Again

I've heard it said before that people only take the time to write when they don't feel happy, because when you feel happy you're too caught up in the experience of happiness to want to take the time out to write it all down. And certainly, when you're enjoying yourself, why would you want to take yourself away from the moment to make a record that may not be historicly relevant in the larger scheme of things anyway? And that's why I haven't been writing: ever since school started, I've been unbelievably happy. Interesting (yes, interesting) classes with engaging readings, long meals with good conversations, old friends reunited and catching up again, steamboats and nights spent chatting over dessert made by J, a night out on the city to wach the Miami City Ballet's breathtaking performance, random long walks, a random and dingy-looking diner giving us unprepossessing service, a dinner with Z and W - Ethiopian food and reflections on the richness of the city and the films that are waiting to be made in it, long nights, long chats, the gentleness of waking up in the morning with warmth and contentment enveloping you.

Have you ever been so happy that it scared you?

And then, this happens again. It has been precisely one month today. A worrying message on my phone, the email that sent the shock and pain of recognition shooting upwards and downwards, the sensory acuity that comes with disorientation and revelation. When you know something has happened, but you don't know who it has happened to, suddenly that message that you read becomes like a verdict, and everyone that you know who fits the description becomes a possible victim. It ismental Russian Roulette: you know that someone has paid the price, and you flip through all the people you know wondering who it is exactly. You picture each and every one of them in the dreadful situation, and because it is uncertain which one is the right one, each mental image is like a separate tragedy. Not knowing who it really was, you are forced to contemplate each possibility as if it really happened. Cognitively, then, one tragedy becomes many.

Then, there is the moment of recognition, when you know who it really is. Everyone else gets a reprieve, and there is a certain measure of relief. But it is tempered with the terrible knowledge that such relief was bought by a real, corporeal loss. And anyway, the pan that imagined losses can give you is necessarily limited, because you know that it is reall imaginary. When the separate pains from the imaginary losses congeal in the form of a real loss, the resulting pain is more than the sum of its parts. It is sharpened by being real. And you realise, too, that you know - knew - this person, that he is not som theoretical philosophical possibility, but someone whom you had talked to, worked with. Understood, even, in moments of crystal clarity. And then, with a jolt, you also realise how it could have been anyone else, too. Before, I had thought tha we were in some measure invincible, at the top of our game, immune from shocks, or rather secure in the knowledge that whatever shocks we received would not be incongruous with the context that we are in (that is to say, enjoying the chance of our lives in this university and this city). And then, something like this happens, and you realise that everyone really is not exempt from reality, that really we have not moved so far away from the old stresses and troubles that used to drag us down. That, in effect, the new world that we think we are enjoying is really just a fragile, somewhat flashier version of the old one that we thought we had left behind.

We gathered, then, the people who know - knew - this person, across the campus wherever someone was willing to open a door and offer a hug. And everyone was willing to do this. Things followed the usual (I guess it is usual) course then: expressions of shock, expressions of solidarity, tentative dips into the rivers of memory to bring back anecdotes that have been steeped in pathos by the fact of this happening. Cups of tea passed around, chocolates offered, a box of tissues steadily emptying. Anxious activity, restlessness, short self-conscious laughter that eases one pain while making another more acute.

There were, of course, moments of reenacted drama, unreal renderings of an event that still seemed unreal. We interpret the things we perceive using the models that we have, and reproduce the models in our outward reactions. That is, of course, not to say that people were insincere: that would be a total mistake. You can't measure authenticity using novelty. But there were moments when I suddenly realised that I've seen this moment before, on the silver screen, on the printed page, and while I do not question the validity of using borrowed motifs and metaphors to represent what we were currently going through, I sometimes wondered about the appropriateness of each reproduction: couldn't we have chosen a better scene in some places?

More than once, I've heard that it is sad that it takes something like this to bring everyone together, that our latent friendships have been allowed to languish until one is irretrievably lost, at which point we suddenly better appreciate the value of the others. However, I don't measure the strength of a friendship against an index of frequency of meetings. What is important is that our friendships remain strong enough that, precisely at moments like these, we can still come together despite all the intervening time. The thing is that, no matter what has happened in the meantime, we can still come together, simply be present for one another.

*

But at the same time, I see a pattern: that, whenever I get really unreservedly happy, something bad will happen to rebalance my perspective on things, to remind me that actualy, the moment of happiness is not really that far removed from a more general, ambient sadness, or at least the possibility of imminent sadness. This pattern, I think, is undoubtedly a fact of existence; life is such that happiness must always be alloyed with a degree of sadness. The danger lies in jumping from this empirical correlation to a premature causal link, namely that my happiness will cause my own sadness. That way, one's happiness becomes guilty.

I see another pattern: the shock, grief, loss, awkwardness, even the pretentiousness, are all familiar - all too familiar, fresh still in recent memory. Once again, I see people I know and care about who are hurting. And still, I see that apart from all the words and the thoughts and the sharings, the really important thing is simply presence. To share this moment with other people, not to draw attention to your own pain (which, at the same time, should not be allowed to be blown out of proportion for reasons of vanity), but to acknowledge the pain of others. And I see, once again, that above all else, other people are what's important here: the people who have to go through this, right now, and to learn from it, and to live with it.

