Popagandhi

I have a tattoo on my lower back. It was given to me by the grandson of a tribal village chief. I grimaced for hours on the floor as he used the primitive tools and ingredients that had tattooed his Iban people for centuries, on me, a girl from a big city.

I'd always wanted a tattoo, but didn't know what; this one crept up on me. Like the girl I was there with (we had a crazy idea: we would visit and live with an Iban community in a longhouse and celebrate Hari Gawai with them), I wasn't expecting any of this. The girl, the tattoo, or that I would have such a story to tell many years after the fact. I chose a bunch of tribal motifs from an album and told him to make it up. I got lucky: I like my tattoo very much, even if it is what some people would call a tramp stamp. I'm proud of it. There's a story to tell each time anyone asks about it.

The girl is no more in my life but the tattoo remains, defiantly representing all of the new beginnings I will embrace in life. Tomorrow, I start a new life and more and more I feel as though the year of grieving and floating, which so profoundly altered my path and direction in life as well as my livelihood and future plans, is finally about to draw to a conclusive close.

I am finally ready for another tattoo. This time, I know exactly where it should be, what it should say and what it should look like. I would not have known this without the pain of my first tattoo. It will be a beautiful Sanskrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita and I intend to have it inscribed on my upper left shoulder. This time, I will harbour no plans or illusions about the permanence of anything other than that of the Sanskrit verse on my shoulder; this time, I will learn to love without needing to know the world.

Five Places I Visited and Loved in the Past 12 Months

1. Helsinki
2. Copenhagen
3. San Francisco
4. New York City
5. Stockholm

Five Things I Learned in the Past 3 Months

1. Diving
2. Swimming
3. Git
4. Ruby
5. Still looking for the fifth big thing. For now it looks like it's going to be Fightshape

Note: I could swim, but badly. I took up Shaw Method swim lessons to dramatically improve my technique and confidence.

Five Things I Bought Recently

1. A 27" Korean IPS monitor (A Yamakasi Catleap Multi)
2. Steelcase Leap
3. A Sony NEX-5 with 16mm lens
4. Xbox 360 with Kinect and many amazing games (Assassin's Creed! Borderlands 2! Dishonored! Wow)
5. Das Keyboard

Five Challenges I Will Soon Tackle

1. Advanced diving course with many specialties
2. A job
3. A hopeful transformation into a real programmer
4. A massive overhaul/redesign/ renovation of my room in Singapore. It needs to look less like a place that 12 year old me once lived in.
5. Another tattoo

And at some point, a haircut, too. And a piece of fiction.

Oh shit.

in hindsight

Some songs I cannot hear again. Some songs make me think of you. Not of you in the general sense one does of missing one another. Not even in the way one thinks of losing a loved one or saying goodbye.

Worse? Far worse? The songs of dread. The songs of the silence between us gnawing ever more loudly until we could no longer ignore it. The songs that dig deep into your soul and gives it a little twist with every word and chord.

Did you not hear it die? It fell with a little thud.

In your car. In the rain. In the house. In the routine. Your impatience. Leaping out at me from behind the telephone.

Everybody is a different person with different people. It would be a lie to say otherwise.

With you I was young and hot-headed. A boat without a plan. I was perfectly happy to let you captain it. But we never knew where or how to dock.

Sweet Disposition.

I was a person without a home in those lost days. A wanderer without a country. From bus to plane to taxi to your car. To a home which was never ours. And an us I'm growing increasingly unclear of. Is this a dream? Or is this reality?

Seven Wells.

1825 days. Half of them spent on planes. Half of them ten thousand miles apart. If not literally, then as some impenetrable chasm I never learned to cross.

I hate those songs.

You wanted to know how it came so easily to me. How I moved on. I did not. Did you know of all those nights I drank myself to imbecilic stupor to write poetry in languages I don't speak? It looks like I walked away from our life with scarcely a moment's thought. But it was a burden I could not bear.

