Mourning

I had been reflecting that New York gives you a lot to reflect upon and very little time to reflect upon it, while Singapore's main drawback may well be that it gives you very little to reflect upon but a lot of time with which to reflect. Such is the recipe for boredom. But in fits and starts, Singapore can be like New York in this respect as well. When things happen, action tends to negate reflection.

Many things have changed, and my return to Singapore a week ago seems like someone else's life, or a long time ago. We are into the third day of mourning for my uncle, who passed away in the ICU a bit before noon on the last day of 2008. What can you do, in the face of something like this? You try your best to help him, and when your best proves to be insufficient, you have to continue trying your best to help the people that have been left behind: his family - my family - myself, even. You involuntarily carry on, and because involuntary actions work best under normal circumstances and also tend to produce normal circumstances, you try to carry on as normally as possible.

All told, from the onset of the stroke till today, it has only been three weeks: not enough time to get used to it, not enough time to even properly accept that something as monumental as this has actually happened. Added to the almost instinctive reversion to as much normalcy as is tenable, this gives rise to a dazed mental state; you are aware of your going through certain motions, accomplishing rites and extending hospitality to the people who are visiting the wake, but you don't think about why you're doing it. You don't think about the recent death, or the body lying in state, or the beaming pictures that are posted in the obituaries or at the head of the altar. It's almost as if there were some other event going on: a block party, a family reunion. Even in the midst of the ceremonies of mourning, you find yourself more concerned with performing the rites well and saying the right things at the right time, rather than thinking about what has just happened. I guess when things change so fast, you only have time to appreciate the superficialities; reflectiveness only percolates to deeper levels over time.

But there are breathless moments of crushing awareness. Strangely enough, these don't come when I look on the body, which has ceased to be a person but is like a monument, an alabaster cast memorialising a life. The face has already ceased to be familiar; it is the animation that I recognise, more than the physical features, and so it is easier to look upon the body because it has become distanced from what I remember. But when confronted with signs of the past, the moments of anguish come. The strongest moments surface when looking at his obituary photograph. Or when my cousins speak of their father, speculating on what he would have done if he could have intervened in how his own funeral is organised. At moments like these, the dazed, automatic actions take on an awful frenzy, a sharp edge of desperation, like when you're walking down a street absentmindedly and thn become aware of someone yo don't want to meet, and you try to continue walking past as if you hadn't noticed, but your steps have taken on a bite of urgency.

And so, our consciousnesses skirt around the issue, stepping delicately. I think partly it is because each of us doesn't think anyone else wants to discuss it, and certainly I think that it is better for all our states of mind if no one decides to bring up the issue to my aunt and cousins. Silence and avoidance is a sign of consideration and deference. But at the same time, the ennui and trivia of organising a wake also keep us busy enough to avoid thinking about it. There are elaborate rules: the big joss stick and oil lamps that must be kept burning at all times; the provision of appropriate food for each meal for the deceased; the hourly burnt paper offerings; the ritual bowing when people come to offer their respects. And then there are the pure logistics: the seating of guests and the provision of refreshments, restaurant-style; the collection of baijing, community contributions to defray the costs of the funeral; the scrutiny of expenses incurred and the regular banking in of baijing income; the struggles with insurance forms and red tape. And just in case we have any spare time on top of that, there are always bags of paper offerings to fold, repetitive origami tasks creating wads of afterlife currency that are engaging enough to be distracting but not so strenuous as to be tiring. Putting on a traditional funeral like this is really an exercise in self-distraction, and the traditions give the family a structure to follow at the very time when they are most at a loss, to tide them over the most awful immediate aftermath of bereavement.

Some of it is actually so banal as to be absurd, and there are moments when everyone's placidity and calmness is downright unsettling. The awareness of the absurdity comes on the brink of apprehension of the enormity of what has happened. As you approach the fact of death, things start to look trivial, and there comes a point when people's lack of concern over death looks like lunacy, self-delusion. And maybe it is. But it is therapeutic, and it is what is the best for people on the brink of grief - no, not on the brink but in the thick of it, for everyone is hurting, you can be sure of that.

Such, then, is the paraphenalia of passing on. There are two more days of this; the funeral is scheduled to take place on Sunday, and then the straight, clear path of the traditional funeral gives way to a much less well-defined road to recovery. There are, of course, rituals that need to be carried out up to a year after the death, but they are few and far between, no longer all-consuming. And what happens when we are faced with the inescapable fact of the death? How, for example, do you deal with bereavement that has happened so suddenly, and carry the risk of sudden departure as you yourself depart to a place thirteen timezones away? This is the worst-case scenario for anyone who is away from home. More intimately, how do you deal with the loss of someone from your own generation, the first death in the rank of the family that is just above yours, the rank of your own parents? How do you live with the loss of a parent? And still, how do you deal with the loss of a sibling? The most awful of all: how do you accept the loss of a child? Recovery is neither simple nor inevitable.

I expect that the worst moment will be at the point of cremation, when, at last, there is no more space in which to procrastinate the expression of one's grief, and as the flames transmute the physical monument, I expect that we will all feel the anguish burning in ourselves. That is the point when philosophising fails, and you cannot take the long view because something near and intimate is being lost for good. Sure, we may whine about how life is only smoke and flames and ashes - but at that point, you really appreciate what it means, and the immediacy of it, the weight of it, the inescapable substantiality of it, will overwhelm your pretensions to detachment.

*

At monumental moments, when you're aware that you are in the midst of creating a milestone in your own life, there is a tendency to philosophise, to enshrine the moment in platitudes and to emphasise the glory for one's own pleasure. But this is not just any death, and this is not just any theoretical scenario. It is hard for me to find the right words, but I think - no, feel - that I must write this down, for some purpose that is obscure now but which, I trust, will become clearer in the future.

On the last day of 2008, my uncle passed away. He was a conscientious man, a good father, sometimes strict and demanding, accepting nothing less than full effort. He was assertive, which made him a good businessman. And he was witty, cutting through pretensions, making you question your own achievements to see whether they really were substantial before you try to hoodwink him with it. He was formidable; I myself never got over a certain fear of talking to him, because I did not feel I could hold my own against his intellect. He did not accommodate weakness, and he complimented sparingly, but whenever you did get some praise out of him, you knew it was given sincerely. He was not my age; I did not speak to him enough; but I liked him, and I cannot remove him from my memories. He loved his family; he loved us; he loved me. And we loved him well.

How else can I put it? I have lost a member of my family; we all have lost a member of our family. And we grieve, together or in our own ways; but we all grieve.

Hope

It has been a trying few days of watching and waiting. Have become quite familiar with hospital procedures, though not to the level of my cousins. They, who've been at their father's side since the beginning, describe to me how different coloured lights over the doors of the rooms mean different things: red for emergency, yellow for scanning. There are also the various whirring machines in the room itself: the gently hissing ventilator, the leg massager inflating and deflating rhythmically, the feed tube with its periodically turning rotor. Everything is well regulated, well controlled and orderly. Predictability is a strong point for Western medicine, giving us an impression of what to expect. And though all the machines, with their clockwork functioning, and the well-documented procedures of the hospital conspire to paint a picture that is not all that rosy, at least having a basis to prepare ourselves is a comfort.

Preparing ourselves for what, though? On the one hand, I guess it would be irresponsible of us not to prepare for the worst-case scenario. And the people in the ICU typically don't last long. My cousins tell me of two patients who have passed through the inauspiciously-numbered Room 14, one of whom was a convict who apparently took his own life by yanking out his own respirator, finally eluding the two stern prison guards posted to look after him. The nurses also whisper among themselves of the ill fates of the patients that are admitted to the ICU. And to pretend that there is no danger not is to delude oneself. And yet, there is also a feeling that making preparations for the worst case is also a form of cursing the patient, kind of like making a prophecy that you know will be self-fulfilling. There is a certain feeling in the room that as few preparations should be made as possible, to prevent the spirit from interpreting precautions as invitations.

One result is, of course, that we adopt many euphemisms to tiptoe around the topic. Even here, I feel constrained not to use overly strong terminology to describe the situation. Thus, we speak of "passing through", or "passing away", or "going up there", as if being any more specific would be to tempt fate. And whenever we speak in the room, we intentionally try to be upbeat, even irreverent, believing that somehow, my uncle can still hear us, and that we can either encourage him or irritate him into regaining consciousness. At any rate, even if it makes no difference to him, it does make a difference to the people around him. What we say may sound slightly delusional or disrespectful to an observer, but it is good for us, because it helps to maintain a sense of normalcy, without which this situation would overwhelm us.

The goal is, of course, to elicit a response from my uncle. The trouble is that to our untrained eyes, any response is a good response. This morning, while visiting, I touched his foot and he jerked it back from my hand, in much the same way as any conscious person would respond to tickling. I was made to understand that this is a reflex action rather than an indication of consciousness, but it was so lively and so normal that I thought we had had a breakthrough. And then there are the little movements in the toes and in the fingers and in the neck, as nerves get stimulated somehow and respond like they are meant to respond, with movements that are moving because they are so normal. The movements show that the body is intact, I am made to understand; the only thing is that the consciousness is blocked by blood clots near the brain stem. Somehow, somehow, those clots must either be removed or be bypassed.

