A Singaporean In Australia

A storm in Summer? I thought I had seen it all but what did I know?

A rainy day is rare in Summer, much less a stormy one. Scary as it looked, the storm lasted all but a few minutes. It wasn't even anything like one of those nasty storms [link] that I experienced during my first Winter when I was staying in Gosnells. It felt like we were inside a washing machine in operation back then. This one was a lot milder and I drove home along the highway with ease though when it eventually came upon us, I saw many cars slowing down to deal with their fazed vision.

If Grandma knew about this, she would surely grumble about my decision to work in Australia. In the earlier days, she put a lot of pressure on my mum by telling my relatives I made the craziest decision to move to a disaster prone country. Factually, Grandma wasn't wrong. Every day, something nasty happens somewhere in Australia. Remember the Queensland flood and the devastating bushfire that hit Victoria? If it wasn't the wrath of Mother Nature, then some evil humans will see that another gets hurt by their actions. Didn't Duchess M and I wondered if the air smelt a little funny the other day? From where I were, it seemed like the source was at the north so I pinged M to check if she set some bush on fire. It turned out she didn't and she couldn't figure out where it was from at her location. There was a fatal explosion at a shopping centre in Morley a few days ago but I wouldn't have know if Jen did not tell me about it. The impact of ignorance to one's life.

An old friend told me that I was wrong to allow myself to immense myself heavily in Singapore news back then. By doing so, he reasoned, I made myself radar to negativity. By subjecting myself to such a state, I became a convenient receptacle of a false sense of discontentment. I would be a much happier person if I could focus of the brilliance of my home country. Basically, being ignorant is being blissful. 

I disagreed then but I have since changed my stance on this. He was right. By living life with an opposite mindset, it was possible to live happily in Singapore. The problem was, once you saw things that way, there was no way back because it was too easy to be reminded of the dark picture by encountering bits of the puzzle too often.

Likewise it can be too easy to find fault in a place like Australia or anywhere else in the world if I continue to see things the old way. Over the years, I have been reading what the Aussies think about local issues. Gradually I began to understand why foreigners love Singapore so much, until perhaps they begin to see the place like us. It'll take me years, decades to understand this country in depth like a local. By then, things probably do not matter anymore. I have bought myself a second chance to live.