Penang

Indulge my wanderlust.

In a little over five hours' time I'll be across the border and starting the transpeninsular drive to Penang. And tomorrow morning I'll be at the Sungei Nibong Terminal finding a way to Chinatown, where I hope to find a bed for RM10. And over the next few days, there will be market-surfing, book-hunting, prodigious photography and, perhaps, a midnight vigil for Palm Sunday, if I can find out which church is organising one.

One downside, however, is this incessant rain. It's been raining everyday since last week, and lately, it has taken to raining continuously from dawn till dusk. It's not even the kind of thing that is worth writing about; it's just tedious and dark. Hopefully the Main Range on the peninsula will help to block some of the rain so that at least Penang will have some hours of true daylight. But, checking the forecasts for the next few days, it doesn't look promising.

Will be switching back to paper soon for my journalling. I realise that it's a big part of the holiday, to record happenings by handwriting instead of typing. It's qualitatively different from blogging. It's more intimate, definitely, and when you write by hand suddenly your setting becomes important. Where you write becomes a participant in what you write. So my walks around a new place are also partly a quest for good spots to put pencil to paper. And that's also why the most crucial piece of equipment for this trip, especially for the train trip back to Singapore, is not so much the camera, but the journal.

Three whole days stretch ahead, empty of schedules but filled with ideas that are vying for attention. I have a hill to climb, a waterfront to stroll down, a ferry to ride, architecture to appreciate, commerce to absorb - and who knows? There are also people to meet, for better or worse. This, the greatest risk, is simultaneously the most seductive and tantalising aspect of a new place.

You go to a new place, and accept that unfamiliarity will force you to absorb everything at once, because you lack the mental markers nurtured by familiarity that tell you what things are more important than others. You accept that you are most vulnerable at that point in time, because you cannot preempt influences that will hurt you, and you are in a state of innocence, or of ignorance. But you still travel, regardless; you still put yourself in that position. Because you believe that there is value in things that are learned spontaneously, in how unsolicited experiences can surprise and delight you precisely because of their unsolicited nature.

*

Yesterday night, went out for dinner with Ms. Ong, Llama, Conan, JY, Joel and Kats in Little India, at Delhi Restaurant, an establishment that Ms. Ong introduced to us. Taking advantage of the free corkage, we worked our way through six bottles of wine, which accompanied platters of curried meats, dahls, naans and tandoori dishes.

Last night was one of those times when I felt the alcohol came in useful rather than interfering with the quality of the interactions. Being tipsy, I guess, is not a disadvantage in and of itself. It is a constant ingredient that is added to the people who you get tipsy with - and whether the experience comes back to haunt you or lives on in your memory cloaked in the glorious colours of nostalgia depends on the quality of the people. And last night, the wine helped to keep the conversation flowing pleasantly, and after a few hours and bottles, we began to feel like the epicentre of the dining room. Between the waiters amiably chatting with Llama and our roaring jaunts through our conversations, there was not a lot of air left in the room for the other patrons, I reckon.

The topics always seem to revolve around the same topics - which is inevitable, I guess, for people who have not had a shared experience lately. In want of shared ground to talk about, we look to the mutual past and talk of hopes for a common future, because the present has seen us walking down diverse and non-intersecting paths. But that is not to say that the conversation is boring, even if it is repetitive. The past, for us, is like a mine of information, a murky lake which we trawl with our talk, and which yields up surprising and diverse nuggets everytime. Memory accommodates our need for conversation and interaction, and old stories gain new shades of meaning in their retelling.

We get together more often nowadays, partly because we are now earning money and can afford such occasions of plenty, partly also because, perhaps ironically, of our diverging paths coupled with a conviction that the shared past is worth preserving. And, definitely, also partly because we are aware that come August, we would really have no chance to do dinners like this anymore for quite some time. We - at least I - meet one another with the consciousness that we are running out of time to do likewise. The shortage of time makes it harder to say no whenever someone proposes meetings like this, but, happily, it also makes it more likely that the meeting will be enriching because everyone would be putting in effort. If something needs to come to an end, temporary or otherwise, it is surely good for it to go out in this gradual and considerate fashion.