Incredibly Nice Memories of Living Away from Home

So I went downstairs for a walk in my shorts, t-shirt and sweater, hoping beyond hope that it could have been cooler. Thought about a couple of things.

First, the incredibly nice memory of living away from home. Nobody (at home) knew about this much (except my room mate then, who had to put up with all my quirks - and I have got a lot!) but anyway, in the middle of the night during exam time, I would put on my running gear and go jogging in the Melbourne cemetery alone. Yes, at 2am in the morning. It was usually during winter, when the chill air wakes you up in time for another cycle of studying in the dead of the night. Sometimes D-, a friend then, would join me, and we would both sit in the sofa or something, watch 300 MTVs countdown to the top 10 on weekends, and chat until sunrise.

Pour moi, that was la dolce vita, the sweet enjoyment of sunrise over coffee, staying up late, chatting with friends, jogging in a crisp and calm winter's night. It's funny what you take for granted and what you miss when you're home away from home.

The second thought I had was around someone asking me if I was envious of enuwy for being in London, where I wish I would be. Funny, the person I'd expected to have asked me that didn't (but then again, he probably knew that I was feeling a bit itchy for some travel again...) and the person I'd have expected to have the hidden agenda for me to stay, ironically did. I didn't know what to say. Perhaps it wasn't really envy, since I knew I could jolly well do that myself if I'd really wanted, but the truth is, I haven't really figured out yet the dynamics of being Asian in Asia. It's an amazing dynamic, filled with many interesting complexities of feeling like you should be at home, but half-hearted about missing things overseas that shaped my life as I was growing up and experiencing them.

Here's some of the incredibly nice memories I have of living away from home...

1. Out partying in Leeds and Manchester, singing with (rather drunk) friends along the streets and stumbling home the next morning on the early morning train.
2. Sitting on a quiet day in the summer heat sipping a cool glass of iced latte, as the dog in the neighbouring table, a french briard, gives you the hot tongue out as his metrosexual owner chats with his female friends.
3. Staring at the TV screen playing Australian's 300 greatest hits MTVs (some of them you wonder at...) counting down until the sun rises at 8.30am with #1 (usually Kylie Minogue or someone like that) and you crawl into bed with the sun in your eyes and wake up again at 3pm.
4. Chatting with friends over tea in each other's little dorm rooms from 9.30pm in the morning till 7.30am the next day. I don't know why we had so much to talk about, but I do know that our conversations formed friendships that honestly last a lifetime.
5. Plastering the walls with excerpts from 17 different copies of wallpaper*. Yes, my favourites were the absolut and skyye vodka ads.
6. Skating on the frozen university lake in knee high boots on New Year's Day. Apparently if the ice had broken (which it probably was close to doing), I would have had to be rushed to the nearest clinic or hospital (most likely closed on New Year's Day) to have gotten a nice cocktail of antibiotics injected into me because the lake was that toxic. Happy memory #2: I didn't fall in.
7. Singing songs from Les Miserables in duet on the top of Barrows building, the tallest building in university, with the wind in your hair, fresh air in your lungs and a gorgeous view of San Francisco before your eyes. Yes, I think I'll always keep that place sacred for the songs that we were singing and the company that we were with.
8. Dancing in the salsa club with some of the coolest friends you'd ever get to know. We were such a mixed bag and an unlikely bunch... Persian, American, French, Italian, British, Singaporean, Australian, German, Ukrainian, Hongkonger, Canadian Chinese, Swedish Indian, Japanese.
   
   Somehow the bonds we had went beyond the colour of our skin or the countries and cultures that we were from. I never really believed in the connections that you could make across cultures happening for real, despite having been all over the place. Somehow you made me believe all that was possible. Right now, with the mixed marriages that I'm seeing, looking at their faces, blurring the lines between local and foreign, I'm really starting to believe in the magic of people coming together as global citizens. It's really inspiring.
9. Sending postcards to myself of the Travelling Cow, and receiving postcards from places like Turkey and Prague from far away people in far away places. Hearing how friends you have always believed in are in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Turkey, Lebanon and with Peace Corp, JICA, teaching in Shanghai, teaching you that life is meant to be seized with the attitude of carpe diem and small victories.
10. Trying fried chestnut cake for the very first time. It's amazing how little simple pleasures like food can wake up your senses. Even more amazing that for the first time, in a very long time, I've actually tried a new taste, and one that I like. Sure, I can go for new tastes in various forms if I really wanted to be adventurous - like eat escargots, or rocky mountain oysters - but imagine finding out that you like something, actually like something, after having a whole lifetime's worth of experiences that you've set in stone that you like. That simple joy of being able to add one more thing to the list is absolutely to die for.
    
