Sunday, July 24, 2005
Friends.
In these past six months, as cliche as it may sound, I've learnt so much and seen so many different sorts of people that it's been such a great eye-opener. I feel like I've seen so much more of human nature than I ever would have in this short period, had I not made my choice to take a gap year. It's almost as if I've garnered 3 years of experience in the span of half a year. Universal street-smarts or cultural perspectives that I would have otherwise never known, had I stayed in Singapore these past six months working at an office job or going to school. I'm not knocking those who have been doing just that, just marvelling at the amount of things one can learn about people in general that school can never teach you. Yeah, some people might say that I've been wasting time with foolish pursuits, but these are the people who'll tell you to walk down the well-worn path that so many others have tread upon because it's the 'normal' thing to do, the usual road to follow in the natural progress of things. I mean, why waste time travelling and exploring when sooner or later you're gonna have to come home to face 'reality', right? Wrong. Just because home is my final destination doesn't mean that I should skip out on all the other places on my itinerary and head straight to it. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. So what? If I'm short of that bloody $200 I'll scrimp and save or work along the way whilst living budget, if it so means that I'll get to take a longer journey before I reach GO again. This isn't a game of Monopoly. This is life. We do not all have to take the same traditional route to the end. Not everyone wants the typical Singaporean life, whereby there is usually no disruption in the order of things from the time you graduate from junior college, worry about getting into a good university, go on to worrying about making the grade, get caught up in the whole paperchase, to the time you finally make it into the working world, and then start worrying about workplace politics, at the same time getting stressed over the constant ticking of your biological clock telling you you're not getting any younger and maybe it's time to settle down and start a family. Yes, it's not a bad life, but why deny me the chance to travel and enjoy freedom of movement while I still can, just so I can quicken the process of becoming yet another insignificant statistic in the working society? I'm not saying I won't be working whilst travelling, I'm just not too keen on making work my sole aim right now. I don't want to get sidetracked by the idea of trying to make as much money as I can, instead of what it started out with - making little enough money just to get me by on my passions so that I don't burden my family financially any more than university will. After I've gone to university and started working will there be little opportunities here and there for a "steady" (nothing is ever really steady though) trickle of income to repay parental loans and take care of them (Yeah this might sound really optimistic but it's just a start, so if it doesn't work out, you can laugh. But for now, play nice and keep it to yourself). Anyway, to continue what I was saying, the bare minimum I have now is fine with me because it's all I have saved up. Countless people comfort themselves with the fact that they'll have sufficient time to travel or enough time to enjoy life after graduating from university, but how many have actually escaped the lure of the paperchase. Or the constant urge to obtain a higher position in the working hierarchy upon entering society. Most get too caught up in the whole course of things that they don't realize the prime of their life is gone until one day, they wake up and it dawns on them that they've gone through half their lives in a rush and have nothing to show for it except for material possesions and wrinkles. Some of the 'lucky' (questionable?) ones realize earlier and end up getting married and starting a family. But that in itself is a whole new chapter, where what was once your life, now becomes part of a bigger ideal known as the 'Family' life. What I'm trying to get at here, is that I don't want to miss out on the prime of my life just because I was too busy chasing degrees or working my way towards a higher paycheck. There will always be enough time for further higher-educational or money-making opportunities in the future, but I'm not getting any younger and vitality counts when it comes to achieving what I want to do - that is, to travel and see as much of the world and people as I can. Bear in mind that this is what I love. This whole paragraph being written as a rant against those who have marked my passion for travelling down to foolishness and the like in the face of their condescension, and not in the purpose of degrading others' version of an ideal life (which could be anything ranging from becoming financially independent successfully or starting a family and raising one's children to the best of their abilities). It was never in my interest to offend, just to defend. One persons meat is another persons poison. So please try not to compare your idea of an ideal life to mine when, one, we are all different, and thus two, everyone has varied ways of deriving happiness and contentment.
Anyway, on a lighter note (ha ha), one of the things I've come to realize these few months is the many meanings of which the word 'Friends' can hold or how versatile it can be. Friends from all over the world, new friends old friends, good friends toxic 'friends', long-distance ones and short-distance ones, friendships forged through circumstance, a day, a month, a year, even throughout life, long-term friends and short-term friends, friends who were more than friends, friends who were just acquaintances...and so on. How quickly some friendships are made and lost, in the same time circumstance chooses to throw both of you together or apart. How it takes more than just similar interests or personalities to make a friendship work in the long-run. How you may be friends with someone one day, and strangers the next or vice versa, due to the lack of effort on one's part or invitation on the others'. It's funny that way. Regardless, it doesn't stop one from missing the times spent together and the silly things done that was so characteristic of a particular friendship. Travelling continuously for the past few months has showed me alot in terms of friends, friendships, relationships and family. It is tough maintaining friendships whilst moving around, not only with friends at home but with friends made along the way. Alot tougher than I thought. Especially when you return, and are reminded that life back home goes on whether or not you're here to witness its progress or not. Anyway, here's to working harder on my part to hold it together, to be more rooted/grounded and not be so much of a lazy (or more possibly, never-present and invisible) arse anymore. The long scroll of pictures below from the past half a year is just a personal reminder of the myriad of implications that 'being friends' can bring. I just hope my good friends know who they are, even tho I might not show my appreciation all that much sometimes. :)
Shu at 1:07 PM
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Longg update.
I do know that I have been negligent and have thus left my blog to fend for itself these past few months. Even my chatterbox has ceased to exist due to inactivity, hur hurr. Oh well. I can honestly say that I DID try to blog but to no avail because the one time that I did blog about my entire bloody shanghai trip in a 9,000 word entry, my shitty computer just decided to hang on me whilst I was pressing "preview". The damned PREVIEW button, of all things! Argh. So as you can see, I was sorely irritated and decided to leave my blog to die again.
