One Thing I Miss From Home

One thing, O Ye vision of well-preserved 19-year-old gorgeousness, focus on one thing; or the nostalgia and homesickness will overwhelm you and your unstable self will topple and your precious head will hit the hard steps up the airplane bound for Kuala Lumpur.

Alright then, one thing. I will just think of one thing that I miss from home, which I will be able to see and grasp tangibly (and not just caress in my thoughts, as I have for the past 6 months) in another 9 hours.

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The yellow 3-seater leather couch in the living room. I remember it being there ever since we moved into that house, more than 9 years ago. Scratched on its base and having slowly evolved from a cheery canary yellow to a matronly off-yellow over time. So many memories of lazy Sunday afternoons, convivial Saturday nights, looooong year-end holidays; are sealed in those plushy, inviting, butt-swallowing cushions!

Now that I reflect on it, so many things have gone down on that couch. The time I frightened my sister half-to-death by lying flat on the top before rolling down onto her un suspecting self. Primary school friends sitting awkwardly as we made a tape for our class teacher's birthday. Later, my true friends sprawling over them as we whispered secrets to each other and laughed like we had no cares in the world (in the larger scheme of things, we really didn't. We knew we had something precious and we were happy.) Family reunions and talk about cameras and printers and jobs and weddings and government and all the miscellanous chitchat you have with your extended family.

Not to mention my personal horizontal bonding time with that couch; studying History, Biology, Physics, Add Math and subsequently The Practical Applications of Human Nocturnal Behaviour, otherwise known as sleeping. (My college friends call it my coma periods due to its fully-focused, almost-unwakeable quality. I prefer to think of it as aggresive sleeping.) Not to mention the piles of Terry Pratchett, The Star, Readers Digest and other reading material that I've read there with my chin on the armrest and the book on the floor.

Good times indeed. I may have changed in many ways (hopefully for the better) but that couch will always hold a part of me. In psychoanalytic terms, I suppose that couch is the part of me that loves to relax, to think about life and my place in it, to enjoy conversations with friends, and to take a lovely afternoon nap:) People who know me will probably say that that last item is a significantly large aspect of me:)

I hope you all have a "yellow couch" in your heart, if not in your living room. Adios! The next time you hear from me, I'll be back in the land of Nasi Lemak (its Malaysian not Singaporean, foreign ignoramuses), Char Koay Teow and murderous sunshine.