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Singapore I: Dawn in an aeroplane


And January comes to a close. A pretty stressful, eventful, exciting month all rolled into one. I'm not sure if that sentence makes sense. But I'm so so tired. Yawn.

I have a niggling feeling that another year "off" might be waiting for me. And while I don't think that'll be such a tragedy, I'm not sure I'll have the patience or strength to deal with...people. But enough unpleasantness for now. The real purpose of this post is to trigger off a short series about my short (but awesome) trip to Singapore last week. Gosh, I can't believe it's only been a week...feels like eons ago! Perhaps that's because I was back at work when I got back and have been ever since. A work-free life...what a dream!

This trip resulted in the first stamps in my passport, a brand new camera bought especially for the occasion (well, after being put off for ages. It feels SO good to spend that much money on something when it's all yours! I've saved up my pocket money, which was mostly measly, since the age of about five, waiting for that "special something" to come along that would make it all worth it. And it was.), and well, everything that comes with a first trip to phoren. And the sense of triumph when you get when you're back, when you realise you managed, all alone. I went with the brother and it was mostly the two of us gallivanting across the city, living "on the edge" (read: catching the very last train/bus back to campus every night to avoid the humungous taxi fare we had to pay when we missed them).

But mostly, I really want to hold onto all those special moments and feelings because I felt like I never wanted to come back. And that doesn't happen to me often. I love traveling but I always like coming home too. Sometimes I feel like a misfit, wonder if I was born in the wrong place and time, and sometimes I really feel the need to live elsewhere for a long-ish period just to remember the feeling of missing my country. I feel like it'd be the only way I'd really learn to...value it. Coming back was like jerking out of a reverie, severing all those feelings to get back to the drag, to pick up where I'd left off. There's never a clean break. And the more I try to hang on to the details, the faster they siphon away.

The view from an aeroplane is breathtaking at night. This was the first flight I've ever taken after dark, and there's something so special about the twinkling, sparkling, glittering pinpricks of every color you can imagine, peppered across and below. But more enchanting was when I suddenly woke up around dawn with a twisted neck, to find myself gazing into a clouded bed that directed my eyes to a red, red stripe on the horizon, and the disk that was rising as sleepily as me spreading golden rays.

At least that's what I think it was like. I was sleepy.

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