I’ve always had an affinity with the road. The endless stretch of tarmac beckoning me to follow — on wheels. An odyssey. A new adventure. Countless lives, passing me by — played out in droves. So many different people. But, above all, I’m free. My woes and troubles, left behind, further and further, until they’re…
Two Months in Kofu
I honestly don’t know where time went — one minute I was bidding my family goodbye as I walked past the departure gates, and the next thing I knew, a little over two months had passed since I started my new life in Japan. I’m not sure if anyone expected a regular stream of new…
Finding Your Feet in Kofu (Unitas Student)
I have to admit, I was heavily aided in my preparation to live in Japan (shoutout to my school’s coordinators, James-san and Hide-san for letting me harass them to no end about the various nitty gritties that I was quite unnecessarily bothered by on hindsight). Yet, there are some aspects to living in Japan, or…
Kofu, Week 2 — The Sleepy City
Kofu is the capital city of Yamanashi Prefecture and home to some 200,000 residents, and the cityscape from afar seems to suggest that it is a pretty bustling place to be, with buildings sprawled from one end of the city to the other. Yet, my increasingly distant walks paint a different picture — one of…
Kofu, Week 1 — New Beginnings
Before I left Singapore for Japan, I told anyone who had to put up with my annoyingly incessant conversations about the latter that I was looking forward to the many challenges that would invariably fall my way as I navigate foreign lands on my own. Hoo boy, did I get one the moment I stepped…
Nomadic Affair — Chapter II
I was debating for a bit, if I should be publishing this, mostly because I didn’t want to overly dramatise moving abroad, and partly because I didn’t want to jinx what could possibly by the biggest life decision I’ve made in my entire life, all 30 years of it. As I write this, less than…
Living a Quarter-Year at a Time — Lessons and Reflections
I always found movie quotes tacky and never really bothered to appreciate them — at least until I discovered a few relatable ones that seemed to speak to me in the season of life I was in; and perhaps that was the catalyst I needed. Growing up, I was a big fan of the Fast…
Not What I Signed Up For
These days, my family and I resort to visiting the ginormous Changi Jewel mall, situated next to Changi Airport, in a sad bid to revive long-lost tinges of excitement that come with travelling abroad. I also know of more friends who have started photographing planes — you get the gist; we all miss flying. You…
We Are All Astronauts
Like most people stuck indoors during the pandemic, I found myself dropping deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that is random Youtube videos. Interestingly, vlogs about life in the International Space Station (ISS) found their way into my recommended feed. I spent the next two hours watching ISS tours by charismatic astronauts who gave…
Lessons From The Fort of Shame
Nov 16, 2019 On a downcast Saturday afternoon, my girlfriend and I decided to pay the nearby Old Ford Factory a visit. Tucked away in an enclave just beside a sprawling nature reserve, the war archive was probably a place you would have visited if you were a student in Singapore embarking on a mandatory…
Nomadic Affair 