*866 - postmortem

Rather unexpectedly, the third installment of the Tooty Fruity Tea Party series has left me feeling ... hollow? Kinda. Achey? A little. I think leaving this time will be sadder than ever, because it's different from leaving temporarily for a semester. It could be the beginning of a life displaced. When I've previously returned, it's been a "returning to the place I will eventually return to". Now when I return, it might be a "returning to the place I have left". It might.

Friends in college--wonderful, incomparable, truly blessings. But friends who grew up with you, the ones who saw you through the pimply adolescence, who endured the silly tantrums you threw as a young 'un, who cried with you over medals like your lives depended on getting that gold, who studied with you after school till the security guards chased you out, who made you feel like everything was ultimately okay, who were so much a part of this big abstract concept of "home" that you never realized until you left--it's just a different kind of friendship altogether.

Each time I come back, I already feel more and more like I do not belong in this country. A silly Singaporean who's always chosen not to speak Singlish, who prowls the aisles of NTUC flabbergasted at the absence of tortilla chips and vanilla pudding, who sounds funny when asking for the prices in Chinese, who thinks the world (country) would be a better place if people would yell "thank you!" to bus drivers as they get off, who misses her ang moh boyfriend dearly.

And yet, I don't belong over there, a little Asian with my roots someplace else, struggling to assimilate and make do with things still foreign to me--toilet doors with gaps, how I can't say "queue up" or "car boot" or "spectacle case" or "I have a stitch", how I can't put commas outside of my inverted commas, how one has to be loud and beautiful and polished and confident to survive (in the Hotel School, at least), how it's harder to connect to people who aren't from the same place as I am, how people look at me funny when I speak with my non-American accent.

But then here there is 80-cent strawberry Pocky, pig trotters in black vinegar for dinner, mangoes that are actually sweet and non-fibrous, MUMMY AND DADDY AND THE SIBLINGS (in capitals because this is a very important point), all the wonderful friends who still are friends despite three years of almost-absence. This place is still very much home to me, and I'm going to miss it dearly, dearly, dearly.