Home Home Home

When the kids were young, I used to say "home, home, home" to them whenever I got to the driveway and put the car in park. Until today, I occasionally say it if Jared happens to be in the car with me. We always smile and it's a pleasant memory from the past.

I'm sure all families have their anecdotes and idiosyncrasies and I surely have a goldmine. But those stories are for another time.

Today, I want to write about the home.

No, I’m not going into those clichéd stories about the home being where the heart is or that a house is not a home.

I just want to talk about the home and what I believe it has become in today’s world.

Let me start, I have two homes. One is here in Kuala Lumpur and the other in Singapore because circumstances make it necessary for us to have set up two separate homes, at least, for now. For this reason, I travel very frequently to Singapore. On the bright side, I have two dressing tables, two wardrobes and two sets of my girlie stuff for here and there. This is to allow me to travel as lightly as possible.

Let me come straight to the point of the “Singapore home”. People there have a strange robotic way of asking “How many rooms?” instead of “Where do you stay?”. While there are the occasional few who ask for the area, the majority normally begin with the number of rooms.

In Singapore, I notice that they say 2 room apartments and it means that there is only 1 bedroom. So 3 room apartments only means that there are 2 bedrooms and so on. So the people there seem to judge you by the number of rooms you have in your home. This is evident in the fact that the moment you mention the area, they will ask you for the road and when you tell them the road, they will respond with the number of rooms those apartments have. I find it amusing.

Here in Malaysia, we have something similar but we don’t mention how many rooms we have, we just say the locality. It’s more complicated than this, of course, but I’m just touching on this so as to move on to the next point.

The point being that a home is a home is a home. You won’t be able to take it with you when you die.

So those who are slaves to their homes, who have nothing but showrooms with everything neatly in place, do remember that people matter more.

And if you are wondering..... I live in a 4 room apartment (meaning 3 bedrooms) along Old Klang Road and in Singapore; it’s another 2 room apartment (meaning only 1 bedroom) in Toa Payoh! I am comfortable and more importantly, I am happy.

In the end, this is only thing that will matter.