I’m very homesick and it hurts :(
I know I say this from a position of privilege but I have never, until now, felt like I couldn’t go home to Singapore any day. Just a 16h nonstop flight away. Fishball noodles or prata the moment I land. Now there are no flights (except from LA).
Wife is not a citizen so she can’t even board the plane. I miss home so terribly I miss the heat and the sun I miss sweating I miss eating all day I miss walking I miss my friends I miss my family I miss speaking Singlish and Teochew I miss using five languages in one sentence
I miss staying up till 4am watching soccer at a kopitiam while drinking tea (at 4am), taking taxis to meet friends at 2am to talk cock, I miss eating noodles at 5 in the morning
I miss thinking that hai di lao at midnight is a good idea and walking in the dark through the woods from my ulu house in Portsdown to the one at harbourfront

I miss spelling things with a u, like harbour
I miss public transportation, and not having to call it ‘transit’
This week hits especially hard because I am faraway during pink dot and election season, two of the seasons I love the most, indeed our only seasons, and I feel further and further away from everything back home
I want to gossip about PAP candidates in Singlish
And call people very one kind and cmi
I miss calling it bubble tea and not boba because I am a half Hokkien lesbian and I can’t stop thinking about boobs when I say boba
I miss queuing up for food that’s actually good
I miss walking around and bumping into every single person I dated between the ages of 14 to 30 lol
I miss dissing food courts from my snobbish perch in a hawker center but I am desperate for bad Singaporean food court food from here coz it’s better
I miss traveling 7kn for breakfast. Sometimes to another country
This is weird but I miss Singaporean hospitals and not having to check the price before I let anyone poke me anywhere even tho I have insurance
I miss McSpicy and McDonalds curry sauce lol. I miss calling it McLausai with people who understand the poetry of LS after a double McSpicy
I miss queer parties and laughing at baby dykes with popped collars while avoiding everyone I’ve ever had a fling with
I miss buying epok-epok from a random neighbors house and illegal otak-otak from under a bridge
I miss kilometers, centimeters, grams and liters. God I miss Celsius. I swear when I go home next I will just keep saying THIRTY TWO DEGREES CENTIGRADE whenever i can
I miss knowing how to spell kilometres and litres
I miss being able to go to a fun country because the flight cost US$50
I miss sports that I understand and care about
I miss wok hei. And tofu. God I miss tofu. And fishballs. And hee keow. And ti por.
I miss having a different chilli for every dish (I hate Sriracha). I miss having self service free pork lard bits to add to my breakfast. I miss ice jelly and I miss the Michael Jackson drink
I miss black and white carrot cake and Hokkien mee served in an orpeh leaf. I miss food in, and on, all leaves
I miss Tekka market. Words cannot describe how much I long for Mustafa Centre.
Mustafa Centre is my North Star
I miss spicy as the default food mode, not the option
I miss having words that make sense to describe different spice levels, because spicy is a meaningless concept among people who love chilli
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