Home

Should I have returned home for the holidays? Maybe not, because I am feeling so homesick and depressed now.

I miss my home too much. I miss my parents, my friends, my ex-colleagues, the food and my house.......I never felt more reluctant to fly back to Oz than ever.

My parents are doing great and in their pink of health. They have developed a huge senseless fanatism for Chinese ornaments, gems and crystals. They filled the whole house with thousands of dollars' worth of their new "playthings" and were brimming with immense pride and interest as they displayed the items to me individually. They were "madly" happy nevertheless and I shared their joy and bliss.

It was exhilarating catching up with my old chummy friends again. Their radiant smiles, with the few added wrinkles and gained straws of wisdom, left lasting impression on me. We spent precious moments updating one another on our lives and our ideals, while whipping our appetites with the local Asian cuisines which I have so missed terribly. I call ourselves the "Jurassic Park", a dry humour of our inevitable aging progression and cellular apoptosis. And I vehemently still insist that I do NOT have an Ozzie accent.

Who can forget the past midnight booze my longtime dentist pal and I had at the cosy haunt of Serangoon Gardens in the open space, followed by a drive down to the famous Jalan Kayu for its mouthwatering roti prata and teh tarik? Life went on there despite being 4am in the morning, while we made our way back to our dreamlands.

Smiles and greetings prevailed as I returned to my previous workplace to visit my ex-colleagues in the Cardiology department. Having been there since 4 years ago, it was comforting and pleasant to know that I had not been forgotten and would be welcomed back anytime with opened arms. The warmth and camaraderie was a prized asset which is sadly lacking at my current adopting land.

And the food.....SLURP! The laksa, mee siam, chao kwey tiao, chai tao kweh.....simply succulent, mouthwatering, aromatous, appetizing! 3 bowls of yong tau foo for $7 at the neighbourhood hawker center!!! I'll never get these quality food for that price here. It was not all that heart-stopping when I tipped the weighing scale with an extra 4kg over the last 3 weeks when I was there.

Despite not having spent a day without hitting the streets outside, I managed to tune in to my ever favourite Cantopop music at home and catch up with the hilarious antics of Phua Chu Kang and Achar!, our popular local sitcoms with the familiar Singlish and multi-racial casts. The Malaysian TV channels saved my Chinese New Year days, with their continuous screenings of my favourite Hong Kong variety shows and concerts. Watching our local movie production in the cinema with the rest of my fellow countrymen and a few foreigners could never have been more meaningful and memorable.

And the bus rides truly intrigued me. Having been pampered with a luxury car for 10 years and surviving the cut-throat experiences of driving on our congested "carpark" highways, it has indeed been divine travelling in the fully air-conditioned tanks with continuous entertainment from the TV mobiles. The bus interchange at Toa Payoh neighbourhood was amazingly air-conditioned as well and it was superbly convenient flashing our ez-link cards across the installed gadgets when boarding and alighting the vehicles. And the sightseeings.....why was it that I never noticed this new building constructed on that hill or the willowy palm trees in front of my condominum? What else have I been missing about the land on which I had been leeching for the last 30 years?

Nothing beat my comfortable bed, the cuddles for my parents, the outings we had together, the meals we had at our favourite food courts, my friends' understanding and support for me......this is what I call HOME.

"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you" - Christian Morganstern

Charmed

She sat down comfortably, plugged on her headphones, ready to assail the diversed selections of inflight movies with glee and anticipation.

He approached his allocated seat a few minutes later. They stared momentarily at each other. He gave a sincere smile, the crimson glow on his cheeks even more apparent and dazzling. She responded courteously before looking down coyly. Her heart started fluttering unconsciously. She stood up from her glued position to let him pass through to the adjacent seat next to the window.

She went on with her flipping of the flight magazines, figuring that it would just be another mundane 8-hour journey back home. As the plane took off, she even had a quick nap before waking up for the ever non-appetizing dinner. Every single minute, however, she sensed his forlorn glance from the corner of her eyes and felt the warmth of his presence.

"May I....?" he requested in his heavily accented brief English, before making his way for the relief.

"Are you German?" she asked him when he returned, her usual curiosity begetting her.

"Yes", he replied, flashing his wholesome grin and maintaining a sincere eye contact intensely.

"What about you?" he asked in return. They began chatting cordially.

He spoke very limited English vocabulary. The high-decibelled plane engine in the background did not help either. They found themselves leaning almost against each other while trying to hear what they were saying. She felt a blush of embarrassment as she noticed other passengers smiling at them inadvertently.

They talked about their lives, their homelands, their families. They shared a little about their personal love lives and their jobs. They spoke as if they had known each other for ages.

They exchanged email addresses, promising to contact each other should they decide to visit their respective countries. The air of romance was strong and thick, punctuated only by her fatigue and her insistence to finish the screening of "Shall We Dance" towards the end of the journey. He never ceased staring at her miniature screen [and her ;)], inquisitive about the Chinese subtitles that followed.

His smiles were mesmerising, and his gazes penetrating and tingling to her senses.

She was definitely charmed to the core.