Dear Oliver and Camille

Mon petit Oliver et Camille,

In March 2013, I will bring your grandfather out on a trip. A hiking-up-a-mountain trip!
It's not that I am sponsoring the trip, sadly to say, at this ripe old age I am still lacking of the funds necessary to sponsor someone beloved, to travel together with me. The reason could be that I am not very good with money, as I have been, my whole life. And there are still so many far flung places that I would like to visit before I embark on the monotony of daily life. Your father has always been good in planning for the future, and that is why now we have a castle, a lake, a stable of horses and a large garden... Okay... ...you know we only have a small but cosy home, but it's true that we have endured many hardships together and your father has made many sacrifices for us to be together. I hope love is easy for you. I have always loved your father, and no other man could ever compare to him. I hope that we will grow old together and still keep each other warm during bitterly biting days, when we are both silver-haired. I am glad he bothered to take an interest in me, to know me inside out, to steal away a part of my soul with his antics. He warms my soul with a thousand blazes that can only stir more love, more desire for each other, and that is how we have been living together thus far.

Grandpapa is not too old yet, he can still hike faster than me on the easy hiking trails in Singapore, wearing his white hat, carrying a red Ferrari brand sling bag and his favorite accessory, a china-brand walking stick. (Only $10.) We will be hiking during the school holiday weekend in March, and staying in his friend's house, an elderly German who lives on Kuta beach, one of the biggest and most well-known beaches of Bali, a favorite island paradise of many over the world, located in Indonesia.

It will only be a weekend trip, because I only have 14 days of leave for a year, this is one of my pet peeves about working in Singapore. Yes, this sounds unimaginable in places where you get 2 months off, but it is the reality for many workers in many countries. I really enjoy a culture where the vacation time is treated as almost a ritual to be observed in summertime; then again it is summer here all year round, except in monsoon season where the rainy days from end November to early March threaten to spoil every plan with ugly blackened skies.

Just yesterday, the sky turned into that ominous color and during my usual evening walk home from the train station after work; the sky threw small leaves and grime onto my feet, my open toed slip-ons getting increasingly soaked as the rain pelted torrents. I wonder if you will ever see the monsoon rains of SouthEast Asia.

I have a bit of regret now that we have not done this trip earlier, when Grandpapa was younger; he would have enjoyed this trip more then, than now; carrying with him a prior knee injury, and recently, suffering from the kind of asthma that I used to have in my childhood (that's why I never enjoyed exercise in my youth); except that his kind of asthma starts at the twilight of life. Last year, I described to him my vacation in the South of France, I lavished praises on seeing the unbelievable white rocks that form a sort of fjord known as a 'calanque' in the Marseilleveyre range, together with the tiny alpine plants that were only permitted to grow to a puny height because of the harsh surrounds of salty sea spray and dry air with little moisture. I had a fun time trying to collect the seeds and berries of the mediterranean fauna throughout the jardins I visited, for the family's gardener hobbyist to plant. In Singapore, Grandpapa planted these seeds, but the sleeping seeds did not awaken. In the end they were carried off by the garden ants; off to their little anthouses to be eaten, a delicieux french meal, I imagine!

Grandpapa had the sort of wanderlust in his eyes when he listened to my spiel about Marseille, we are the only two in our family that share the love of traveling (and now hiking)- to destinations that are usually hard to get to, and not favored by the usual crowd. I am glad that when I was young he has brought the whole family to several roadtrips and also had the liberal thinking, very unlike typical Asian parents; to allow me to travel, solo, in my late teens, to neighboring 3rd world countries. Alhough being the scaredy cat I was, I did not venture far.

I still have not ventured that far, I think! And right now, I have no idea what my reaction will be if you inform me that you will be traveling the world at 18!

It has been a dream lodged in the back of my subconcious, to live in a place where there are mountains and seas. Perhaps that is why I started traveling. To find my place in life. In more ways than one. Singapore is a totally flat place with few hilly terrains, although now that we have built basements upon basements of train stations, there is a chance to exercise your legs on the long staircases.

When I went to Chiangmai I was in the old city, wandering around like someone who loves the city, photographing animals and street signs. But when I went to dinner with your Uncle Sergio (who is now a famous physiotherapist in Spain) - every evening beyond the city walls, I saw the mountains in the distance, ahead of us, and the scent of the sweet, fresh, mountain air as dusk arose and day turned to night. As I walked out of the city walls into the sight of the mountains, my soul whispered that the people here are so blessed to be able to see mountains everyday. Perhaps that was what inspired me to take these journeys this year. A part of me is still surprised at myself, always overestimating the energy and physical strength I have for such a journey I take to get on top of such mountains, and always having a range of emotions (some really negative), until I reach that destination. Maybe I am seeking to find something more than a short term romance with these high places.


