Shanghai Crib

Ooh, so I just got off the phone with Kow Foo, who had spoken to his friend in Shanghai. At any rate I don't get to rent a room in their swanky unoccupied pad in central Shanghai, but that friend (thank you, thank you, whoever you are) with all his leisurely time went to check out ACLS and the surrounding area, and even scooped out some potential places for me!

- The 2000RMB one, which is about 10 minutes' walk from ACLS, in a slightly older quarter, a slightly older building
- The 2500RMB one which is just about completing renovation, a decent 6-7 minutes from ACLS
- The 2200RMB one, relatively new, and RIGHT NEXT TO the academy!
- And apparently another one in the nearby JingAn expat area, also nearly completing renovation.

They're are the open-concept single-person type units, and I guess decent places to live in for 6 months. We're gonna check it out some more, but at any rate I'm kinda grinning at the possibility of waking up just 5 minutes before class, pulling on my clothes and dashing next door! Heh, lazy me. Things are looking a little more exciting now, what with firming up my visa and travel plans.

So initially I was planning to fly on the 8th, maybe take the 9am flight with Auntie Ivy's son Jason who's working there. He'll be back for CNY, and it'll be nice to have someone to travel to SH with, who can at least help me a little in the airport. The original plan was to check into a youth hostel for a few nights and hunt around for suitable accommodation with the estate agents in the area. But then Mum's reminded me that Poh Poh's death anniversary falls on the 17th day after CNY, which for this year is the 12th of February. Might decide to fly late 12th or early 13th instead, depending on what flight with what airlines are available.

(Be warned, from here onwards the post changes tone and direction considerably, which is not all surprising since I wrote this in two parts. Feel free to skim over the graphic, grandmother-story descriptions and jump from introduction to conclusion.)

So for this new year, it'll be a new country, a new city, a new place to call my temporary home. I wonder now, how things will look like in a mere few weeks' time; 6 months from now, I will remember how I felt this moment, and ask myself whether it was as I expected, and what things I would do differently, if I could do it all over again.

6 months ago, when, for the final time (for now), I stepped off the plane from England, into the enveloping familiarity of my blue-brown room, the knowledge that I will not budge from this place for a while was like a sigh of relief and finality. That time, before I made the decision to uproot yet again, I finally did something that was the culmination of a 10-year habit.

Without fail, everytime I said goodbye to a place I had lived in, I would sit upright in the middle of the bed, close my eyes, and slowly visualise the peculiar nooks and crannies of the space I had to call Home for a while. That night 6 months ago, I sat cross-legged on my bed and closed my eyes in that darkened bedroom, and slowly brought to the surface of my mind those visualisations I'd etched deep in my memories. Minutely savouring the countours, objects and sensations of those spaces, it felt as if I was really there again, inhabiting that place, that time, that younger self.

First I visited my 11-year-old self, some 10 years ago. My divan bed had a worn cotton quilt with a patchwork of dolphins leaping up from the sea. The wall immediately to the right had a cantilevered double bookshelf, the upper level stacked with books that I'd somewhat outgrown. Behind was a raised cabinet storing various soft toys that took their turns on the bed, and in front was a sliding-door double wardrobe with a recessed, fluted pattern. The desk ran parallel on the left, filling up half the length of the room, its large window overlooking the fountains, bridge, and covered walkway. The floor was of the typical brown parquet you'd find in these mid-range condominiums. Even with a small oscillating fan on the wall, the afternoon heat usually drove me to the greater shade of the dining room to do the homework, but evenings were spent sprawled on the bed, zooming through my Enid Blyton and early fantasy books, and later on the rhythmic croaking of bullfrogs lulled me to sleep.

Next it was that chilly single bed in my quite-bare room in Gardenville, Singapore. A loan from the real estate agency until we bought our furnishings, that rented bed was the only item of furniture in the largest bedroom I'd had until then. Essentially a generous-sized rectangle with amazingly high ceilings, built-in airconditioning, a big wardrobe along one end, the room had floor-to-ceiling length glass windows with the most fantastic view over the lushly forested gardens of the Shangri-La Hotel. That first night, I switched off the lights and sat awake in bed for a long while, drinking in the softly spilling light from the moon and the trees that seemed to be waving a leafy welcome. It was also the first time I'd attempted to pull on a large duvet cover over my new goose-down duvet - needless to say I got tangled up inside the sheets!

