Category Archives: Repatriation

Back in the hood

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Good job I renewed this site when the hosting reminder came up. It’s for Singapore matters only, and we don’t live there any more, so I considered letting it lapse. But our return this Christmas brought back the relevance of – and need for – a PartlyCloudy post, so here it is.

We left the Little Red Dot in 2017 and returned for a visit in 2018. That five-week return trip felt like closure, and did us the world of good. Since then a lot of ground has been covered and we are very much Londoners living in the Northern Hemisphere. So I didn’t expect, on our Christmas trip, to feel so at home so fast.

Singapore is mercurial in its changes, and a lot of building work had taken place as we emerged blinking into the sunlight on our first morning. But much had also stayed the same, like our beloved Botanic Gardens (point one on our to-do list), Henderson Wave bridge (made it there on the last day), concrete over-road passes with big jungly trees forming essential rain cover, efficient Changi airport whisking us straight to the cab rank, etc etc – all this stuff made us feel instantly at home. Here are some more things we loved reconnecting with:

• Commuting on the MRT felt so normal. Smooth, quick, cool, WiFi everywhere. No food or drink allowed, mind you, and no entertaining buskers, but those are also plus points. When riding the escalators we had to remember to stand on the left (and we’re now remembering to switch back).
• I do love the buses. Little things like tapping out as well as in make so much sense. They run in all weathers, including torrential storms but they’re very joggy, so don’t expect to sit down before they hit the gears.
• We made good use of the fiendishly cheap Grab cabs spinning us around Malaysia and Singapore to a backdrop of bluesy 80s choons, furry animals dangling above the dash. That’s my cab quota used up for the whole year.
• Food, glorious food should really be point 1. We are still dreaming of it (and working it off). Cheap eats, fancy seats, take-out, stay in, it’s curiously available in a way I can’t describe. Tangy south-east Asian scents wafting from every air outlet, brilliant food courts in almost every mall, offering food you actually want to eat. The whole country is a giant foodie playground and we could have spent a month tucking into kaya toast for breakfast, quick curry lunches, Crystal Jade, Tim Ho Wan, Ippudo Ramen, proper Din Tai Fung. Oh and the bread shops, cake shops, skewer sticks, nonya dishes – and airport snacks a speciality (Old Chang Kee, Kopitiam, etc).
• Shopping? Yes, but it’s a funny old thing: when I lived there I loved coming back to the UK shops. Now I’m here I love it out there. Singapore is a shopping city and not always in a brilliant way. Loads of plastic and packed-out malls on weekends. But how do I know? Because I was right in there, sorrynotsorry. Couldn’t hurt to hunt for a few bargains, like the third-off quilted cross-body bag and the bargain Bata sandals. And my suitcase didn’t split, result.
• Back outdoors and there’s those funny chunky up-and-down pavements with a tree in the middle, suddenly, or a railing over a drain, or a fence. On off on off up down up down. Good for the glutes. And the traffic lights that make the “peow” sound before the fast green countdown. Don’t dawdle, the roads are massive here and red comes round fast. I remembered my way around a few places as if I’d only left five minutes ago. Weird and not-weird all at once.
• Waiting at a crossing in the sun or sudden rain, forgot your umbrella, need water? You can find a 7-Eleven or Watsons on every corner selling those. And the one time an MRT didn’t have one (naughty Telok Blangah) there was an HDB over the road with shops at the bottom.
• A word about water: Singapore is 95% water (made up that figure but you get the idea) and it’s effortlessly drinkable straight from the tap, so ditch the plastic and fill up those water bottles.
• And HDBs, OK not always amazing, but such a great concept. A little round of applause here for convenient communal living (when it works, that is, not for the rubbish ones)
• Another shoutout for one of the best bits of Singapore living: toilets. Public conveniences are every-single-where. Everywhere. Such a great idea, but I guess you need the infrastructure to do that, and attendants willing to keep them orderly. Thanks, Singers, for being so practical.
• Clement winter weather made our trip more doable. Yes we had melty moments every day, but there was a lot of uncharacteristically breezy, sunny stuff going on, and a few coolish nights too (a parky 25 at times). I did find the heat tougher this time, no doubt thanks to a few more years on the bodyclock. When I lived here I prided myself on not minding the weather too much. For this trip the answer was: yes it’s hot – table inside, please. One bonus: western hair is a fluffy nightmare in Asia, but my thinning threads loved it. Bit more of that humidity and I’ll start looking like myself again…
• I’ll roll into one the giant palms on every corner, lianas in hedges, monitors and otters in the Botanic Gardens, cicadas ringing in the trees, and the simple joy of having warm bones (when it’s not too hot). But it’s more than that, the whole fortnight was a feeling of being at home in a place.