*

I cannot speak of details: that would be grossly inappropriate. At any rate, no further information is available. I am sure, though, that eventually, those who need to know will know what they need.

City of New Hope

Had a pretty good flight back to NYC. The transit through Heathrow was really enjoyable, and I spent a few hours immersing myself in the sleek smoothness of Terminal Five, pretending to be part of an exclusive jetsetting segment of society. British Airways continues to have less than remarkable service, but the crew delivers the service with such touching self-consciousness: they know they come off as unimpressive, and their good-natured bantering and self-deprecation in the face of this knowledge is somehow endearing. It makes me much more forgiving about the quality of the food and the entertainment system!

Anyway, right after arriving in NYC, went out for dinner with YR, G, WL, YR's friend WR and YR's mum. We didn't go far; the cold in NYC was pretty daunting, especially after coming from a place that was 40 degrees warmer. In the Cuban restaurant opposite school, we had a slow dinner and a long reunion, catching up with what YR and WL had been up to in the depths of the NYC winter while the rest of us had returned home. Yes, New York is undoubtedly gloomy, cold, grimy, disorganised, expensive and challenging - it is, in short, not (yet) home; but in the warmth of the restaurant, talking to these friends over generous portions of Cuban fare, there is no denying that it is good to be back here.

*

The next day, left with G for Washington DC for a short 2-day visit to the city. It really wasn't much time, and we were working on a pretty punishing schedule, walking for hours on end trying to take in as much as we could, but we still managed to see four different sides to DC, I think.

The first was the lifestyle of a family living in one of the DC suburbs. My mum's old university friend lives in DC, and my parents had enlisted her to transport some goodies over to the States for Chinese New Year. That was before my sudden return to Singapore, and so the goodies had rested unclaimed in her house until now. We made contact, and received incredible hospitality, including one whole storey of the house dedicated to guest accommodations, home-cooked dinners and breakfasts, and daily lifts to and from the nearest Metro station. We really couldn't have asked for more. The most enjoyable parts were definitely the dinners we had, with Aunt CK and her husband and young son N. The young boy is 7 years younger than me, but he is already taller than I ever will be; and he was impeccably well-behaved, articulate and helpful, leaving us as guests feeling wholly inadequate to repay all of this. Aunt CK and her husband, too, were warm and open, and we easily entered into long after-dinner conversations about US and world politics, sociology, engineering, school days and American life. It was a scene right out of the pages of what I see as the American dream: a warm family, a great dinner, and pre-electronic entertainment involving the engagement of minds in real time with each other.

A second aspect was, of course, monumental DC. We spent quite a lot of time wandering around the National Mall and Downtown DC, and while the buildings are ornate and impressively immense, you can't help but wonder whether they're really necessary, especially when the sheer scale of the structures force you to endure minutes of empty streets as you try to go around a single block. After all, marble in itself doesn't strike me as interesting, and the monument district seemed to me to be especially devoid of life and thus of purpose. However, when the sun came out today in the afternoon, the monuments looked much more impressive, invigorated by the play of light and colour. Against the wide blue sky, the bulk of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial became moving in their scale and what they mean to Americans and the rest of the world. And there was a nice stretch along the Potomac River connecting Georgetown with the monument district that offered such breathtaking views; though the walk took about an hour, it was well worth it, and exceedingly pleasant in its serenity, its not-too-cold temperatures and its incredible vistas.

A third aspect was Georgetown. Hooked up with YM again this second time that I visited DC, and she brought us around this lively neighbourhood near the eponymous university. Here, then, was the city life that I had been looking for: streets bustling with people, interesting shopfronts beckoning every few metres, places that are insider secrets (like the delightful cafe with excellent coffee and cupcakes, or the restaurant with impeccable service, or the staircase and house where The Exorcist was filmed) - in short, a human-scale place. And the thing was that, without YM, we wouldn't have figured it out ourselves that Georgetown, far from any Metro stop, accessible only by bus or car, was actually the Main Street of Washington. After the cold immensity of the monuments, Georgetown was a decided delight and quite a relief too.

And finally, of course, there is the Washington that is on the verge of celebrating the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Everywhere, you see cheap Obama merchandise on sale, from pins to t-shirts. More tasteful (and tasty!) are the limited-edition merchandise put out by the shops of Georgetown: Obama-themed cookies, chocolate White Houses (in milk or dark), limited-press inauguration wines. There were also all the cordons, troops and convoys speeding through the streets of the capital, lights flashing and engines revving. There were the special events that attracted immense crowds to the monuments, creating waves of humanity trying to funnel ineffectively into the overburdened Metro system. There were the big screens, and the innumerable flags of all sizes. And of course, there were the good spirits of all the people there, all laughing together at the spectacle of hundreds of people daftly braving the cold for a peek at some famous dignitary, waving at convoys though the dark-tinted windows meant they had no idea who they were cheering on, being polite and helpful amindst the chaos of crowds (including the section of troops who all gathered around one map to deduce for us the shortest route to a Metro station). It all added a much-welcomed buzz to the city, and all that joy made it clear that we were in DC at a time where things really matter there, even though we would be missing the actual inauguration.