Anyway, these past few months have been, to sum it all up in a word - GREAT. Travelling nonstop and meeting new people. Learning about the different cultures everywhere and the sort of do's and don'ts of each country. Making new friends from all over the world. God. Things have never been this great. I ended up spending close to two months in shanghai on my own, in a tiny rented apartment and long story short, quit my job after 2 days and spent the rest of the time bumming. It was a good kind of bumming though because I got time to explore the whole city, meet alot of locals and foreigners and just immerse myself in their growing cosmopolitan culture. As a sidenote, the nightlife in Shanghai is the bomb. Nowhere else have I been, could actually rival Shanghai's clubbing and pubbing scene. There's always somewhere to go no matter what the day, even if it's a sunday or monday. And taxi fares are so cheap (think 2SGD or so) that a night can start out shitty if you check out a lousy club, but will almost always definitely turn out great because you can just hop into a cab and head to one club after another till you find your favourite spot. If you're a lady, it's even better, cos there's ALWAYS ladies night happening somwhere or the other, everyday. So you can just get your fill of free flow and then head up to another club that suits your fancy. Anyway, the people in Shanghai are so amazingly open. I love it. I mean, you don't actually make friends right off the street in Singapore, do you? No way, because in Singapore, if someone were to start making casual conversation with you while waiting for the traffic light to change, they'd prolly be faced with the 'Wtf' kind of look. Shanghai's just the complete opposite. No one's skeptical there unless given a valid reason to be. So as a result, everyone there knows practically everyone else. Whenever you go out, you'll prolly meet friends of friends of friends and all that kind of 3 degrees and more sort of thing, and before you know it, half of Shanghai will be made up of people you know.
Okay, enough about Shanghai. On to our backpacking trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Went there on a last min decision with O'malley, her friends Sau Yee and Wei Neng, both of whom I met for the first time at the airport itself haha. We were such a cartoonic bunch man. I never expected us to get on that well, seeing that we were quite a odd group who'd never really got together before, with our own little preferences and strange quirks. Like the vege and meat thing for example. HAHA. Anyway, obviously we did have our differences but that's all part and parcel of travelling. You guys develop shit with each other but then you end up learning how to bury it together. So it's alll good. I had just been back from my shanghai stint for less than a week before I made the spontaneous decision to hitch in on Michelle and her friends' backpacking trip. Booked my tickets in a few days and then we were off for almost a month. I just got back the day before yesterday and I really miss the whole experience. I would NEVER give it up for anything else. I wouldn't trade in even the shittiest parts of it because that's what made the whole trip all the more memorable. There was a point in our trip in Phnom Penh where 3 of us came down with really bad food poisoning. God, it was bad. We started puking nonstop and the whole place was reeking of vomit. Urgh. I for one, puked a total of 9 times in the span of 3 hours. I swear, retching that many times consecutively till nothing but bitter-tasting bile comes out is horrible. Utterly horrible. I was cursing everything I could possibly blame for my sorry state while retching into the toilet bowl. What a nightmare.
Speaking of which, there was this particular place where we stayed in in Khao Sarn, the backpackers haven of Bangkok, which was so completely shitty. It was the cheapest place along Khao Sarn, which meant really, really bare essentials and nothing more. Never have I been so amazed at the actual state of things. There was graffiti all over my 4 dirty walls and a tiny bed with no bed spreads and pillow casing at all. Remnants of dandruff and hair and tons of dirt were still all over it. The room itself was at most the size of a typical bathroom man. We had iron grilles and wires for windows and a padlock to lock our otherwise un-lockable door with. Imagine how bloody claustrophobic it was sleeping in there. Anyway, it was only a hundred baht a night, which converts to 4SGD, so I can't complain about the price. We had communal toilets which was a bathroom at the same time, where there was pee all over the floor that you were supposed to shower on and no place to hang your clothes. I never realized how much I took clothes hangers for granted till I had to try balancing my clothes and keys on the edge of the toilet seat whilst trying not to get them wet from the shower. Argggh. But bear in mind, that although this whole situation was shitty, I did enjoy it after a while in a strange sense. Haha. I got a weird satisfaction from living in such basic conditions, if there's even such an explanation for it. Having to share bathrooms with the entire guesthouse population was quite interesting. All the queueing up for showers and brushing your teeth together with strangers kind of thing really did provide amusement.
Vietnam was just so amazing. I would try describing everything we saw or did or even ate, but it would be pointless because you could never understand what it was like unless you were there. I took tons of photos to try to make up for my reticence on the experiences we had there but like I said, it doesn't do justice to the places and people themselves. Koh Phangan was equally awesome. We stayed at Sri Thanu beach instead of the usual party beaches like Hat Rin Nok and Hat Rin Nai so basically we spent most of our days lying in the hammock on the beach, reading our books or tanning on the otherwise empty beach. Made alot of new friends with our 'neighbours' too and it was great hanging out with them at night and chilling. Really multicultural over there. We met Aussies, Spaniards, French, Brits, Canadians, Taiwanese, Koreans, Irish, Germans, Mexicans, not forgetting the locals of course..and the list goes on. Everyone of them with their own story to tell. I'll go into more detail about the trip later when I'm more inclined, right now I've got some uploading of photos to do.
The link should be up soon, on the left hand panel above my equally dead Guestbook. Check out my burnt black state. I look really really dark now. Haha blame it on Vietnam and Cambodia. Anyway, till then.
Shu at 4:58 PM
