This was supposed to be a post about Vietnam. I was having enough trouble with that, for whoknowswhat reason, and then we came back and something else happened and none of the other things I was going to say seemed relevant any more.
I’m sorry to sound so flat-eared when I’ve just been for an exotic spin around the paddy fields in the back of a moped-truck and then a slow paddle up the Mekong in a long boat wearing one of those conical hats before hitting up Saigon for more incredible fresh food and a whizz round the bonkers night market (there: Vietnam), but then the Thing happened, the sad Thing that happens all the time out here. And for a while that was that, in terms of any fancy travel writing.
I went and sat in the cinema for a bit, it being the only place in Singapore where I could have an #uglycryingface and no one would see, and while SM sat to attention through all the shooty bits, I had some popcorn and a think.
I know people leave. That’s life. In any case, I’m not knew to it, because we had a lot of this in our old town, a posh north London enclave once famous for writers and artists, now better known for smart shoe shops, gold card accounts and a thriving expat community, which implodes and explodes seasonally, as the expat community does here. I had a few friends come and go. I should be used to it. I’m not.
If I have to live here, then I have to have friends. If I have to keep saying goodbye to friends, then I’m not sure I can live here.
I jest, of course. Everyone knows I’m having a lovely time and I’m not quite ready to get down from the comfy chair yet. But how to adjust? Do you harden to it? Do the new friendships you make become skin-deep, less important, out of necessity? What’s it like to be a local here and to have this happen literally all of the time? I should know – that was me once – but I don’t.
In any case it’s really no one’s fault, and that’s an important point to make, and I think I even said it somewhere here: we come and go according to the tides of commerce. Whoever pays for the bacon is in charge of the schedule, and the workers and their families must change mercurially according to what’s needed, with the Home-Makers swept along in the wake of the Bacon-Getters, stuffing pants into a case, redirecting post, downing several bottles of wine at hurried goodbye parties with a cell phone tucked under the chin on speed-dial to the next international school. I say ‘our’, but I haven’t had to do this yet, and I hope I won’t have to, unless I feel like it, or ask for it. That’s not how it happens, though.
For those of us waving goodbye through the patio doors, it’s not just about how we feel about the leavers, it’s about adjusting our own settings in accordance with what is happening around us, about how much emphasis we put on OtherPeople, and whether or not we feel the need to continually renew our social settings in this world, or if we’re happy to build a bubble around ourselves and push on regardless. I guess I’m just a bit rubbish at the bubble thing.
There’s a selfish slant to it too, that ‘left-behind’ suspicion that everyone else is going on to funky pastures new, while us lot get left behind to battle on with life in our luxurious condos with the pools and the gyms and the tropical holidays… (yeah, alright, I’m onto that one already).
After our trip to the cinema I explained to SM yet again about the fact that another batch of patio-door-knockers would no longer be knocking on our patio door, and he said three things: 1) Can we go too? 2) Let’s make the most of them. 3) Maybe what we need to do is have another barbecue?
Actually, he said four things: 4) Why does everyone have to do this?