Another thing that I noticed was the stark difference between the approaches of Western and Chinese medicine. Where Western doctors are grave, distant and placid, the Chinese doctors (a master physician and an acupuncturist) are easily excitable, enthusiastic and empathic. An examination by a Western doctor may just be a few minutes looking at the waveforms and the numbers on the monitor, whereas the Chinese doctors do not hesitate to feel the patient, moving limbs, pinching and poking. I found it especially incomprehensible how sometimes a doctor or a houseman would come in and peruse the charts showing the bodily numerics without one glance at the patient. And it is surely counterproductive for both Chinese and Western doctors to look at each other with distrust bordering on blatant hostility. After all, as long it does no harm, shouldn't any approach be tried if it has a chance of doing good?

The nursing staff, though, are extremely helpful and supportive. They are clearly interested in the TCM treatments, and they also express their surprise at how strong the reflex actions are in my uncle, but they're also committed to the Western approach. So, they sometimes furtively express their support and how impressed they are with the effects of TCM. I myself, too, am ambivalent about the use of TCM. It does seem to have a chance of working, and it certainly is better for our state of mind than simply waiting (as is the Western approach at this point), but the Chinese doctors seem to be a bit too confident for my liking, citing miraculous recoveries as evidence of there still being hope. We already know that there is hope; the only thing is now to get an accurate impression of just how much hope there is, and it doesn't help to base our impression on the outlier cases of medical miracles.

At this point, though, I think it is obvious that the greatest value of the Chinese approach is that it gives us something to do. My relatives look forward to the visits from the Chinese doctors with eagerness, and they go about acquiring the rare medicines with gusto and enthusiasm. It is certainly better for us than simply watching and waiting. The hope is that, of course, it is also better for my uncle.

*

And, not being able to travel at this point in time, contrary to my original plan to bus my way through the Northeast US, I am indulging in my old love for travel literature, reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which is a sequel to his earlier The Great Railway Bazaar. I read the other book in Taiwan, when we were there for military training, and enjoyed it immensely - the descriptions of each country that he passes through, the incredible people that he bumps into, the remarkable experiences that seem to find him spontaneously, and of course, the long and interminable pleasure of a slow train ride that reinforced my own impression of the romance of rails.

Now, reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, I revisit that previous book and that previous experience. The latter book retraces the route taken by the former book: nearly the same rails across Asia, but with 33 years in between the two trips, and all the changes that it has wrought. Theroux continues to give gripping descriptions of the people and places that he discovers along the way, but this time there is a delicious nostalgia attached to it, because this time round it is really a revisiting, a long, stretched-out return not so much to a place but to a journey. He doesn't really search for a rediscovery of the old experience, but he does run into it again and again, and the differences and - more importantly - the similarities between then and now creates the most compelling contrasts. The book simultaneously moves forward and goes back, generating a tension of memory.

And then, sitting in the hospital room amidst the serene whirrings and hummings, I read this moving passage, of Theroux quoting a short story that he was working on on his way through India:

"She had come to understand what the solitary long-distance traveller eventually knows after months on the road - that, in the course of time, a trip stops being an interlude of distractions and detours, pursuing sights, looking for pleasures, and becomes a series of disconnections, giving up comfort, abandoning or being abandoned by friends, passing the time in obscure places, inured to the concept of delay, since the trip itself was a succession of delays.

Solving problems, finding meals, buying new clothes and giving away old ones, getting laundry done, buying tickets, scavenging for cheap hotels, studying maps, being alone but not lonely. It was not about happiness but safety, finding serenity, making discoveries in all this locomotion and an equal serenity when she had a place to roost, like a bird of passage migrating slowly in a sequence of flights."

I don't think that all good travel must be solitary travel, but solitary travel does have a particular pleasure attached to it. And I am taken back to days wandering on whim in Penang, long slow walks in Sabah and Sarawak, other early-morning or evening strolls along rivers far away...the sense of freedom, the yearning to have someone to share it with, the knowledge that not many people look for the same things that I look for in travel. The feeling that solitude is necessary for this kind of enjoyment, contrasted with the impulsive desire to share this enjoyment with someone else. In a situation like this, even that contradictory yearning becomes pleasurable.

And of course, there is always the allure of Elsewhere...

*

Also, over the last few days, have been revisiting old haunts. Went with G down to the Esplanade to try our luck at the free performances, striking gold with a concert of prodigiously talented young rockers and another rock band playing rather good original compositions in the new, enlarged Outdoor Theatre. It was a bit of a pity that the new Outdoor Theatre had sacrificed a bit of beauty for practicality: the sails that had framed the skyline so well in the old Theatre now extend all the way across, blocking out the cityscape but enabling concerts to be carried out in the rain. Nevertheless, it was a special moment, coming back to this well-loved spot, clapping eyes again on the well-loved skyline for the first time since coming back. Noting the changes: the monumental shapes of the Marina Bay Sands towers rising on a daily basis, the first new towers of the New Downtown also climbing to the sky. Noting the constants: the familiar riverside shape of the city, the old bayfront spot at the Esplanade, the same clear tropical sky at dusk.

And then yesterday, met I, K and E from UPenn with G for lunch at Siglap, tucking into Vietnamese food and claypot rice that would have been considered way too overpriced in the days before going to New York. It was a good reunion, on this side of returning, but a bit strange, too. Seeing familiar people and a familiar context, but with the former never having been inserted into the latter before - this created a certain novelty in the situation, a certain self-consciousness on my part, the awareness of disparate social spheres converging. And of course, similarly the previous night, performance-hunting with G at the Esplanade, I was aware of how this compares with rushing for Broadway shows in our last days in New York before returning: the breathless sprints from theatre to theatre, certain of landing a cheap ticket to a world-class show before the evening was out. Now that my perspective also encompasses four months in the US, coming back has a certain tinge of nostalgia and discomfiture as well. Sort of like Theroux retracing his steps.

But I also realise, to my surprise, that returning really isn't as hard as I'd thought it would be. Not that much has changed, after all, and it is easy to slip into old habits again, habits that have lain in wait for your return. The experience of the last six months has not been revolutionary; it is more evolutionary, a continuation from previous processes rather than a break with the past. It is a comfort to discover this, that returning is possible, and that returning is pleasurable, and that there need not be a conflict between the old and the new.

Returning

On Boxing Day morning, I woke up in my old bed and realised with a sense of relief that I am home.

There are certain sounds that are particular to my home. Rather than the wailing sirens, sudden delighted screams and murmur of unseen aircraft of Manhattan, here there are only the sounds of children laughing, of the distant hum of the MRT train, of a drill running at a nearby construction site. I hear the distinct hollow sound of doors opening and closing in my home, of people walking around barefoot. I feel the warmth in the air, the firmness of my old bed. It is a deep sensual familiarity that I woke up to this morning. And my first thought was that although my room in Columbia is definitely mine - I had gone through a lot of trouble to make it that way - my room is not the same as my home.

Coming home was easier than I'd expected. Rather than being oppressed by the heat after sub-zero temperatures in New York, it was easy to adjust to the pleasant humidity here, and it is a definite pleasure to be able to walk around without worrying about windchill or frostbite. And though there's now a new lift shaft in my old block of flats, practically nothing has changed around here. And what struck me the most, things that I'd taken very much for granted until this return, were the quiet purring of the MRT trains (not the obnoxious clanging and screeching of the subway), the cleanliness of the sidewalks, the sheer space between the high-rise apartment blocks, the greenery all around. And compared to New Yorkers, Singaporeans are really gentle and polite. Rather than coming off as standoffish, the people I see on the streets seem more respectful and courteous. After the cramped exuberance of New York, Singapore streets and Singapore life seem to me to be so luxuriously spacious.

Don't get me wrong: liking Singapore this much upon my return doesn't mean that I didn't like New York to death. Both places are wonderful; even now, I'm thinking what it must be like to spend the last few hours of Christmas in New York, what it must be like for the people that I left behind there. Singapore is not New York, just as New York is not Singapore. What I am coming to realise, though, is that neither is mutually exclusive. Indeed, they may even be mutually reinforcing: liking one seems to make my love for the other stronger. Each is endearing in and of itself, but each becomes even more compelling when seen in contrast with the other.

*

Went down to the hospital yesterday to see my uncle for the first time. As a general rule, I don't like hospitals, but the visit wasn't as hard as I'd expected. The hospital staff were supportive and gentle with us, and those people who came to visit didn't seem overcome or romantic. It does help that people are facing this with a minimum of drama, rather preferring to approach this as practically as possible, doing all that needs to be done, without indulging in self-pity. And it is true: simply being here makes a difference, both for my own peace of mind and for that of my family.

