House-Hopping

Wow... it's already been a month since the end of the school semester?! Gosh, wonder where all that time went...

Guess immediately after my finals I was busy with the mammoth task of moving out of my St. Andrew's residence. Getting my stuff into boxes and out of the place was not as much a headache as it was having to clean up the quad. Part of the contract was to leave the place the same way it was when we first arrived... not that any of us really remembered what that was like a grand 8 months ago!! Anyhow as it turns out, the clean-up was massive - including vacuuming out the bathroom vent-things, de-greasing the stove vent-things, and cleaning the obscure places behind the fridge and stove... SJ and I were scrubbing away till we were pretty certain our fairy godmothers were gonna turn up any moment.

Well, I've since moved on from that and have been putting up at my godparents' in Richmond (which is some distance away), with the occasional 'house-sitting' for friends away on vacation who kindly hand over the keys to their place to me. It has been a swell arrangement, but it's also unexpectedly tiring doing all this house-hopping... Not too much fun being a wandering nomad and am looking forward to settling down with some permanency as I house-hunt.

I have come to the realization that moving ranks up there as one of my top not-favourite things to do... maybe because it's something I haven't done really much of back in Singapore. I can't imagine what it is like for people who have to keep moving constantly, or even as I have discovered, for some of the homeless here who have to live with the prospect of nowhere to call home each day... some consider 'couch-surfing' - rotating spending the night on someone else's sofa, but even that is hard to keep up as well as there is no respite in the feeling of dislocation.

One thing that struck me being out here is the tension to be held in making a house (or room for that matter) a home... I remember the first couple of months that I was living in my quad, I tried to keep everything to a bare minimum knowing that this abode will be temporary. I didn't want to get too comfortable and I didn't think it odd. Yet this notion was challenged by a dear fellow SEAsian who gently reminded me that unlike myself, most people out here who grew up, studied, and have worked in various places, do not necessarily have one place that they can readily pinpoint as 'home'. Each place they are at, at a particular time, IS their home. Identity and a physical home is more intrinsically tied up together than I had previously thought. By not allowing myself to build some semblance of a home where I am at, I am perhaps robbing myself of truly living in the moment...

And so bit by bit, I got myself some scented candles... hung up my farewells cards... put together a little make-shift dresser with pretty cloth draped over some boxes. Things did look more lived-in and cosy as I dared to beautify my space, and perhaps part of that was acknowledging and overcoming the fear of having to eventually junk stuff too in the end when I had to move on. Hmm... I guess that's it - the fear of getting, stemming from the fear of having to let go.

So that's my resolution for the future spaces I will inhabit... to really live fully where I am, and at this point things get suspect as I quote from Winter Sonata, "The best house you build is the one you build in your heart". ;)