Jet-lagging or just-lagging

makaned black-sauced duck wing and utas and expensive singapore restaurant food. walao...not used to 7% GST!


It is 5am in the morning, Singapore time. I am awake. The darkness seems so bright. Jet-lagged. Funny, but both my parents are also awake; saying they cannot sleep due to the jet-lag I "infected" them with. Despite this frustrating predicament (I want to wake up early tomorrow!), I smile, somehow.

It is Day 2 since I got back home. I wouldn't say it has been a world-wind elation-bubble experience, neither would I call it dull. Perhaps life's experiences need not always be extreme ones; often just rather simple contented ones. Perhaps always expecting it to always come with fireworks is pushing it.

But what it has been has been, for the lack of a better word, gladly weird (right, that was 2 words).

Glad because of the familiarity of driving familiar roads, doing familiar in familiar places, familiar faces saying familiar things, familiar friends making familiar jokes (about me!), familiar emotions with familiar people; Daddy dragging me out of bed early for early breakfast, mummy nagging me to drink my orange juice (which I funnily, appreciate, both the juice and the nagging), my kid cousin being coy with me, the view from my balcony being still the same, the nagging sweat dripping down my sweat by just standing in the Singapore weather, the familiar pleasure of driving...

But despite all the gladness for familiarity, there is something different, and therefore weird. Familiar things with a possibly different story; I actually have been absent from lives here for 1.5 years, I've gained weight (-.-), I've different stories to tell from Warwick, I've been to New York since the last time I was back, I'll be graduating in 6 months, friends' lives have moved on, grandparents have aged, Orchard looks slightly different, things are helluva more expensive...

I possibly could whip up some complex cheem philosophical exposition on this dichotomous glad weirdness, but I'll leave it for later (if the inspiration ever comes). But for now, just 2 days into homecoming, there has been fireworks but simply the human experience of coming home after a long time.

Uncle T