at the school of communications and stayed in the publishing line.

or if i had cleared that writing test waaaay back in 1999, i would never have gone to japan. i might have gone to leeds, had a lot of english tea, and come back as a journalist instead.

or if i had, say, read the papers just a teeny wee bit more and passed that other test last year. i might be coming up with tv documentaries for a living now. i think i would still very much like to do that if life had turned out differently somehow.

or if the ministry of education had not decided that my japanese degree meant that i had insufficient skills in english to teach the kids here (and look! i don’t even use uppercase! how right they are!) i might be in teaching college right now, learning about pedagogy and such, and looking forward to moulding the future of our nation.

but most of all, if i hadn’t taken a series of turns and unintended crossings, i may never have met a certain person. i may never have been both happy and sad (people you love do that to you. it’s the law). i may never have returned to singapore two years back, nor may i have wanted to leave again. who knows? i might even have met sundry other people and allowed one of them to make me both happy and sad for the rest of my life. i might have been bouncing a baby on my lap as i type this.

if. such a powerful word, full of endless possibilities and dead hopes.

…blog.

this is turning out into an entire series of entries on when to blog.

it’s a very strange feeling to know that i have no work for the next four days, at least. nothing. absolutely nothing. it’s a situation i have been actively trying to avoid for months… years…? but not this week, at least. it feels good for now.

just out of nothing-to-do-ness, i started surfing around for apartments in tokyo. even having lived there for two years, the whole upfront cost of renting an apartment always hits me afresh. it’s not even the rent – just that lousy excuse for extortation they call “gift money”. (they don’t even disguise it under some other name. it’s simply a gift to the landlord, and you can kiss it goodbye forever.) i don’t hate japan, no. and i am wildly excited at the thought of being there again. but there are just things about certain places (any place in the world, for that matter) that you just find difficult to accept.

like how the hairdresser slapped my hair around last week. it just came to my mind now. i went for a haircut last week at an established hairstyling chain in singapore. they weren’t bad, really, and the hairdresser was a friendly chap (although he didn’t really seem to understand my english). perhaps they were too friendly. i felt positively man-handled. first, i got a blast of cold water to my hair, which dripped unceremoniously all over the sides of my face, but… never mind that. then later, the hairdresser, together with hairwashing-lady, stood side by side with two major hair-driers. you know, the giant, whooshing type they use in salons. and they came at me. really. each taking one side of my head, they flicked my hair violently and slapped the wet hair all over my face while waving the hair-driers around wildly the whole time. hello? i was scared. very scared. it’s a good thing the haircut turned out fine, but i don’t know if i’m ever going back there. i am used to being pampered by gentle, apologetic japanese hairdressers. this is all rather new to me.

but i only meant to say that there is something about every culture, every place, that you will somehow find fault with.

my right cheek is swollen. i wonder if my wisdom tooth is (finally) pushing through. why do i not feel any wiser than i did five years back?

people wonder why i love mornings. this is why.

the view from our eleventh-floor apartment

but i had a fruitful walk anyway.

lovely bushes of white flowers lining the streets

the banshee

on the road to...

the interesting thing about traversing these green belt roads is that you see nothing but “wilderness” around you. looks pretty much like a scary undergrowth to me, except…

yellow and red water pipe thing

…for the adorable yellow and red water pipe things lining the “wilderness”, interspersed along the sides of the street at every 100m or so. very useful markers if you get lost while trying to hunt down the missing park connector signs (i’m very bitter about the signs. can you tell?)

where the witches meet

i love this; this little ring of trees in the middle of nowhere. where suburban witches have their little pow-wows.

what is this? (besides being a badly-taken picture)

advertisments for a condominium development project! these figures line the border of the property, and individual spotlights illuminate each figure at night. what a creative and efficient use of space, and so much more effective than just tacky billboards. i first saw these in the form of cow figurines, which some milk manufacturer placed randomly on a field to advertise their milk. later, there were some others – figures of atheletes in various poses in an advertisement for the youth olympics. excellent idea.

and then homeward bound.

illegal?

contrary to popular (?) belief, they don’t impose a fine for walking on the bike path. really. lots of things are actually legal in singapore, believe me. although…

no cycling on the bicycle path... i think.

this sign was next to the bike path, so… i don’t know if it means what i think it means. 

and home to breakfast!

i made this.

ok, that was a minor lie. i did make it, but three months ago, on mother’s day to be precise. except that mum was not home to eat it. i do things like that. don’t ask. my scrambled eggs were a grand success!