It was definitely a great trip, then. To me, it was like a highly compressed exchange programme, including a stay with a local family, many long, long walks, visits to monuments, the nearest water body (the riverside walk was spectacular), and the local market district, rides on the local mass transit, and random encounters that enriched our trip and proved that it is always a good idea to simply walk outside and place yourself in a place where things are likely to occur.

*

We slept all the way on the bus, back from DC to NYC via Philadelphia (I was really surprised to find that the bus took this rather long detour), properly tired out by all the walking and exploring that we had done over the last two days. And despite the rocking bus hurtling rather disconcertingly down the wide, smooth highways, and despite the landscape outside worryingly turning more and more snowy, I had one of the most comfortable rides ever. And, of course, the company was great. G has gamely kept up with all the punishing walks that I had made us embark on, sharing in every part of this trip and thereby making this trip all the more acutely experienced. I do believe that I have been lucky enough to find another travelmate. Maybe even a new soulmate; hopefully, the first of many, but realistically...we'll see what happens from here on in.

*

I was really in no hurry to arrive in NYC, partly because the bus trip was so pleasant, but also because tomorrow, the new term starts, and I wanted to linger on the winter break, truncated though it was by the unexpected emergency at home. I do think, after all, that it has been a good break, if not wholly what I expected or hoped for. It has definitely been a worthwhile pasage of time, at least. But when we emerged from the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, and saw the familiar grungy streets and the wrought green metal of the subway entrance, I realised that, after all, it is still good to be back here, in this city, regardless of anything else. When one returns, one brings with one new perspectives and experiences through which to interpret the place that one is returning to. In my experience, every return has allowed me to reinterpret a place such that it has become more compelling for me, more meaningful. And so, with every return, NYC seems more exciting, more accessible, friendlier. Similarly, Singapore seems more promising, more valuable, richer. In this way, returning is not an end of a trip, but a continuation of a theme across different locations. It is a comforting thing to discover this.

Brink of Returning

Have been out quite often this week, meeting as many people as I could, those who are still here. That is one real advantage of coming back here for the holidays: although not many people are here, overall you're still more likely to meet more old friends and acquaintances here than abroad. And, just as it is essentially the people that make going elsewhere worthwhile, it is also the people that make coming back worthwhile.

And so it was that I went to the airport to find YS for lunch, because she was working there again. And then, after a trip to Chinatown to buy New Year goodies and enjoy the bustle of the season, went back to Aljunied to meet G, R and J for an evening of food sampling in Geylang, covering good dim sum, great ice kachang and an old favourite: the Y0ng He tau huay place just around the corner at Lorong 27A. And then, yesterday, met up with the old gang: JY, Conan and Liang See. We went for lunch at Pepper Lunch at Lido, and then chatted the afternoon away in the Liat Towers Starbucks, regularly remarking on the profusion of tourist customers that visit that particular branch. And today, met up with LJ, YJ and Liang See again for another lunch at PS.

So, I've quite completed my rounds of old haunts and familiar places, and in the process have caught up with more familiar faces than I'd originally expected. It still strikes me, after all this time, how easy it is to slip back into a particular mode of conversation: sharp, witty, unassuming, uncensored, stimulating, unpretentious, sincere and straightforward. Such is the conversation of long familiarity, sprouting from the rich loam of shared memory and coded gestures referring to inside jokes and unforgettable moments. I remember how I myself had been apprehensive when meeting returning people in years past, wondering how much they may have changed, and how easily we will be able to resume where we had previously left off. And now, looking at things from the other side of four months studying abroad, I see even more clearly how a shared past can form such a strong foundation for continuation that the intervening time is not alienating but enriching, a source of novelty that leavens an old, familiar relationship. It is deeply comforting to think, to discover, and to know that old, cherished things in the past can continue to persist in this new present.

Told Liang See that if it were possible for my whole social circle to come to NYC too, then my life there would be complete. Certainly, I daresay some of the friendships that I have right now will not be duplicated in the years to come. As such, there is no question of moving on from an old social circle to form a new one; it is rather the expansion of an existing circle. But I encounter new people all the time in New York, and certainly some of them also have shown themselves to be kind, dependable, sincere people who are a joy to hang out with: people like K, BY, Ar, As, Je, Ja, WL, YR, G, R, J and the rest. I have been ridiculously lucky on this front. And I do have hopes that many of these friendships will only grow stronger over time. But all the same, I think what I am looking for in these new friends is inevitably modelled after what I have encountered in my old friends.

It has been the case that the old principles of life have remained sound despite being imported to an entirely novel environment: approach everything with no illusions and no expectations, don't begrudge people their good fortune, put yourself where things are likely to happen, make the most difference that you can. And I think in the social realm, too, it will be the case that the old principles remain sound. It is possible that this will turn out to be false, and I only hope that should that be the case, I am flexible enough to adapt the situation as it is. But I hope that the old principles will in fact remain sound.

