Dear Singapore,

You were the girl I never dreamed of marrying. The simple girl next door I grew up with. You were always studying hard at an elite school, scoring brilliant grades, winning scholarships. You never broke the rules, whether at school or at home. And you listened to your father when he told you that he always know’s what’s best. You were a friend at times, an occasional playmate, but I always had my heart set on something more.

The first girl I loved was New York. Brazen, rebellious, artistic, intoxicating….a whirlwind romance ensued, in which I followed her blindly and eagerly wherever she would take me. Then came the hangover...my first love became my first despair. Try as I might I could never hope to keep up with her. From time to time I stare at her picture in an old album, wondering what might have been. I know she’s grown up now. Last I heard she was having her works exhibited at some m useum downtown.

Seoul was different. There are many ways to be different, and she was different in all of those ways, which was what I liked most about her. But of course, its quite difficult to be different from oneself, and eventually I got bored with her. Back when I was with her, she wasn’t quite the pop star that she is today. These days I often see her face on posters as I walk by, and I get a slight kick out of thinking...“Hey, you on the wall...you used to be mine.”

London was my closest friend who became my dearest lover. Charming, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, yet subtle. She dislikes being compared with her sister (see first love above...yeah, we called them the NYLON twins). Two things I hated about her — your occasional (ok, make that frequent) moodiness and your absolutely awful cooking!
I’ve also flirted with Paris and Hong Kong — both were fun but neither held my fancy for too long. The former I could never hope t o understand fully, while the latter was always too fickle and pretentious for me.

And then I met you again, 10 years after I’d last seen you. Still the same sweet, principled, well-behaved girl, but a little less rigid in the way you viewed the world. I guess your father became a little less strict as you grew a little older and more mature. I must say I was shocked when I saw you dancing on the bartop that night. Where did those legs come from...weren’t there the last time I looked at you.

I don’t know how much of it is because you’ve grown up (into a beautiful woman, I might add) and how much of it is because as I’ve grown older my own values have changed, but I now find myself wondering if I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you.

Dizzydee