That room, that apartment, was wonderful, and I absolutely loved it. Shortly later, I got a lovely, high loft bed from Ikea, a queen-sized manifestation of every child's dream with a workstation and shelves underneath, and most importantly, a real 6-foot ladder to climb into bed with. As expected, whatever books we had brought over from Malaysia lined the shelves; a framed photo of Mum with an infant me hung on the wall, and I even had a "chicken carpet" underneath my very own swivel chair. Luxury indeed, and Mum's complaints whenever she had to climb up to change the sheets was somewhat tempered by the fact that it was ridiculously easy to clean under the bed, for once.

Alas, my enjoyment of that bed and room didn't last terribly long, and it was onto a vastly different scene when I came to England at 14 years. Imagine how an only child feels, when you've always had a room of your own, and the only time you've had to share was with your nanny/maid during toddler-hood, upon realising you've somehow got to survive in a old English house and share the room with 3 other girls! But Wells saw some fun times, some great memories that I wouldn't replace with anything in the world. As I'd arrived there first, I got to take my pick of the 4 study-cum-bed units and of course chose one by the window and heater. The unit was one of those peculiar things that is hard to picture unless you've seen them before. the bottom layer consists of an incredibly deep desk, the inner half of which is covered lengthwise by a single bed about 2 feet above. To the right is a deep, broad drawer, and underneath a cupboard with 2 shelves. Below the desk is a pair of lockable doors which led to the empty space underneath the inner half of the bed. Designed for boarders to store all their belongings in-between terms, that back storage portion was actually open, but there wasn't much fear of vandalism or theft as the heavy units were pushed up against the wall. To the side there were 3 cubby holes where we would put our shoes, and a separate wardrobe for each of us. Boarders were allowed to stick things over any surface we chose, as long as it wasn't offensive or in the way of the cleaners. In my year, the wall shared between Emma and me were plastered with various posters, magazine cut-outs and print-outs of the Lord of the Rings movie and especially Elijah Wood (Emma's) and Orlando Bloom (mine). Eleanor had a large poster listing the reasons why a man was better than a dog, and Emily had one of those "Chocoholic" posters with a dancing purple berry in the middle. Along the headboard around the bed I'd stuck various cards from family and friends, Claire's sketch of a feisty Shetland pony (supposedly me), a newspaper clipping of an exposed Afghan woman's face in a sea of veiled heads, another clipping of a Picasso sketch, and a shiny red-and-gold ang pao. Funny, the things one can recall across the years.

Year 11 saw me sharing a much smaller room with Eleanor. Again, I chose the bed nearest to the window and heater, coincidentally directly above my bed from the year before. This was one of the prized dorms everybody fought to be allocated to, for it had its own sink (a luxury so you didn't have to stand in the cold bathroom brushing your teeth), and a mirrored alcove with its own built-in bench seat, in which generations of Plumptre girls would hide the damning evidence of outlawed vaguely-alcoholic drinks sneaked into the boarding house in soft drink bottles. Ah, the shenanigans of 16-year-old girls!

In these two years I grew resilient to the winter cold of the English countryside that is so different from the cold of airconditioning - the sensation of slipping from warm silk bathrobes and fluffy ducky slipppers into freezing cold sheets, and later on learning to run the hot air of a hairdryer underneath beforehand. Initially accustomed to the deep, complete silence and darkness of my Singapore room, I learnt to fall asleep to the comforting sound of occasional cars zooming along Liberty Road, their headlights through the thin curtains throwing slanted rays across the cracked plaster ceilings.

Even now, I still miss the gnarled character of that old English house, that inimitable sensory experience of patchy paintwork, the not-quite-straight lines, those chilly drafts sneaking through windows that cannot or will not close properly, and the clear, crisp sunlight streaming through old rippled glass panes. Sherborne's character was never quite in the same vein of quaint oldness.

Lower Six in Sherborne saw me bundled into Wingfield House, packed into a longgggggg, partitioned room with 5 other 6 Formers on the 3rd storey. My "room" was positioned to the far right of the dorm, directly facing the entrance. Furnished with a basic 3-ft bed with drawers underneath, wardrobe, tiiiiny study desk, our cubicles didn't have proper doors, only some mottled green-blue curtains that barely stretched the length of the entrance, and the partitions ended some 4-5 feet short of the ceiling - all this contributing to the lack of aural insulation, and a thin veneer of physical privacy. Luckily enough, my corner lot provided me with a nice bay window that overlooked the tennis courts and main school building.