*

Strangely enough, even though Singapore is 70% Chinese, Singapore's Chinatown is actually smaller than NYC's Chinatown. I guess you could argue that, in fact, the whole island is a Chinatown, and that it is equally ridiculous to complain of a small Chinatown in Beijing as in Singapore. But I find it interesting that, as far as the acknowledged geographical reach of the two Chinatowns is concerned, the one in a predominantly Chinese society is smaller than the one in a Western city.

Even so, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Singapore's Chinatown, far from being the slepy, dingy place I remember most vividly from primary-school field trips, is in fact a bustling, lively ethnic district. This was especially the case, given that the Chinese New Year is almost upon us. The streets, alleys and sidewalks were full of shoppers and walkers, and merchants had turned blank walls into kaleidoscopic displays of New Year goodies and decorations. To my utter surprise, even the tacky and touristified faux-classical architecture of restored shophouses and buildings struck me as exciting, being perhaps dignified by the human pressures and flows around and through them.

I had previously remarked on the vibrance of the Chinatowns of New York, Malacca and Penang, and had admired the seemingly spontaneous, effortlessly engaging street life of Taipei and Hong Kong. It was with quite a bit of surprise, then, that I found myself becoming similarly taken by the streets of the Singapore Chinatown. It is possible that my perspective has just been romanticised by my being away for four months, so that home just looks generally better, in the way that confinement on Tekong made me look at Simei with new eyes. And it is likely to be premature to compare Singapore with Hong Kong or Taipei or (heaven forbid!) New York. But I think the life I encountered on the street was genuinely engaging, and surprisingly so. Maybe it has always been there; maybe it is just that I've recently developed a taste for it, or the perceptiveness needed to detect and appreciate it. But no matter the case, I'm glad that I managed to encounter it this time, when I came back.

And another one of those ironies that make Singapore compelling to me: despite the technology and the society bent on developing itself at breakneck speed into everlasting prosperity, traditional things still hold sway. And so it was that I found this crowd of people engrossed in the detailed divinations of Chinese astrologers, who had produced predictions for every aspect of life for every zodiac and posted them up on this board in the middle of the Pearl Centre Shopping Mall. Similar to this moment was one later that night, when we were chatting about school and army and work life in Geylang, enjoying the phenomenal quality and range of food on the North side of Geylang Road while seeing the red-light district gearing up for opening hours on the South side of Geylang Road. It is, after all, not true that Singapore as a society is uninteresting, and neither is it true that we have exhausted all the possibilities of Singapore in our 20-odd years living here. It is just that we have become intimately familiar with how this place works, and have been inculcated with acute cases of envy for the seemingly greener grasses elsewhere.

*

And so, I find that, on the verge of leaving, a part of me sincerely wants to stay on. I have completed all that I want to do here at home, and I have seen just about everyone that can be seen. But the main difference between my lives in Singapore and in New York is that here, I am not a stranger, whereas in New York, I join the innumerable ranks of strangers. It is, perhaps, a matter of a sense of belonging, or of acceptance; whereas New York is likely to be socially more accepting of newcomers than Singapore, the thing is that I am already accepted here. That status is a very strong impetus to stay, a power capitalising on a person's inertia or conservatism.

But I know also that my time is called for elsewhere, and the opportunities that are only available abroad have their own power to draw me to them. Will be flying via Heathrow again, and with any luck, will return to London to visit my people in the UK over the spring break in March. First, though, will go with G to Washington DC, to visit a family friend and to check out the capital on the eve of the inauguration. And there is also talk of a trip with As to Boston, not to mention the myriad shows, concerts, exhibitions, festivals (Chinese New Year!) and spectaculars coming up in the next term.

It is time to go back, and I feel that I am, essentially, ready to go back, bearing with me valuable experiences, a heightened sense of humility, and a tempered hope for the coming year. 2009 has started, after all; let it come, but also let everyone be safe. As for the rest of the details, we will take it from there.

Coming Back

Had a big dose of culture over the weekend, getting reacquainted with the Singapore scene. Had read in the papers that the Singapore Fringe Festival was on, and decided to give it a try, since it was marketed as being edgy and provocative. I'd never tried the Fringe Festival before, and had the impression that it could open up a whole new side of the Singapore arts scene for me.

On Saturday, went with G to watch a concert, a doublebill, the first part consisting of a guy putting various random household sounds together and placing toys into a Steinway piano to create discord. The result was a strange, barely pleasant melange of noises. Allegedly, the piece was supposed to be a sonic conversation between objects found in the artist's living room, representing the various strains and melodies of interactions between family members. The random household sounds I did not get, for their mixture into an apparently random soundscape seemed only to make the rather trivial point that most household interactions tend to be random and unartistic. The discordant piano was more interesting, as a slow progression of chords that would otherwise have been quite pleasant was disrupted by the toys interfering with the piano's strings. I got the point about discord being seeded in beauty, about how the latter may even be rendered more poignant by the former. But I don't think the artist quite got away with the other sounds that he was trying to pass off as music.

