Countdown
I have tried updating this blog over the last coupla days but the connexion is crap. Here i go again...hopefully.
Ghin when he looks like Peter. Sometimes i catch him and i think, this is what Peter must have looked like as a baby.
Oisin climbs a heritage tembusu tree in the Botanic Gardens. He didn't get much further than that. What a tree!!!
A reflective moment...
Cactus hat shot
This is Yati and Ghin. Yati is the only other person whom Ghin will go to without a fuss. Probably because she was so determined to carry him - and because she was just great with kids. Having brought up four of her own and two of my uncle Gab's. Could women, who have children, now go through their lives without knowing how to take care of a child? Maybe? Yati, in any case isn't one of those women.
The other pictures are of us in Botanic Gardens.
As predicted, i'm on the upswing again. My dad read my blog and then told me off for feeling low, which is precisely what i was felling low about - that people here can't publically acknowledge their humanness - their state of misery - and then get on with it. Somehow we were told we were one and the same - our moods, feelings, etc and who we were. Which is weird, seeing how we had Bhuddism to guide us. That said though, my dad does have these feelings, it's just that he has them in private - and then he rebounds, as we all do. His sunny, optimistic, amazingly optimistic actually disposition is a real lesson.
Lessons, lessons...
I can't access hotmail at all. We are now into our ten day countdown. It's kinda scary to think that nearly three months has passed. Three whole long months and looking back it wasn't any time at all. I will never holiday in Singapore for this length of time again... things that have happened with my perception of things here.
If i were to stay...
I would have to believe that capitalism is a good thing.
That consummerism is a good thing.
That the Straits Times and the relentless propaganda of how good Singapore is, is a good thing.
That being in a very small space is a good thing.
That loads and loads of people are a good thing.
And they are... if administered and taken in the right way.
I think that my learning is, that either way, people adapt. There is no right and wrong. That in many, many ways Singapore is very, very liveable. That i miss my family. I will miss them.
But also, all the above can be said for where i live right now. I have had to give up on certain things - certain things that i thought i held true to when i lived in Belfast. The localness of things. The real mix of friends. Participation in civil society. Wide open spaces.
But again, there is no right and wrong. Just trade offs.
My mistake: missing the bigger picture. I'm always doing that. I never seem to know how good i've got it till it's gone. So i have been determined never to do that again, no matter what my circumstances.
I'm really going to miss all this though, most especially family. Most especially them.
It will be very very hard at the airport, particularly since i have no idea when i'll see them again. For some reason, it will be as if i was saying goodbye to them for the first time.
We change so much, so very much, don't we? Looking at Ghin and seeing how he's grown so in these last three months, that is so clear. I feel very foolish sometimes going, i don't want to miss this, i don't want to miss this, and all the time, i'm missing it even as i say this.
I have tried not getting too attached to the place really, it's like having a dog that you're fostering for awhile. You try not to love it, but really, i have grown to love it - it and all it's quirks, i might as well admit it. But then i'd say exactly the same thing about Belfast if i were leaving it for the forseeable future. In fact, i did say the same thing about it.
Life will be a little emptier, a little less colourful, a little most lost when we leave - but that is probably true of anywhere. Anywhere at all. Most especially about the place that i grew up in. The place that i never could call home. The place that i do now. In the nicest, non national day propaganda shit kinda way.
Why oh why did they have to try so hard? And by they i mean the government. The crudity with which they flogged themselves. They didn't have to you know. They other day i told my mom, the thing about the education system is that, you don't have to take part in it if you didn't want to. You could just say, sod it. And if i stayed, i would. I would have said, you do what you need to do, and if you get good grades, great. If you don't then, don't worry. The point is that you are cherished and loved. The point is, there is always another way and another day.
Ghin when he looks like Peter. Sometimes i catch him and i think, this is what Peter must have looked like as a baby.
Oisin climbs a heritage tembusu tree in the Botanic Gardens. He didn't get much further than that. What a tree!!!
A reflective moment...
Cactus hat shot
This is Yati and Ghin. Yati is the only other person whom Ghin will go to without a fuss. Probably because she was so determined to carry him - and because she was just great with kids. Having brought up four of her own and two of my uncle Gab's. Could women, who have children, now go through their lives without knowing how to take care of a child? Maybe? Yati, in any case isn't one of those women.
The other pictures are of us in Botanic Gardens.
As predicted, i'm on the upswing again. My dad read my blog and then told me off for feeling low, which is precisely what i was felling low about - that people here can't publically acknowledge their humanness - their state of misery - and then get on with it. Somehow we were told we were one and the same - our moods, feelings, etc and who we were. Which is weird, seeing how we had Bhuddism to guide us. That said though, my dad does have these feelings, it's just that he has them in private - and then he rebounds, as we all do. His sunny, optimistic, amazingly optimistic actually disposition is a real lesson.
Lessons, lessons...
I can't access hotmail at all. We are now into our ten day countdown. It's kinda scary to think that nearly three months has passed. Three whole long months and looking back it wasn't any time at all. I will never holiday in Singapore for this length of time again... things that have happened with my perception of things here.
If i were to stay...
I would have to believe that capitalism is a good thing.
That consummerism is a good thing.
That the Straits Times and the relentless propaganda of how good Singapore is, is a good thing.
That being in a very small space is a good thing.
That loads and loads of people are a good thing.
And they are... if administered and taken in the right way.
I think that my learning is, that either way, people adapt. There is no right and wrong. That in many, many ways Singapore is very, very liveable. That i miss my family. I will miss them.
But also, all the above can be said for where i live right now. I have had to give up on certain things - certain things that i thought i held true to when i lived in Belfast. The localness of things. The real mix of friends. Participation in civil society. Wide open spaces.
But again, there is no right and wrong. Just trade offs.
My mistake: missing the bigger picture. I'm always doing that. I never seem to know how good i've got it till it's gone. So i have been determined never to do that again, no matter what my circumstances.
I'm really going to miss all this though, most especially family. Most especially them.
It will be very very hard at the airport, particularly since i have no idea when i'll see them again. For some reason, it will be as if i was saying goodbye to them for the first time.
We change so much, so very much, don't we? Looking at Ghin and seeing how he's grown so in these last three months, that is so clear. I feel very foolish sometimes going, i don't want to miss this, i don't want to miss this, and all the time, i'm missing it even as i say this.
I have tried not getting too attached to the place really, it's like having a dog that you're fostering for awhile. You try not to love it, but really, i have grown to love it - it and all it's quirks, i might as well admit it. But then i'd say exactly the same thing about Belfast if i were leaving it for the forseeable future. In fact, i did say the same thing about it.
Life will be a little emptier, a little less colourful, a little most lost when we leave - but that is probably true of anywhere. Anywhere at all. Most especially about the place that i grew up in. The place that i never could call home. The place that i do now. In the nicest, non national day propaganda shit kinda way.
Why oh why did they have to try so hard? And by they i mean the government. The crudity with which they flogged themselves. They didn't have to you know. They other day i told my mom, the thing about the education system is that, you don't have to take part in it if you didn't want to. You could just say, sod it. And if i stayed, i would. I would have said, you do what you need to do, and if you get good grades, great. If you don't then, don't worry. The point is that you are cherished and loved. The point is, there is always another way and another day.
