on leaving singapore

As my departure for university nears I'm starting to get more apprehensive about it.

I think for slightly more than two years I've been buoyed along by this post-admissions-outcome glow. I was ridiculously happy - hey, who wouldn't be? - and somehow it's actually lasted this long. But now as I'm having to settle visa forms, flight and hotel bookings, and thinking about setting up a bank account... rooming with a total stranger probably from a culture quite dissimilar to mine... the laundry situation O.o... it's getting kinda daunting.

And let's not forget that my brains have rotted. I can understand about 30% of an average Chinese text. I've done nothing to my mind in NS except attempting to plough through Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and learning enough Cyrillic to read the labels of vodka bottles. I can barely remember all the math and economics that I did and that's going to be awfully important later on.

I'm flying out of Singapore on National Day. When I booked the flight I downplayed the obvious significance - after all it's just a date. But the significance looms ever larger and it seems a very decisive up-yours to Singapore, and although the whole notion of patriotism is ridiculous to me I wonder whether I'm quite ready to leave the place I grew up in. It's all making me feel quite conflicted.

Come to think of it, once Yale said yes NUS never had a chance. When I did the US apps nearly 3 years ago I'd only applied to those schools that I thought were definitely better than NUS (the economists will recognise an application of ordinal utility here), so when an offer came along it seemed natural to take it. Looking back at it I think it was kinda self-centred. I know it'll be tough for my mom.

All things considered, there was a time when I really looked forward to independence and moving out of Singapore for ever and ever. Now I'm not quite so sure.