Breaking the Silence

It seems its safe to mention this, so I'm gonna say it, in case you didn't know of this. The main reason that I'm going to Singapore this
winter is due to the fact that my dad has gotten a transfer to another branch which is located in Phoenix, in Arizona. What role do I play in this? Helping him pack our stuff in our home in Singapore so that we can move out of our place by the end of December and ship them to where he will be living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The whole move makes sense, considering I'm in Atlanta, both my mom and my brother are in Chicago, and now, my dad will be located in Phoenix.
Instead of a 24 hour flight to go to Singapore, it'll now be a 4 hour flight, which is still a long time, but heck, compare that to 24 hours, I think anyone will take the 4 hour flight.

So yes, the reason I'm going to Singapore isn't to be back 'home' and meet friends I've not seen for a long time, etc. It's more like this is the 'real' good bye, since the two times I've left Singapore for America wasn't a real departure.

What does this actually mean? In the short run, that I won't really get to go out and meet friends and go out and all that good stuff, though I'll try to meet as many people as I possible can, but the priority goes to helping my dad move out, since he'll be working during the day. In the long run, I can't really predict when the next time I'll be in Singapore. If I were to give any sort of an estimate, then at least not
until I graduate from Georgia Tech (which is May 2008) - a good 2.5 years, which isn't a long time. I had harboured some plans to travel to Japan, Singapore and Bangladesh after I graduate and before I start full time work, but as I mentioned few posts earlier, I'm thinking of volunteering to teach or something in a third world country. There's very few entry level jobs that will get me straight to Singapore, and most likely, I'll be employed somewhere in Atlanta or the south. There's
a high possibility that I'll move to Asia - mainly because I can speak Japanese - and hey, I can go on predicting and planning, but it's of no use, I just have to go with the flow of how my life turns out. I might be going to graduate school, I might just end up moving within America, and all my aspirations to travel around the world may not materialize.

It's a really weird thing to be saying that I may never go somewhere for a while. I previously thought I'll go back to Japan, but that has not happened since I left that place at age 8. I wanted to visit Bangladesh pretty bad, since there still are lot of relatives that I've not seen
for ages, but that didn't happen either. And now this, and I'm wondering if this'll be the same case again. Of course, I can always take a holiday, but who knows, I may have other things coming up that I might have to deal with that prevents me from taking such a long trip - even then, what guarantee is there that even the very friends that I want to meet are going to be in Singapore then? They may also be travelling around the world, having family, immersed completely in their work life,
etc, etc, so there's no point dreaming about a completely perfect trip for reunion.

Yeah, the realization is sinking in. Things will really never be the same again. The past is something we'll always cherish, and for now, I've been in a really nostalgic mood where I am thinking about my time in Singapore. How can I not? It's the place where I spent the formative years of my current being and I definitely have to attribute a lot of things to that.

I've done my bit of reflection, but for now, I really need to get back to studying for my final exams, which I just can't wait to get over with, even with horrible grades. So long as I don't make a D, I'll be okay. It's gotten to an extent that I'm just willing to take a C and deal with it, since this has been a hard semester. I'll make it up with the other semester.