A Singaporean In Australia

In another 3 months' time, I would have left Singapore for 4 full years. I am glad I made the decision to write down my thoughts along my journey. Over the years, many people contacted me and told me I "inspired" them. That is never the purpose of the blog and will always remain as a side effect, if anything. The only purpose of the blog is selfish and has never changed. I write for myself. Only if I have done so, I will be able to observe how a radical move influence the metamorphosis of my thoughts, for gradual change is scarcely evident, particularly if the observer is the observed. Thus thoughts of the faraway past will be sporadically reviewed, for my own interest and amusement.

What has been consistently inconsistent is the ideology of home. For a good three decades of my life, home has always been where the river always flow and where I won't be alone. I used to believe that this will never change, no matter where I go, no matter how long I stay away. After all, my history cannot be rewritten. As time is slow to diffuse old data of the mind, how I speak, think and behave will always be evidence of my roots. It is conceivable that most will relate their identities to home, a misconception that haze ability to differentiate our homeland from home. A homeland can be a home but a home may not necessarily be the homeland.

When one's personal values do not correlate with the society one lives in, the mind will never be at peace. For every minutia from the buzz of life will require high level of perpetual tolerance, or risk insanity. Every single day is spent adapting and accepting the place that you believe you belong, by substituting the sense of belonging with the sense of familiarity.

Spending time away, I realised that a sense of belonging comes from where our mind takes us, therefore home is not a specific physical space. Like a shelled creature taking home on its back whatever it goes, we carry our homes in our minds. A ideology impossible for me to fathom in the past until I walked the talk.

To conclude, I'll share a screenshot of the thoughts of a tourist on our homeland and people.