word vomit 1000 words in 15 minutes no editing

Thing on my mind right now, oddly, is travelling. I’m walking around my house thinking about how familiar everything is. I went to the toilet to take a piss- and my living room and kitchen are in absolute, utter darkness because the prayer altar is off (God doesn’t visit your house when there’s a death in the family, or something like that- mother’s uncle passed away) and it’s interesting how I’m able to navigate it anyway, because it’s so familiar to me. I know my house inside out. No surprise there, I guess. I went to Al Salam in Tampines for the first time in a long time, and it’s amazing how familiar it all is. Everything. I mean, we can look at this at so many different scales. Singapore itself is so beautifully familiar when you come back after you travel.

I went on cruises as a kid, and I went to India with my parents a couple of times to visit my grandparents, but none of those experiences mattered very much. The travel experiences I explicitly remember are the times I’ve travelled either with friends, or with the missus. I think there’s something about travelling when you need to be responsible for yourself that puts you on extra “high alert”- and I imagine you don’t quite experience that as a tourist on package deals, because you’re kind of insulated from the world- the world presents itself in front of you, but it’s safe- you don’t need to directly immerse yourself into the local culture. My idea of travelling is going to coffeeshops and having conversations with locals.

I’m not like an obsessive die-die-want-to-travel sort, but there are a few things I’d really like to do. Interestingly, the things on my mind are- I want to go to New York to experience the sort of intensity that exists there. Maybe I’d like to visit Silicon Valley, but I have no real reason to, and I’m not particularly a techie anymore, so I’m not sure why- maybe because I’d like to visit the people on Quora. Yeah, I’d like to go on a roadtrip visiting Quorans. I’d also really like to take a long drive down the seaside highway in Australia. These are the things that kinda top my travel list. I’d also just like to travel and backpack around for the joy of it- Cambodia, Thailand- they’re all pretty nearby. I’m thinking, I want to do this because I want to see what happens to me, I want to know who I am when I’m outside of my comfort zone. I know, ultimately there’s only one journey, and it’s within yourself- one of the most amazing experiences I had this year was doing standup comedy. It was something always on my mind, somewhat, and I finally did it, and it was amazing. I felt so alive. I want to feel that alive as much as possible, all the time. I want to be happy and engaged and alive. I don’t think this will be a magic solution to my problems or anything, and I too am a little bit suspicious of living-by-a-bucket-list, but I think there’s a middle ground to be achieved.

Put more simply, I really don’t like the idea of living in today’s globalized world, but only having been born and raised in Singapore, and maybe travelling like a tourist to other countries. I’m not interested in going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower to take pictures and post them onto Facebook. I’m more interested in say, learning Muay Thai in Thailand, and playing in a band in the UK or something. That sort of shit. I want to immerse myself in humanity and see more of it- I can’t shake the feeling that my experience is awfully limited. I would like to try some mind-altering experiences, as long as it’s safe and controlled. I just do,

I think it’s a shame to NOT experience as much of the spectrum of experience that life has to offer you.

This is my 11th word vomit, I think, and it’s interesting to see how my mind is working now. I won’t pretend to know what’s going on, and I’m not going to theorize too much about it- but it does feel like the initial “dirty water” has been hosed out and what’s coming out now is a little more “clean” or “pure”. Or maybe I’m just making that up to fit the narrative I’ve crafted for myself. Either way. It’s still interesting.

What else. I’ve been meaning to do monthly summaries, and I was kind of thinking of doing one for December 2012 in the form of a Word Vomit- or maybe I’ll do all of them this way. The plan isn’t to make a big deal out of it or anything- it’s just to have some reference material when looking back at my life- I want to be able to do battle against the narrative bias in my head. If you keep a monthly account of your life (without spending too much time on it, of course, because living your life should be a greater priority than chronicling it), I believe that you will capture elements that you will otherwise miss if you simply use hindsight recollection.

At several points in my past- once I wanted to go to Oxford, at some point I wanted to go to SAJC, at some point I wanted to go to Poly, NTU Mass Comm, then NUS FASS, then SMU Social Science, then I started going sour-grapes on the whole thing. At some point I wanted to ditch everything and tour with a rock and roll band, however that was to be accomplished… the point I’m making is, we tidy up our narratives on hindsight, but that doesn’t give us the whole picture… I want more of the picture. I want more of the experience. At the same time, I want to NOT fall into the trap of obsessing with more-more-more to the point where having things or acquiring experiences like notches on a bedpost becomes a priority over the actual joy of experience, of life.

I think there is a balance to be had between a sort of goal-setting and a goal of no goals, a kind of worldliness and a kind of ascetic zen, a kind of discipline and a kind of freedom. It will take time to emerge but I am developing the idea very organically, very naturally.