There was a moment in the midst of rushing out one of my essays last week that I want to pen down. It happened while I was sitting at the dining room table with my pile of books. Chong was to my left, Darren to my right. We were all rushing our various assignments, and it had been a crazy night of reading about Mao and his policies, or angry Arabs and their goal of destroying Israel. I can’t really remember which. Anyway, there was a point when my eyes had gotten too heavy, brain too slow and I had to reread sentences several times before I could ~sort of~ understand what the damned academic author was trying to say. So I folded my arms on the table, and lay head down. The way we all did when we were trying to sleep in class in Secondary school.
And the moment I did that, I don’t really know how to explain it without sounding crazy, I sort of transported myself back to when I was living in Bedok North Avenue 3. With my eyes closed I imagined sitting at our round, glass dining table. I was facing the sideboard with the large mirror hanging over it. To my right was what used to be our balcony. The pebbled floor. The water feature. That old yellow leather one-seater that my dad used to sit on. My mom’s plants. The wind chimes and that bee thing Truett loved to play with when he was a baby, hanging by the window. The trees outside - I could only see the trees that it made it feel like we weren’t surrounded by a thousand other HDB flats but instead we lived in some kind of cool garden. At my 10 o’clock was the door to the kitchen. I could see inside, see the green wooden country cabinets, see the reddish brown tiles. And I could see part of our fridge. Then to my left was the living room. The carpet that lay in that space between our door to our dining room. And our beige recliner where the sofas were.
I could see all of this while my eyes were closed, and it was as if I was right back there. Sitting at the dining table. Taking a break while doing one of those cram sessions before a poly exam, or when my sister, my brother-in-law and I stayed up nights to memorize sixty bible verses. It feels so far away, so long ago. It feels like another life. And yet, it remains to be the only place I know to be home.
Roaaarrr I miss Singapore and all of my tribesmen :(
