When I was young, they would say, that Singapore had only two kinds of weather - it was always either sunny or rainy. "It's boring," they would say, and I would echo, "to only have Spring and Summer." So what if the birds would migrate to Sungei Buloh to hide from the cold? And our equatorial climate supported growth of the spices - precious commodities that the Ang Mors had to come here to trade for. I wished that I lived somewhere that had the four seasons - four seasons like what I saw on the TV, in movies, in books. If you also grew up reading Archie comics, I'm sure you'd empathise with how I felt left out reading about the snow sculpture competitions (Jughead would almost always be making a sculpture of a hamburger and Betty of Archie) and how Lil' Jinx might be making snow angels...
Having two kinds of weather was boring, because it meant that I didn't have the chance to put on more clothing or see the trees change colour or have a childhood with snow angels. If you also grew up reading Archie comics, I'm sure you'd empathise with how left out I felt - to be growing up in Singapore.
In Singapore, it might have been possible to lie down in the sand pit on the playground to make sand angels - but it's not quite tempting. The occasional beer bottle cap poking out of the sand was usually enough to set our imaginations on the defensive mode - that the sand is clean enough to run about barefooted and not to think about what else could be living in the sand. Besides, having grazed my knees on the sand deterred the idea of lying down and rubbing my limbs around on the ground... (Now, snow angels must seem even more remote because playgrounds are tiled with those sissy spongey cushions.)
Another common reason to wish for the four seasons was the imagined entitlement to a wider variety of clothes. Autumn and Winter clothing in fashion magazines always look great. They promise to hide body flaws and make everyone look more pensive and melancholic. With autumn, anyone could have the rights to sensibly own three dozen scarves and a blue coat just like Paddington Bear's. One could have twenty-seven cool sensible hats and seventy-two sensible sweaters in a variety of styles. One would even have a pair of sensible ice-skates...
Yet, today, I'm not sure if you noticed anything... but today, the weather was a little bit strange. It might have started last night, but in the morning, the winds were already blowing hard. It seemed, that the winds were from different directions - sometimes from the East and sometimes from the North or West. The trees, if you had the chance to look at them properly, were swirling. It's really interesting, you know! Swirling trees.
Sure, other countries might have swirling trees too, but would they have swirling bougainvilleas from overhead bridges next to swirling iron tree hedges next to swirling pong pong trees? Would they have trembling orchid plants and jasmine plants outside your neighbour's home in the common corridor?
It was all quite cute to take note.
And I realised that having only two seasons doesn't make any place any more boring than a place with one million seasons.
Then again, perhaps a million seasons are quite hard to beat... but what I mean is, happiness lies in the details, and we all just need to know what works for us so we know where to look.
Honestly, do I wish for Singapore to have autumn and winter? So that I could match a colourful South American woollen poncho with a black turtle neck top and my new Uniqlo jeans? No, and why not? Because I know how expensive it would be to maintain a wardrobe for four seasons and how much more wardrobe space I would need. What a hassle it would be to manage all that?
I'd much rather be spending my afternoons watching the wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment