Being here - Merlion City

Fireflies. Not really. But oh well.

Its been a while since I blogged about living here.

I think, after living a while in a certain place, you fall into a natural rhythm as to how life happens. You wake up, brush your teeth, shower if necessary, catch the bus, go to work, deal with work as it happens, and then come back, have dinner, surf the web or fsck around for a little bit and then. Sleep. Wake up. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. 


One thing I have learnt to do pretty well is learn to accommodate the place. Its a bit difficult especially because once again, I am in a foreign country, this (as much as it looks Singaporean) still is not really my home and I still have to get used to quite a number of things. Like how expensive rent is. Or how there is really nothing very healthy around to eat and when there is, it costs a BOMB.

I am doing all right, though.

I am used to looking at cityscapes and seeing towering after towering HDB apartments with their lights on, their laundry hanging outside their windows on broomsticks, residents sitting at the bottom of their apartments with food or a cigarette or just a beer. Chilling out, you know. Everyone lives like this and you get pretty used to it after a while.

But once that's done and over with, you get back in the rat race. You stuff yourself back on an overpacked subway station or a packed train and then you stuff your headphones in your ears to try and block out the sound of everything around you and then your music then stuffs your brain with your favourite tunes and then you get out of there when your bus stops and there is suddenly people everywhere rushing to where they need to be and then you cram yourself into your office cubicles and there you're stuck all day with a prison break period for lunch. And then you're back there in the bus or the subway on the way home. 

rinse. repeat. ad nauseam. 

I like it though. 

I have always wanted to live in a big city. Experience the thrill of a bustling, hustling city and then find my place in the great machinery that is the joys and wonders of city living. I like to go places, see things. 

But then...

At the end of my day, my laidback personality comes back to shine. It tells me to cool down and keep it slow. At the end of my day, I kick back, cup of coffee in my hand, or edamame in a bowl while I read a book. Or watch videos on Youtube. And then I stretch, call it quits, and hit the sack. 

I still definitely enjoy my solitude. And especially in a big busy country like this, once upon a time, I got infected. I forgot how to slow down. Everything became a rush for the bus or the train or to get to work on time or to make it in time to the food court so at least you would have something to eat before everyone cleans up and goes home. Fact is, I did not like it. I felt like I was on speed half the time. Like I had ingested meth for breakfast instead of oats.

So I exercised. I read. I tried to slow down. But it did not work. 

Until I had the man flu and it took industrial grade tranquilizers to realize that in a big busy world like the one I am living in now, slowing down is a feat. And it is not something that everyone can do. But to slow down, meant to live. It meant that you could get out of the rat race and look at everything from a bigger perspective. And I started to do that. I started to decide to make conscious efforts to slow down when I'm eating rather than gulp down my food at Speedy Gonzales speeds. I started to walk a little slow, breathe a little deeper, and realize that in the end, nothing really matters. 

I deleted my Facebook account because I realized I was checking in 20 times a day because I had nothing to do. Having a smartphone meant that I could check my email, texts, Whatsapp messages, Google Reader, and Facebook status updates from the moment I cracked my eye open in the morning. I  decided that instead of trying to do 50 thousand things at once, I wanted to do just one. So I have improved a little bit. I still do check my email in the morning on my phone (should stop doing that altogether really) but I make time for breakfast and I make sure that I take a bit of a stroll 2 bus stops away from home before I get on the bus. Just to breathe. And get myself in the right frame of mind before work. 

Things have changed, definitely. Coming here meant that I was dropping myself in the deep end of the pool and I was not sure if I was going to make it out of here alive. I have had so many near encounters where I thought to myself where I should even be here in the first place. But I have made it through. Again. Thank God.

Let's see where the river takes me this time, shall we?