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'I really should eat a hot meal,' I think to myself as I pass by a cute quirky looking cafe, its pure white interior accented only in bits of red and photos that make my mouth water.
'Later,' my brain replies, 'it's not lunch time yet.'
It may not be lunch time, but all I've eaten in the past 36 hours are some cookies, a sandwich, and a piece of bread. Any hour is lunch hour.
I return to the same spot a few hours later convinced that I will buy myself a nice meal, but this morning's quiet and quaint cafe had transformed into the hottest lunch spot downtown. 'It's too busy,' I hear in my own familiar voice; I keep going. I head out to the Marina Bay Gardens, park myself on an empty bench and take out a pastry I'd managed to pick up from a bakery this morning. Mmmm chocolate fudge: delicious, but not exactly nutritious.
The minutes tick by as I debate what to do. I need to get food, but my all too familiar fear of restaurants only multiplies in this alien culture. The secret of these restaurants isn't locked up in a vault in the basement of a downtown skyscraper though, it is, in fact, not a secret at all. But what everybody knows, that you need only to walk up and order what you want, remains elusively hidden from the voice inside my head.
This is usually the moment that self-hatred begins to take root. Why is it that I cannot talk to people? What am I so afraid of? 'I fucking hate myself. You're so stupid,' the words, not at all unusually, don't stay silent in my head but rather roll off my tongue into what feels like an ocean of air around me. The humidity seems only to catch them and throw them back as the oppressive heat reminds me of what I would give to sit inside for a moment.
Apparently not enough because I don't move.
My spell of silent self-hatred is broken when an older man waiting for his wife to catch up sits down beside me. His language sounds Nordic, though I'm unsure of where he's from. I listen as he and his wife bellow with laughter, seemingly about the flowers. Not wanting to intrude, I just smile and look the other way.
As I turn my head I catch a glimpse of the Singapore skyline behind me. With the boat perched atop three skyscrapers and the downtown core in the distance, Singapore's skyline is a mixture of both hope and opulence. A South East Asian powerhouse that has remained stable amidst economic uncertainties, it's a Wall Street of the world, where the nouveau riches come to play. Unlike Wall Street though, for an expat here, it means they've already made it.
I, myself, am just a tourist who, like so many others, sees a job in Singapore as a symbol of accomplishment, of having 'made it'. But as I train my eyes across the length of the skyline, my only thought is that I'll never make it here.
'Why do I have to be so stupid?' the words stay silent as the air suffocates me further, but in my head I hear the voice screaming, reminded that any possibility of me working here is much further than those skyscrapers appear. There's no mirror distorting reality here though, only the heat bouncing from sidewalks as if it were playing a game of chicken, beckoning those air conditioned fortresses even closer.
Across the bay though, I spot a plane coming in to Changi Airport: full of tourists, immigrants, and a few people chasing dreams. Landing at Changi Airport they'll be a whole lot closer than they were yesterday. And so am I.
Working in Singapore never has been and still isn't a real dream of mine, but it's what the absence of that possibility represents. If I fail even at communicating the simplest of things, I won't ever be in a position to be offered an overseas posting. I'm going to fail at life.
Except that yesterday I was roughly 3000 miles away from Singapore in what is another powerhouse of Asia, Seoul. I was a further 8000 miles away from 'home', a place I haven't seen in over a year and a half. Today I'm looking out over the Singapore skyline alone. Alone. If I'd depended on a friend to come with me, I'd have never come to Singapore. If I'd desperately searched, I'd have come with someone I dislike. If I'd taken a tour I would be well informed, but then I also would be sitting in this park, Alone.
People who peer through the screen at my life see one of jet setting fun. The computer screen hides the fears, the agony, the anxiety, those parts of me, and of travel that people might question if they saw. Why, as an adult, am I still so incapable? Why bother if my arrival in a new country sparks fears so acute that I can only ever observe, like a fly on the wall.? Why bother if I don't see it all? It's a good point but at least I'm on the wall, those asking are still safely in the clouds, peeking through a tainted window.
As the sun begins to set and the oppressive humidity lets up just enough to allow me to breathe again, I get up and walk back to city. I go to the Esplanade, drop by 711, and buy a sandwich. A hot meal can wait, sometimes you just have to pick your battles.
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