Places, Various

We're off to Melaka later today, from whence we'll make our way back on the morrow to our usual Far Place of residence. On the road again, I suppose, but in a curious way we find ourselves at home in all these places. And similarly so when we're back in Manchester. I suppose we're good at belonging. It's striking how long we seem to have been in Hall, for example, but it's only just over three years, having occupied the Mansion for a small life-time before that. We seem to be able to stick to places somehow, but can leave them when necessary without a surplus of regret. Indeed, I think we just feel a sense of gratitude at being able to be around wherever we are.

These thoughts have in part been prompted by my reading of Boey Kim Cheng's extremely readable Between Stations. The predominant mood of this sort-of-memoir has been a kind of embittered nostalgia, so far at least, and it's a mood the poet does well. I'm finding that the Singapore he remembers and evokes with sad intensity is strangely impinging upon my memories of the place. I came into contact with the last remnants of the Singapore he recalls from his childhood and difficult adolescence in my first years out in this part of the world. It was obviously being swept away then and now I grasp something of the keen regret so many must have experienced in that time of heady change. I remember Noi showing me where Change Alley was, a sad echo of what it must have been in its heyday, and now my understanding of that location will be haunted by an image of a little boy on the shoulders of a limping man, both trying to catch some transient happiness from their walks there. I never saw this, or anything like it, but it has become real for me.

We joined our neighbours, Susan and Mike, and some of the other folks from the taman, late last night in their post-CNY celebration. They've only lived here a short time but are clearly very much in the process of belonging, and helping everyone feel they too belong. This strikes me as embodying the antithesis of Boey's sense of the need to wander and explore. Interestingly Susan was very keen on our sticking around and not selling the house. It seems we can be reasonably assured of a good price for it given the current and likely future state of the housing market in KL. I can't say I'm tempted.