While You Were Sleeping

Was checking out the new location map of SoC, then I saw the label "LT27" and was suddenly struck with an unexpected nostalgic feeling. =) Ah, I've been seeing that building for years, and now we will be quite a distance away.

(Though one could easily say, how big is NUS campus really, or for that matter, the whole Singapore town?)

I have surely forgotten that I once missed the CELC at the old Admin building, the old NIE park, or the old KR hall (I suppose it's part of RVR now?) just the same.

Thufir Hawat said, "Parting with friends is sadness. A place is a place."

I can tell you many things I miss about Singapore as a place: the fresh air, the manageable size (long live Street Directory) and even more as an environment (the lack of all those things one would be fined for doing)... but I guess the core of it all is a matter of familiarity.

And we humans can adapt very well. The air quality has not improved in Beijing, but my dissatisfaction about it certainly has.

I've been so comfortable with my life back then, with all its ups and downs, with my semi-static circle of friends, even with all that my personality lacks, with all the shortcomings that attack my conscience from time to time. I accepted the offer for this temporary posting in Beijing because, simply, the opportunity was there. Minutes from the so-minimally-prepared departure, I was thrown to the discomforting realization, "Oh no, I will have to make new friends soon?"

By now I know there'll be bits of the same bittersweet feeling towards these new friends when I leave this city, as what I felt when I left for it; as what I still feel once a year on that taxi trip to my hometown airport.

And yet, it might just be a subdued sentimental recollection one year from now.

Much as it may sound anti-romantic, feelings do pass... or change, and I think that is perfectly all right, 'cause I'd like to think that romance lies, in contrast, in all the effort we spend on the feeling while it lasts.

Now is that mushy or what? =D