To look life in the face

and to know it for what it is

The void

Filed under: Random thoughts — Xiao at 5:57 pm on Monday, September 17, 2007

Just came back from Karaoke with my ex-colleagues. Have I been away so long? I couldn't even find my way to Orchard Road from City Hall today. The clothes I left in my wardrobe 4 years ago have gone mouldy. I couldn't recognise any songs at the Karaoke lounge. Even my softball glove has gone mouldy… And looking at the soft toys I played with years ago, I realised there will come a day when everything will fall apart. 

Four years of absence will be topped with another four years. My accent has changed, and it's so difficult to speak Singlish again. I have an urge to speak cantonese all the time. I'm seeing frowns. People are telling me I won't be coming back after all. It's stifling. I want to cycle, but the only place to do that is East Coast Park. I need some time alone, or time with someone I can relate to. 

Perhaps it's been the past year especially, after the departure of two people who have always tied me to home emotionally and psychologically. I have shrugged off my reigns, and I feel that I might have wandered too far. So far that I wish I hadn't been so ambitious, that I wish I were 'one of them', 'normal' like everyone else. 

4 Comments »

Comment by MZ

September 18, 2007 @ 6:18 am

I wished I was more normal, I won’t feel so out of place in HK. I feel way too out of place here.

Comment by husky

September 18, 2007 @ 6:49 am

that’s what i say when i am here. i tell my mom i wish i could be more ‘normal’. and then it’ll spark whole arguments and well… i guess i can’t ever be ‘normal’. i should be proud of it and our status in singaporean society.

Pingback by talfryn.net » Blog Archive » More on belonging

September 18, 2007 @ 7:56 am

[…] I had once asked my parents if we were still considered expatriates. Perhaps not, was the answer, since we’re all holding red passports now. But we certainly are living an expat lifestyle. Our mode of living, inclusive of everything from where we live, where we buy our groceries from, where we hang out, how we travel, our consumption habits, the friends we mingle with, our language - Cantonese, and when we’re speaking English, our accents, scream out that we’re not quite locals. I don’t mean to be elitist. I don’t really feel that way. I just feel different. Recently I told my parents that I wished I could be more ‘normal’. To just be a ‘normal’ person (a sentiment which two of my friends shares, albeit in a slightly different manner). The saying goes ‘poor have poor problems, the rich have rich problems’. I admit, we’re considered rather well-off, fortunate in many ways, and we’re all spoilt, and I don’t really like that feeling, not only because it alienates me from the society I want to embrace, the friends I want to make (it can get real tough sometimes), and some of the aspirations I seek to achieve, but because this imposes upon me certain expectations and standards to live up to, some set for myself by myself, and some set for myself as a result of the perceived mould that I am being shaped into by my family and our place in society. The problem is, there is no sense of freedom. The Chinese are a highly collectivist people, and I cannot just bring it upon myself to break away. There is, after all, this thing called ‘face’. Not only for myself, but for all those my in-groups. But I digress. […]

Comment by Xi

September 18, 2007 @ 10:01 am

“Normal” doesn’t exist.

That’s the problem with tropical countries - everything turns mouldy so much faster.

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