So. I am back. I say this belatedly, when I have, in reality, been back for three weeks, or more. I began to lose count of the Sundays when they started passing me by too quickly.

Back where, you ask. Singapore, I say. And for some reason, the National Pledge, though completely unconnected with the conversation, begins to play in my mind. I have not spoken it for nine months. It feels like an age, though it wasn’t so long ago that we stumbled down to the courtyard, placed loose fists over sleepy hearts, and murmured the words, or did not bother, at all.

What have you been doing, since you got back, you ask. In the day, I work at law firms. On some nights, I make Subway sandwiches. On yet other nights, I meet up with friends I have not seen for a year, or more. I listen to music. I try to make time to indulge in running. I make lists and try to work my way through them. I go for archery, where more and more, I am learning to tune my intuition to the way my bowstring sings, or stutters.

And, in those gasps of emptiness that pocket my schedule, I think.

Soon, it will be Singapore’s 44th Birthday. The banners are going up in the heartlands, the HDB estates. The red and white flags are filling those blank and numbered blocks. The coloured flags are being strung up outside offices and around convenient posts. I am familiar with these rites, having lived in this country for six years.

By birth and passport, I am a Singapore citizen. This bright red passport guarantees me passage to any country in the world, without a visa, except, perhaps, North Korea. By all standards and measures, Singapore is a decent enough country. Its streets are mostly safe, mostly clean and transport largely efficient. Day-to-day life here is generally smooth-sailing and fuss-free.

What have I found in Singapore? I suppose it would be fair to say that in my past six years in Singapore, I have found friends, some true and some not so true, learnt some of the most important lessons of my life, some extremely hard, and others, less difficult to accept, and been lucky enough to have been taught by some very good teachers.

I re-read the paragraph. For some reason, these sentences seem too...bare, too thin, to encompass six years of residence in a single country. Surely, Singapore must hold more for me. However, at the moment, my mind is full of LondonLondonLondon. For some reason, in my mind’s eye, that makes me sound like an ungrateful bastard, though, as one of my close friends pointed out recently, there is no reason why a paucity of gratefulness should mark me as an ungrateful whelp. After all, he points out, it isn’t as if Singapore gifted me with friends, moral values and an education. I suppose he is right, but this lack still bothers me.

While in London, food being the first point of reference for most Singaporeans, many of my Singaporean friends would often reminisce about the Singaporean dishes that they missed, or old eating haunts that they were definitely going back to when they flew back for the summer, or food expeditions they would be mounting in various areas of Singapore come June. I, on the other hand, would usually end up being the other side of the coin. Having lived in London and Beijing when I was younger, food to me is really just that, food. When in London, I will eat English food, and when in Singapore, I will eat home-cooked food, or dishes I normally consume when here. I have never particularly felt a need to seek out Chinese food, nor did I really miss Chinese, or Singaporean food, to any degree while in London.

Now that I am in Singapore, it is, admittedly, nice to be able to go to familiar cafes and restaurants again, to walk down the supposedly recently revamped Orchard Road (though it looks, surprisingly, the same, barring a few decorative panes of glass and plants – and, of course, the garishly lit building that is the Ion) once more, to meet up with old friends, and take note of the various changes that have taken place (new concept shopping centres, new roads, new facades).

On the other hand though, being in Singapore feels transitory. I feel like an observer, a visitor, a tourist, even. One part of me says that I should not be feeling this sense of detachment, of displacement. This is the part that waves my passport in my face, and tells me I should, at the very least, be grateful, in some sense, or another. This part sounds increasingly desperate, though. The rest of me constantly asks, grateful for what, exactly? I have an increasing tendency to agree with the friend mentioned earlier. Singapore did not give me friends, family, or my education. Increasingly, Singapore just happens to be the place where I found these things, for myself. Exchange Singapore for any other country in the world, and while I may not have found the same friends, or the same education, I would still have found close friends, and would have made the best of my given situation.

I am lucky, I know. Singapore’s education system is extremely sound. Going through the Singapore education system usually guarantees a place in a good university, or, if not that, then, at the very least, usually means a decent job in your relevant industry. Who knows? If I had stayed on in Beijing, or even London, perhaps I would not be the person I am today, or have met the people who have touched and shaped my life to such a huge extent. But since I will not progress very far on conjectures, I will go instead on what I do know.

I know I feel at home in London. London, with all its inefficiencies and mediocre systems (or lack thereof), feels like my city. Not so long ago, I wrote that one of my friends told me the reason why he loved London was because it was his city, and he has always lived there. I know in many ways, Singapore is the more efficient, more reliable (I need not mention the number of times that various members of the British Government have left DVDs containing important and confidential information of their citizens on trains and buses), and infinitely safer (again, I need not mention the lack of knife crime in Singapore, compared to numerous streets of London) city. Many would say that Singapore is the better place to live, especially since, at the very least, the Government puts into place policies that usually work and read as if they have been thought through. But putting these practicalities aside, at this moment in time, I would still choose to live in London. I know London is my city. At this point, Singapore feels like a convenient stopover, perhaps, a place where my friends and family congregate. Again, swap Singapore for any other country in the world, and, move my friends and family there, and I could just as easily fly there to visit them.

All this makes me sound very callous, I know. I haven’t yet entirely resolved the two voices in my mind, and am not sure I ever will be able to. This is simply what I know, at the moment.

Perhaps my friend put it best. As I fiddled with my iced drink and told him about this nagging feeling of displacement, he shrugged and said, “...but you have never felt Singaporean, anyway.”

Perhaps.

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