Saturday, December 22, 2001

Fare Thee Well, Gentle City

We're leaving for the airport in half an hour so this shall be my farewell to Melbourne entry. The next one I shall endeavour to write will be written on a Pentium 1 laptop that doesn't load very well. Oh well, that's symbolic of everything at home anyway.

It's hard to believe that I won't be back in February to start a new term. It doesn't feel too real yet, that I'm not going to come back as a student and going home means the beginning of another life that neither Daniel and I have a clue about.

So, we've been showing it in different ways. Daniel has been wanting to spend all our time with our friends, even till late into the night. On the other hand, I've been just wanting to cuddle up and talk about our life here and reminisce instead of being dog tired and falling asleep the minute my head hits the pillow. But whatever way we choose to show it, the both of us feel the same way, like it's unreal, like our house on Little Palmerston is still waiting for us to go home to, that sort of thing. Daniel summed it up really well, it's not that he's afraid of going home; he's afraid of leaving.

This place has been a haven and a santuary for the both of us. I came here, 3 years ago, badly scarred from a 6 year relationship that ended badly. I still remember the first night here in my room, where I threw myself on the bed and wept, wondering whether it was really that great an idea to have left Singapore and come here to do a brand new degree. It's been a hard three years, I've worked harder here than I ever did in NUS, and sometimes the results weren't proportionate to the effort. But I learnt tons , in uni as well as just walking down the street. Some things are so intrinsic that words fail to describe them. Sufficed to say, my eyes have been opened. I also think I've grown as a person, understood myself abit better, understood the world abit better too and learnt to be a more open and tolerant person. Something I don't think I would have learnt had I got a job and stayed in Singapore after graduating there in 1998.

I will always remember this place, for all its memories, good and bad, for the bad ones were lessons to be learnt and to grow from. The first time I got a C on a paper (I learnt that I had no clue how to write a scientific paper), the first time I got fined by a tram inspector ( I learnt that tram inspectors were scummy people and I disliked them on sight, they have a yucky aura that radiates around them), the first time I got yelled at so badly in ballet class I cried ( I learnt that there were nicer ballet teachers around and I should switch schools) will be remembered along with falling in love with Daniel, the first H1 I got, the first time I spoke infront of academia and was praised and going home with a first class honours in psychology. So yeah, a great many things.

I'll miss this place and I'll miss my friends, I suspect I'll even miss those looooong drives to Clayton (where uni was), I'll even miss the bright green leaves on the trees and that tree that is entirely purple cos of its flowers. You can tell I'm being nostalgic now.

It's almost as if I want to write down every single thing I can think of now, as fast as the images and thoughts come to mind so that I will never forget them and they would be recorded in print. But even my quick touch typing skills fail me as the thoughts are coming too fast and thick.

I'll stop here because my half an hour is almost up and I should do a final check to make sure every single thing is packed. Plus no matter how hard I try, I will never do justice to any of the things I want to say, so I won't.

Well, I'll write when I get settled in Singapore. We're hoping we get upgraded on the flight but chances are we won't. There's this thing call CB luck that follows us around. We've got rid of it with regards to parking, but flying, not yet.

So later and Good bye Melbourne, it's been good knowing you.

Later

Ondine tossed this thought in at 13:18

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