All things considered, despite everything that has happened, I guess it really could be worse. The doctors tell us that his vital signs are remarkably good, and that he has already lasted longer than expected. Of course, they are also careful to avoid rousing unreasonable hopes. But it seems that at some level, he is still unquestionably alive. I hesitate to say whether or not he is alive enough to recover. Perhaps that would be asking too much. But he is still here - and as for the rest of my family, we are all still here too, together and with him.

It is uncanny, though, to see that familiar face transformed by illness and by the medical machinery that is entwined around him. The readouts are cryptic, and I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to decode the hieroglyphs on the monitors: acronyms and waveforms pregnant with undeciphered meanings. The familiar face, too, is opaque to my understanding, uncommunicative, unapproachable. If there is consciousness still somewhere in there, there is no link of communication. I suppose to a trained eye, even the colour of his skin can be meaningful, but I am not trained to interpret these messages. I wonder, though, if I would like what I saw if I could read it. Maybe the incomprehensibility of medical information is also for the good of those who are conscious enough to be upset if they knew the truth.

*

Yesterday, given the situation, we broke with family tradition and cancelled the Christmas party, rather opting for a meal cooked by my brother. Had a small dinner with my family and that of my father's sister, a simple affair of rice and soup and steamed fish and stir-fried vegetables and stuffed chicken, a dinner spent dispelling myths about New York and getting reacquainted with happenings at home. Did you know that the Singapore Flyer, that colossal observation wheel, broke down, leaving hundreds of people stranded in its observation cabins dozens of metres above ground? In Singapore, moments of high drama are touched by a feeling of absurdity.

This was one of the signs that signalled to me that I have come home. The other was a quiet, gentle awakening in my old bed this morning. And yet another was on the plane. By a stroke of luck, we had taken the Southern approach into Singapore, and from my window seat, I happened to look out at the right time and my heart seized as I recognised the familiar island shapes. And then the great 747 dipped its wing, and that well-loved skyline of towers appeared above the wing edge, shrouded in the early-morning greyness, but still seeming to be beckoning to me with so much promise and familiarity. I have known this place well; how can you say no to a place like this? This city is not New York, even if it wants very much to be like New York. But it is home, and unquestionably so, and that is enough for now.

Tension

Things have moved quickly since Saturday. Now, unexpectedly, I am on the verge of going home. Things at home have taken a turn for the worse, and I feel like I'm needed there, not because my presence will make any practical difference (even if I would like to think so), but because I think my being present will be better for my own state of mind, and I hope also for the state of mind of my family.

So I have a plane ticket for tonight, transiting through Heathrow, and arriving in Singapore on Christmas morning. Christmas eve in the air is not something that I'm looking forward to, but if it's needed then it's needed. And in a bit more than 30 hours' time, the white-blanketed landscape outside that I have grown to love so much will be replaced with another much-loved cityscape. It's mind-boggling how things have come to this in such a short span of time. A week ago, I was still doing astronomy questions in a frenzy, and looking forward to the end of term and a week full of celebrations and lazy aimless afternoons, evenings walking and nights of good conversations. I was hunkering down for a long winter in New York City; and as I look around now in my room, there are signs of a long stay all over the place: the food stocked up, the new supply of winter clothes bought, the new 2009 calendar already pinned up and waiting for the first flip. And now, in a few hours' time, I'll be making my way to Newark Airport and going to the other side of the world.

The other side of the world...where I'm going and where I've been in the last week both seem so alien from my position now. Home is far away, and six months removed from my experience, and the family emergency stands between me and the entire period preceding the end of the final exams. This is an interstitial state that I am inhabiting now - I'm between a departure that was effectively decided last Wednesday and an arrival that will take place on Thursday morning. I want to be somewhere else but here. I want to arrive and be at peace. But at this point in time, I don't think I'm quite ready to depart yet. And certainly not ready to arrive. To return.

I wrote once, long, long ago, in the jungles of Brunei, how a return is made meaningful by change, and we see most clearly what remains constant over time when we return from a long trip. These things are the most important. But this sudden return has left me with insufficient time to prepare for what I'll find when I return. I am unprepared to arrive, and I fear that what I'll find will not be what I expect. Essentially, I fear that the things that I regard as important will be revealed to be transient after all.

And so, in reaction, I cling to the past week, going out as much as I can, to squeeze all that I can out of this week, just so I can remain engaged and avoid being alone. Went on a movie marathon yesterday with G, YR, WR and SN, sneaking into multiple movies on one ticket to get our money's worth. Then we returned to the Ethiopian restaurant that I had visited with A, M and S, and over dinner we suddenly started speaking of politics at home, and it felt like we were in the centre of things surveying our possible futures. And also returned, again and again over the last few days, to Union Square, to buy presents for my family back home, because although Christmas this year is truncated, it should still be marked in some way.

And going through this last week, poised on the verge of both hope and grief, with moments of illuminating clarity and happiness juxtaposed with moments of deepest pain, I find that I have grown to love this life I have here, and the people that I share it with: both old friends and new, both here and elsewhere. I still count myself as extremely lucky to have made so many good friends, friends that have proven to be trustworthy and understanding, people that I can work with and talk to and eat with or simply be with. How things have come to this I do not know; there are moments when I am struck by how undeserving I am of all this, and I fear that I have somehow stepped accidentally into someone else's life, and that the real owner will turn up any moment and have me evicted. In the meantime, though, I am grateful to all my friends for their support and understanding. I cannot imagine what I would have done without them. I suppose it would have been something like Frexprog One, only so much worse due to the acute irony.

And as for this place...what can I say? On the verge of leaving New York City, I am sad that I will not be able to pass the holidays here. I cannot pretend that a part of me doesn't want to go home, and would rather go ice-skating under the great Christmas tree at Rockefeller Centre, watch the ball drop at Times Square and have an intimate dinner with a few friends to toast the start of another great year. This was what I'd imagined this winter would be like, ever since I confirmed my flight to New York in August. How can you say no to these beguiling streets, these streetcorner surprises, these singing subways, this unscripted and spontaneous drama of real life in New York? Things happen here, and a part of me yearns to stay to see what will happen next.

But a return is required, and a part of me also understands that it is good to go back. A change of scenery is nice, no matter how it comes about, and it will be great to have warmth again, and cheap, good food, and a mass transit system that works flawlessly, and my family around me. A part of me wants to see what returning will be like, what gaps have opened up, and which ones can be bridged through storytelling and regaling.

No part of me, though, wants to be in this state: already determined to leave, but waiting to depart, and waiting to arrive. Waiting is the hardest part of all this. I want to either be en route or already there, or not going anywhere at all. I am impatient to get underway, to put an end to this terrible waiting. No long goodbye this time, then.

And this is the 150th entry. What a way to end the year.

Double

I haven't written in a long time, and in the intervening period a lot of things have happened. Most of them have actually been happy things, but there is one thing that happened at home that has been especially worrying. We live and learn. But the important thing is that we live.

My mind is pregnant (in the sense of Plato's Diotima) with things to say, but I don't have much energy to say it. I guess this will be rather short.

*

Two weeks ago, A, M, S, a few of their friends and I went down to Midtown to see the Rockefeller Centre Tree Lighting Ceremony: you know, the famous giant tree that's placed above the famous skating rink. We headed down right after classes, but by the time we got there, the surrounding streets had already been blocked off by the NYPD for crowd control, and there was no way to get to a spot where the tree itself could be seen. And thinking that it would not be very fun to stand out in the cold watching a Jumbotron big-screen squeezed in with teenagers screaming at Jessica Elba et al (Britney Spears cancelled at the last minute), we headed back uptown instead for a spot of dinner.

We found this quaint Ethiopian restaurant up on 122nd, and decided to give it a try. The meal cost about $15 per person, but considering the quality and quantity of the food, it's a real steal. Fragrant meats and vegetables stacked into steaming mounds on a platter so large that it warms your heart just looking at it, on a bed of flat roti-like bread with more flat bread on the side. You eat with your hands, tearing off a piece of bread and picking up portions of the dishes. The warmth of the food seeps into your fingertips, and the scents are sensually felt. And after all the dishes are gone, you eat the bed of bread, which has soaked up all the gravies, and that makes for a satisfying dessert.

And of course, the company was great as well. Sometimes you're lucky to meet people that you can get along with handsomely from the beginning, and the conversation flowed so easily around that laden table. It was an easy night, one of the last nights before the final exams when we could be at ease and linger over food talking into the night. Every day, there has been a sense of urgency, and lingering is quite a luxury. To linger: to appreciate; indeed, to savour the moment - that is a challenge and an art.

*

The other big news is, of course, that it's snowing in New York. It started about two weeks ago. Y, J, W and I had just come out of a concert of mediaeval Christmas songs from the nearby Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and suddenly we noticed that there were white flakes falling from the sky. We - well, at least I - freaked, and as we walked down the street back to Columbia, I was sticking my tongue out like someone out of a Charlie Brown cartoon trying to catch a flake of New York snow (I'm told it's not recommended for health reasons). We were meant to be studying, but the dusting of white compelled me, J and W to keep walking into the night. We went all the way up to Harlem, eating a cut of frozen yogurt on the way (because cold things taste better in cold weather).