    Oh that said, I'm changing one more thing to the Seven Things meme - I can't believe I missed this one out! It's of course A) getting married in Spain, Zaragoza to be precise, and B) having degustation menu at El Bulli, Ferran Adria's flagship restaurant.

The third thought I had was a song, called (unoriginally) Home:

Home, in the quiet streets by quiet people
Living with the quiet smile upon your face
I never feel like I am near or away
You never make me feel out of place

Home, this is where the darkness lingers
I can feel safe, being miles away from you
By the candlelight, as your smile flickers
There's no other place I would rather be

They say Home is where the heart is
My heart has travelled miles to where
I rest my shoes, my head upon your shoulder
We could be so many places...

Home, different smiles and different faces
The memories pass us by like fading years
In our starburst days, we leave different traces
These are the only legacies of our lives.

They say Home is where the heart is
And my heart has travelled miles, to where
I rest my shoes, my head upon your shoulder
In so many different places...

Friends (Here, There and Everywhere) !!!

Happy post now: I just wanted to say that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, makes me happier than reuniting with old friends from far away places, and finding out that from the moment you open your mouth to speak (after the gushing and the twinkling eyes stage has passed) - nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed and you're still the old friends that you used to be.

Funny how experiences either bind us or separate us, yet I find that there's nothing more alienating than two people sitting right next to each other, experiencing the same thing in two completely opposite ways and similarly, nothing more binding that two totally different people, in two different parts of the world, with totally separate and different lives, experiencing the same thing in two mirrored places.

Most of my friends are not in the country. It's sad (sometimes) but true.

But sometimes, just sometimes, people happen to drop by, which happened yesterday. So an old colleague from the office in Canada dropped by to Singapore yesterday and we caught up over dinner. Now this is tres cool, since I haven't seen him for years almost, and life is, in the meantime, moving along quite quickly. But same old, same old. We had a heck of a lot of fun, making me almost wish that I could have taken today as leave off to show him around this nice and fancy, rather warm city that I now call him. It's not Toronto, it's not Vancouver, but like I said, few things are as star attractions as are people. Had dinner at the Esplanade's Glutton Bar, which, quite frankly, even for a sorta local (me, yes me) was quite good. They had quite a decent standard of char kway teow, oyster omelette, fishball noodles and fried carrot cake. I love my savoury hawker center goodies.

Today was another pleasant surprise because enuwy (bless her) came online from London and we chatted perhaps about 5 minutes before my laptop battery died. And tomorrow I'm flying off to Hong Kong and have got Kathy's phone number on my mobile, together with a list of places that I'm awfully dying to go to on www.hkclubbing.com. I didn't even get to tell her that I'm meeting KM for dinner tonight - but I reckon if time permits I'll catch up online again. She'll be excited.

All in all, I owe enuwy a bunch of emails, met up with old friends and am awfully excited about HK. It'll be so very good to go back, althoug h I'll be in a different hotel and area this time from my old haunts. It'll be a side of the city that I've never seen before - quite an adventure and no, I don't remember much of my Cantonese so I'll just fumble around and be completely non-local for a change. For once, I won't be expected to be anyone's guide!

Oh yes, and Monsieur G- demands some "typical Chinese sweets or pastry", so I think some lao po bing is in order. I do so miss the egg tarts, lao po bing and bo lo paos. Ahhh... sweet anticipation. *big cheesy grin*

(My new Canon Ixus 55 will be along for the ride, so anticipate some photos from the road coming up, and this time they *will* include the foodie items I ate but didn't photograph the last time...)

Co-Dependency and the Lack Thereof

This post probably would cross some boundaries, but I'm hoping that you don't ever get to read it. And similarly, I'm going to keep this as brief and vague as possible. (Recently have been getting into a blog dry spell. That is when one neither has the time, nor the inclination to write about anything, despite the fact that things keep on happening in your life-not to say that Life really stops when you stop writing...)

