My entire family went- my parents, sister, grandparents, aunt and me. We went to Tokyo and then to Kagoshima, where my dad's family is. I was 7 and just finished the academic term of Primary 1. Following that, we went to Hong Kong in December the same year, and took trips nearly every year to different countries, including South Korea, China, and Taiwan etc. We never stepped out of Asia though. I remember liking all these trips. Especially when I was young, I especially looked forward to going overseas and it was probably the most exciting highlight of the year for me. I would countdown the days to the trip and be very, very disappointed when it was nearing the end and when it ended. To me, it meant another 365 days of waiting. To a young child, a year is an unimaginably long time, it stretched on and on and on.

This intense anticipation and excitement dwindled as I grew older. I do not know exactly when I started growing up in that sense, I only remember never experiencing that surge of adrenaline and excitement since we planned our second trip to Japan after skipping 2 years. I was 15, at the peak of my teenage years, and expected myself to be even more excited than I ever was. But that feeling, those feelings, did not come. Instead, I just accepted the trip as if it was a daily occurrence, nothing more extraordinary than, say, going shopping in Orchard Road. I think it was from then on that I rarely got nervous, anxious, excited, or experienced any sudden, dramatic bout of emotion. I do not remember crying in front of anybody, or at all, from then on. In fact, the last time I can recall crying was in March 2007, and that was because of a competition.

Not crying actually stinks. Everything gets bottled up, until you reach a bottleneck and yet you still can't release anything. After 3 years, I have concluded that, odd as I may sound, stifling your emotions has the same effect as not going to the toilet when you have the urge to. When you don't go to the toilet when your stomach tells you to, you tend to get constipation as time goes by. Same for feelings, when you don't release them as you're supposed to, you get emotion-stipation as time passes. Not that you don't feel anything, but you're unable to express them. When that happens, you cannot be exactly clear about what and how you feel, your brain is clouded by a misty fog.

I have digressed badly. Sorryyy.

To bring myself back to my original topic. Anyway, my point is, "What makes someone look forward to travelling?"

I read Night Train to Lisbon a month ago, and I remember this line in the book saying that what makes travelling so attractive to so many people is because they see the possibilities of living lives different from what they have been. It struck a chord with me. You know how they say you should never agree fully with literature, because literature wants you to think for yourself? Heck with that in this instance, I haven't seen anything which fits in more with my love for travelling. Which is also why I feel a special tingle when I visit Japan, the idea of having another, totally different live is nearer when I'm there. And that's when I feel like I'm stuck, unable to move.

These days there are so many places I want to visit, for a myriad of reasons.

I want to visit Ahmedabad and Africa because I want to know how precious life is and how lucky I am. Japan is attractive to me because I want to know what I've missed out, am missing out and will be missing out on. Egypt holds and attraction to me because of the thick veil of mythology surrounding it. I would really like to go to Afghanistan because it is so different from the society I've known. I want to go do Lisbon because I've read about it in a book. Budapest seems cool just because I like its name. There's just too much to see out there, I want to see as much of it as I can in my lifetime.

Most of all, I want to know different experiences, I want to learn from everyone and everywhere.

Call me angsty if you like, I am 17 going on 18 after all.

But I really don't think anyone would like going home to a grandparent crying, a parent whom she virtually hates, and an aunt who complains of pain which is pretty much self-imagined.

All the women at home seem to think that they have a really hard life. Or maybe they really do, its not up to me to judge.

Nevertheless, I loathe self-pity. I never want to be someone who pities herself. I believe there are things I can break out of as long as I have the determination and the appropriate mindset.

Self-pity and pessimism, including self-delusion into pain (physical or not) are two of the most destructive things one can ever have. Nobody who really loves him/herself has either of these. I love myself, even if it is because I don't know who or anyone else does. I've had the bad times, I can understand that there are times where you just want to rot your life away because you feel like you've had enough. But there will also always come a time where you wake up and realize that you cannot let life carry on in that manner, not when there is such a vast world out there waiting for you.

I was on my way home from the hospital last night, on a bus journey that took 45 mins, (quite long considering this is Singapore) and I was struck by how different I felt looking at the night scene in different countries. Technically, countries are only divided by man-made borders, which, to a certain extent, are not concrete nor definitive, and definitely not God-given. So what makes the night sky of Singapore different from that of others? Nothing, except the fact that I feel safer because I know its the piece of sky I've been looking at for the near-18 years of my life. I always found night-time overseas scary, but it didn't occur to me that its the same sky as the one I've been seeing. Now I realize that its because the surroundings of the night sky are unfamiliar to me- it isn't so much the sky but the streets and shops and people and places that scare me. Everything is always magnified and 10 times as scary when you aren't familiar with it.

But if you think about it logically, there's really nothing to be scared of. Not when you think of yourself as a member of a species of animal which walks the entire Earth. Instead of viewing the world as countries, why not view it as a common ground where everything is connected, joined? Because that's what it is. Humans are just too used to thinking in the contexts and boundaries set by themselves. Not exactly, self-centred, no matter how much it sounds like it.

Sometimes I feel like I need some hope and optimism from someone, because I do not have enough energy to supply myself with that all the time.

Nobody tells me its okay to take a break.

I wonder how long they will take to find out if I faint.

Fuck.