What will our world become?

9 months since this whole pandemic unfolded in Europe / London. Some days I ask myself, would I be better off if I were currently still in Dubai or is London a better option? From what I heard from my friends in Dubai, movement is relatively free these days albeit there has been an increase in crime rate. My personal feeling is that I am probably better off here in London than Dubai. 

I cannot help but wonder what would our world be like after we get a vaccine and we get some normality back into our lives. It has been 9 months since I bid farewell to CD in the office and we both felt that it would be a long time before we next see each other. Never did we think it would be 9 months and probably a year even. I really wish to go home but I just cannot get past my own conscience to take the risk and travel and risk spreading the virus. It is like if I were to get C and die, I would be absolutely fine with it, what I do not want is to risk spreading the virus to my family and friends and put them at risk. I would be guilty for the rest of my lives. Perhaps I am too conscious, perhaps I am too risk-averse but I really have the urge to just put everything down, pack my bags and go back to Singapore and never return to the UK again. A two months stay in Singapore would be great, given that I have not been back home for more than 1 month in the last 5 years. I was always back for 2-3 weeks then off to another place on Earth shortly after. No one will know the number of times I visited the SIA website to check flights, almost every other day I am on, counting the number of days that I can work from Singapore, etc. No one can really understand what I am going through, put it that way. I am not feeling awful for I know this is the price that one has to pay when one decides to uproot from home.

I thought about all the potential avenues for the virus to spread - pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, touching the same groceries, trying out the same outfit while shopping, sleeping on the same bed in the hotel (despite bedsheets being clean), sharing a uber with a stranger, airbnb - what will happen to the whole sharing economy which has had a massive boom in the last decade. Would you still be willing to share? The more I stay home, the more I have to shoulder the burden of - given that I have waited so long and persevere so long in limiting my movement so as to avoid spreading the virus, why should I be giving it all up when a vaccine is so close in sight and give up all the effort that I have put in so far to try my best to break the spread? 

However, I realise that not everyone thinks like me - my colleagues who continue to socialise, have drinks together (even though some of them might already have had C) and even to the extent of disregarding rules. I really cannot concur with their behaviour and I do not see why I have to cave in to peer pressure to meet with them. I have nothing much to talk to them about because they will be making jokes about "who-who" in the office, ranting about work and making stupid lame jokes about C, about work, about people whom I at times find really superficial. I know that I can be a pretty serious person and rather geeky I would say, because I enjoy intellectual conversations on politics, economics, life in general rather than muse about the daily struggles of life. I would be very happy to go play sports with people and learn new things but I really hate just talking for the sake of talking and laughing for the sake of laughing. Getting on team calls to hear people making jokes about lockdown etc. really gets on my nerves and -_- is my favourite emoticon these days. I know that not everyone takes life as seriously as I do, particularly here in Europe but sometimes I cannot help but wonder if the best of the people in this continent is capable of only this much, and are they then worth the sacrifices of their fellow healthcare professionals (whom they probably deem as less of an equal to these so-called white collar PROFESSIONALS) to be trying to save their lives when they get hospitalised after they party and get C? 

The world is a strange place and days when I want to trust in God that he will put everything in place again, I cannot help but wonder why is he letting all these selfish people scoot freely and continue to harm others? Inshallah, God will have his own verdict and judgement in due course. 

*Keeping to my one blog post per month ^_^

If you move between time

I am catching up these days, not just 1 blog post every quarter but at least very month and if I have more time, I will try writing fortnightly. After all, I do enjoy writing and words are definitely my love language, for I always remember - Speaking is talking to a moment, writing is talking to eternity. 

Today, I shall write about things that I used to enjoy when I was a kid but no longer do as an adult. Well, I did not grow up in such a well-to-do family and as a child, I had many desires that I could not fulfill. I enjoyed buying small little accessories, be it pouches, home decors, pens, key chains etc. but could hardly afford them. Purses were tight and there was no chance my mom would give me the opportunity to buy any of those. I recall when I was about fifteen, I had a bag filled with iron-ons of weird little characters, etc. and that was one of my favourite bags, really. My favourite cartoon character was Doraemon but I like Slam dunk, Rilakumma, etc. and one of my favourite soft toys was this monkey (I cannot recall its name right now but I still have it at home!) and they were all gifts from my best friends. Over time, I grew up and now I am able to buy as many of them as I wish but I realise I have no desires to buy them anymore. 

Instead, I became a collector of souvenirs from all over the world. Every city /country that I go to, I try to bring back something unique e.g. magnets, shot glasses, paintings (at least 15-20  that I do not even have any space to hang any of them) - you name it, I have it. The most classic of all has to be the Turkish lamp which I was in love with but owing to me on a 2 month travel spree at that time, my luggage hardly had any extra space for anything bulky and my friend was all out to stop me. I ended up buying a mini hot-air balloon HAHA but I had my cousin to thank who bought it for me from Turkey! Well, the lamp is sitting right at home and I have turned it on like twice in the last 5 years? 

I know that some day, all of these souvenirs would be dumped or gifted the day I stop breathing but I never regret buying any of those. I buy them for keepsake, so that when I look at them or think about them from time to time, I remember the memories that accompany them e.g. Dad bought the clock from Murano in Venice and is now sitting right on the wall back at home and it brings back so much fond memories of our Europe trip and I know that Venice was definitely my parents' favourite place in Europe in those two weeks.

These days, when I talk to my nieces/ nephews, I realise that everyone is a collector at heart - nieces, a collector of stickers and nephews, a collector of toys/ cars etc. From an adult's perspective and being someone who went through all of these, sometimes, we tend to think it is a waste of money to buy all those things because some day when we grow up (like I do now), we will then realise how much of a wastage those things are. However, looking at them made me reflect upon my own childhood and ponder over the battle between needs and wants. They are trying to fulfill their desires i.e. wants (just like when I was a kid) but those are not necessities. Given that current finances are in a much better position than when I was a kid, we unknowingly fulfill their desires because we do not want them to feel deprived like we did when we were young. Nevertheless, there needs to be a good balance in helping them find their wants and needs. Life is not all about fulfilling needs but also fulfilling wants from time to time so that they grow up happy and fulfilled. What is important is we help them to grow and see value in their desires. 

Besides my collector nature, I realised that I have become so much of a foodie as I age. I used to love eating pizza crusts when I was a kid and I am the kind of person who would leave the favourite part of any food to the last. Hence, I always made the point to start eating the fillings and leave the crust to the last. In Mandarin, we call this bitter first then sweet. HAHA! I do not know when it started but I realise that I dislike eating crusts over time. These days, I would only eat the fillings and not eat the pizza crust LOL! How weird that one's taste changes. Another of the many changes that I observed about myself has to be my love for seafood - I never ate any seafood before the age of 16 I would say. I eat only chicken, fish and probably a bit of pork. As I grew older, I like only seafood and nothing else HAHA. If I had to choose between seafood and meat, I would always go for seafood! How weird is this? Another of those food that has crept into my diet unknowingly is yoghurt. I used to find yoghurt disgusting, after all it is sour. However, I am eating 3-4 yoghurts on a weekly basis these days. Some changes are for the better, some are for the worse but my point is, we do not stop growing and changing no matter how old we are. :)