The thought of loving forever a woman who did not want to marry me. The idea that I had to banish all hope for a family. That, when I left you, tethering on the edge of madness, you loved me tremendously but not enough, seemed to be what you were saying. My hopes. My dreams. It was all you. It was madness that made me circumnavigate the globe to win your heart. And it was madness that made me travel the world to lose it. We never wanted to be the people who stayed together from not having a good reason to leave. Better now than at 35, or something like it. In the end I could not bear the thought of not being enough.

I can never go back to that city and not feel quite desperately breathless again. Not for a long time at least. Waiters who want to know why I've disappeared. Friends who I haven't and won't see. That city, at the start, was all you and all us and all our secret nooks and our very own places and special people and our house and our dog. That city then grew into a nightmare that was all broken dreams as they fell apart and things that could never be and places I could not find and things I could never be. I tried to hide it and blamed your taxi drivers and horrible traffic and the pollution and the inbred circles and the wanky artists but in the end it was all us, falling to pieces and me doing the only thing I knew how to which was run very far away from responsibilities and rent because like I said I was a different person then.

The good thing about falling to pieces and putting yourself back again is you do it so many times you get faster at it, if you remember how. I ran as far away from that city as I could and hurried to build a new life for myself, it was selfish of me to. I ran and I ran and I buried myself in a dozen women's pillows and I walked home from their darkened kitchens like a zombie every morning mortified that my life as I knew it had ceased to exist and that I had swung a fairly giant axe in its direction.

I never want to have to run again from the woman I love. I never want to turn the other way in silence biting my tongue letting an argument fester until we no longer speak. I never want to hide who I love or have to be hidden.

The seventh well can't be found.

I'm sorry you loved me I'm sorry you wasted five years I'm sorry you gave up so much I'm sorry I hate KL I'm sorry I'm not a private person at all I'm sorry I moved on so quickly I'm sorry I loved you too damn much I'm sorry my disease made me an emotional basket case I'm sorry I never learned to stop crying I'm sorry you hate crying I'm sorry I wanted my girlfriend to also want me as much as I wanted her I'm sorry I don't know how to be older and better I'm sorry I wish I'd done a little better

63 random things from the past 3 months (inspired by Michael Ruby's "Fleeting Memories")

