We aren't very sophisticated, are we? But everytime I am back in Singapore, I feel my mind regressing and sinking into mush. My usually razor-sharp wit degenerates from watching too much CSI. I'm planning a trip to the east coast of australia with my boyfriend, Jamie, where we will can guan beautiful sandy beaches, majestic waterfalls, and giant earthworms. It will be like something out of Slaughterhouse Five (or substitute with any other post-apocalyptic movie set in the deserted future with large mutated animals). We're still in the research stage and he just asked his friend, amusingly named 'Chris, the Nazi', what to expect from hostels.
So he sent me this email:
"Regarding hostels in general, he (Chris) said on a note of caution, "they are full of 18 year old kids trying to get laid and it gets pretty tiring". He recommended staying in a few hotels along the way to avoid the desire to murder horny teenagers. Basically we will be the oldest people there
- Apparently there is a reason why dorm rooms are so much cheaper. This is because they are full of 18 year old kids trying to get laid. They are pretty noisy and tend to stay up all night.
- Don't bother with the OZ experience. An East Coast Greyhound pass will take you to the same places for about 2/3 of the price. Again, the OZ experience is full of 18 year old kids trying to get laid.
So, basically, 18 year old kids trying to get laid may haunt us. Personally I'm happy to pay a bit more at times to have somewhere slightly nicer. Having roughed it throughout Europe I can tell you its not nearly as earthy and romantic as you might imagine. It can get extremely depressing. And as we'll have more money than God next year we may as well try to be as comfortable as possible."
I feel old. One big attraction of the east coast for me is the possibility of seeing giant earthworms, like this:
Notice that the caption says 'juvenile' giant earthworm. Imagine what the adult version would look like!
So it got me thinking about what I was doing when I was 18. What was I doing when I was 18? Writing a play with my groupmates for our A level exams about how we were all cheena-piang even though none of us wanted to be, aka 'finding our roots through drama' and other wanky pretensious bullshit. My 18 year old sister is presently trying to get to level 60 for world of warcraft. It makes me wonder if we should have been trying to get laid and if we have missed out on a world of fun (and syphilis).
I suppose I would rather Gloria define her existence by trying to get to level 60 than trying to get laid.
I know I have definitely missed out on my most fruitful backpacker years. Now that I am old, I prefer my bit of comfort, ie. air-conditioned rooms, or even, rooms, instead of tents. In Greece, I know I preferred my own double bed in our rented villa on Mykonos to our 7euro a night Athens bunkbed. Yet part of travelling rough is the possibility of meeting new people (usually with a view to having another place to crash should you decide to visit their home city in future), and you meet the most people by sharing a dorm room in hostels.
Sometimes, young people being young people, they fall into each others' beds. Gloria and I witnessed first-hand such a phenomenon in Paris. But I can't be bothered to tell you about it because it is a boring story anyway.
I had a very innocent and boring childhood/teenagehood. I never took any drugs or had alcohol or casual sex, as my frustrated ex-boyfriends will testify. I didn't get to travel until I was safely out of the country, when I was 20. Jamie is right to say that we will be the oldest there. Even when I was in Shanghai I was the 2nd oldest in my little group of acceptable people to hang out with. When did I go from always being the youngest in every group to being the oldest?
My childhood was really quite idyllic. I had 50cents to spend every day. When I wanted to splurge, I would save up and spend a whole fifty cents on a giant bag of ikan bilis, with chilli of course.
That was in Primary 1. My standard lunch would be a 30cent plate of curry chicken which would include 1 potato cut into half and 1 piece of chicken. And a 10cent cup of fako ribena that was actually made from cheap grape cordial of some sort. Or a very small plate of mee siam for 40cents which came with half a boiled egg. And perhaps a packet of seaweed (4 paper-thin slices) for 10cents as a snack for later. Or chee cheong fun with thick black sweet sauce and sesame seed oil for 30cents and mixed fruit punch for 10cents. That way I could have 10cents left over to buy stickers from the school stationery shop to add to my collection of shiny stickers, scratch 'n' sniff stickers, furry stickers, 'branded' stickers like carebears and my little pony collection, and glow in the dark stickers.
For amusement, we would play, 'What is the time, Mr Wolf'? and other enlightened games like catching which allowed us to run around and not be fat. Nowadays, schoolchildren eat at MacDonalds and just watch movies on their iPods. While waiting for the bus, our favourite activity was to pluck little red Ixora flowers growing by the roadside, take out the stamen of the flower, and suck out the nectar. Now, kids have sex in void decks.
I remember the time blue M&Ms did not exist. Remember when kitkat was packaged in foil then wrapped in paper? Now you have chunky kitkat, peanut kitkat, sakura kitkat. I think their sales would increase if they brought back the paper-wrapped kitkat. Do you remember the days before blue M&Ms? If you do, you must be at least 20. Ah, those were simpler times.
I remember when there was no MacDonalds in Bishan. Now, there are 2 in Junction 8 alone! Do you remember the time you thought MacDonalds was not evil, but a place of happiness and fun and nice ice-cream in cones? Yes, when we were like those deluded little children in Supersize Me who ultimately could not recognise a picture of Jesus Christ or George Bush but pointed out Ronald MacDonald easily. Now my 18 year old sister is aware and mature enough to realise that they are taking over the world. So perhaps there is hope yet.
My teenage years were marked by trying to do well, not to get in the popular girls' way and arrogantly trying to assert my superiority over all (what's new, haha). I'm sure we have all been there. Then the later JC years were all about biding my time until I could flee the overwhelming inanity of everyday life here. Now all I want to do is set up a kopitiam in London so I can re-capture this mundane sense of sian-ness. But it will be an artistic, fashionable, ironic sian-ness, which some people call ennui. And I will let people smoke and read whatever wanky postmodern continental writers they want to. I will serve teh, teh-peng, skinny teh-peng(reduced fat condensed milk), kopi, skinny kopi, kopi with dao huay chui, green tea, green tea peng and various bubble teas.
Then I would have loads of nibbly things on the menu, like curry puff, ikan bilis, prata, durian puff, spring roll, nasi lemak and laksa (with ham! not ham, ham! i.e cockles) Would you patronise my cafe?