The second half was a more conventional (i.e. recognisable) performance of electronica accompanied by piano-playing. The German group SWOD performed pieces from their latest album, and it was more interesting than the first performance because, firstly, it did not make pretensions to some abstract and tenuous connection with an ideological investigation, and secondly because it was not so novel that the novelty itself became a hindrance, distraction that interfered with the sensory enjoyment of the performance. The soundscapes that were created were at times bizarre, at times jarring, but always engaging, the artists adeptly balancing pleasantness with strangeness. Listening to their performance is kind of like drinking rum and coke for the first time: there is enough of the familiar to be reassuring, but there is a sharp tang of the novel to keep things interesting.

After that, adjourned to the outdoor theatre for one of the free performances. A singer-songwriter called Ling was strumming out covers and original numbers into the night. Her voice wasn't that spectacular, but her guitaring was quite impressive, and I have to give it to her: her ability to sing and play at the same time with such vigour is something that I cannot yet - can perhaps never - emulate. And I noticed something about the new outdoor theatre: if you sit at a particular area, one side of the theatre's sails frames the new casino quite nicely, whereas if you sit at yet another place, the old, familiar, well-loved skyline of the current CBD is framed by the sails. In this way, therefore, the new theatre forms a rather poignant bridge between the familiar and the new, and I am reminded of the times that I used to spend there in the pre-army days, while at the same time seeing that the outdoor theatre still continues to be the venue of new, memorable experiences.

And the next night, met up with P and E to watch a Fringe Festival theatrical performance, an Israeli-German production entitled 3SOME, allegedly discussing the state of Israeli-German and Israeli-Palestinian relations. There were some brilliant moments, including one sequence in which the German hunts for something that stinks onstage, and after sniffing everything around him, he starts to burrow under the rubber matting that covers the stage, effectively dissolving the stage surface, rendering what we assumed was a solid surface into something fluid, craggy and malleable. And then there was the beginning of the play, which did not seem to be a beginning, but rather constituted the German apologising for technical difficulties, then describing fantastic stage directions of what the play was supposed to be like, then getting lost in his own fantastic descriptions - then freezing suddenly, to have the Israeli jumping without warning out of a bathtub in the centre of the stage. That sent shivers down my spine.

They made a right mess of the stage, ending by tossing all sorts of materials indiscriminately, hanging a cello (to symbolise, they say, the execution of Germans' traditional angst about the Holocaust) and proposing, Lysistrata-style, a preposterous Final Solution to the Palestinian question (consisting of divine intervention in the form of a natural disaster wiping out both sides indiscriminately). In the end, though, the piece suffers from the problem of most modern art: a lack of clarity. Some parts were all too clear: I thought it was kind of artistically lazy to use the mess onstage to symbolise the untidy situation in the Middle East. Some parts were quite poignant: I especially liked how the German, paralysed by war guilt, was cowering in the bathtub while the Israeli was ranting away, carried away by his risque passions, skirting with blasphemy. But there were things that would have remained indecipherable if the artists had not explained them after the end of the piece, like the hanging cello or the mysterious story of the Israeli torturing a kitten for the fun of it.

On an unrelated note, after the show, on the train ride home, E was saying that she would not have missed Singapore as much if she had not come back over this holidays, and as it stands, going back to school is more difficult now because she has spent a month at home. She does raise an interesting point: homesickness is not a product of the duration of one's time away, but rather the frequency of the reminders that one gets of what it's like to be at home. In this respect, I think we're luckier in New York, where there are lots of distractions and fewer Singaporeans to serve as echoes of home, tantalising because they remind us what it's like without giving us the full experience of what it is to be home. I for one can't really say if I would have been happier staying in the States over these holidays and exploring the Northeastern US with WL and YR; certainly, though, I had planned to do that under the assumption that I would not appreciate being home as much as travelling. But as it turns out, being home is good, despite the terrible circumstances that brought me back. I have been happy here, and I have been able to spend good time with family and friends, both old and new. And at the end of the day, I am glad to have come back.

*

Speaking of returns, went back to school today (that is to say, CHS) to visit, partly because I and Kats had bumped into Ms. C in Little India a few weeks back and she had invited us to go back to school, but also because if I did not go now, it would be another five months before the opportunity is likely to present itself again. Spent a good part of the day in school, wandering the staff room, meeting old teachers and colleagues, and then bumping, to my delight, into many old students - the people from the classes L and N, and my CSE class, and even class F, whom I'd taught for all of one month. I was surprised to find that I hadn't yet forgotten their names. The really nice thing was that they still remembered me, and though I know it really is self-indulgent and egotistical, I have to say that it really feels good to be remembered!

Walking into CHS, though, two things struck me. Firstly, the beauty of the campus itself is striking; while Columbia undoubtedly has its charm because of the glamour of its address and the uniform classical architecture of its buildings, it lacks the careful landscaping of CHS, and it certainly is smaller than my old secondary school. So, whereas my old school has about as many students as Columbia has undergraduates, CHS feels serene and open, while Columbia comes off as crowded and small. Secondly, so much of it is still the same. I'd mentioned this before: working in CHS was rather surreal because I suddenly found myself back in the physical environment of my secondary school, and amidst people whom I remembered from my time there as a student, except that now I was the one holding the red pen. The contrast of the familiar with the novel social position was striking; and today, going back again, there was a touch of confusion over whether I was returning as an old colleague or an old student.

