expectations

so this is it - the first time i've ever returned to a place i came to feel was home after just over two years of being away

i thought i would get rather emotional and reminiscent (k. tells me it's a failing of mine, this tendency to keep looking backwards - it's a cultural thing - brits are like that - just look at the amount of nostalgia shows on uk tv schedules) - i thought when i came through those airport exit doors, got in a taxi and drove down the ecp to robertson quay, i would be welling up and i'd feel tingly goosebumps travelling up my spine to the back of my head

however, after a twelve hour journey following a rather fraught time before i left sydney when i got to the airport, laden with my wordly possessions, and realised i'd left both my passport and ticket back in north sydney on the desk in our apartment, i was very tired and grumpy when i emerged into the half-forgotten heat and humidity of a tropical country, the sweatiness and closeness of the air making me even grumpier - fuck, how could i have forgotten this, i chastised myself

after a restless night of only three hours sleep i caught a taxi to parkway parade to make lesson preparations for my first weekend of teaching with my grumpy factor receding but still nagging away at me - it was a strange feeling - not at all how i thought i'd feel - here i was doing my usual route to work, about to start teaching for the same company for which i'd worked for nine years before with virtually my same timetable - it was as if the last two years hadn't happened - it was weird

i had a very chatty taxi driver who filled me in on some of the changes - apparently that big hole in the middle of the nicoll highway has been filled in, there's a new shopping area called vivo city, or something like that anyway, which has opened up somewhere near the waterfront somewhere or other - there's a golf course on that reclaimed land near fort road, replacing an illegal activity in that area with a more respectable legal one, but still mainly engaged in by men and requiring as much walking and standing around under trees, near bushes and in the open as the previous activity did (and, like the previous activity you're still trying to get a hole in one and coming away frustrated that, after several attempts your aim has been unsuccessful, even though you've had plenty of practice at handling your club) - a tunnel is being constructed from fort road to somewhere near tampines (always one of my favourite percussion instruments in an orchestra) - various buildings have gone up since i was last here and large areas of the city still look like major construction sites (so no change there) - clarke quay is now the buzzing place to be, whereas when i was last here it was boat quay that was the busier of the two and was the one with all the annoying drunken expats - the wankers (sorry, merchant bankers) who work in the financial companies and banks and have all the social finesse of a dog turd

what did strike me as i drove around over the next few days was how much more claustrophobic it all feels - i'm not sure if this is because once wide open spaces around the centre of the city have now got large buildings on them or whether it's due to the fact that we lived in a city of low rise buildings for two years, we have been living in a sydney apartment with a wide sweeping view across to a clear horizon and, of course before that, we were living in and travelling around the states where the wide open spaces seem unlimited and there is no shortage of land for one storey housing estates to keep sprawling into

so for the last few days it's all seemed unreal and unsettling to be back here again and at odds with the last two years which i've spent looking forward to k. and i picking up our singapore lives from where we left off

and then it happened on sunday morning