If there is one activity that one most decidedly does NOT get better at the more you do it, it has to be packing. Like, big packing, to move. I reckon I have got the hang of packing for holidays by now.

色々な箱や荷物やかばんを詰めれば、詰めるほどもっともっと困るんです。そんなたくさん物の中には、何が捨てればいいですか？ぜんぜん決められない。

I’m aware I have a phobia and a mental block around packing which simply arises from having too much stuff, and I know I have to be harsh and get rid of anything I don’t need, especially as I will have less storage space at my new place than here. But somehow – it is never as easy as it seems in my head.

And when you are as much of a packrat as I am – packing is a surprisingly emotional process. You unearth so many things you haven’t thought of for ages and have been living happily without touching for the past, oh, year. And yet, once you see them, you can’t bear to be rid of them.

I guess the one thing I could really use right now besides more time is my dad, master packer, to ruthlessly cull all my belongings without me looking so that I will never miss them. But there’s just me. And I have to consciously free myself, now, from the things I am clinging on to, as no one’s going to do it for me this time.

I keep putting off blogging because I keep wanting to redesign, and I have ideas and all and even a Photoshop mockup (done ages ago), but there is no time on weekdays and always so much to do during the weekends. Once I start full-time work, it will only go downhill. Looks like it’s tomorrow or never, but in the meantime… there’s still today, and these words of wisdom from Mr Neil Gaiman himself, which Wee Zi first drew to my attention earlier this year and which I never got round to posting…

Hello, Mr. Neil.
This is my question: You lived most of your life in the UK but now live in the United States, right? Which one do you consider to be your home? And for that matter, what do you think classifies as a ‘home’?

I find myself remembering the Richard Burton (the actor, not the Arabian Nights one) line about “Home is where the books are”. And by that token, home is the one in the US.

But truly, even now, when I go to the UK I think, I’m going home. And when I go, er, home, I think I’m going to America. Probably why I’ve never taken citizenship…

But at the end of the day, I think Home is something you make, not something you find. Something you’re always leaving, and somewhere you’re always looking for or returning to. It’s part of growing up, and not the best part.

- (from Neil’s blog)

As always, Neil totally nails it, better than I ever could even after years and years of struggling with my own words.

Recently, someone referred to the UK as my second home, in casual conversation; my immediate and instinctive response was that Sydney is my second home, and the UK just a place I’m passing through. It doesn’t really make any sense because I’ve spent most of the last five years in this country, and less than 6 months collectively in Sydney over the same period of time, and it gave me pause for thought. As for Singapore – I think I’ve spent even less time there than I have in Sydney, since 2004 at least, so why do I still think of it as my first home?

I think I’m a lot less emo and angsty about finding home now than I used to be (time will do that to you), but it doesn’t mean I don’t still think of it often, turn the question around in my mind, grapple with my lack of answers. And what Neil says here – it’s exactly how I feel about the UK, Singapore and Australia. When I fly to Singapore, I think, I’m going home. When I fly to Australia, I think, I’m going to my family. And when I fly here, to the one country where I actually have a residence (albeit rented) to call my own, and a semi-permanent correspondence address, I think… I’m going to England. Often, I think I’m going back to England, and that back is a pretty key word, but I never think I’m going home. I guess Neil is right (what am I saying? of course Neil is right. Neil is always right :P) that home is what we make, and home is what you’re looking for, what you want to return to. And I think a big part of my thinking of Singapore as home is that so much of who I am is based on my growing up there, and it represents, or is as close as a physical place can be to representing, the idea of a world I want to go back to. I know it’s not the same anymore and that it has changed, in many ways, so dramatically that it is no longer the world in my mind. But the idea of it, the memory of it -

(As for the books, let’s not even go into where mine are. I have no idea, in most cases, and this distresses me.)

To me, Sunday is and probably always will be Oldies Day. As a child, and all through my teenage years as well, Sunday was waking up to an old CD that my dad had put on the stereo downstairs. The music would waft through the house as I went about my morning, softly upstairs through the bathroom door, louder as I headed downstairs, accompanying me through breakfast and the Sunday colour comics at the big marble dining table. I hummed along to Donna Summer, The Osmonds, the Bee Gees and Billy Joel never knowing the first thing about any of them. It was all just Sunday music, the music of lazy days in and slow, languid, easy mornings.

I haven’t listened to oldies on a Sunday for many years now. Perhaps since I came here and my family moved. We no longer have an ancient JVC stereo in the living room. Sunday mornings at home in Sydney are now the sound of my brother’s cartoons on TV, or perhaps his breakdance music blaring from computer speakers, and sometimes both. And while I’d diligently ripped almost all my CDs before coming here, I hadn’t thought to rip any of my dad’s, so I’ve now got a hard disk full of modern music, instrumental soundtracks, the odd classical piece and a very limited selection of oldies.

This morning, in search of suitable background music to keep me company while I did chores, I plowed through the Shoutcast internet radio directory and put on an oldies station. Suddenly it was like I was a child again – boppy, syncopated ’80s beats filling the house. I couldn’t help a little hop, skip and twirl round the room to Tina Turner’s glorious, belting vocals. Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? Ah Sunday, Sunday – with the right soundtrack, what a revelation you have been to me all over again.