Anyway, it was definitely good to be back, amidst an environment where I feel utterly at home, chatting with old students about the university experience and their new classes in the new year, dabbling in staff room gossip with old colleagues and teachers, talking over gelato nearby with my old colleague and friend G, meeting my old Lit teacher Mr. L, who happened to be visiting CHS on the same day that I dropped in. Coming back allowed me to remind myself of where I had come from, and also to better take stock of how much I've actually progressed from those days.

*

And then, tonight, went out with family to a seafood restaurant nearby for dinner. For some reason, it was particularly windy this evening, and the red plastic tablecloth substitute flapped precariously throughout our meal, as we tucked into fried fish, sambal kangkong, oatmeal prawns, a chili crab and a steamed crab. Special mention must go to the crabs, which were laden with meat and fat with roe, and whose shells fell away with gratifying ease, to leave large, juicy, tender pieces of fragrant crabmeat that could be eaten in satisfying mouthfuls. It has been too long since I've had crabs that were that good.

My life overseas has undoubtedly been exciting. I've received so many opportunities that I find myself terrified of my own prodigious good luck. I've met many good people, made many new friends, and had many experiences that have enriched me beyond my wildest expectations. But it's moments like these, when you have the whole family together, that make all that excitement worthwhile, because it reassures you that you always have somewhere to come back to, that what you have cherished before has not been lost over time. If I could bring my whole family along to New York, that would make my life there perfect. But since that's not possible, then that impression of perfection can best be accessed by coming back, and by finding that, while many things may change over time, family does not.

*

And so passes my 22nd. Another year older...and I hear that from now on in, it's all downhill, since there are no more milestones to pass until retirement or your midlife crisis, whichever one comes first. I feel decidedly old, especially when I think about going back to school, where practically everyone is on the brink of coming of age. Nevertheless, it has been a great day today, and as far as getting older goes, I can't really in all conscience ask for a better way to do it! Thanks to everyone, for all your well-wishes and messages. They've all made my day!

I Can't Take My Mind Off of You...

Just finished another video, the first one that I've made that is based on scenes from New York. I discovered that I have taken so much video over the last four months that I can make the whole thing out of videos, rather than mixing in photos, which is my usual tactic. As it stands, too, the 3-minute music clip that I set it to doesn't leave enough space for all the video, so I only managed to cover material up to Halloween. Oh well...the leftovers of the last semester will doubtlesly get incorporated into the next video.

In the process, though, was looking through my photo library, and discovered a few nuggets, not enough to fill a new Facebook album, but good enough to warrant record somewhere. So, here they are:

A perspective trick on a blue-sky day. The winter sun stays so low in the sky that parts of the campus never get direct sunlight in winter.

Another perspective trick. I took this one on the second day of snow that we had in New York. Within hours of the snowfall, numerous snowmen had sprouted across campus. Was walking with G back from a session of studying in Avery Library when we came across this little guy, who was no more than 5cm tall. In the background is College Walk (the bit of 116th St that runs through Columbia), lined with lighted trees.

And this one was taken from the top of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the world's largest cathedral, and right next door to Columbia on 112th Street. J had given me the heads-up to accompany him to the Cathedral, because he had stumbled upon a cultural festival taking place in the building to commemorate its reopening after renovations restored a portion of it damaged by fire. One of the activities was a tour of the cathedral, and after walking right into the walls, through hidden passageways and spooky spaces, we emerged onto the roof. It gave a spectacular view. If you look closely, you can just see Midtown and the Empire State Building towards the right edge of the picture.

And this is J, on the way down from the roof of the Cathedral. Trivia: the stairs in a cathedral spiral clockwise upwards, so that it makes it hard to carry out a swordfight in the stairs, meaning that in mediaeval times, cathedrals were likely to be neutral ground in wartime. Also, many thanks to J for always giving me heads-up to great performances and opportunities; I really should put in more effort to find out about these things myself.

And P, on her last day in NYC, shopping for cosmetics at Union Square. The UPenn people's visit to NYC really brightened my last days there before coming home. Now we need to meet up in Singapore one more time before we all have to go back to school.

*

Also, have taken quite some time out over the last two days to pick up the guitar again. It surprises me how easy it is to start playing again, despite more than half a year's hiatus. Maybe guitar-playing is something like bike-riding; and although what I do with a guitar can't really be called making music, it's still relaxing and soothing to make the instrument produce the sounds that you want. I definitely have to get one for my room in Columbia.

Been learning a couple of Damien Rice numbers: Older Chests and The Blower's Daughter. Kudos to G for introducing Damien Rice to me! Was listening to his songs, and I realised that actually, the guitar riffs are quite simple, and decided to try them out for myself. Another big plus is that Damien Rice actually seems to put effort into his lyrics; I especially like how he uses repetition to express yearning in The Blower's Daughter, a tactic that is powerful and moving, and makes you feel as if you know exactly what he's talking about. And, of course, the overall sound of the music is intriguing. I can't really explain it, but the rhythms and notes don't strike me as precisely conventional somehow, and the edge of quirkiness invites you to pay attention to the song.

*

And besides that, met with Kels and Soph again on Wednesday night downtown. It has been a really long time since I last saw Soph in Sabah in January, and I had thought that we had drifted apart. I was really pleasantly surprised, therefore, when we easily struck up a conversation again, especially when Kels joined us, and we talked and joked over kopitiam drinks into the night, catching up on what has happened over the last semester. After that, Soph came over to stay the night, because her flight was early in the morning the next day, and one of the few advantages of living at my place is the proximity to the airport.

And last night, met up with YS for dinner at Simpang Bedok. By a strange set of coincidences, we keep seeming to cross paths. First, she visited me in NY, then I went to UVa to return the favour, and then she came down to NY again with her mum (after telling me that she was determined to go to Chicago), and now I'm back in Singapore just when she is also in town. Anyway, we're both in the vicinity of each other, and we had a really long talk last night over prata and a Milo dinosaur. For some reason, it was exceedingly easy for me to talk t her about what happened over the New Year; I can write about it better than I can talk about it, but yesterday it seemed natural to just open up and discuss it, voicing my concerns and fears and hearing her opinions about it. This is definitely partly due to our long friendship, but I think it also has to do with how alike we are philosophically/ideologically. It is rare to find people that share something like this; and when you do, you do your best to stay close to them.

Continuing

A big thank you to everyone who sent their concerns and thoughts and prayers. Every little bit helps, and definitely I and my family are heartened by your support. There were difficult moments in the last few weeks. But for me, personally, I do think that the worst is over. The situation is greatly different for my cousins and aunt and my uncle's siblings, of course. The priority now is to support them, to help them to continue onwards.

As for myself, there hasn't really been many lasting effects, but the real impact has been to drive home the one great fear of people who are far away from home: that something drastic may happen when you're away. That, I think, is my greatest fear now: that I won't be able to be present when another crisis strikes, though heaven forbid that it happens again. It has never really occurred to me; usually, I think that the person most at risk when going away is the person that is departing. But it is clear, now, that simply being at home doesn't reduce the risk of some things happening, just as going abroad doesn't increase the risk of some types of occurrences. The difficulty, then, lies not in where you are, but the distance between you and your loved ones.

*

We carried out the funeral on Sunday, going through an elaborate Taoist ritual that saw us circling the coffin, bowing to it, strewing it with flowers, and then embarking on a noisy procession through the housing estate, complete with blaring band and talismanic papers tossed liberally into the air. We tried to keep up as the rituals progressed, at points threatening to leave us behind; our sadness and pain was mixed with a measure of bewilderment that served to give the situation a tinge of absurdity. We understood so little of it - the ritual's meaning was the province of a different generation - but the only hope, as always, is that we are doing good by our family member.

Actually, before we knew what was going on, the cremation was already over. It was very fast: a group of duty monks reciting the scriptures with the lacklustre over-familiarity of extended habit, a robotic lifter that raised the coffin to a space-age door, and at the press of a button, the metallic portal slid open noiselessly, the robot pushed the coffin into the dark space beyond, and then - a flash of flames, and the door sliding back into place as the flowers covering the coffin started to burn. And that was all there was to it: it was over in five minutes, barely enough time to register that the ritual has started, and certainly not enough time to appreciate that this is really the end.

It strikes me as somewhat sad, aven outrageous, that the end of a life, the end of a funeral, can go so smoothly with factory precision and industrial-strength equipment. Some things in life cannot be done quickly; certainly the value of some things should not be measured in terms of how efficiently it can be done. It is somehow wrong to end life as a piece of cargo handled by an industrial machine. There has to be a better way to do this: perhaps not as efficiently, but certainly a better way, whatever that may mean to the individual.

We went back later to the crematorium to collect the remains. I had imagined that the transmutation of the body by the flame would produce a fine dust. "Ashes to ashes", as it were. What really happened, though, was that everything combustible had been vapourised (the undertaker tells us that in the cremation chamber, a total of fifteen jets of gas flame are whipped up by a tornado of winds to engulf the body), and all that remained were broken bone fragments, completely dessicated. Everything soft had been reduced to nothing but hardness. And yet, there was something about the broken fragments that still seemed irreducibly human, and therefore inviolable. There are some things, secret things, about the human body that should not be seen, and setting eyes upon a skeleton strikes me as somehow being a desecration. It's strange: on the one hand, you objectively recognise that the bone fragments do not make up a person, and that after all, the person you knew departed long before the body entered the coffin. But as the crematorium attendant dug through the mound of bones with his bare hands, sorting out the skull pieces from the rest so that tey can be placed symbolically on top of the rest of the bones in the urn, a part of me was disgusted, outraged even.

