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.