Una Ragazza on Love: Bringing Love Home

It’s been nine years since I’d moved away from Singapore. Nine years. Six cities. Plenty of snow, plenty of new foods tried. Many tongues, even more variations of English heard. Many friends, even more acquaintances.

The European highlands: Where I spent my first winter... and was introduced to the world of winter fashion

Relicts from my multiple attempts to speak in many tongues

Despite all the excitement, I look forward to what has become my annual pilgrimage home to Asia. This has traditionally involved Singapore, except for the last two years where a new niece brought me up north to Mainland China and Hong Kong.

In true Singaporean style, my trip is strategically planned to maximize the amount of cold weather I’d miss. It typically takes place between mid January and mid February. One year, I rejoiced when the entire week I was in Asia was the same week that New York received the majority of snowfall for that year. Another year, I avoided a Tri-state airport shutdown arising from the poor weather conditions.

Preparation for the trip normally starts around Christmas time, when I’m on the prowl for gifts and souvenirs for friends and family. In the early years, bringing back presents was personally a bigger deal, when a younger me felt that it would be a physical reminder to my loved ones that they are on my mind although I am half the globe away.

With each visit, I gradually focus on the quality time we spend together and gifts soon took a back seat. Until my sister had to get herself pregnant! These days, I am a very busy aunt come December. As an attempt to make up for every little milestone I’ve missed for the calendar year, I rush about Buy Buy Baby like a woman with a bottomless credit card account (emphasis on the word “like”). I stop in almost every kid store in the Village and Chelsea that I come across, and inevitably leave with an overpriced item that some cunning marketer knows guilty aunts and uncles would unwittingly pay for. Last year, gifts for the little princess took up an entire suitcase and made up half the weight of my total baggage.

Mini Ragazza with her adoring fan, Mr. Z, during my visit last winter

A mere sampling of the goodies Mini Ragazza will receive this winter

So it’s 1.1.11 today. I’m on the cusp of another planning season, with a few weeks left to go before the big trip. This time, something is different. Un Ragazzo will be coming along. His first visit to Singapore. His first visit to Asia, for that matter.

Dating interracially has been a eye-opening experience. On one hand, Un Ragazzo and I see each other first and foremost as interesting, intellectual beings. There is enough fascination going on at the cerebral level for us not to dwell on the fact that he’s Italian-Irish-Austrian and I’m Chinese Singaporean. On the other hand, the very person that we each have grown to become is by and large the result of our diverse upbringing, which inadvertently is a function of having been raised on the opposite sides of the earth by two very different sets of parents.

Un Ragazzo hard at work putting the final touches to my new wall. Check out the beam from the laser level

His first trip to Singapore will therefore be exciting for him, and exciting for me to observe him.

Having heard me wax lyrical about Singapore food, efficiency and cleanliness for so long, Un Ragazzo can finally be his own judge and check out the cool island I left nearly a decade ago to live out shivering winters further north.

Perhaps he’d understand that “summer year-round” means sweat on the back every time he steps out of the shower.

Eating round the clock would take on a new meaning, as would talking about food before, during and after meals.

There will surely be talk about how different or similar my cooking is when compared to the hawker versions. *No pressure*

Enough of that strange Singaporean accent from one girl for the last two years. Now, he will finally experience being surrounded by everybody who pretty much speaks like his silly Asian sidekick. I chuckle at the thought that it’d soon be his turn to make these subtle adjustments to his speech and behavior to fit in.

And perhaps that’s what makes me look forward to my winter trips home. The food is, without a doubt, a huge draw. But it’s about coming home to familiarity. Where nothing needs explanation. Where I do what I do because that’s just the way it is. And it feels right and comfortable to do so.

Strangers sharing tables at food centers. Shoes being taken off at the entrance of a home. Showers being taken before bed (because they are compulsory!). Chillies and hot spices being essentially compulsory condiments at every meal.

It’ll definitely be great to be home again so soon. If Un Ragazzo likes it enough to consider it a place he’d see himself coming back again every so often, that’d be a bonus.

For now, I’m simply looking forward to us sharing a sugarcane juice in the breezy hawker center after a sweaty bike ride with my equally bike-crazed cousin on the East Coast Parkway.