i've started making tentative summer plans -- back home for a few weeks in august, i think, and maybe a short trip in may if i can afford it. i've been soliciting opinions about whether it's weird to travel alone, since certain parties have sold me up the river. you know, when you read the blogs of people who travel solo, the instinctive thought is "cool" -- but i suspect that that's only because you become their companion by dint of reading the blog, thus mitigating the weirdness of the solitary journey. or maybe i'm just thinking about it too hard.

home. it's strange to think of it. when i was at duke, and was back in singapore for 3 months of the year, it seldom felt that i had truly left -- i was always either coming or going. and now -- it frightens me a little, all those things i was worrying about last august, bifurcating trajectories and so forth. and i kind of understand not wanting to face that, wanting to believe that memories might be enough, that reality is only perfect when it's frozen.

i have allowed myself, over the past few months, to like my life here. in college, as an undergrad, i found it hard to let go -- the breaks were lilypads, so that even while i was enjoying myself i thought of it as just an enjoyable (3-year) vacation from "real life". and i'm slightly ashamed of that, and i know that many singaporeans -- i've met lots of them (BONDED) -- take this to extremes; they "like" their overseas college experience only because at the back of their minds, they know that they're going to go back home and lie through their asses to everyone about what a fantastic, awesome, eye-opening, life-changing experience it was and have a billion public flickr albums with bulletpoints detailing exactly why this was so. the next step, of course, being angst -- why don't i like it as much overseas? what's wrong with me? i can't possibly actually like singapore more. i've been there. i just read a blog entry about someone in sydney who is there at this actual literal moment.

it's a conundrum, and has something to do with "to thine own self be true" or whatever, and i think that the light at the end of the tunnel is when everything unravels and you see the goddess and realise that anything higher than "i'm happy", or "i'm miserable" is, from the standpoint of living day-to-day, largely unimportant, and the unfortunate byproduct of an overlarge frontal lobe. so here it goes. i like it here, i truly do, even though i have crappy days and weeks. and -- at the same time -- i'm looking forward to going home. it will not be like before, ever again, but if you screwed a confession out of me, i'd tell you that i miss people too much to care. and so it goes, and so it goes, and you're the only one who knows.