Simple Things

I guess having spent some 64 days here already in a new country, new climate and new environment, I owe some people some thoughts on how things are like.

What has changed? I've been thinking about that quite a bit recently, whether or not I have changed, whether anything has changed, whether the outside world influences the inside realm much or little.

Quite honestly, it has come to only one point, really. I enjoy the simple things better now.

As much as you can think of London as being the hub of hustle, the city of cities and the base of busy'ness, and indeed it probably is, being one of the three largest financial hubs of the world, 30 minutes outside of London by train and it's a whole new world.

There are large expanses of green fields outside my window that, except for 2 days of frost so far in winter, remain green most of the year around. A slow, ambling river runs at one end of it, parallel to a path where joggers jog and dogs of all shapes and sizes run with their owners. A pair of French doors open out to this field from the second floor where I am, and sometimes in quieter moments when I wish to have silence for thought, I stand at those doors and find solitude and peace in peering out into this wide open field of green, content to be privately alone in my thoughts and solitude. When the weather gets warmer I will open these doors and go outside for walks.

On the other side of my apartment, trains chug by from day to night. The shuffle of the trains break the silence and comfort me in my loneliness when things get too quiet when I'm alone in the house. In the night, light reflected from car beams and street lamps stream into my window, interjected by a single candle flame from an aromatherapy lamp that does not flicker.

It's a lovely life. Very much one that begs the poem of "come live with me and be my love".

When I contrast this with what life was like in Singapore, I couldn't say that this is what I'd dreamed of. I'd initially come all the way here to escape the sniffles (yes, to a colder climate, no less, if you can believe that) and gain better health and potential longevity for a body that is burns up faster than it can build up.

What I got was peace of mind, a healthy 10 minute walk to the station and a free ride to work each morning on a green (low carbon emissions) bus, healthy MSG free food and fresh air that cures the sniffles (if I wear a coat and open the window), people who smile and say hi when they catch your eyes along the street, bus drivers who wait for you as you run towards the bus. This was probably more than I bargained for.

Is that a good change? Sometimes when I think about it, it is a change from recycled air-conditioning, fat and oily MSG laden hawker food, traffic pollution the congestion of throngs of humanity edging shoulders. In the simple things, the little things that make up life like wallpaper, yes it is a good change.

I miss the people from home the most. I miss friends and family. People I love, and people who love me. I miss a little white dog that cannot come here to run in the fields with me just yet very terribly.

What defines a home? What makes things perfect?

I would give up a lot to have a life here like this, surrounded by "pleasant wallpaper" because they are what I live and breathe on a superficial level each day. They are the basic foundations of a place you can call home. I challenge anyone who can live in a house with ugly purple painted walls all their lives and claim happiness. So this is important. The simple things are the ones that matter, and the ones that drive people like me to pay tax at 40% instead of 11%. At the end of the day, I have realized that the cost of living is like everything else, you pay for what you get.

But what I would die for - are the people who make that perfect house a home. It is cold here without the people I love and the people who love me. This perfect house has only made me realise the things make houses homes at the end of the day. Simple things. Like family. Like friends. Like Love.