I now see our 2018 visit as a stamp of security, whereas this trip will go down as the one that confirmed how much we love the city. Grandpa came too, and loved revisiting the gardens and MacRitchie. Jonah loved every second of our roam around town, remembering familiar things, coming up with places to revisit, promising to return. Our tattoos (phoenix and monkey), which sometimes seem a bit twee here in the UK, made much more sense over there.

Expat are always, or often, aware of being a guest, but over time a sense of belonging can develop, and that’s in part down to the friends we make. Most of ours have left the building, but we enjoyed breakfast (Yien), lunch (Ai Lee and Angela), tea (Saori), dinner (Chessers), plus a night on the town for Jonah, and New Year rooftop fun for us (thank you Karen and Ian, and for the house-loan). Just the right amount of catch-ups for the time we had.

We did also include a trek around Malaysia, this time to Penang and Ipoh to meet up with more family. More food, more walks, night markets, daytime hikes, chilled nights with snow beer and chicken skewers, novelty shops, local temples, and an important visit to see John’s Aunty Rosy’s resting spot. We’ll be back to knock on the glass three times. A bonus for me was taking the train from Penang to Ipoh, really not much to get excited about, which is why I loved it, just so normal, notably efficient, clean and simple. UK transport routes – take note.

I used to write my travel posts while flying for 14 hours at 36,000 feet. This time, cruising home, I had an MA assignment to complete, a fellow student’s story to review, and a contextual statement to draft. And all with a seatback in my face. Definitely out of practice with the whole long-haul work thing.

We are just about the right way up – jetlag was tough. I’ve stopped playing the time game (‘five days ago I was…’). I don’t know what happened to our first week back but I seem to have written that assignment, drafted my statement, co-planned three webinars, and more.

And so 2025 begins, and we’re standing on the right, sleeping without a fan, wearing extra clothes to bed, packing the sun clothes away, passing credit cards over with one hand not two, thinking in snapshots of our two-week Asia fest.
Until next time, LRD.