OK, back to the story.

Sunday evening. Dinner is served late as usual. I'd had a late brunch thing at about 1030am and skipped lunch. So by 815pm, we were driving around and the first restaurant that we'd gone to (promised to be fabulous) was closed, and we drove around again for something else. 830pm. I'm starting to get desperate. Suggested another place, so we all (finally) unanimously agreed (hard to believe it's so hard to get consensus on a place to go) and drove there. I must have arrived around 835pm. And I was on the phone with you the whole time.

My sister in law made a joke about how coincidentally phone conversations just keep happening when I'm around them. I had to play on the joke and continued saying, "Yeah, you know, whole day I'm waiting for the phone to ring, and just when I'm going to step out of the house, it rings. Murphy's Law." I wasn't lying. It's true. I had been waiting. Truth #1. You had to call. Truth #2. I didn't care if it was in the most inopportune time. Truth #3. Sad, but true.

Anyway, so I finally got to the restaurant when you had to go get some sleep (thank you time difference) and suggested I call you back at around 9pm. I set my alarm. This is strange thing #1 for me to do. But it was exactly 25 minutes more to go and I would have forgotten. Sneak phone under table, key the typical Start > 8 > 9 > 3 that I'm used to, got me to Date/Time settings and I changed my alarm time.

9:00pm exactly. The phone rings. The alarm. The waitress had just started to serve food. It was a tense moment as the rice got placed in front of me. I stepped up from the tatami I was sitting on and got up to make that phone call. You were already awake. I think it was tense. There was no one else in the restaurant except us, and the place was quiet. Silent relief you didn't take too long to answer the phone, the receptionist was intelligent and the phone rang only a few times. You weren't sleeping. Silent relief, silent relief. Call you back later? OK, like when??

Cut to dinner. There was awkward silence when I returned to the table. First of all, it was pretty darn rude, probably one of the rudest things I have ever done, and I have a personal taboo not to interrupt dinners. You know I hate to interrupt dinners. Especially if it is with friends/family, not that I ever eat alone. I mumbled a quick, completely unbelievable excuse, and sat down. Attempted to resume dinner to normal.

And to think that this evening, just-only just, that you and I were talking about me being too dependent on you. I cannot believe how easily you saw through me. I cannot believe that you knew this before I did - this is not me to feel this way, and I hate it that you knew it even before the truth hit me. Obviously, the truth is, I am. The truth is, I've never found myself feeling this way about anyone before, and it scares the hell out of me how much I feel. The truth is, you know it. And it's you that I'm feeling this way about. It's crazy.

I keep telling everyone - "No day but today. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss." I am so much in love with the idea of being in love, I dream about being in love more than I really am, more than I know how to recognise it when it is staring at me, point-blank, in the face. People need to tell me what devotion is. And I've only recognised it, and let it slip, only too many times before. What's this now?

Does Love make you change your habits and your ways overnight? Or is Love a slow and settling truth, one that hits you in a way you cannot deny, only in hindsight when you look back and recollect the number of times you did something nice just because? Is Love that patient and slow affection that is slow to burn, not jealous but kind, not possessive or outraged when you mention an old flame, when I come back late at night? Is Love that slow and lazy affection you feel for an old dog that you've taken care of since he was a puppy, or that yearning fire that engulfs and destroys, when you are not around and my eyes burn?

No, I think Love is both that gentle and radiant fire that burns but does not consume. Love is learning how to let go, and knowing when and how to understand. Love is knowing that although you will miss me, you let me be who I am, you let me go when you know I need to go, even though you will be waiting home at night. Love is patient... it is not jealous. Somehow the phrases you read at someone else's wedding ring out in my ears today like a reminder of what is staring at me in the face.

Somehow I know this is forever. And like a diamond sitting before me, so close yet so far, I am so apprehensive to reach out and touch it. I fear it is not mine to hold for the rest of my life. Yet your eyes when you reach out say something nearly completely different. This is the tension of Love. It is not mine to take, but completely yours to give. If only I could find a way also, to make you take what I'm completely willing to give.