I’ve always had an affinity with the road. The endless stretch of tarmac beckoning me to follow — on wheels. An odyssey. A new adventure. Countless lives, passing me by — played out in droves. So many different people. But, above all, I’m free. My woes and troubles, left behind, further and further, until they’re…
Tag: World
Two Months in Kofu
I honestly don’t know where time went — one minute I was bidding my family goodbye as I walked past the departure gates, and the next thing I knew, a little over two months had passed since I started my new life in Japan. I’m not sure if anyone expected a regular stream of new…
Finding Your Feet in Kofu (Unitas Student)
I have to admit, I was heavily aided in my preparation to live in Japan (shoutout to my school’s coordinators, James-san and Hide-san for letting me harass them to no end about the various nitty gritties that I was quite unnecessarily bothered by on hindsight). Yet, there are some aspects to living in Japan, or…
Kofu, Week 2 — The Sleepy City
Kofu is the capital city of Yamanashi Prefecture and home to some 200,000 residents, and the cityscape from afar seems to suggest that it is a pretty bustling place to be, with buildings sprawled from one end of the city to the other. Yet, my increasingly distant walks paint a different picture — one of…
Kofu, Week 1 — New Beginnings
Before I left Singapore for Japan, I told anyone who had to put up with my annoyingly incessant conversations about the latter that I was looking forward to the many challenges that would invariably fall my way as I navigate foreign lands on my own. Hoo boy, did I get one the moment I stepped…
Nomadic Affair — Chapter II
I was debating for a bit, if I should be publishing this, mostly because I didn’t want to overly dramatise moving abroad, and partly because I didn’t want to jinx what could possibly by the biggest life decision I’ve made in my entire life, all 30 years of it. As I write this, less than…
Living a Quarter-Year at a Time — Lessons and Reflections
I always found movie quotes tacky and never really bothered to appreciate them — at least until I discovered a few relatable ones that seemed to speak to me in the season of life I was in; and perhaps that was the catalyst I needed. Growing up, I was a big fan of the Fast…
Lessons From The Fort of Shame
Nov 16, 2019 On a downcast Saturday afternoon, my girlfriend and I decided to pay the nearby Old Ford Factory a visit. Tucked away in an enclave just beside a sprawling nature reserve, the war archive was probably a place you would have visited if you were a student in Singapore embarking on a mandatory…
No More Trains Left
I found myself at a crowded train station, packed to the brim with folks from all walks of life. Some were friends I grew up with, mucking around by the playground when I was a little boy. I spotted a few of them, and I waved. They waved back. The train platforms stretched to no…
Commentary: Travel Writing
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a travel writer. When I discovered my passion for writing some eight years ago, it was the very genre that prompted me to make a career out of it. Grandiose dreams of travelling the world and writing about it sprang to mind,…
Nomadic Affair 