Start counting down

Yet another week has passed us by. Watched Fantastic 4 with the Guys on friday night, then we adjourned to nick's place in don's car to play mahjong/fifa/pool and talk cock about, well, life universe and everything. I was dead on my feet on sat, but still managed to drag myself to watch the Play! concert, which I thought was nice. My only gripes were that the orchestra wasn't rousing enough, didn't have the necessary gravitas to give one a "gan ren fei fu" feeling. Some of the pieces felt flat as a result. But overall it was nice, wished they could have more pieces that I heard of.
Well, it's 3 months to departure. It has finally hit me, the realisation that I'll be going away and I have to get ready for it. Felt so lost and blur for a while, as I know nuts about how to get things done, and my usual inertia didn't help things. But slowly, am getting things into some semblance of order, must thank my many friends who offered and gave advice and help.
A friend asked me what I would miss when I go over. Haven't really thought of it, because well I haven't been thinking about leaving for the past 6 months. Spending some time thinking about it, I guess I'll miss this intangible thing called home. It's just that feeling where you can just let go and rest, knowing that here in this place you can be who you are.
The weekend's papers did a report on enbloc sales, and the report stated that one of the reasons why people don't want to sell as they have grown attached to the place, be it the fellow residents who have become friends, or the shopkeepers who know their name and allow you to pay on credit, the neighbours who you entrust your kids to. They do not want to lose these intangible things and thus are resistant to selling.
Much to my mum's chagrin, I always viewed a home which is too tidy to be a showroom flat not a home, thus I am partial to using that as an excuse for my untidy room. Like a friend's place, he has his books placed perpendicular to the edge of his desk and stacked in order of size. My stuff are always thrown helter skelter all over my room which makes finding things a bit difficult at first, but somehow I can still find what I want most of the time, despite it being untidy.
A home is where a person lives, has relationships with those around him, grow up in, screwed up in, cried in, laughed in, and ultimately lived in. That's why I realised it was easy for me to move from my old place to my new house. We didn't know many neighbours, (can't blame us, most of them were expats who stayed for 3 months or so to work on a project and then leave), so we found it easy to to leave. It was just brick and mortar we left behind, plus memories of living there, which we stored in our mind.
Now, it's another home I'm leaving. This one is far bigger, made up of 21 years of my life. It's daunting to think about it, but yet I'm also excited. A part of me wonders if life would be fine there. another part of me welcomes the challenge of going there and living there, away from the safety net of home. But those thoughts will come later, when my feet finally come into contact with British soil. Now, thoughts are focused on the dwindling days I have left on this island I have had no choice but to call home for 21 years.
So, what will I miss? I think it'll be banter sessions with my family during dinner, spending time with my siblings, disturbing them, chatting with my mum, watching football with my dad, marketing with my grandparents, meeting up with the guys for frankly no reason at all most of the times, laughing with or at them, spending time with friends from sec school or JC, trips to familiar places, be it for ban mian, to my alma mater just to walk around, food that I've grown up eating, in short, I'd miss the setting of the first 21 years of my life.
But familiarity has bred a form of contempt, if I may put it harshly. The other part of me has this burning desire to leave all this behind, to test my being against the unknown elements, so as to jolt myself out of this comfortable cocoon I have built myself. A longing to see the world beyond the confines of this island, so as to appreciate it further, to see and experience things contrary to what it is here, to walk that thin grey line, always teetering on the edge, to strike that balance that I believe is the optimal way to live. This part of me is the one that wants me to go out and actively do then sit and wait for something to happen, a drive that I think I'd lack if I had decided to stay.
And this is the part of me I will have to show more when I go to London. Till then, let me enjoy this comfortable familiarity for the remainder of my time here.