Baaaack

I'm back from Taiwan, after two weeks of stuff that I can't write about here but three days of R and R that I certainly will post on because it was so cool and a great change from the usual run of things. I'll write more about it when I get the pictures from my friend Melvin, who brought his camera and took more than 300 photographs around Taipei! He took so many that he had to pop by a photo studio along the way twice to get the pictures on his memory stick burned onto CD so he could continue taking more.

However, home is still the best place to be, despite all the things we usually complain about when we've been around too long. Travelling is a good thing because it makes you realise what you have that you can't get outside, and it's not just the food that I'm talking about. Singaporeans always make a big song and dance about how the one thing they miss about home is the food, but I think that's because it's a national characteristic that we don't talk too much about touchy feely issues -- things that really touch our hearts and make us cry. Things like how being home means being with family and loved ones, how Singapore's so small that seeing relatives is just a fifteen minute cab ride and not a 2 day series of connecting flights, how the traffic actually stops for you at the crossings, how serial murderers strangle kittens and not people. There are so many reasons to love home, regardless of one's political persuasion, but our nation's chronic inarticulateness and need for concrete, material signposts means that we simply end up saying that we miss the food and leave it at that.

Yesterday I had the chance to meet my kindergarten teacher again; my mother works in Simei now, near the kindergarten I used to attend and where she still teaches, so she bumped into her a few times and came to mention that I hadn't seen her in ages. Since I had the day off anyway I said yes and went along with her. It was like being brought to school for the first time all over again. It's been so long that I can hardly remember what she looked like. According to my mother she hasn't changed much at all, so I should go have a look at my old photographs. Seeing all the kids in her class reminded me of my younger days. One thing I recall quite clearly, for some reason, is that I once spelt 'skirt' wrongly for a test. And all the strife in the classroom: fighting over toys, things, and other kiddy stuff. The children in her class seemed quite docile, and they were so cute when they clustered at the door to see who their teacher was talking to. To think I was once their age and size! It feels really odd, somehow, to consider that. Perhaps I would have been the boy lost to himself in the corner staring at his feet while lying on his back. But it was nice to reminisce, though all those years in between meant it was really hard to say anything: too many things to catch up on. Coincidentally, two of my former classmates had come back to see her just a few days ago: they're in university now. I doubt I'd recognise them if I saw them, and perhaps I have seen them around in the street. It would be cool to meet all of them again.

Today I also met my cousin who now lives in the US. She returned to visit her parents and sister with her husband. The last time I saw her I was probably six or seven and my sister was one, so it's another case of plenty of catching up. But it was easier, perhaps, with my other cousin (her sister) as an intermediary of sorts, and the whole familiy talking together.

With all these memories, and people from the past resurfacing, it's hard not to think about where I'd be in the future. It's certainly difficult to tear oneself away from home, and the sheer familiarity of the streets and the way things work, right down to the odd looks people give you when you act different, make it hard to think that I'd ever stray away from home for very long. Certainly the world has to be seen, and I'm raring to go see it, but like a boomerang, and because the world is round as a pear, I'd have to come back one day and probably, certainly will.