Shanzhi leaves for the US for overseas studies.

One thing I did before I left was to read Neil Humphreys’ excellent Complete Notes from Singapore. I found it in a bookstore some months back, and while normally violently opposed towards spending money (I’m Asian, after all) I decided to pick it up anyway. I’m glad I did.

20,000 Singaporeans are pursuing higher education of some sort overseas, and by the time you read this, I should have joined that number. As the days slowly pass (but not slowly enough) to the moment I board that plane, I find that my own feelings towards the imminent departure have changed. I was – and I still am, despite it all – looking forward to heading off to a new phase in my life. But I’ve also come to dread the day I leave.

Part of it came from reading Humphreys – for those who have yet to, it comes highly recommended. I thought I was pretty Singaporean, that I knew what there was to do in the country, what kind of people we had, what kind of a place this small island was. Which is why it was enlightening to read it from Humphreys’ perspective, to see what he saw. And I must say, I learned so much more about Singapore, about the things that make us Singaporeans, through that angmoh’s (used affectionately, of course) eyes. (One of my JC tutors, having arrived in Singapore from the UK to teach before I was born, liked to tell my class that he was “more Singaporean than [us]” – how true, come to think of it.)

There’s so much more to Singapore than Orchard Road, but for so many of us, I think it’s hard for us to see beyond that.

How many of us have gone trekking in Sungei Buloh to find monitor lizards, or gone to Bollywood Veggies for a meal? How many of you have decided to watch your local (I use the word very, very loosely) S-League side at the stadium, or spent time at the library near your home? Have you ever gone to explore Kusu Island, or wondered what on earth is inside Haw Par Villa (is that place even still open?)

I realized how shallow my outlook must have been when I whined about not having anything to do after I figured I was able to navigate Orchard Road blindfolded. There’s so much more to Singapore than that, but for so many of us, I think it’s hard for us to see beyond that.

So it gave me some impetus to travel, to go to places (on the very limited free days I had) that I had never been to before. I went on food trails in Chinatown and Lau Pa Sat, watched NUS students perform at Rag, and cheered my lungs out watching Singapore beat Malaysia. And on these little forays, I just saw more and more things, places that I had never known to offer anything to me. Little pockets of activity, bustling with people who were, in so many ways, Singaporean.

Even watching what little of the National Day Parade I managed to catch this year seemed so different – a celebration of a country that for once I felt so connected to, ironically, just as I was about to leave.

It was that book which showed me that there was so much here I had no idea about, that there were places I had yet to visit and things I had yet to see. And in the years since the book was published, and since Humphreys left for Australia (which as Colin Goh put very rightly in his introduction, “what could possibly be more Singaporean?”), even more has changed.

That’s what I’m afraid of: I’ve become so connected with my country, that I’m afraid I’ll come back to find that it’s changed

That’s what I’m afraid of, I think. I’ve become so connected with my country, that I’m afraid I’ll come back to find that it’s changed, that the places where I made my memories will no longer be there. I had dinner at a small eating place in an Orchard Road shopping centre last night. It was a quaint place, serving the best (in my humble opinion) char siew rice in Singapore. I used to go there quite regularly when I was taking Chinese tuition in the area, but my tuition centre has long given way to progress. This eating place was still there though, serving food as I remembered it, looking just the way I remembered it. It was so nostalgic, and it felt so good.

And in a nation still in flux, that reassuring constancy rooted me even more to home.

I’ve read how Singapore has been a home to an Englishman from Dagenham, and it showed me just what it was I had been missing. I may never have as unfortunate an incident as he did at a “hawker centre”, but so many things resonated with me about how I felt towards my home.

I hear seniors say how much more they appreciate Singapore after they go overseas and “see the world”, and in a sense I always expected myself to continue that tradition. But it’s begun so much sooner that I thought it would. It’s at once bittersweet as well as heartwarming, because even though this place may change, and I may get lost in Raffles City in a year’s (!) time, I know that more than anywhere else, I will feel at home here. Why? Because, quite simply, it is where I know I must be, where come rain or shine or watershed election, the river will always flow.