A month in the country

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I was never meant to resurrect Partly Cloudy. It could have been seen as attention-seeking, like threatening to leave then not going, or waving madly just to get people to look. But then this summer happened, and writing one last post seemed like an okay thing to do.
It was when winter took hold last year, when we started wearing double-thick socks round the clock, that we dusted off the credit card and booked five weeks of summer for a trip back to the Red Dot, one year after our big exit.
We didn’t expect a royal welcome. We knew our first week would be full of tumbleweeds, as we landed just as all the expats flew out. Luckily, one generous family was still around. For over a week they budged up to make room for us as we emptied our bags across the top floor of their house in the very cool Joo Chiat area. Exploring this fabulously laid-back zone got us acclimatised nicely. By the time we had gone on some local travels and then flown back in again, everyone else was home. Then reconnecting began in earnest.
It was all very level. There were some retro moments, like rediscovering each-a-cup Pearl Tea and making an unplanned but lovely visit to the old apartment. There were some tight hugs hello and several watery goodbyes, but otherwise the days felt comfy and happy, like getting into bed after a long day. We had EZ Link cards and an existing bank account. Mr PC worked for three weeks out of the five, bussing into the CBD with a plastic bag of kopi-o, even getting in a Wednesday game of footie with the old crowd.
Jonah found his Bounce socks and hung out with friends in town. I had some loyalty cards to use up (latte and a gel pedicure, please) and found myself more adept at knowing the Singapore bus routes than the London ones. We dined out and ate in, went to the cinema, pottered in parks. Thanks to the kindness of yet more friends, we borrowed an apartment for the last two weeks so we could play house, hosting some meet-ups and using the gym, pool, balcony and tennis court as if we did it every day. It really was a case of ‘popping in’, delightfully familiar but at the same time so special. In fact just like our summer trips back to London only in reverse.
I’d wondered if the revisit might have been a bad idea: would the second departure, one year after that awful wrench, be damaging all over again? Jonah was fine at first. He only became a bit wistful during the final days of the trip, when ex schoolmates bustled about getting ready for the new year while he stood by looking on, still a few weeks to go before the UK summer closed.
I write this in London and, now we are ‘home’ again, I’m not sure where the boys stand. I suspect that if Mr PC lived in a parallel world he might prefer to take the Downtown line to work, instead of the Jubilee. But we are where we are, I’m an ex-expat and I can talk fluently about repatriation and transition. I know there is truth in the saying that it takes two years to settle, home or away. We are halfway through and that’s just how it feels: fine to be there and fine to be here, hard to leave and hard to stay. Is it possible to have two lives?
Yesterday – last day of the hols – Jonah and I chatted about something that happened at a friend’s house a few days back, or so I thought.
‘Who were we talking to?’ I asked him, and we ran through some familiar names until we worked out that it had been several weeks ago in Singapore, not here in London. The two lives are so familiar. They have blended together like a translucent screen over a picture, with groups of friends there matching up, twin-like, to the ones here.
We can’t and won’t do a big summer trip every year, and we owe it to ourselves to sit down for a bit and let the grass grow under our gel-tipped toes. But as my Mum used to say when she found something nice in a shop but didn’t want to buy it just yet, we know it’s there.
Until next time, Singers.

That’s not MY memory

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“What have been your favourite countries?” I asked Mr PC on his second Last Night In Singapore. “Mine are Japan, China and New Zealand. Japan for culture: ninjas, sushi, kimonos, geishas, waving cats and temples. China for history: the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors, Shanghai shikumen and Beijing hutongs. And New Zealand for natural history: mountains, valleys, glaciers and those stunning endless prairies.”

“Mine would have to be Vietnam,” said Mr PC, “such a different feel to the place depending where you go, such hidden gems, such surprises, and such amazing food!”

“Mine’s Bintan,” said Jonah. “The activities, the sea, and that time when Dad face-planted off the trapeze.”

#youcantaketheexpatkidoutofBintan

Special delivery

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Today, one third of the PC household returns to the UK to pick up his new role, galloping into Heathrow just in time for St George’s Day and his Dad’s 79th birthday in Marlow. First he’ll have lunch and birthday cake with the cousins then he’ll drive to London and camp out at my sister’s for the next few weeks. He starts work on Monday. As for leaving Sing, for a man of modest gestures I’ve never seen so many goodbyes locked into the calendar. He had a football farewell on Wednesday for the weekly group he’s been running – that was a tough one. In a fortnight he’ll be back here briefly and no doubt there’ll be more goodbyes. And back again in June to co-host a proper leaving do with me and repeat the beer theme once more. The multi-celebration thing is unusual for a man who’s typically quite low-key, but I suspect it’s testament to how hard it is for him to leave the town he has so enjoyed exploring, and all the friends within.

Mr PC is a man who’s rarely sad. He goes through life using the same Terminal Optimism as my Dad, constantly carrying around a half-full pint glass in contrast to my half-empty water bottle. (Does that make us well matched? It certainly makes him very patient). A person who knows him better, though, might have detected clouds across the moon these last few weeks, even during our recent fantastic canter across beautiful NZ, when, at times, my permanently happy man might have sometimes been less so.