1. Arriving in Budapest knowing absolutely nothing about Hungary
2. Drinking palinka for the first time, feeling the flush
3. The Hungarian energy drinks I drank while wearing funny hats
4. Walking with team Photogotchi along the Halászbástya, feeling a little like Ezio Auditore da Firenze
5. The boys who were carrying giant swans and crocodile paddle boats onto Lake Balaton
6. Sitting in the yard of old times
7. Leaving Hungary thinking fröccs is the best idea in the world
8. Arriving in frosty Helsinki once again
9. The cute studio in Apila
10. That Finnish rapper in a Tiki bar
11. Being miserable, cold and desperately wanting you
12. More palinka, Timo's flat, tiny spaces and uncrossable chasms
13. Red-heads in the rain
14. Remembering that karaoke in northern Europe is pretty damn weird
15. Mushroom-picking, mushroom-cooking
16. Cycling on a Jopo through the rain
17. Beautiful Finnish brunches on Sunday mornings
18. A lot of fish
19. Tactical Nuclear Penguin
20. American Airlines, truly a terrible way to fly
21. Arriving in America for the first time
22. Pacific Heights. Not having change for the bus to Market Street.
23. Speaking badly in Cantonese.
24. Father of my future children showing me a iBaby monitor in the Apple Store
25. Brilliant people all over San Francisco.
26. Being chased up a flight of stairs by a bouncer in the Castro for not having an ID.
27. Losing my ID. And my credit cards. And my iPhone. In a bar. In the Tenderloin.
28. Being stupid.
29. Being on a work call with Sydney while sitting next to a painting called The Chronological Wall of Dicks and Cunts. Ah, San Francisco.
30. Staff at the Singapore consulate giving me cup noodles and soya bean milk from their personal stashes.
31. Buying a bright yellow Fuji Finest on my second day in San Francisco.
32. Toning my ass, cycling uphill everywhere
33. Excellent vegetarian Japanese food in Valencia followed by a free meditation class down the road.
34. Folsom Street Fair. Many things cannot be unseen, once seen.
35. Ethiopian with Jiten and Family.
36. Family of four sitting in a hipster coffeeshop in San Jose, each with a parrot on their heads.
37. Watching The Nationals vs the Phillies at the Nats Stadium.
38. You never forget your first Shake Shack.
39. America is so great because you can order beer and hot dogs online, and expect to have them arrive at your seat in a baseball stadium in three minutes.
40. One day I will understand more of this great nation, the same one that invented SPAM and Chicken in a Biskit. These inventions speak more about a national character than any other great invention.
41. Rolling my eyes at groupies of ‘famous tech people'.
42. Walking to the Lincoln Memorial, wishing I had seen it earlier because all I see now in that statue is Abraham Lincoln (Vampire Killer)
43. Eating fish tacos with Jason Scott Jones, who knows more about Brooklyn than anybody else
44. Having the cashier ask me why I want to pay US$12 for a can of tuna. Not having a good answer other than ‘it's very good tuna. Spanish.'
45. My crazy/beautiful Crown Heights pad.
46. Being in love with New York, like they all said I would.
47. Talking to my aunt at JFK for longer than we have ever spoken to each other, all our lives.
48. My 27th birthday party in Crown Heights.
49. The Met Museum with Michael Ruby and Dave Gurien.
50. Leaving New York, loving New York.
51. New York to Budapest via London, Budapest to Singapore via Doha, 12 hours apart
52. Those miserable long layovers in Doha.
53. Wanton mee
54. Having everything fall into place the moment I got home
55. The first day Cookie got home
56. Cooking a delicious spare ribs pasta
57. IKEA, burgers, Thai supermarkets and Mustafa
58. Finally getting my diving license
59. Doing the Gangnam Style at 10m underwater
60. The corner store in Tioman
61. Thinking that learning to dive in the middle of the monsoon was probably not too clever
62. Floating upwards uncontrollably before learning to trust my own buoyancy
63. I am finally ready, maybe.

Recently, a friend from Bangalore messaged me on Facebook and asked me for some help. Her family friend, who was not very educated, had paid a lot of money to an agent in Bangalore to get work in Singapore. He had his work permit issued, and was told to leave for Singapore as soon as possible. There was a gap of a week: he had to leave immediately, they told him. She found this a little dubious, and asked me to help verify if the work permit was real, if he was being taken for a ride.

As we suspected, the entire thing was a scam. He did not leave for Singapore, and narrowly avoided what I can only imagine was a low paying, illegal job for a shady employer. I doubt he will ever get his money back, but I still think that is a better fate than coming here without even fewer rights than a legit foreign worker.

In the process, I learned a bit about how one can verify the authenticity of a work permit. I hope this can be translated into different languages, especially in Indian languages. Feel free to post this in as many places as you like. As long as it helps somebody.

1. Visit the Ministry of Manpower's Work Permit for Foreign Workers page

2. Scroll down to: Work Permit Validity Check Via Work Permit Online. Click it. Note: This service is only available Monday to Saturdays from 8am to 10pm, and unavailable at other times and on Sundays and public holidays.

3. If it's within the time frame that the WPOL service is online, this is the screen you will see: a lot of legalese. Click Agree.

4. In the main WPOL screen (which looks like this), click the third item on the left which says "Work Permit Validity/Application Status".

You'll be prompted to enter your details. If you are a foreigner or currently not residing in Singapore, check Passport and enter your passport number.

You'll see many boxes. Go to Option 3 and key in: "Worker's Work Permit" and "Date of Application of Work Permit". Both details will be on your IPA letter.

If it is an invalid or forged work permit, you'll see: Error.

Follow up by calling the Ministry of Manpower at +65 64385122 during working hours in Singapore.

Hope this helps someone.