I hope that one day you will find it possible to be able to live in a place with mountains and seas. I hope that we will go on many expeditions together. When I see the many young children being pushed in prams in freezing shopping malls here, I think to myself, that I was so lucky that it was different, during my time. We used to explore the reservoirs and the beaches, the suburban streets and wet markets. I'm not sure yet, if I want to do these, and of course, the weather here can be blisteringly hot to endure a day out in the sun. But anyway, I'm sure we will have some small adventures. I think if I was born in another period in time, I would embrace being a gypsy. If not for our wealthy city's government protocols, I would have never studied, nor done well, nor gotten a good job. So I am thankful that a person such as I was born here and never am I able to be proud of such achievements. If I look back, what I want to be known for is to have loved deeply, and to have traveled, deeply too, in the sense of being exploratory.

Dear Oliver and Camille, one day I hope you will have the chance to explore the mountains of South East Asia. I've heard that they are beautiful, but for the majority of my adult life living here I did not envision myself to want to or to be able to explore them. One day I will be going to the French alps and also I want to ride a horse, a galloping one, before I get too old. I will tell you all about it as a bedtime story!



Digital photo taken by Seth Weisel.
Analogue photos taken by me.
France, Indonesia, Singapore.

Unencumbered

 
Lately, I have made a little effort to keep up on my language ambitions. After having missed the french film festival that ran for a week here, I decided to do what I have done previously when I was in an earlier relationship, go to the video king rental and take out some french films, just that now I watch it by myself. I remember that all through the late teenage years and early twenties we all went to see french films in the cinemas. So it was with fond memories that I browsed through the small collection of foreign language titles. Actually I was really surprised that the video king rental shop had not closed down, I thought that no one else would be renting DVDs these days. It is quite expensive, but I think paying for it and having a limited time frame to watch them changes the way I make the selection of the shows I would like to watch. I take more time to look at the choices of the plot, the actors and the directors, and also the place where it is shot. So I have just watched 'The Artist' (Jean DuJardin), 'L'Immortelle' (Jean Reno), 'Beautiful Lies' (Audrey Tatou), 'He loves me he loves me not' (Audrey Tatou). Being half the price of a movie in the cinema, I make this time a solitary, single enjoyment, savoring macarons or my favorite red velvet cake bought from the bakery just a few doors down from video king rental. I'm sure that through osmosis of some sort, french words have crept into my long-term memory already.

And I messaged Julien, about my new-old hobby. He too watched L'Immortelle on the same weekend, after I gushed about the scenes in Marseille, and although it wasn't a big deal, I felt that it was a sweet gesture, that it was almost like watching it together. I remember when we were on the white rocky paths of Marseilleveyre, a dry hilly place covered with white rocks, and I couldn't walk well. For one, I had never been used to walking on rocky paths, or pathless paths where you found yourself evaluating each footstep. The strange thing that was when I returned, I felt that the ground was too flat and now, more than a month later, I still take the staircase from the MRT platform to the main gantry area, I still prefer to walk on grass patches instead of concrete. How strange, that my legs would prefer non-flat paths after a lifetime of walking on them.

He never teased me the way I would him, almost mercilessly, if I spotted something he could not do well that I excelled at. I lamented at the fact that I was so slow on those paths and so many people passed me by. It isn't a competition, he said to encourage me. I felt so small.To think that I thought quite highly of myself for walking home almost everyday from the main MRT station, a good 25 minutes' walk to my doorstep, a feat that would raise most Singaporean eyebrows. It was this sense of a matter-of-fact humility and 'non-competitiveness', two traits I had always appreciated but never embraced, that drew me to him. It was this feeling of just being at ease with the world and at ease with yourself, with being the way you are, that grabbed me as I found myself failing to walk further, and for the last final steps stumbled my way through while holding on to his coattails for dear life. I really admire people who can push themselves to learn something new in three months, a new sport, a new language, and while I tried my utmost to do it too, I think there's nothing wrong in taking my own time and learning something else along the way. I have always been too impatient and with the passing of time I hope that I realize sometimes time can be a friend. Being in love, for one, needs the realisation of time to illuminate what we need to know. When I returned from Marseille, a trip I had many reservations about making in the first place, it seemed that something would blossom between us, but it also seemed impossible at the same time.

I wanted to write about so many things, it seems that every now and then I get this influx of words caught in my thoughts, and writing out what I could not be able to speak coherently of, just seems to make it all better inside. How do I write about the kind of adventures I've been on, and remembering fondly the friends, some, very handsome men, who have been on these journeys with me. Yet I have had no romantic allusions, and neither did they. It is friendship of the purest sort, positive, healthy, meaningful ones I've always seemed to have (with handsome men!) throughout my life. And few people understand this, that I can have such close friendships, spending extended time together, talking, sharing a drink, sharing life experiences, yet never even crossing the line of being more than friends. I wanted to write about why I travel, something that this year I've taken as almost a birthright, it was only after someone asked me if I was traveling like a gap year of sorts that I realised that I was doing it so often, and the feeling of being tired but refreshed at the same time, the feeling of coming home and feeling happy once your feet touch the carpeting on the Changi Airport's floor, the euphoria when, several days later, I find that the film I have carried so carefully around with me developed into interesting, if not amazing photos. We do not know how lucky we are to carry this passport that enables us to go into most countries without paying a high fee or applying for a visa, it seems such a waste to do the same thing every weekend when for the almost the same amount of money we spend here we can take a weekend to somewhere else.