My neighbours were, in order of proximity, Tamara, Cindy (Ting), Cherrie, and Lizzie, the only British girl in our dorm. Tamara and I, and occasionally Cindy, used to curl up in the toasty laundry room just behind our dorm, especially when winter gave its all. I missed the frequency of that companionship when I was made Vice Head of House, and subsequently Head of House later in the year, and given a room all to myself on the top floor. Nevertheless, that proper room gave me the privacy I've learnt to treasure, a place that was warmer and cosier that anybody else had the fortune to have, and my favourite bit of English houses: slanted ceilings with exposed rafters.

All the Upper 6 moved into Mulliner House for our final year, some 70-odd stressed, playful, loud, moody, vain, hormone-charged females under one roof. Again, my real estate luck held up, and I absolutely loved the single room I was given on the top floor, along the quietest corridor in the whole building, with the least-visited toilet, and overlooking one of the more tranquil spots of the school grounds. Everything about the furnishings they gave us was simply... generous. From the 3 1/2 foot bed, the large wardrobe and ample drawers, the full-length mirror (always very important), to the broad and deep desk and wide window, there was just so much space in Mulliner. It was, very simply, the best place anyone could be in, for having the optimum personal space for studying or just simply sleeping through a rainy winter afternoon, snuggled under an airy, warm duvet, unfinished knitting on the table and some music playing softly in the background.

My remembrance of Derby House, Whitworth Park, during my first year in Manchester is tinted by a strong wash of the colour orange and a stomach-churning waft of cooking oil. Having chosen one of the cheapest accommodation Halls due to its proximity to the business school, I had the misfortune of being placed into the most dilapidated of the housing blocks, the one that was next-in-line for rennovation and refurbishment. Though comely enough from afar, the make-up of Whitworth Park was a throwback to the architecture of the dread '70s, and Derby House was the worst of the lot. My room was perhaps the tiniest I ever had the misfortune to stay in, the rickety furniture and mottled orange curtains long deserving of the nearest garbage heap, the insulation and heating a laughable affair, and worst of all, situated above the window was the opening of the kitchen extraction pipe. I shall not bore you all with detailed descriptions of the stench, not commiserate at length on the narrow and so-thin-you-can-feel-the-springs mattress among other things, but suffice to say, my final visualisation of the place was not the best.

Thankfully, the final two years of my tertiary education saw me considerably upgrading my housing conditions, taking the D room in the H block of Wilmslow Park, originally intended as Manchester's poshest student accommodation. The carpet was noticeably thicker, the carpentry far superior in design and build.. well, everything was just miles better. But more importantly, the super twin bed saw me finally making my transition from the 3-foot bed of Derby House back to the original Asian (ie. larger than Western) Queen size of the bed at home. My room had more storage space than a student could wish for: besides and above the bed frame, cubby holes behind the door, a decent-sized wardrobe, small coffee table, bookshelf on the wall, standalone 3-tiered bookcase, drawers below the desk, a shelf and ledge inside the bathroom. The desk ran the breadth of the room, giving plenty of space to be messy, and the easy access to the electric heater somewhat made up for the relatively smaller size of the restricted window.

It was a great place, with great times. Cook-out sessions in the decent-sized kitchen, packed pot-luck parties, some intense society meetings, crazy drunken poker/chor dai di matches. Intimate one-to-one talks, heated discussions and hilarious imitations, and studying, sleeping, frantic essaying. The drama of 2 years played out to a striking backdrop of another hundred students doing the same things, across an airy, quadrangle courtyard.

And now it's a complete circle, and I'm back in my room, in a space that is finally mine, in a home that is truly our own. In my darkened room, cross-legged on the bed, I skim across remnants of the past, through times tumultuous and calm, and wonder what new adventures will come about soon enough.

Do you ever get nostalgic for the places you've lived in before? Do you, like me, try to preserve something of that familiar, illusive place within your memories, an essence of those spaces you breathed life into that can never be captured in a photograph?