And yesterday, it snowed really hard, until visibility was reduced to just under 20m. The weather's so cold outside that the snow's still there this morning. The season lends itself to such things as snowball fights and snowman-building, and throughout last night you could hear intermittent squeals and screams as girls were hit by flying snow. The snowmen have been sprouting like mushrooms, and right in front of my dorm is a veritable igloo, with well-shaped blocks and an entranceway. All the rooftops around are covered with white. All you need is for a universal soundtrack of Christmas carols, and you won't be able to resist being happy.

*

And to mark the end of term, we had another steamboat in one of my hall's lounges, running down to Chinatown right after the last paper to buy the food and coming back to the chopping and cleaning and marinating. We actually did a really good job, I think, especially when Ja whipped up a very commendable marinade for the chicken, which transformed it from food into a delicacy. We're quite lucky, too, to have met this boy from Queens. Without his culinary skills, we'd really be rather high and dry foodwise.

With the weather becoming colder outside, and with the finals just ended, and with the holidays stretching ahead, pleasantly uncommitted, it was exactly what I needed to be with familiar people and eating a communal meal. This steamboat reminded me so clearly of the meals we had at home - meals that my family are, I trust, still having at home. I am, of course, in such a different context and so far away from them. But I have been unbelievably lucky here, especially to meet all these people. You get your family wherever you can have them. And the most important thing this holiday season, after all the academic and professional distractions have died down, is to be together with people you know and care about.

Here, then, is a group of people that I have come to care very deeply about.

*

And on Thursday morning, suddenly I get a message on my phone saying that P, E and K from UPenn were in town and looking for things to do. So we hooked up with them to show them around town. Went to Times Square and walked down to Macy's hunting for cheap clothes, and then made a mad dash up 10 blocks back to 45th Street, a street lined with theatres, to watch August: Osage County. It was a mind-blowing piece of drama about a family dealing with the (apparent) suicide of their father. It was spectacular: they'd built an entire cutaway dollhouse on the stage, and the characters wandered in and out of it, from room to room, up and down stairs, lights turning on and off in a disconcertingly familiar way. And amidst all this, a morbidly fascinating family drama played out, with the daughters competing to see who has had the happiest life, trying to hide their insecurities and neuroses from each other, and with the mother descending into willful dementia that brings about cutting lucidity and violent veracity.

It was especially hard to watch this drama, particularly when the family started to tear into each other over the funeral dinner, because just before the steamboat the previous night, just after I completed my last exam, I'd received word from home about one of my close relatives being hospitalized for a stroke. This is, of course, extremely worrying in and of itself, but I've mentioned before that for someone going far away from home, such a happening is especially fearsome. Of course, I understand that at this point in time there's not much anyone can do except wait to see what's going to happen, but it is also important to simply be there, especially for his family. And, stuck as I am 13 timezones away with only a few hundred dollars for the rest of the month, there is no practicable way to be there for them at the moment, unless I do something drastic. And given the current situation, something drastic may be called for. Times like these, you realise the importance of being present, just to be there to share the pain.

It's a strange position that I'm in right now. I of course join my family in clinging on to the hope that my uncle recovers, and I join them too in my concern for his family and how they are holding up. But I have the luxury of distance; if I wanted to, I could escape from these worries and immerse myself in what there is to do around me in New York. Thirteen timezones does tend to reset your perspective on things. I'm sure that my family back home also don't want to keep thinking about this, but it is so much more immediate for them: all it takes is a phone call or SMS to spread the news if anything more happens. It is, I guess, a sense of guilt for being so far away when something like this happens. Not the guilt of escaping, per se, but the guilt of possessing the means to escape if I wanted to. And I see that, from a certain point of view, there is not much of a difference between the two.

So it was, then, that it was especially hard to watch August: Osage County with this hanging over my head. It was a funny play, sharp and witty, but I kept getting the eerie sense that there was a meaning reserved only for me that I was decoding because of my own personal history. There was an especially disturbing moment when, after the father goes missing, one of his daughters grabs the shoulders of her own daughter out of the blue, and demands, "Die after me." "Live," she implored. How am I supposed to read this, especially in the light of...no, the rest is too private.

One is faced with two options here, I guess: to focus on the imminence of death, or to go for its antithesis, to take the former as motivation to focus on the living of life. And I guess you have to choose the latter. The dead don't care about dying anymore, and if you focus on the former you're practically experiencing a part of your own death prematurely. I mean, moments like these call for you to commit to life, don't they? Not only to life, but to the continuous active verb form: living. Maybe it's a mental trick for me to reconcile the opportunities I find around me with the tragedy that's playing itself out at home. Maybe it's flimsy excuse to carry on as if nothing's happened, in the face of imminent catastrophe. But to choose to live on, I think, is deeply important. It is one of the choices that we make that keep us one step ahead of being merely passive victims of chance and fate and whatnot. It is one of the choices, one of the very few choices, that can instill meaning into every moment, in a postmodern context.

And so, it was especially important, I think, that these last few days be well spent, both as the best way for me to help my family at the moment (so that they don't worry about me while they worry about my uncle as well), and, if I may be so bold, as the best way to pay tribute to all that has happened before that has led up to this. For certainly, my uncle has played a part in how I have ended up here, in my 21st year of life, and for me not to take everything to the fullest is a sort of betrayal of his involvement.

So, after the play, brought P, K, E, G, J and W to the Jap bar that I'd gone to with another group of friends over Thanksgiving, and there we sent off the first semster in style, tucking into yakitori, ramen, udon and several other unsayable (and unspeakable) things. We also polished off two bottles of sake, coming up to about 3.6 litres of the stuff between the seven of us. This stuff is a great drink, but rather dangerous, because it goes down so easily that you don't really notice that you're getting intoxicated. Eventually, we managed to stumble our way out of the bar and wound up in the subway, somehow. As usual, the New York subway was in the process of breaking down, and we couldn't go any further than 42nd Street. J and W brought the rest to the surface to go back to Columbia by cab, while I had to stay with K, because he was too woozy to move, and instead spent about half an hour slumped over on a subway staircase, attracting the concerned stares of passersby and two NYPD officers.

Ultimately, though, we ended up back at Columbia and slept it off. And yesterday, brought them down to Union Square to do some shopping. It was heavily snowing in the morning, which was really pretty, but in the afternoon it couldn't make up its mind whether to snow or to rain or to hail, and it was quite the challenge to walk around Union Square, jumping colossal puddles, ducking cars and practically skating across sidewalk glaciers. Dropped the rest at the Strand while I brought P nearby to do some last-minute shopping. And then, after enjoying a wonderful cup of hot chocolate from the original Max Brenner's at Union Square, brought them back to where they'd dumped their luggage and then sent them off in their car to the airport.

It was, of course, great fun to have the UPenn people down for these couple of days, and it was great to be able to get out into the city again. But there were moments of surreal irony, when the joy of the moment was thrown into sharp contrast with the worry and the dread that I imagine must permeate the atmosphere back home. It is hard to reconcile the experienced happiness and the projected sadness back home. It makes everything that is happening now around me much more poignant: the steamboat, the rowdy night at the bar, the trek through the awful weather around Union Square, even the quiet hours of studying in regional libraries before the exam, the walks back to campus in the nights, the simple pleasures of rambling conversations over food. It makes it so much more important, now, to experience everything as fully as possible. And of course, to wait with hope.

We shall see what happens next.

Thanksgiving

And so, the Thanksgiving weekend passes in a whirlwind of beers, dim rooms, shisha smoke, Garth Merenghi, Asian food, subway rides, long walks and reunions. It was an unbelievable weekend, as many people came from all over the Northeast to New York, and old social circles and new social circles met and combined in captivating social kaleidoscopes.

Over the weekend, I found that I have two great gaping holes in my knowledge of New York, specifically concerning the nightlife options available, and also the various places to get the best food in New York. The former is because 1) I don't have enough money to investigate the nightlife on a regular basis - indeed, on any sort of basis at all, and 2) I hadn't really been all that interested, to be honest. And the former is because my trusty NYC Free and Dirt Cheap guidebook doesn't include (understandably) top-end stuff. For these two lacunae, though, connections with other friends (especially the NYU people, who, having their school situated right in downtown Manhattan, are ludicrously well connected) proved to be extremely useful. At any rate, we went to so many places that I'd never even dreamed of going into that I find myself suddenly swamped with places to explore.

One of the places that we went to was Cafe Wha?, which is apparently the place where Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan were talent-spotted. Despite its worldwide renown, though, it's still a tiny space crammed into the basement of a short boutique on a small street off Washington Square. On the night that we went there, right before Thanksgiving, the place was crammed with tables and chairs, and every available space was taken up by people. Into the dingy space we went, and discovered a live band playing priceless numbers from the golden age of rock. I was rather taken by how I recognised almost every song, from Sweet Child of Mine to Hey-ya. And between singing along (rather ineffectually - though the place is small it has a superpowered sound system) and squeezing into the narrow aisles to dance (or, more accurately, jump up and down, since lateral movement was pretty much out of the question), I found that it was actually really fun. I never thought of myself as much of a nightlife person, and certainly the bill for that night tells me that I can't do something like that every other week, but I was really surprised by how fun it was. Joel was right - you need to get a little buzzed, and more crucially, I think, you need to go with people you know.

