hokkien mee and milo monday to sunday

Old military band, upper peirce reservoir

Ivy's kingdom

Eau de Singapour

grandmotherly feet

marilyn with pride

my reading baby

If Not For You / Sab Kuch Milega

***

Having gotten tuned to the world of masala chai, clattering honks, gold-trimmed petite-square-sprinkled love-red saris, trains going nowhere, flower earrings, the times of india, pumpkin-orange turbans, twinkling eyes, curly moustaches, lizardy rooms, cold water, rickety buses, grime, rupee laundry, bumblebee-yellow-and-black taxis, dreams, jeera rice, adventure, danger and not missing home, it is now unspeakably odd to start life anew with mrts, clean hawker center seats, my palace-home, the instancy of email, bank accounts, the straits times. Maybe I was in a dream as I thought I'd be, but it felt more real than anything. And isn't real just in the mind? What's real is this: "After spending one million dollars on research, we have found that the number one cause of divorce is marriage" and my very real double-chin-a-shakin' grandmother griping about the neatness of my room with very furrowed tattooed brow, so off I scoot.

a friend

As Lucy said so too, coming back to your room from somewhere else after a long time is like meeting an old friend anew. (Firstly, we have the luxury of having a 'My Room' and a world of our own.) You open the door, take a deep breath of the musty air, a flitting glance around at all the things that were too familiar before you left, that are now magic little new-old parts of the world, the bits of you that you left behind when you went to see other places and people, your lungs send a signal to your brain, I'm here now....

"Hello."

And it seems, or maybe just in that moment alone, like all that travelling, somehow, was to get back here, as if you'd never left, to dream of the next time you'd travel again.