Repatriation was never going to be easy for any of us, most of all him. Like most families we try to make decisions as a solid unit, but sometimes one person is less comfortable with a decision than the others. Just as you could say it was his idea that we came here in the first place, it was mainly me who came up with the idea that we pack it all in and head back to Blighty. Worse still, while we wait under softly swaying palms for TheEnd, drifting back and forth to work and school with the sun on our backs, he has to dump his carry-on and head straight to the Tube under chilly London skies*.

Still though, every cloud and all that. I’m hoping there will be plenty of you to welcome him home, maybe put on the kettle or pop open a beer. If you see him, he’s pretty easy to take care of but he’ll probably appreciate some Singaporean touches. He likes kopi o ping or kopi si kosong. He likes congee for breakfast, laksa for lunch and a big fish curry for dinner. He likes the heat, so turn up the radiators and hang a load of wet laundry inside so the place gets a bit humid. And as always he loves a spot of running, so if you feel like trotting up and down Kite Hill with him then give him a call.

As he paces the apartment looking for things, tying up loose ends, sending emails and printing out documents I’m sitting here looking at our Mandarin textbook collection, gathering dust on the shelf since we stopped lessons in January. His favourite word was always “husband”. Mine was “goodbye” because it’s the only one that comes to mind easily. So then: zaijian Xiansheng. Safe travels and see you in two short weeks. I’ll keep beers in the fridge and kopi by the kettle and I promise not to chuck out your shoebox full of electrical cr@p or rearrange your precious pile of interesting pocket fluff. Hope the new school has a good canteen and nice teachers. I’m sure my sister wouldn’t mind if you bought a plastic palm tree and stuck it in the window.

Here’s your leaving anthem, a top choice from the Jonah playlist that we had on repeat in hire cars all around New Zealand. I think it fits.

*I’ve got the packing, the goodnights, the homework and the exam-revising to do as well, so don’t feel too bad for him

There will now be a short intermission

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Writer’s block. First time in five years. The bin is full of scrumpled up introductions. That country cannot be put into words, it is just not possible, and since I have been unable to write real or imagined postcards I’ll stick up a few snapshots shortly.

Perhaps the writer’s block is also to do with Mr PC beginning the slow dismantle of the condo in preparation for his next big move, back to the UK and to our new lives.

So the pen is pretty dry this week. Talk amongst yourselves.

Space balls

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Houston, we have a hoarding problem. All removal companies have told us off for having way too much rubbish. I’m getting loads ready to trash, donate or sell but it’s like dismantling Marina Bay Sands with a fork and spoon, in a lightning storm.

I caught myself doing the Oxford Street Swerve today – Londoners will know it. It’s where you’re in a big rush and you have to thread your way through the herd of hundreds of slow-moving tourists to get from A to B. I had to physically slow myself down when I cut across the park at the back of Somerset 313 and almost knocked someone over in my hurry to get to the bus stop to catch the No 36 home in time for the dishwasher fixer to sort out our leak before the piano lesson commenced, which left me half an hour to sort through some sale stuff for buyers to look through this week, before putting in an hour of work before rehearsing our two new songs for tonight’s choir practise, and then the three new songs for Saturday’s other choir concert.

It’s because we’re working towards a scary timescale. Next week we leave for our Easter trip to NZ (our fault for having another holiday, granted). When we get back Mr PC will have just three days in Sing before he leaves for London. There is an insurmountable load of Stuff to sort and we are orbiting the epicentre in ever-decreasing circles, flying faster and faster into the centre of the rubbish pile.

Mister sat down with me last night and sighed into his tumbler of whisky (a valiant effort to empty the drinks cupboard), ‘What’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t all get sorted before July? We just pack it all up and take it with us.’

So I’m apologising to my inner tidy person (the one who rarely gets an airing) because she’s not going to be happy with the crap that’s going into our twenty-footer.