Another place was this Japanese bar at St. Mark's Place (in the Lower East Side) called Kenka. We found it on the evening of Thanksgiving Day, and when I stepped into it, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like something out of a Kuroshawa flick, with a peeling samurai poster on the back wall, a cluttered counter doubling as a bar and sushi joint, several dozen tables and scores of young Japanese and Chinese people doing away with cheap Sapporo beer by the jug and sticks of yakitori. Even the harried serving staff, with their dirty aprons and tired smiles that they could turn on and off on demand, seemed to have been chosen to fit in with the decor and enhance the atmosphere. This is, of course, a place to linger, with a pint costing only $1.50, and various snacks costing onl $5 per serving. Amidst the hubbub of people relishing the arrival of the holidays, you feel yourself transported, and you are inclined to ruminate over how you got here into this little fragment of Japan when moments ago you had just walked out of the No. 6 subway line.

*

To commemorate the special event of our first Thanksgiving, though, the first-years invested in a steamboat dinner. I, WL and J (our friend from Flushing who is also a skilled cook) went down to Chinatown to buy the food, the pot and the stove, and came back to our dorm to set up the meal. I have to say that we did a passable job. The meats were a tad bland because we didn't marinate any of it (it didn't occur to me at least that the meat should have been marinated, since I assumed that raw meat worked like meatballs or crabsticks - goes to show how much I know about cooking), but you can't go far wrong with fishballs, cabbage, rice and noodles. The best part, as usual, was the soup: clear, wholesome and, most importantly, piping hot. I daresay that we'll be having quite a lot of steamboats over the winter, especially when the dining halls close for the holidays. And there is a sort of pathos in a group of Asian students huddled over a bubbling hotpot on a winter night.

The dining halls were closed over the weekend, so everyone basically had to go out and make do with whatever we could afford on the open market. Over the weekend, I hooked up with various groups to sample the Asian fare of NYC, including the still-good Nyonya restaurant in Chinatown, another Indonesian-Malaysian restaurant whose name escapes me, and the Saigon Grill near Union Square - all of which serve what they purport to serve. The last one was especially atas, being in a prime location, but it does a remarkably authentic pho (one of the most affordable items on the menu), given its location in New York. Between that and the fare around Columbia (Mill Korean Restaurant and Tom's Restaurant of Seinfeld fame), we rounded out our meals over the weekend - and you can imagine how much cash was spent on food!

*

Special events over the weekend were provided courtesy on NYC, in honour of Thanksgiving. So after Cafe Wha?, which kept us out till about 4am, I went down to Central Park West to hook up with some other visitors for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which started, to my dismay, at 9am. By the time I got there with JK at about 8.30am, the place was already filled to capacity; there was essentially zero movement along the sidewalks fronting the parade route. And, as I'm coming to realise about New Yorkers in large crowds, everyone was in high spirits, being far more gracious than I'd expected them to be, given the early hour and the inhuman crush (at one point in time my weight was completely supported by the people around me). Kids were lifted up onto shoulders, kids were squirming between legs to get to the front of the crowd, kids were jumping up and down trying to see.

The parade itself consisted basically of enormous floats interspersed with marching bands from the various states of the Union. It was fun to see a giant floating Pikachu, Snoopy, Buzz Lightyear, Ronald McDonald, Spongebob et all bobbing along Central Park West, tugged gently through the crisp morning air by the tethers attached to a troop of puppeteers on the ground. Also, it was exciting to try to spot the celebrities, including child stars like Miley Cyrus and her protege (a pretty little girl whom I don't recognise at all), and the American Idol runner-up Daniel Whatshisname. But after a while, you realise that it's really just marketing by Macy's to get the kids to pester their parents in the run-up to Christmas. However, there was a special moment at the end, when Santa's float comes down the avenue. Santa always ends the parade, being the last float, and this year, the big red sleigh carrying the rotund and white-haired man was followed by huge red and green stars emblazoned simply with one word: "Believe".

And after that, New York offers another legendary event: Black Friday (so named not because of its tragic element, though someone did die from it on Long Island apparently, but because on this day the balance books of major retailers all go into the black). Essentially, it's the first day of the pre-Christmas sales, and all over the US stores were slashing their prices. In New York, as if discounts were not enough (and they really were not enough - there seemed to be hardly any difference in price), stores also opened extra-early. Macy's (the department store that's as large as a city block and five storeys high) opened their doors at 5am; Woodbury Commons, a huge factory outlet centre for branded goods, started doing business at midnight. Some friends actually went all the way upstate for the Woodbury Commons event, and came back laden with the fruits of a good night's work. For myself, though, I stuck with Joel, Conan, Ihui and Mark in NY and trawled SoHo instead. It was (for me at least) a journey marked by futility, because despite the discounts I still could not afford to buy anything. The price cuts are hardly on the same scale as the Great Singapore Sale.

*

So, the weekend was really stuffed with things to do. Beyond all the myriad happenings, though, was the inherent value of meeting up with friends, different groups of friends, old friends and new ones. Basically, lots of people converged on New York for the Thanksgiving break: the old gang from CHS, new friends from UVa, YS (who surprised me by coming back to NY after all), and naturally, friends from NYU as well. Made quite a lot of new Singaporean acquaintances, friends of friends who turned up at the mass Singaporean dinners that happened every other day. Shuttling between groups took up most of the remaining time; I had never before taken the subways so often.

When big groups of Singaporeans congregate, the usual tendency arises that drives a sort of competition to prove who's leading a more happening life. Like I said before, it's not a question of whether people are leading good lives: those who actually don't like it here are rare. It's just that the tendency to aggrandise the joy, to vie for the title of being the happiest overseas student, seems to me to be such vanity. And anyway, such preening doesn't contribute anything to the happiness of one's life, unless one actually gets the acknowledgement that one is competing for. This, I think, could be part of the reason why Soph always found Singaporeans distasteful, especially when she encountered them abroad, and in big groups. There is a tangible, unpleasant edge, as if it is a matter of honour not to allow any doubt about one's success and enjoyment of one's life overseas.

But anyway, in small groups, everyone's amicable enough. Met lots of interesting and nice people over the weekend from far afield (inevitably, because there were so many Singaporeans in NY over the weekend that we were running into them randomly on the streets), and certainly there are people who I would like to keep in contact with. This weekend was a prime opportunity to diversify my social circle, at least in the Singaporean sphere. And this was made easier by the fact that we all already tend to come from similar social circles, so it's not that hard to transform a shared past experience into a shared present link. And it gets even better when the group isn't entirely Singaporean, as was the case with the UVa people. We had only met once, that evening in Charlottesville at C's apartment, but it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to resume our conversations. I guess partly it's because when you're abroad and in a strange place, every familiar face becomes so much more significant. But there also seems to be an effect that the more diverse the group, the less likely that it will be pretentious, or at least vain.

And then, of course, there's YS, who came back to NYC. I'm not sure why, but I was sure glad to see her again, especially since she's going to fly back to Asia soon, and I'd not been able to say a proper goodbye in Charlottesville. So, when I got her message that she was going to come to NYC over Thanksgiving with her mother, it was startlingly timely. How has it come to this, that we would be arranging meetings that would span entire states, in a city on the other side of the globe from home? We've travelled together before, but these transatlantic rendezvous are a whole new level. I guess it's partly a signal that we've grown up, and we can now plan suc big hops by ourselves. Anyway, caught up with her at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then again on Saturday night for dinner before she and her mother went to the Lincoln Centre to watch the NYC Ballet perform The Nutcracker, and then one last time on Sunday morning to help them move from their hostel on 94th to the bus station on 34th. And this time round, it was a good goodbye; or, at least, it was a better goodbye. And now, certainly, it will be another six months before I can even consider seeing my old travelmate again.

And of course, there's the gang from CHS. Somehow, as things have worked out, four of us have managed to end up in the Northeastern United States, and while Joel and I have met up rather regularly over the last semester, this was the first time that the four of us (Ihui and Conan) have gotten together since leaving. It seems like not so long ago, that everyone was at the glass gates of Changi Airport, singing (of all things) Sinatra's number about New York. But it's already been almost an entire semester, and the seasons have changed, and we've gone through experiences that are not entirely the same. I went into this weekend with the fear that we'd have drifted too far over the last six months to recapture the easy camaraderie that we used to have. And certainly, I get the impression that I've drifted farther from them, even if they've not drifted farther from each other. I get pulled along by them, trying to keep up, and finding that it takes all my effort simply not to lose track of them. I guess part of the problem is that I can't let go as easily as I could back in the NS days, when time and money didn't matter so much. I find that now, I'm much more self-conscious than I was even six months ago. But still, it's worth the effort to tag along with these people, and throughout the weekend, I was repeatedly struck by the sheer improbability of these relationships, how they have lasted not only the better part of a decade but how they have survived the transplantation to a new continent - and how I still find myself a part of all this, despite everything. It is a privilege to which I find myself struggling to prove myself worthy.

