Shamrock Park

This visit to my parents' home in Singapore was a bittersweet one. My parents had sold my childhood home and I went to pack up as much stuff from my first 24 years as I could fit into two suitcases. I supported their choice to downsize. The downside, however, was that my childhood home, which was an actual house built on freehold (fee simple) land - a rarity in land scarce Singapore - would be torn down by the new owners who would most likely build a soulless custom McMansion on the plot. Not only did I have to say goodbye to a structure that housed so many memories, I also had to figure out what to keep and what to toss. Even though I am relatively unsentimental about my past, in hindsight I now realize I made some poor choices. Chief among the poor choices was my decision to toss my handwritten travel diary from my backpacking days. I also did not have easy access to a scanner so many photos got tossed as well.

Apart from the sale of my childhood home, 2011 itself was a difficult year for me. I spent the first half of the year shuttling between Honolulu and Silver Spring, MD before concluding a consulting contract in Honolulu and joining the rest of my family who had moved to the DC Metro Area ten months earlier. The move to Maryland was already showing signs of stress even before I got there - Jeff's job (the one that motivated us to move there) never really took off and was beginning to fall apart, and our relationship with our foster son was well on its downward spiral. I had yet to find a job in DC/MD and I was feeling very lost career-wise. We'd also bought a house in Maryland soon after Jeff moved there (I did the math and it made no sense to rent especially when we could come up with a downpayment easily) but our income stream was now lower and it had become unreliable just when we had two mortgages to pay. Layer on having to fly to Singapore to pack my stuff and I was quite a mess.

I needed a break.

Around that same time, my friend Rae was going through some life changes himself and was on an extended trip, with Bali figuring prominently in his plans as he is an artist and architect and hence Ubud was a natural fit for him. Rae invited me over, and there was also a fare sale with KLM going on at that time. With this happy confluence of events, I flew over to Bali for a two day stress break.Read more