vestigesoftime: Why did i book my return tickets? I've missed you so, Perth.

The more you travel, the clearer you see home.

Travelling used to be the self conviction of the grass being greener on the other side and the novelty of having Google maps 3 centimeters away from my face, and maybe the exhilaration within with the smirk across my imbecile face after mastering the turns of the town. Ultimately, I would head home thinking, no, the grass is not greener on the other side. My brain was more susceptible to the colour green and maybe it’s the unfamiliar mixture of excitement and exhaustion and intense optical stimulation. Maybe it’s just the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there are so many ways of doing essential things like eating, drinking or even crossing the roads. I would be engulfed by guilt each time, saving just to spend hundreds and thousands to convince myself that the sunsets in another country is so much more magnificent and the street lights are more captivating. I would beat myself for failing to take slower steps, look out of the window and stay away from my phone when I back home. But that being said, I continued spending on travels, because if beauty can only be pursued at such a high cost, I would.

I would bet that it’s the “quarter life crisis” that is causing the emotional turmoil when I had to return from Australia. Regardless my usual purpose being on a plane – returning home, venturing to an unknown place or just the joy of being on no man’s land; the flight back home from Perth has got to be the grumpiest and most reluctant journey ever. My farewell with Australia felt like a self-paying abduction.

For these two years, there’s a slight ambiguous regret that I had missed the opportunity to flee from Singapore for overseas college. This trip to Australia has only concretised such regrets. No, I know Singapore is my home and I definitely love this country. I just feel like there’s no space for me to breathe in anymore, academically. Don’t make me start on quality of life. (You can label me as a spoilt city brat, bringing in the miseries and misfortune of the other third world countries, but that’s not the purpose of my post.)

Meanwhile, let me bask in the denial of Australia's beauty via pictures.