There you have it, then: a magical, magical weekend. I can't see how things can get any better than this. Well, actually I can see one way: to reproduce something like this with non-Singaporeans, and especially with Americans. And an opportunity to do just that may be coming up tomorrow, as I hook up with some CUErs to go to the star-studded (in both senses of the word) tree-lighting ceremony down at Rockefeller Centre. In the meantime, though, I'm still basking in the afterglow of Thanksgiving. May things only get better from here for everyone.

Weekend Culture

It's gotten really cold here! It is literally freezing outside, and the weather reports show that it's started snowing all around New York City, even as close by as Philadelphia. We've apparently had some flurries here (mostly early-morning snowfall that melts before it reaches the ground), but I haven't actually seen any fallen (or, even better, falling) flakes yet. But the temperature's gotten low enough that I've taken to wearing my heavy coat all the time, with scarves and gloves and other knicknacks. If it gets any colder, or if I have to spend any length of time outside, then I'll need to start using my beanie too.

Thankfully, though, it hasn't been very humid. Cold rain is the most miserable thing I can imagine at this point in time. Rather, each day has been splendidly clear; or rather, whatever's left of the day, because the sun's only out from 7am to 5pm now, and even at noontime it feels like late afternoon. What gets you, though, is the wind chill, as the concrete canyons of Manhattan funnel the wind up and down the streets. Depending on the wind direction, some blocks will offer you complete protection from the wind, whereas all it takes is to cross the street to bring you right into the blast path. Each intersection must thus be approached carefully. And I find myself bracing mentally and physically before stepping out of buildings or subway stations, because you never know where a gust will come from and rob you of your built-up cocoon of warmth.

Anyway, before it becomes absolutely too cold to do anything outside, there have been several moments of surreality this week. One was when a drama troupe brought out a bright red casting couch and planted it under a tree that had just turned bright red from the cold, making for a remarkable colour combination, and the strange sight of a couch looking perfectly in place outdoors. Another was of a couple, all dressed up, eating a candlelit dinner in the dining hall, with a white tablecloth and silverware but the incongruous and brightly coloured dining hall dishes. It'll be kind of like guys in tuxedos tucking into canteen wanton mee at home. The thing is, though, that these apparently odd things don't seem so out of place here in New York. They chime with the flavour of the place.

*

This weekend, instead of going somewhere else, I decided to devote it to exploring New York instead. Like I said before, it has come to pass that although I've visited 5 states of the union, I haven't finished exploring the six blocks that comprise Columbia's tiny urban campus. Also, that means that while I've been having lots of fun outstate, I have really given a lot of things in New York a miss so far. So, as the weekend drew near, I looked forward to making some progress towards rectifying this oversight.

Yesterday, after a soothing couple of hours of chores (read: laundry and vacuuming - who would have thought that housework could be therapeutic?), went down with WL to join G in the NY Public Library for a couple of hours of studying. The Library is, of course, still as opulent and conducive to intellectual work as ever, and the others were, I think, also impressed with it - enough, I hope, that they will be willing to accompany me there the next time the urge hits. After 5pm, though, we made a quick hop over the the MoMA to join R and C, where we attended a free screening of Wall-E. It was a great film, and it was a pity that we couldn't catch it either in Singapore or here in NY, due to the unfortunate timing of the release dates and our flight dates. But yeah - Pixar and Disney really have hit upon a mother lode with their animation movies. Wall-E is great fun, and absolutely a delight to watch, both as a visual spectacle and as simply a feel-good story. Well, at any rate, I sure won't be able to look at an iPod in quite the same way ever again!

There was something else happening at the MoMA at the same time, though. There were great crowds in the main museum building, and when we entered the main lobby, all the walls on the upper atrium level were writhing with oversized projected videos of someone's face. We theorised that this was the overflow from the Van Gogh exhibit, but we didn't have time to stay to investigate, because the movie ended just in time for us to make a quick hop across the block to the New York City Centre theatre. There, we hooked up with J and YR, and the whole troop of us went to watch a reprisal of an old discontinued musical, On The Town. This, too, was great fun, with the plot set in 1944 New York, which meant that the performance was infused with jazz music and dance. The music loosened the limbs of all the dancers, and raised the voices of the singers magnificently, and I was left enthralled by the spectacle of a big-band musical, and wishing that more of the spirit of that age still existed around us. They definitely don't make musicals like they used to.

After that, we took a slow walk back to the 59th Street subway station, on the way passing by opulent 5th Ave and the apartments and hotels lining Central Park South. As winter deepens, New York is being gift-wrapped for the season. Fairy lights start to entwine the trees, glittering decorations festoon the buildings; one Cartier boutique was literally gift-wrapped, complete with ribbons and bow. And walking through the crowds that evening, everyone huddled in their coats, our breaths misting pleasantly in the air and our faces and ears burning urgently in the cold, it suddenly struck me that this was what I had been writing about, dreaming about, hoping for all this time: such a time of carefree walking down a street in the greatest city in the world, blending into the life there, and feeling as if you're participating in rather than only spectating at the life of the city.

And returning to Columbia, we stopped by a Chinese restaurant opposite the campus for supper, and I had a bowl of fishball and wanton kway teow. While it wasn't the nicest version I've ever had, it certainly was a big portion, and hot, and between the chopsticks, the noodles and the Singlish, the cold, monumental, kaleidoscopic city outside was thrown into even starker contrast. It takes something familiar to act as a yardstick so that you can see more clearly just how far you've come away from home. Such a day, such a night...it certainly cannot happen simply anywhere. We certainly aren't in Singapore anymore.

*

So yesterday was the longest outing I've had with the Columbia Singaporeans since coming here. It has taken all of four months for me to encounter what I had encountered in UPenn, Boston and UVa earlier. But I think this is really not a problem; the delay, after all, is partly because I haven't really been in NY much on the weekends to begin with. And it does make a difference that the Singaprean community here is smaller. It means that our little Singaporean group cannot sustain itself as a viable social group, and that everyone must be part of other social circles besides. And who's to say that such an arrangement is not optimal? I would venture to say that it's healthier to mix with more people, but to always have a core of friends that you can always rely on to fall back upon in times of need. And I hope that what I see forming now is in fact a situation like this.

Today was, in contrast, dominated by CUE people. Woke up early this morning to go with K to Union Square, where the weekly farmer's market has been turned into a weekly Christmas market. There were the usual food stalls and flower stalls, but beyond the familiar booths were new ones set up selling Christmas decorations and trinkets. I had not seen anything like it since the Marche Noel in Lyon seven years ago, and I had not expected to ever see anything like it again. And so, it was with especial delight that I discovered this warren of Christmas stalls, replete with fake snow and Christmas music. It definitely warrants another visit!

So anyway, K and I were walking through the market, with cups of hot apple cider in our hands to ward off the cold. There is a special sort of comtentment that you get when you drink something hot on a cold day. Your insides feel extremely pleasant with warmth, and one blows especially large clouds of misted breath that are somehow deeply satisfying. And as we walked down the aisles, she introduced me to the most wonderful sweet I've ever tasted: maple syrup candy. From what I can tell, it's hardened and dried maple syrup. It's as close to pure sweetness that I've ever come, and it comes in hard little blocks like ding1 dang1 tang2, with a powdery coating of extra maple syrup flakes. When you bite into it, it crumbles like a good cookie, with a fine consistency. And the sweetness - it explodes on your tongue. My first bite of it stopped me right in my tracks, so that I could better savour the flavour spreading throughout my mouth. It is definitely something that I recommend to everyone! If you ever come across it, buy some and try it. Then buy more. You won't regret it.

Came back to campus after a bit of shopping (K got more maple syrup in a cute log-cabin-shaped bottle, apparently a historical allusion to how maple syrup is traditionally made in log cabins, as well as some flowers for her aunt), and A dropped by for a bit of a chat. Showed her some photos and videos of Singapore (since she's from Trinidad, and I thought she'd appreciate the tropical scenery). Then took out lunch from the dining hall. Ran into T at the doors of Furnald, and had lunch in her room instead, because we don't meet up often enough, and it's been a long time since we've had the time to talk at length. So, as I tucked into passable lo mein (what a strange transliteration), we chatted about courses for the next semester, teacher-student relationships in the US, future job plans and writing for Lonely Planet.

After a bout of work in the afternoon that took up the rest of the daylight hours (I don't know - it feels wrong to squander sunset for homework, and if it were not so cold out, I think I'd spend every sunset at Riverside Park watching the sun go down slowly), J suddenly called to offer me a ticket to go watch an adaptation of The Canterbury Tales at nearby Riverside Theatre. The last time I'd gone with him to watch a play at Riverside, it was a staging of Brecht's Ball, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed the thought-provoking performance, so I quickly agreed. Hooked up with A again, as well as AW, and we all went to watch the play.