One Month To Go

And thus begins the final month countdown to take-off day. Just another one of those days, when, after some rest and respite in No.795, I take that 45 minute drive to KLIA, check in, pop my bags on the carousel, and say my goodbyes all over again. After 7 years of living away, each one with at least one or two of those days, it's gonna be an over-familiar feeling, tinged with a hint of alien-ness, and a different flavour of trepidation this time around.

It will be a little strange, this imminent journey. I've flown off so many times in that north-east direction, bisecting the globe diagonally through the Andaman spice route, over India's booming cities of Hyderabad and Ahmadabad, across the tumultuous Middle-Eastern lands of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, onto the blooming cultures of Europe, and then finally landing on that vaguely triangular-shaped island. The place that started it all, a land of bangers and mash, custard and crumble, the rhubarb and Yorkshire puddings that saw me through my formative years on a smug, rotund belly.

It's been rather nostalgic recently, picturing myself again in Manchester, perhaps braving the unusually biting winter cold with an army of jumpers, fleeces and my dad's infamous sheepskin underwear. (No, not literally!) Malaysia's monsoon this year has been on the chilly side, albeit nothing like South/North-East England this year. In that sense, I am looking forward to spending the last part of this winter in a different country, a different place. They say that Shanghai's winter isn't rationally that cold, but the omnipresent chilling wetness that spreads to your bones makes it as formidable a winter city as any.

Despite feeling relatively gung-ho about the impending winter, I'll easily admit that I'm a little scared of this new adventure I'm plunging head-first into. Just a little. Because for me, that small sink-hole of fear and foreboding in the pit of your stomach that materialises with the looming take-off, could be, more often than not, attributed to a guilty lack of preparations for forthcoming exams. This time, essays and exams are (for now) a distant thing of the past, but venturing into the unknown future alone is still somewhat daunting.

Suddenly, it's like I'm going away to boarding school again for the first time, just that I don't have my parents beside me, don't know anyone there, coming to grips with an unfamiliar language, and the school of 600 is now a swirling, pulsing city 10 times the size and density of KL. I'm buoyed up with the same irrepressible confidence that my 14-year-old self had, that by hook or by crook, I will get through it all, and have a jolly good time to boot. Coming along in the luggage are the same niggling doubts from 7-plus years ago: what if I don't fit in, what if I can't cope, what if I've pushed my extraordinary luck too far and something really bad happens this time around...?

During countless occasions when that sickening, sinking feeling of nerves made a timely appearance for my entrance on-stage, I'd stride out on the high of the adrenalin rush and the audience's adulation, and deliver one heck of a performance. It's like swinging your way across mountain tops, suspended 100 feet off the ground with no visible means of support. High time to reclaim my place out there. Stay tuned for one helluva ride.


p.s. How d'ya like the new bloggy template for the new year?

Endings

With at least half the world ending 2008 on a decidedly low note, replete with dollops of bitching on and on how crap their year was, and the uncomfortably gloomy tidings of the year to come, I decide to - surprise! - blog about things decidedly less Gormenghast-esque for the first post of the new year.

Hello 2009!

So dad and I have been gearing up for our amazing event to start the year - a surprise 30th wedding anniversary for my mum! (Goes without saying that I'll be publishing this blog post a few days' later.) It's been a pretty busy, stressed couple of weeks, us having to plan and tiptoe around her all the while having secret conferences and making phonecalls/decisions when we're out of the house. It really doesn't help that she's a stay-at-home person, and the house is single-storeyed and relatively small... Anyway more about our secret bash later.

I guess with this new year, it's a timely reminder for me to come out of my hibernation-reclusive break. What with my feet nearly healed from the operation (what operation, you say? Just ask.) and the event-organsing nearly done, I don't quite have much excuse any longer to remain in my Hermitage. With my departure for Shanghai looming imminently in a month's time, it's really time to finally get off my butt and out there again. No new year's resolutions, as usual. Perhaps reviving this blog would be good, a sort of chronicle of my Shanghai adventures, but then again, I won't commit to more than 1 or 2 posts a week. Max. Can't be spending much time writing on here, when so much needs to be sorted and done, can I? Just writing from time to time will get them brain juices flowing again, a prelude to all the mental labouring I'll have to do once the Mandarin lessons begin. So here's to an exhilarating year off-the-beaten track, with plenty of opportunities to grab, places to see, and people to love!