Saying Goodbye is the hardest part

Words  are dangerous in volatile times. With only three days to go, this feels like a kind of limbo –  no longer wholly here, nor yet arrived, saying goodbye is the hardest part; sentimentality and the maudlin must surely follow swiftly behind. So – not to forget happy times! Here are Fei and Mrs Chin back in January, preparing the family Chinese New Year reunion supper  – they’re making the first of many loh heis.

Not to forget! laksa, chilli crab, prawn noodles, yong tau foo, nasi lemak, tom yam, lotus pao, kopi, curry puffs and pineapple tarts, beef rendang, fish head curry, ayam buah keluak, soft shell crab in floss and hainanese chicken rice. And then all over again …

Friends already established on earlier trips to Singapore and new ones made this time round have given me an astoundingly generous, warm-spirited and kind-hearted welcome, and we’ve had great times together enjoying wonderful food and talk – I’m very grateful to have had these experiences, to have made these connections.

I’ve  been soaked in so much physical beauty – the great rain trees with their tree ferns and snaking twisting branches, clouds banked up high after a huge storm, shadows of palms thrown across the void decks at night, the ships out to sea and islands far off. The beauty of sounds, birds in the morning, the eery cry of the bird which calls after rain, the announcements in three languages on the MRT, the whip-flap of fans wielded by  senior citizens exercising in the void deck as we walk out in the morning, the splash of a dive into the pool. The beauty of light, and shadows, and colour, red leaves and the lime green stripe.

 

Last night Fei and I were walking home after taking his family out to a goodbye supper at the University Guild House. We came across this moth. Injured, it flapped across  our path. It was huge, much bigger than the span of my hand, so great that we could see its eyes, gleaming amber yellow in the street light. When it spread its injured wings, like this, it was ravishingly beautiful.

 

 

Fei quietly one night type-set this blog and went off to West Coast Plaza the next day to get it printed as a booklet. Here he is, setting them out at the studio wrap we held for friends on Sunday at Paya Lebar.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve worked hard, and accomplished much of what I set out to do. Going into the studio every day was an intense, focussed experience I haven’t had for a long time, and it has felt really good. My head is full of the structures and ideas and language I want to work with when I get back to London, so this is a continuum – I’ve hardly even yet begun.

 

And finally here is Fei again, taking the chance to grab a quick rest before guests turned up at the Paya Lebar studio wrap. On his lap, a copy of the TLS.