I have only read one page of Chaucer before, and I've certainly never seen any of his work staged before. Joel's mentioned The Canterbury Tales to me before, but I'd never really known what the play was about. Until I watched it tonight. It's basically a play about a group of misfit pilgrims, who tell each other stories to make their journey pass more easily. It is an intriguing premise, really; it reminds me of Tokyo Cancelled, which was a series of stories that a group of travellers stranded at an airport tell each other to pass the time till the next outbound flight. In Chaucer's play, the stories range from the moralistic to the salacious, from the religiously extremist to the downright vulgar. Each story was good fun, though, as aspects of the tale got amplified to absurd proportions in the retelling. What was especially intriguing was their use of props to reconfigure the set for each story. The pilgrims' carts turned into outhouses, tables, beds, trees, walls, prisons and anything else that was contingent to the stories. All it took was overturning the carts, setting them up on their ends, propping them against each other or joining them together. The audience's imagination, too, was pressed into service, just as the listeners of each tale in the pilgrimage would doubtlessly need to use their imaginations in the listening. The way that the travellers used whatever they could find on their own bodies or in their carts for props and scenery was also authentic, I think: on the road, you don't have the luxury of unlimited resources, and you draw on whatever's available and you make do as best you can.

At the end, a character playing Chaucer himself (ironically, it was a black girl - yet another example of the proud tradition of actor-character contradiction that started when Greek men played female parts in the days of Sophocles et al) broke the fourth wall to ask the audience: "Do we tell stories to ease our travels? Or do we travel for an occasion in which to tell stories?" It is an intriguing question. I would say that I do the latter more than the former. I would even go further to say that I travel to find stories to tell - some of which end up here. And as we move into winter (the first winter ever that I actually have to live through), I find, to my delight, that things are happening around me and to me that are actually worth retelling. That is the happy consequence of being in the right place at the right time.

Away

And so, over the weekend, I took off again, this time to Charlottesville, Virginia, on a trip to visit YS before she leaves at the end of her academic exchange. I hadn't realised how far south Virginia was when I bought the bus tickets, but it turns out that a nine-hour bus trip can really get you places. I'm told that Virginia is actually considered by some to be part of the South (meaning Confederate territory - the South in Southern Comfort and Southern Hospitality), and certainly, as the bus wended its way through the country highways and across the smooth, long Interstates, we got so far off the grid that people were burning wood for light in farmhouses and shacks, and for the first time since getting here, my phone had no reception.

At the end of the long bus rides, I found a small, quiet town tucked into rolling foothills, with roads lined with copious amounts of greenery and the buildings and roads adapting to the lay of the land. Here, civilisation treads lightly on the ground, laying on the landscape like a soft blanket rather than crushing, digging and tunnelling the landscape into submission (I am romanticising, of course, by comparing Charlottesville with Manhattan). The air was noticeably fresher, edged with a certain sharpness that seems to be distinctive to mountains. And everywhere, the overarching impression is one of space: roads and sidewalks shared with only a few other scattered pedestrians, enormous rooms comfortably occupied by a few quiet users, and the wide-open skies meant for eyes to roam over and savour slowly.

Speaking of space, YS shares an enormous apartment in Charlottesville with three other housemates. They have their own bathroom, a fully-equipped and sleek kitchen, a 40" LCDTV, a small porch and three full-sized bedrooms. YS's own room seems to have been the master bedroom once upon a time; or at least, it's as big as the master bedrooms I see in HDB flats. After the rather limited possibilities of my Furnald room at Columbia, having so much private space was incredibly relaxing. It's a beautiful way to live; certainly, I would have been content to simply spend a day lazing around in that apartment. As it was, though, being able to come back to it at the end of the days, to potter around the kitchen using the high-tech appliances in my first attempts to make breakfast since time immemorial, and stepping out onto the porch to sample the crisp morning air were all deeply therapeutic, cleansing even.

The pace of life there is noticeably different. People walk around more slowly; there isn't that all-pervading sense of urgency, that need to always be doing something even when one doesn't have anything to do. People do stop and chat, and go out of their way to meet people. And it's really true that everyone seems to know everyone else: for such a sparsely populated area, it's amazing how many acquaintances YS ran into simply by walking down the streets. But that's not to say that its smallness results in there being nothing to do. The first hour I was there, we found a delightful little Greek restaurant for dinner. Then, walking through the Corner, UVa's little pub and bistro strip, we were attracted by music to go up a narrow flight of steps to a cramped and smoky jazz bar, where students were jamming into the night. The next day, YS brought me to a quirky tour about the really intriguing and idiosyncratic history of UVa (and of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the institution and of other things like the United States of America). I sat in on a dress rehearsal of a performance of The Nutcracker that she had helped to choreograph. Then, we went for dinner at the apartment of one of YS's friends, and it turned into a home-cooked meal with a dozen Singaporeans chipping into the festivities. And on Sunday, we popped into a wine bar and sampled the local Virginia vintage over brunch. Certainly, then, there is no dearth of things to do, and the demands on one's time are well within reason, leaving you with the sense of being pleasantly occupied but not overly stressed.

One big thing that struck me about the weekend was how easily new connections were made, and how old ones were reprised. The vast majority of my time was, of course, spent with YS, and it is still heartbreakingly easy to talk to this old travelmate; the words and actions seem to find a natural progression of their own accord. But there was a highly unlikely turn of events: as we browsed UVa's bookstore, YS bumped into a friend, who turned out to be SN, my old senior from RJGuitar. I had been her understudy for taking over the role of secretary in the ensemble, and we hadn't kept in contact since her batch graduated. How is it, then, that we would randomly end up in the same town three years later, and that I would just happen to walk past her aisle as she was repacking books onto their shelves?

And afterwards, we ran into C, YS's senior in UVa, who then proceeded to quickly invite us over for dinner at his place. And so it was that we made it to C's apartment on Saturday evening, and I tried my hand at food preparation again (with no trivial amount of trepidation), and then this whole group of friends also turned up, bearing rice and herbal soup. We had a great dinner of rice, soup, curry and stir-fried vegetables, which far and away is the best Singaporean food I've eaten so far in the States. And had a long talk with SN, who had also come to the gathering, and easily bridged the three years that had come between us. Also, made the acquaintance of the other Singaporeans, Jakartans and Malaysians, and found out that a group of them is planning to visit New York over Thanksgiving (and so the foundation is set for a very busy Thanksgiving indeed).

It seems to me that when one is abroad, one cherishes commonality with other people so much more. In a strange place, and among strangers, any sign of shared history or viewpoints is seized firmly as an anchor against the whims of newness. So it is that distances that would have seemed too tedious or troublesome to bridge at home in Singapore become trivial in the States, and commonalities that would have seemed insignificant at home become central. One's perspective is necessarily realigned with one's changing environment. Thus a kinsman almost invariably becomes more amiable when encountered abroad. And often, this is not because the kinsman somehow becomes nicer in a strange situation (though this does happen to), but it is because one's own prejudices against that kinsman become untenable, absurd even, in the new situation. Being in a new environment thus serves to liberate one's preferences from one's prejudices, so one can more fully explore the possibilities of interpersonal connection that had always existed, but that one had not allowed oneself to consider as viable.

Also, it seems to me that chance plays such an inordinately large role in my life now. Consider the chance encounter that produced the reunion between I and SN. Consider also the random encounter with C on the streets of UVa that produced the dinner invitation. Consider, then, the parking garage we just happened to pass on Saturday evening, that we climbed to witness a breathtakingly spectacular goldburst as the setting sun stained the wide open sky. And then, there is the random acquaintance I made on the bus trip back from Charlottesville to Washington, who turned out to be a member of staff on Capitol Hill, and who, over the 3-hour bus ride, proceeded to engage me in an absorbing conversation about her law-school plans, Capitol-Hill careers, insider politics, religion, family and race. And last but not least, there is my finding YM, my old classmate from RJ whom I had not talked to for years, in her basement apartment in DC. She had just happened to have hosted a pre-Thanksgiving party, and had lots of food left over, so I was the dumbfounded recepient of incredible hospitality, even as we reminisced about our old class and marvelled at the places that everyone had gotten to over the years.

And it strikes me very deeply, that I am at the receiving end of so much good fortune - too much, even - so much that it makes me feel terribly uncomfortable, as if I had received an undeserved windfall through a clerical bank error, and I was liable to be found out at any moment. But even as I suspect that there has been some mistake in the heavens somewhere, I cannot help being so totally taken by the people and happenings that I encounter, completely at random, over here in the States. There are certainly deeper, structural sociological forces at work here to make some happenings more likely for me. But I experience it as luck, as the unpredictable outcomes of unfathomable processes working impersonally. And I find that luck brings me into so many incredible situations. It just befuddles me, how things can work out by themselves so nicely.

And so, the weekend turned out to be a great holiday. I had originally had some reservations, Charlottesville being so far removed from Manhattan, and there being so many enticing free things happening in Manhattan over the weekend. But it turns out that the principle still holds true: that if one can choose between going elsewhere and taking the risk of a new experience, or to stay where one is and take advantage of a certain but less surprising experience, then one should always try to choose the former. And as I look back now at the weekend, I find that I really cannot ask for more. I cannot think how it could have been any better. And the fact that such things can happen almost entirely by accident - well, what can I say?