But beyond the technicalites of burial, the main concern has been to sort out my uncle's affairs. No one had prepared for his possible departure, and looking through his things is to see a life that has been put on hold, work that was stopped for the night, seemingly still waiting to be resumed the next morning. And it quickly became clear that no one could decode his work to the level that is needed to duplicate it and replace him. At this point, I feel the most useless and helpless, because as our family grappled with his workplans, documents, finances and records, I could hardly make heads or tails of it. I was so completely out of my league. And it raises a fact that really depresses me: while I am still fiddling around in school, mulling over next week's homework, my cousins will already be planning to take over a family business. It is deeply humbling; it makes the current endeavour in Columbia look like vanity and self-indulgence. Definitely, my own work doesn't matter in the same way that my cousins' efforts matter.

As they looked through the material left behind by my uncle, they frequently remarked on how remarkable his abilities were, abilities that had not been so obvious while he was alive because he didn't make a big deal out of them, but that are immediately apparent from his intricate designs, complex spreadsheets and cryptic workflow. But of course, the documents are not simply lists of numbers, diagrams and words; on a certain level, there is no escaping the fact that these are among the last traces of a person who departed all too suddenly. How do you deal with that? How do you plumb these papers for objective data, and rationalise what you are doing against the personal significance of your own memories of the person who produced these papers?

It is deeply unfair, that I have the option of removing myself from this situation, simply by flying back to New York on the 15th, while my family has no choice but to continue dealing with the fallout from this death. And the thing is that no one really wants me to stay; indeed, they want me to go back because that is where I can make the most difference. It makes me feel even more conflicted, because I feel like I should be where I can make the most difference to them, rather than simply where I can make the most difference. Frustration comes in when I realise that I cannot make much of a difference to them at all. And that's where second-guessing comes in, that I should have lived my life in such a way that would have prepared me for this worst-case scenario. I guess, in a way, because no one can find a reason to blame me for departing again, I feel obliged to blme myself.

This in itself is not a bad thing, I think; self-doubt nurtures healthy humility. We live and learn. Most importantly, we learn while living. I guess that must continue to be a guiding principle; to learn something useful, to make myself useful to others. And self-doubt can help here, by making sure that I don't settle simply for enjoying myself or for passing the time. Productivity is not enough. The lot of others must also be helped.

*

Anyway, the struggle to return to normalcy has begun. School has started or is about to start, people are returning to work, and I contemplate my flight back to New York. But even in this period, there have been moments of normalcy, brilliant for their being so familiar in the novel context of an ongoing family emergency.

On December 30th, met Kats for dinner in Little India, and we randomly ran into Ms. C, our old literature teacher from CHS and a colleague from when I was teaching there early in 2008. It was quite spooky; we were walking along the street looking for a particular restaurant for dinner, and I suddenly spotted her in the window of a large Indian place. We went in, were introduced, and chatted for a while, exchanging festive greetings and status reports about our lives overseas. What made it even spookier was that I was still reading, at that time, Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and Ms. C and her husband were mentioned in there. I thought of taking the book out of my bag to show them, but it struck me as inappropriate.

And after a large Indian dinner, we went down to Clarke Quay, and walking randomly along, we bumped into K, V and CH, who just happened to be heading in the opposite direction. I had not even realised that K and V were back in town! The whole troupe of us went back to Robertson Quay, and over cheap Tuesday liquor, had a conversation like the old times: philosophical wanderings, local politics, heavy issues interspersed with the wry and deadpan humour that I always remember as part of secondary-school life. It was good to find these old friends again, and to simply sit and talk, nursing drinks under the open night sky, in warmth and comfort.

And then, yesterday, took a very long bike ride around the Eastern part of the island with G. We followed a path that was even longer than the one that I had done previously with, coincidentally, another G: starting from Simei, we went down to East Coast Park, stopping at the hawker centre near Bedok Jetty for lunch. Then, we rode all the way up to the Eastern end of East Coast Park, and found a pretty little cove at the mouth of a canal near the airport, where we soaked our feet for a while and I mused about how this little cove is charming not because it is comfortable (like the huge beaches of Australia's Gold Coast or Staten Island's Atlantic shore) but because it is secluded and devoid of people (except for a couple of distant fishermen on the opposite shore of the cove). And then, tracing our way along the runway of the airport and chasing taxiing jetliners, we ended up at Changi Village for tea: mainly sweet stuff, to restore our energy. Then, we made our way via Loyang and Tampines, familiar territory both, to come back to Simei.

The ride itself was imensely pleasant: long, smooth paths, the warmth of the sunshine, the scenery that surprised me for being so beautiful (I have never really thought of Singaporean naturescapes as remarkable), good food. But it was made even more enjoyable by the good company; and as always, an experience that is shared is rendered more real, more palpable by its sharing. And I am again struck by how lucky I have been in terms of the people that I have met. Her personality reminds me of PM, while her gameliness and ability to keep up reminds me strongly of YS.

But of course, people like Joel, Conan, the old gang, YS, PM, Yvonne, K and the rest are not the sort that are likely to be common, and I daresay G will also be her own person, giving rise to a friendship that will be different from all that have preceded it, but that will prove nonetheless to be equally valuable. And not to mention WL and YR, who are still weathering frozen New York. I wonder what they're doing now. I hope they're still having fun.