back where it’s cold

…or not, really. It isn’t that cold here in Sydney - an average of 12 to 14°C during the daytime, dipping down to maybe 9°C or so during the night; significantly colder than currently-summery York but nowhere near the frigid depths of northern English winters, and nothing I can’t take (wait a couple of weeks and I’ll be complaining about not being able to type my dissertation because my fingers are freezing off).

The last couple of weeks in York were whirlwind - drinks, pub quizzing and suffering random harrassment from a creepy American chap with Mander; Red Chilli with Susanna, where we had to order fish to share because she doesn’t take any other meat and I discovered for the first time that York sometimes does have very decent fish indeed; Eleena’s visit and the first proper cooked breakfast I’ve had in York all year, with scrambled eggs, baked potato and bacon; a frenzy of Railway Children activity at the Theatre Royal which involved the filing of a million press clippings and reviews and 1.5 hours of standing at the National Railway Museum giving out flyers; yummy Garden of India takeout and plenty of random chitchat with Kevin and Rokey, thinking this might be the last time for a long time that I see either of them boys; lots and lots and lots of packing and moving, and of course the dissertation final draft (here a misleading term which actually means only about half the thing has been written, and mostly crappily).

All of that, plus passing through Singapore and meeting up with my lovely, lovely friends there, and finally touching down here after two solid days of travelling has stirred up in me that old feeling of being pulled in a million different directions, that question of… how do I balance all this? How do I portion out my time and myself for all these different places and people when I love them all, when I don’t want to leave any of them, when I just wish foolishly that I could pack everything and everyone with me in a bottomless suitcase, have it all in one place? Just when I thought I had it sorted, I find again that I haven’t a clue, I don’t have any answers. I know something’s got to

Now that I’m finally here with my family after nearly 10 months of being away, all I really want to do is catch a breather, sleep in for a week and recover properly from jetlag… but I know I’ve not done anything for a week, dissertation-wise, and if I want to knock out another 10,000 words before September 22nd I have to hustle soon.

breathe, just breathe, I keep telling myself.

can’t take it in

i’ve got to make room for this feeling
so much bigger than me
it couldn’t be any more beautiful
and i can’t take it in

- imogen heap, “can’t take it in”

Lin popped by today for a chat this afternoon, because she’s leaving for Cali tomorrow and who knows when we’ll get to see each other again. And the more we talked, about our experiences, our post-graduation dreams and aspirations, the more I realised that I really don’t want to go back quite just yet. There’s so much more here waiting for me to discover outside my academic bubble, there’s so many more opportunities, not just here in the UK but in the rest of the world, and I can’t shake the feeling that this is the time to take advantage of it all. I’m ideally poised, on the cusp of leaving uni behind me, I have a good degree, the next two years are a sprawling, empty landscape to be filled in. I can’t help feeling that it’ll just be so unfulfilling if I go back to Singapore now, take a safe desk job that earns me S$2.5K a month, get an apartment, maybe a secondhand car, settle back into life there. I’ll go back, after a couple of years - that’s as long as the post-study work visa will let me stay, at any rate - but not now. I’m not ready yet.

And it’s just that much more aggravating, thinking of all this, that the only job prospect for me right now is back at home. I’ve got till the end of September for something really magical to pop up here in the UK… and oh, how I hope it does. I’ve always - whenever people asked - expressed a vague interest in staying here to work for a few years, but now I genuinely do feel it. I really do want it to happen. I feel like there’s something more for me in the future besides going home right away to a government-prescribed path of stable job and sheltered existence… and I can’t even explain it, because it’s not like I’ve had a particularly exciting life so far, certainly not anything to make me think that something special should be waiting for me. But - this is the point in my life, isn’t it, when I can do anything? And I’m gonna do it, somehow, whatever it turns out to be. Fingers crossed.

slow dancing on the boulevard

So today the bunch of us ex-Rafflesians met up with the lovely lady from the International Office to talk about and plan what we were going to do during the upcoming RJ visit to York. And along the way, she dropped the yummy nugget of information that the teacher coming with them would be Mr. Purvis. And my heart just - leapt.

Sure, last time it was Mr. McConnell who came, and he’d taught me for S-paper and he did remember me and it was nice chatting with him, but he did only teach me for a year at a once-a-week class where I was practically invisible because I was silent throughout… not that I talked very much during Purvis’s classes, but his lessons, his obvious love for literature, whatever little bits of conversation I had with him out of class - they were all such a big part of why I chose this subject in uni, how it finally dawned on me that lit was my thing, how I came to see it as so much more than a dry, analytical sifting through dusty old words.

I’m so bizarrely weirdly excited, and happy, that he’s coming to York. I don’t even know if he remembers me (it’s been ages and he probably doesn’t since I have been very remiss in visiting RJ - the new campus is so cold and distant), but… yeah. This is another blast from my past that really means a lot to me. I’m stoked. ♥