*

As for my old flightmate - she will be returning to ANU next semester, but not before trotting the globe a bit more by dropping by Japan and Singapore over the winter. I have to say, though, that she is an inspiration, a vision of how my own time here in the States should look like. Now, she has so much more experience than me, and I find that I want to - I have to - catch up. And to be able to see a real person who has made it work is reassuring as well as motivating.

Also, her departure is saddening. It is saddening to me that she will be on the other side of the globe next semester, even though technically her being in Australia and her being 3 states away in Virginia are experientially very similar (in that in neither case can I call her up on short notice for a coffee somewhere). My life here necessarily is characterised by the formation and nurturing of new relationships and interactions, the making of new friends and the reconstitution of a new social network. But a significant part of my current experience is also concerned with revisiting old relationships, with resuming. A part of my current experience is thus caught up in the reprisal of old relationships, of enacting the experience of sharing time abroad, an experience that had been delayed two years by NS. So it is that meeting up with people like Joel, YS, Jes and other familiar faces from the old era still holds an especial significance for me. And now, all too soon, this old flightmate will be flying away to another corner of the world again.

It is, of course, in the nature of things to be constantly in flux. But the understanding of that fact doesn't stop me from regretting the passing of a good thing. But what can we do? We lay the foundations as soundly as we can, and then we trust the foundations of the past to hold firm in the storms of the present, so that they remain standing and ready for some reunion in the future. And I believe that there will be reunions in the future (after all, from this weekend, it is clear that reunions can even happen randomly). People come and people go. But the hope is that, as people go, they will one day come back.

Long Walks

NOMADS performed the play over the weekend to two sellout performances and two late-night audiences. I wouldn't go so far as to try to venture a guess as to whether the reception was to critical acclaim or simply critical, but no matter the outcome, the process is over, and I find that I am much relieved now.

The final days of rehearsal and each performance was rather gruelling, certainly for the actors and our director as they rushed to perfect the stagecraft, but also for me, because every performance was heart-stopping to watch; or rather, the audiences' reaction to every performance was a drama in itself for me. You can't fool the audience with pretty stagecraft when your play's message is defective, and the overarching theme in the responses from my friends who came to watch it was that they enjoyed the moments of stageplay and the wordplay, but they didn't get the point of the play. Depending on your viewpoint, that last issue could be a fatal flaw, and I for one happen to think that theatrics are cheap, and that the real skill comes from making those theatrics transmit a message. There is, as I always say, no question over the technical skill of all these people - and certainly, working with them has been enlightening and humbling - but if a play has no message, the audience feels like it's been cheated, and rightfully so. And ultimately, the lack of a message is the fault of the writer, and I take it as a big failing that I wasn't skilful enough in this respect to write in a message to the script to match the theatrics.

But it's over. It is strange, this time round; this first brush with American theatre (though, of course, NOMADS is an experimental process and hardly representative) wasn't as invigorating as I'd expected. Of course, the same tensions were present before performance; there is a specific sort of stress, for example, that permeates a stage during a technical run or during the last rehearsal, that has no analogue in the real world. But the end of this process bring not so much a sense of accomplishment but a sense of relief. I guess it's because of the defects in the script and the insurmountable fact of the unfavourable audience reaction (in the sense that they didn't get it). But it's strange, because back in CHS, even when we put up a poor performance (and God knows that we did), there was still a sense of camaraderie and a sense of sharing in the experience, even if that experience was one of failure. We had a good crew back then - not nearly as technically proficient as NOMADS, but essentially professional and tight-knit. That was a good drama troupe, and I guess that the togetherness is worth something in and of itself, and in a framework like that, audience reception is secondary to group dynamics.

Mmm...but it is also true that to compare this nostalgic image of CHS EDrama with NOMADS is clearly self-serving and fallacious. Things are just different here - different circumstances, different conditions. And the thing about coming all the way here is that my presence here demands my complete commitment to using the circumstances that I find here, rather than pining for circumstances of times past.

*

Anyway, the other, bigger thing that happened over the weekend was that YS came up from Virginia to visit. She arrived in a big way, too: because of a bad train connection in DC, she ended up arriving in Chinatown at about 4am. This was the first opportunity for me to take the subway in the early hours of the day, in the time period between the closing of the nightlife and the starting of rush hour. The trains were still quite full, butjust as the character of the passengers fluctuates through time during the day, the passengers of the subway at this hour were a surreal mix of homeless people and beautiful young things trying to extend the nightlife. So you have unkempt people sprawled across the seats trying to sleep as best they can on the rocking train, and people looking spiffy in leather jackets and high heels, draped over each other and raising their voices over the clangs and screeches of the train. It was the most surreal scene I've seen since coming here.

So anyway, I picked YS up from a deserted Chinatown, walked her down Canal Street till we got back to the 1 line, and brought her uptown back to Columbia safely (though I still think that people grossly overestimate the danger level in NY). The next day, we went on a whirlwind tour - basically I tried to squeeze in all my favourite spots over these months of solitary sojourns into the city streets. So we ended up going to the Hell's Kitchen flea market, Bryant Park behind the NYPL, the Staten Island Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge. I would have brought her to Brighton Beach as well, but we were unfortunately running a little late, and it's clear that anyone who comes to New York must, above all, take the Staten Island Ferry and cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bryant Park recently opened its winter-time skating rink, and though the prices are ridiculously steep, there is definitely something to be said for being able to skate in the open air, beneath the soaring towers of Midtown Manhattan, with the solid Classical mass of the NYPL and the trees of Bryant Park in the foreground. I had forgotten how fun it is to skate, since it has been three years since the last time I put i the effort to find a patch of skatable ice in tropical Singapore. And it was ridiculously fun, despite the drizzle, to skate round the rink, and to rediscover how to accelerate and to turn (though I still don't know how to stop other than essentially ramming the side walls). After a while, when you get familiar with the ice again, you start to look around, and you see all these other revelers around, some stumbling and some soaring across the ice. And then you see the wider surroundings, the park and the buildings and the overcast sky, and it's magical.

Unfortunately, due to the drizzle and the accompanying heavy fog, the Staten Island Ferry and the Brooklyn Bridge were not as spectacular as they could have been. But even when it's shrouded in fog, the skyline of Manhattan is majestic, and there are still no better ways to see it than from the Hudson and from Brooklyn. But even if the scenery had been fully blotted out by the fog, I still would have made these trips, because it's just nice to have company for such journeys. They are best shared. And YS continues to be as sporting as ever. This old travelmate; walking the streets of Manhattan with her was like a natural continuation of all our previous walks exploring strange and new places, from Taipei to Bangkok to Boston. To travel together again was a real treat - the easy conversation, the spur-of-the-moment decisions to branch off on a whim, the shared moments.

And so it was that it was with great reluctance that I brought her back to Chinatown on Sunday so she could catch her bus back to DC and then to Charlottesville. It just so happened that the sun came out brilliantly on Sunday; whereas the previous day had been overcast, Sunday was a perfect bluesky day. But we had to spend most of our time underground in the subway going to Chinatown, which was a real pity.

But it was a fitting end, I think, because when we entered the 110st station to catch the train, we bumped into this magnificent two-man jazz band, playing soothing and skilful numbers, stretching the notes out like how yearning can stretch a moment out. Listening to the music, I was once again struck by the fact that now, this old friend was here to share the moment. And that made the moment somehow more real, as if in the sharing we can better confirm that it actually happened, and was not simply a figment of the imagination.

And as we made our way southwards through the warren of tunnels beneath Manhattan, the trip was like a countdown until we ran out of numbered streets and went off-grid into Chinatown. And then, a few minutes of wandering (too short!) brought us to the bus stop where YS's bus was already waiting, with a cheerful Chinese lady ushering passengers onboard. At that point, then, amidst the bustle of Chinatown and the piercing bluesky morning light, something struck me as deeply poignant. Here, then, was a realisation of a crystalline truth: I did not want this weekend to end yet. I did not want her to go. It had simply been too good to see this familiar face again, to have the company of my old travelmate again, and this time exploring the greatest city on Earth. It simply does not get any better than this.

At any rate, time and buses wait for no man, and all too soon she was off again to DC. As I watched her climb the steps onto the bus, though, I didn't really feel all that sad. It wasn't sadness, exactly, but rather the first pinings of nostalgia. It wasn't sadness, because it's not like this isn't going to happen again. Other people will come visit, old friends like Joel and C and I and maybe even G and Jes, if my persuasive skills are good enough to get them to cross a continent or an ocean. And as for myself, I will be going down to Virginia over this weekend, once again taking a long sojourn along the smooth and easy highways of this wide-skied land. At this point, I don't really need to get out of Manhattan again, considering than only 2 weeks ago I was in Philadelphia. But a new place is a new place, and its newness is enticing in itself. And of course, YS is in Virginia.