Since I returned home from my three-week vacation, I've been working and meeting up with friends while adjusting back to the time zone and humidity.
Apart from being intensely delighted to sleep in my own bed again, I've enjoyed picking up the threads of my life in the Lion City.
Work. Home. Church. Class. W2W meetings. I have been busy and a little tired, but there is a sense of satisfaction that comes from being where I should be: Home.
Recently Total Defence launched a new version of "This is home"*, one of Singapore's many National Day songs designed to invoke a sense of belonging among Singaporeans.
I love this new version for it is schmaltzy yet kinda cool, and the chorus** of this Dick Lee song says it all for me:
This is home truly, where I know where I must be
Where my dreams wait for me, where that river always flows...
...This is where I won't be alone...
When I returned home after graduation, I had a bad case of counter-culture shock. I hated the sanitized environment, strict censorship rules, how people were not civic-minded or courteous and the dearth of good concerts/performances. I found it difficult to fit in and just hated being back.
The things that bugged me back then have become niggly, piddly peeves for I have grown to appreciate how I can take my personal safety for granted. I also like the political and economic stability and how there are no racial or religious divides: my Muslim friends wish me Merry Christmas, and I, in turn, greet them Selamat Hari Raya or Happy Eid during the season.
Although Hawaii represents home to me in many ways, Singapore takes precedence for it is where the people who mean most to me reside: family, friends, the various communities I belong to, and clients who have become friends.
I have carved a dwelling place for myself in the land of my birth. My life here is pregnant with meaning, filled with good things, where I have experienced great loss and found new beginnings.
Perhaps as I get older, different things represent happiness to me. I value love over self-seeking pleasure. I honour tradition over novelty. I choose the freedom of purity over the addiction of lust. I appreciate inner peace over chaotic thrills.
I no longer think I need to be elsewhere to be fulfilled but that I am exactly where I should be, doing what I should be doing, living the dream, cruising down reality.
In truth, I am home.
* http://thisishome.com.sg/
** http://lyrics.wikia.com/Kit_Chan:Home
Apart from being intensely delighted to sleep in my own bed again, I've enjoyed picking up the threads of my life in the Lion City.
Work. Home. Church. Class. W2W meetings. I have been busy and a little tired, but there is a sense of satisfaction that comes from being where I should be: Home.
Recently Total Defence launched a new version of "This is home"*, one of Singapore's many National Day songs designed to invoke a sense of belonging among Singaporeans.
I love this new version for it is schmaltzy yet kinda cool, and the chorus** of this Dick Lee song says it all for me:
This is home truly, where I know where I must be
Where my dreams wait for me, where that river always flows...
...This is where I won't be alone...
When I returned home after graduation, I had a bad case of counter-culture shock. I hated the sanitized environment, strict censorship rules, how people were not civic-minded or courteous and the dearth of good concerts/performances. I found it difficult to fit in and just hated being back.
The things that bugged me back then have become niggly, piddly peeves for I have grown to appreciate how I can take my personal safety for granted. I also like the political and economic stability and how there are no racial or religious divides: my Muslim friends wish me Merry Christmas, and I, in turn, greet them Selamat Hari Raya or Happy Eid during the season.
Although Hawaii represents home to me in many ways, Singapore takes precedence for it is where the people who mean most to me reside: family, friends, the various communities I belong to, and clients who have become friends.
I have carved a dwelling place for myself in the land of my birth. My life here is pregnant with meaning, filled with good things, where I have experienced great loss and found new beginnings.
Perhaps as I get older, different things represent happiness to me. I value love over self-seeking pleasure. I honour tradition over novelty. I choose the freedom of purity over the addiction of lust. I appreciate inner peace over chaotic thrills.
I no longer think I need to be elsewhere to be fulfilled but that I am exactly where I should be, doing what I should be doing, living the dream, cruising down reality.
In truth, I am home.
* http://thisishome.com.sg/
** http://lyrics.wikia.com/Kit_Chan:Home
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