#calvintan

Erin : I will ponder about this question, and I feel that my house in China is "home". Here, although I spend most of my free time at home, I treat it as simply a place to sleep.

Me : A place to sleep? E : A place to put my belongings. This feeling could be due to not having my family members around, or something else. It feels...

M : Let's say if you do not share the flat where you are currently staying, if you have the space all to yourself, would you still have the same idea?

E : Yes...

M : Because you don't have family members around.

E : Yes, and because I attend classes everyday. But back home it's different. It feels like I'm returning "home", and I feel really comfortable and can truly relax, and I can do what I feel like doing. Here, I would have to attend classes everyday, or I would think about day-to-day issues.

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M : In whichever country you go to, after you return, do you look at your original house with a different idea or perspective? Do you experience any changes? For instance, now you are in Singapore, and when you return to China, do you feel...

E : I would feel familiar, I would feel like I've never left. 

M : Would that be when you return home, you discover things you hadn't known about yourself, like what is different?

E : I will think about the "me" when I'm leaving this place, and how i was like before I left home and compare where have I changed, what I've gained and how did it come about... 

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Me : How has your idea of home changed after living in different places? 

Hanqing (HQ) : It's become something quite transient, I don't know if it is a good or bad thing to actually have a home. I think people are used to having a place to call home and it is about effectiveness - home is where the heart is stored and where problems can go away. However there is a different type of people now who don't necessarily have an anchored home and are perpetually on the move. Mine is something in between and possibly closer to the latter. If you define where your home is, it comes back to kick you and it offends people in each place you exist.

For example, my extended family back home think that China is no longer home to me, and they surmise that the "opposite" is true, that Singapore, where I grew up, is home. What happens when Singapore doesn't feel like home, then? A home isn't something sitting around waiting for you to come home to; it changes without you knowing and that can be quite surprising.

This question is slightly odd because I have never lived permanently in a place so there is no before and after. Growing up half my parents weren't Singaporean and I would fly to China by myself every now and then. So the idea of home probably was hinged upon the HDB flat I shared with my family, a very practical location where memories were created but not necessarily stored. You pick up different homes along the way, I suppose the only change is that I realise now that you can escape to homes you have never been - seek solace from other cultures and locations. Maybe Iceland feels like home and you've never been there, that's cool too.

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A collection of maps are plastered on Hanqing's wall in her room in London. These are maps from all the various places we have traveled to together. It was like living a nomadic lifestyle, waking up each day to find myself in a new room. Which was pretty exciting at first, but at a certain stage of the journey I found myself yearning to retreat to my room back in London. 

I've tagged every room we stayed at, and It's interesting to see how the layout of each room seemed to match up with the owner's personality. I wonder what it means for a person with a nomadic way of life, how no specific place would serve to represent him or her.

HQ : Every time I return home my grandfather and I would set up my bed in the living room. It's always the same bed and even though there are years and years between my visits everything about the room is immediately familiar. The bed creaks in the same way and even the plants seem to be frozen in growth. It took me a long time to realise that everything in my grandparents house is not only well cared for but also made of really good quality like things were in the old days - you got furniture for wedding gifts and they stayed with you till you're in your 80s like my grandparents are. Even my grandparents are still in great shape. I'm not. 

M : Which item in your room do you think best represents you? 

HQ : The messy bedside table (which is literally a stool I have reappropriated) because I'm way more crap at keeping my things safe and secure and immaculate. I have everything that is permanent in my life on the bedside table - a planner, a Muji notebook, my sweet ass iPhone, the charger - as well as some other rotating cast members, like a good book I'm currently reading, a hair scrunchie, tissue to fight the hay fever. So yeah, the mess represents me. I come and invade this room and I absorb all the unconditional love and I leave, constituted of parts that keep shifting around and fucking up. Once in a while i get to go somewhere safe like here to get sorted out and clean my act up. 

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1. Room in London

1a. The most significant thing in my London room is the décor that I built for my desk. After travelling with my flat mate across Europe, we were so inspired by the rooms that we had couchsurfed at that we immediately started revamping our rooms after we got back. I’ve attached notes and letters from friends, and quotes as well. The one I like most is an excerpt of an interview with Stanley Kubrick on mortality. It seems almost ritualistic that I glance at it from time to time when I’m working at my desk. 

1b. What I miss most about my room in London is admiring the view of our garden from my window. It’s like a painting that transform over time through the seasons. We’ve had BBQs, picnics, watched a movie (using a projector and a bed sheet draped over the clothes line), had a poetry recital, shot fireworks in the garden on New Years eve, and enjoyed lazy afternoons lying on beach chairs.

2. Current room in Singapore

2a. Since returning from London, I currently share a room with my eldest sister. I sleep on a slide-out mattress beneath her bed. Nothing much has changed during the 3 years that I was away, except it seems to contain more junk that we can’t seem to get rid of. I have always been envious when someone tells me they have their own room. I used to share a room with my parents till I turned 16, and moving into a room with my sister is considered a big step-up for me. Well, that is till I had my own room in London. I miss having my own privacy and decorating the space as I see fit. Also, adapting to an independent lifestyle abroad has left me yearning for a space of my own. 

2b. This room used to be my grandmother’s room until she passed away. Most of the items in this room belong either to her or to my sister. This wooden trunk that sits on top of the bookcase contained all of her possessions when she sailed from China to Singapore on a junk boat. My mom tells me it is at least a hundred years old. I wonder what it must have felt like making that journey into a foreign land, with a chest full of hope and dreams of a better life.

Perhaps I already know how it feels like, when I made the decision to travel abroad for my studies. While the experience didn’t meet my expectations of an education abroad, it has changed the way I think about and approach design. I used to have this perception that the environment was holding me back from producing good work, stifling my creativity. But after returning back home, I wish to change this mindset and to encourage others as well. 

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