I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

The place is still kind of sparcely furnished. We’ve the bed we shipped from Singapore, I ordered another for the spare room, and there’s a dining table that came with the house.

I like the empty living room, but it’s hecka echoey. It does make cleaning up a breeze though. Hee.

Our room is complete though. I carved out a space in our room just for me. I am sitting there now, almost 3 in the morning. I can’t really sleep, I think I had too much tea. I have a nice little armchair, a matching ottoman, a little work light, and my knitting gear (some of it) stuffed into a box under the window by the chair. I even got a pseudo-designer magazine table – which FedEx delivered and left at my doorstep, how clever – to complete the space. It’s comfortable.

I enjoy being at home. It’s the only place that feels like home.

Cos. Outside on the streets it feels like a throwback in time. Cyclists hovering all over the street (them greenies), people spitting everywhere – on the road (again them greenies), on the sidewalk (what we call the pavement), potholes in badly maintained roads, old cinemas, bad traffic, bad manners. Of the lot the spitting has to be the most disgusting. It’s not surprising to come across random but generous wads of rather malignant looking loogie just standing there in the sun, glowing, waiting to be trampled on.

The horror. The irony. The civilised nation.

While it might be just one more thing to look out for while navigating myself around the city, the other being poop, it’s not something you’d expect in a large, cosmopolitan city in a developed country, you know, a member of the First World since you’d have to pass pretty stringent GDP criteria, and I’m thinking, the higher the GDP, the better the education, and therefore the more civilised. It’s a wild presumption on my part, I agree. I mean, they can’t spell, and they don’t really speak English anymore.

On the issue of littering and spitting and gum, I have to say even though our policy back in Singapore is a tad authoritarian, I am grateful for growing up in a relatively clean, sterile country. Yes, it would’ve been better if people refrained from behaviour which is selfish and inconsiderate out of the goodness of their hearts. But education alone would have taken too long. Now, I feel proud when people mention how clean Singapore is. Yes, we don’t do it through the goodness of our hearts, we do it because there are consequences of not complying. But, I don’t have to put up with gum or loogie on my shoe, and more importantly, people everywhere are the same whereever it is they say they come from, so I’m grateful for the practical, realistic and deliberate decision to raise the social standard of the lowest common denominator.

There is no perfect state.

I would suppose there is much to be said for being the Land of the Free. Perhaps some day I will appreciate the hubris and the gile of a people blatantly unafraid to speak up, unafraid to oppose, unafraid to question, unafraid to look stupid. Maybe that someday I will appreciate how my earnings will be taken to subsidise a broken system flooded with inefficiency and a misguided belief in welfare. It might even be the same someday when I find enjoyment in having someone with dubious intentions and intelligence decide what’s best for me and how I should think and what I should do. When that someday comes I hope I don’t get shot dead on the free streets, and I certainly hope I don’t land near a gleaming loogie.

And that’s why I relish being at home.