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.