Despite having been born in this crowded city all my life, I think I crave a life someplace else from the madness. More recently, at the end of last year on the last day of my job, I found myself booking a flight to Penang and wanted to travel the Penang-Kuala Lumpur-Melaka-Singapore route, slowly, as I've always wanted to do. I ended up staying in Melaka for 10 days, the duration not part of the initial plan. People always wonder what I did every day in 'boring' Melaka. Boring? It's idyllic to wake up to the fresh air and the sounds of birds chirping, walking to the nearest kopi shop to eat my standard breakfast of soft kaya bread and half-boiled eggs. Everywhere else in Asia, the typical breakfast is a bowl of soupy noodles of some sort, call me Western but I just cannot stomach such fare for breakfast! People always ask what I did every day to make me stay there for so long. I think I did more there than I could do in the same time in Singapore. I wanted to do something creative, so I persuaded the owner of a clay house to teach me pottery on a kiln. I gave up on that rather fast. That was backbreaking work. Never again would I look at a piece of handmade pottery the same way. Then the owner of a second hand bookshop introduced me to the owner of a cafe who kindly gave me a long driftwood to paint, and all his oil paints.

Later I was given a canvas by a retiree from Penang and suprised even myself by staying around to complete the painting - oil painting takes an excruciatingly long time to paint and dry and basically I was so busy in Melaka, really, every day I woke up early in the morning to paint, take a walk around in the afternoon, and the days just passed.

I was looking for a place close to this setting, where you really could live happily not going in to any mall and eat the same thing and just feel glad walking the not-so-crowded streets. It's a strange dream that I had, that I never told anyone, I wanted to live in a place where there are mountains and seas; while in Chiangmai with Sergio, we walked out of the city gates to eat dinner along this stretch of restaurants and cafes having non-Thai food, Chiangmai food is too spicy to eat enjoyably for me. And there would be the mountains in the horizon as we crossed the road and as we ate we could see the evening sun turn to dusk.

Each time I saw those mountains I thought to myself, how lucky I would be to be able to see mountains everyday.

I wondered for months what Marseille would be like, because after I was able to save a little and plan for trips two, three months in advance and book the ticket without serious repercussions, I had wisely saved money by booking Chiangmai in advance, two months before, and Marseille in August when I was going in November. Huge savings there. Although it seems that every month a part of my salary now goes to booking a ticket to somewhere. This month, it's Penang. Well, lucky for me that I don't have any other expensive hobbies except photography! Marseille wasn't that different as I had expected, the kind of culture shock you feel immediately like I did when I landed in other Asian destinations, that, this place is so different from what you are used to. Marseille felt familiar, as if I had been there before, even though it was my first time to Europe. Later, I griped about how there weren't any toilets to be found EVER, and marveled at their innovative trashbins, which was just a large transparent plastic bag attached by a thick band,to a metal rim. Such a good idea. Most of all, Marseille made me feel that I could be a better person, if just a little better. Because seeing the Mediterranean sea that stretches out forever everyday, coupled with the too vividly blue skies that is the type of sky you can only imagine in fantasy, seeing these everyday, with the smell of fresh bread everywhere, hearing the sound of waves, this is paradise.

You discover that the everyday things on your to-do or to-get-done list in Singapore doesn't really matter anymore when you can have a slice of bliss just sitting at a cafe, having the most delicious croissant for breakfast, with coffee, facing the ocean, and nothing beyond. If I ever have the opportunity to live there, I will make the best of the simple moments that are so sublime.

And perhaps this year, the lessons learnt add up to make me a better person after all. I've tried not to overbuy stuff, a wasteful nature I've inherited from city living where everything is so accessible. Little things, like actually using a lipgloss until the last swipe. This may sound insignificant but it is challenging, as it's really tempting to buy new lipglosses... Planning a little bit on travel in advance. Not spending too much on taxi - an essential to meet clients - and also Starbucks, I try to only drink mocha on Fridays, and switch to healthier, cheaper options like fruit juices. I did book swops, went to second-hand bookstores, not buy any books until I've finished reading all the ones I have (same for clothes!) There are some things I really enjoy that I can't help spending on, nice cheese, macarons - they are expensive! A good tuina massage once a month for the neckaches. Treating friends for lunch. Facials to ensure I still look 25.

I realized I am quite easygoing and while I am not all shiny bubbly happy, I am not the worrisome type, nor the overtly critical, though at times I can be both. 

Last Christmas, I found myself going on a strange journey that seemed to be out of a dream. There was dancing and hugging and crying and taking frantic bus rides. While this year's proves to be more mundane - I am actually in Singapore after years of not being here, I will enjoy my quiet day, snuggling alone, watching my last DVD in my stash. I think I will enjoy a quiet day for once, and possibly get up to doing something useful, for once!