Ennui

One of the biggest problems I've faced with living in Singapore is ennui.

It's only natural to think fondly of the "better times" while I was far and away in greener pastures, in favour of dull, drab and dreary blemished reality... so perhaps I'm just biased...

But I do remember how I was happy, doing the simplest things way back then; lying flat in the grass on a warm summer's day, imagining myself escaping the waves of heat rising above knee-level, watching white labradors play so very joyfully with each other.

And I remember the awe I felt as I approched the Golden Gate bridge, and crossed it almost holding my breath; I remember thinking I could do this every day and never tire of it.

I remember walking across sydney harbour bridge and gazing out across the harbour, and thinking... not very much in particular (there has always been too much on my mind when I'm in sydney, for some reason) but feeling... alive.

There is a disease in Singapore; it's a sly creature, almost a malignancy that invades your soul; it's the feeling that one feels... there's nothing to do.

In truth there's a lot to do.

Running with the other... people I work with the other day and looking out over the silly cable-car thing from Mt Faber, it hit me that there's nothing to see.

Nothing that makes your mind go blank with happiness or awe, nothing to be dwarfed by, or to simply precipitate introspective, cathartic moments under a great blue sky.

There is only work, friends, shopping and movies.

And when you're alone it can be oh so acute; movies, computer games, music... not in the mood...
There must be more in life... there must be some meaning.

And so we go about trying to distract ourselves, day to day, from the banality of this humdrum exitence...

Or else we allow ourselves to be consumed by work, so that we don't have to face up to the reality that there really isn't anything else out there.

I want to believe.