It has come down to my last 24 hours here in London, and I have no clue what to do. I remember when I was busy engaging in my national sport yesterday, i.e. ironing and tidying up my laundry, I looked back to the first day that I arrived here in London. After lugging in my luggage, thud, thud, thud, as it went down the stairs to the basement where later I spent countless ungodly hours in solitary confinement watching more reality TV than I had ever had my entire life (thank the heavens for speedy internet connection!), I told myself that this was going to be first day of my life. It is funny that I always look to what-is-to-come at the beginning of things, and cannot seem to not look back when it is all about to be over.
This trip has turned out to be something different from what I initially bargained for. And not necessarily in the negative way. Its failure to meet my expectations was probably caused mainly by my too-idealistic notion of what it was, and my unreadiness to live up to those ideals. I suppose I was just not in the place where I was feeling like reckless abandon. Getting my US visa rejected was a huge blow, and at risk of sounding melodramatic, I would say it was as traumatic as the time where I accidentally dropped a stack of plates when I was about nine years-old, inadequately helping my mother in the kitchen. At that age, strict liability was the rule of the game. My mum thought that the magic mantra of telling me (repeatedly) "Are you sure you can?" and "Be careful, be careful, be careful!" was sufficient to completely eliminate the risk of having her china smashed into smithereens. So when I exited the Consulate in Toronto with nothing but a pink form of rejection, I swear I could hear those plates crushing all over again.
Nonetheless, there were highlights too. Dog-sledding was particularly fantastic--although at first I was not quite sure why it always smelled like dog-poo whenever I sat in the sled. Only half an hour later I realised that I had eight dog asses staring back at me the entire journey. It was worth appreciating how these dogs could follow verbal cues better than could my little brother, and perhaps more importantly, how they can literally pee while running up and down the slopes with the weight of two adults on their backs. That is multitasking at its best!
And of course, seeing snow first hand for the first time was exciting, well, at least for the first seventeen minutes. Having smoke-like exhalations, braving through a blizzard yet still keeping dry (or at least, until you enter a room where the snow cling-on melted and drenched you coats and boots), peeing in the wilderness to see whether it would freeze before it touched the ground (it did not!) were things that I can safely say that money cannot buy.
And meeting new and interesting people was also part of the packaged prize. It is worth noting that somehow almost all the street dancers I met here in London, and Toronto too, were all men and women of colour: Asians, African, Hispanic. All the white people seem to flock in the contemporary scene. Only here that I was labelled the too-broad-a-term "Asian": not Indonesian, not Chinese, not even Filipino. Guess we do the same with "ang-moh" back home, which applies to Europe, North America and Australia. Everywhere we go, ignorance abounds.
Anyway, meeting the people from WOOF was a blessing. They are a friendly bunch who really deserve the term "family". One of the most emotional thing I witnessed (though not necessarily experienced) was the prom, the moment when one by one the delegates from graduating batch went up to the podium to speak. One of them mentioned that when she wrote her speech, she peppered it with metaphors and humour to a point where the end-product did not turn out to be what she wanted to say. But stripped off of those distractions, she could write nothing. Why? Because to her, the reality was too painful. She said that reality is a state of things as they actually exist, instead of as how one hopes they exist, and the reality was that they were going to take their separate ways. I mean, I have had my fair share of graduations, proms and goodbyes, and by now I classify myself as a veteran, and not that I was moved to tears (these tear ducts have stopped functioning since 2007!), but it was nice to see a group of people that could feel that much for one another, even if I only see it from the outside. It was beautiful.
So, perhaps it is too ambitious to call my trip exciting, because for the most parts it is not. It has been, for the most parts, relaxing. And on hindsight, relaxation was what I wanted when I signed on for this trip. The slow pace of London made me realise how much time I had in my hand, and while to relax is divine, there is such a thing as too-much-time. And there is also something called way-too-much-time. It is a delicate process to find that perfect balance, because once I went past the ideal, I just turned suicidal, bordering on homicidal. But I cherished it, now that I am at the end of the tunnel, because with those too-much-time and way-too-much-time, I did not what is especially exciting, not what is particularly relaxing, but those that I wanted to do--whatever they were.
Now that the light is near, and I have a time-warp-like journey back home where I will have to squeeze myself into my claustrophobic airplane seat for too many hours that the human body can--should--endure, I just want to say I cannot wait to get home and meet my parents.
