meow

Darick is in love with purple. It is the colour of his towel, power bank, and phone case. Whenever we visit a place, he buys a T-shirt as a keepsake.

Every night, Rio falls asleep on the living room couch with his phone dangling from one hand, a video still playing on it. Sitting nearby is Audrey bent over her phone with a Velcro patch on her hair to keep the loose strands from falling over her face. There is a look of intense concentration on her face so you think she's doing serious work, when really she's playing some ridiculous boomer game, like the one where you slide cocktail glasses across a table to merge them into bigger ones.

Shopping at the supermarket with Windy is like having a five-year-old kid with a the spending power of an adult. The trolley piles up with Kinder Bueno and discount chocolate bars and Korean ramen. Her diet is probably why she's always going off to poop at random times of the day.

When it comes to brushing her teeth, Sage is unable to get it over and done with in the toilet. She wanders out to the living room couch, where she sticks the toothbrush in her mouth while using her phone. She has a maniacal laugh that is simply infectious. Her husband Jay doesn't say many words but the sound effects he is capable of creating with just his voice never fail to crack me up. Ahhhhhhrrrrrrjjjjjjj…so hard/so nice! He also happens to have a soft spot for Krispy Kreme donuts (original glazed), which he buys by the dozen and shares with us. That makes me really happy.

We had the most incredible day today, although not for a good reason. Which really makes me feel a bit guilty, but I don't think I should be, because Sister Tilly said integrity is the foremost virtue and I am being honest to myself, so really I should be proud of myself instead.

So the whole debacle started because Roy wanted to apologize to Mama Auddie for calling her a shrivelled old prune the other day, but because of his useless male pride he can't bring himself to utter those words from his mouth, and so he had to take the "easy" but really harder way out of cooking her a reconciliatory meal, and he entrusted me to pick some blue-pea flowers to go with it from the garden "But make sure you crumple them a bit, and don't arrange them too neatly," he warned me. Really, this obsession of dignity will be his ruin!

Well, the problem is that the only dish that Roy is capable of cooking is Buldak, and because he is that thick, it didn't register on him that Mama Auddie has absolute zero spice tolerance. The result is that at the time of this writing, Mama Auddie is being warded in the hospital after getting her stomach pumped.

On the bright side, Uncle Jay was called in to substitute for Mama Auddie, and since the dude has zero clue as to how to deal with kids, he brought us to the amusement park on Mount Faber. We had so much fun. Bumper cars, cotton candy, and riding this crazy roller coaster perched on the side of the cliff. Whoever designed the roller coaster is a genius. There is this lever in each car you can push down to accelerate, and if you go fast enough the seat belt pops open and you fly out of your seat and tumble down Mount Faber.

What really captured my heart, however, was the sunset. It was exquisite. It was as though a bucket of pink sunshine had spilled across the horizon. I don't ever want to forget it.

When you are on missions, you get to interact with a whole host of different people from a wide spectrum of backgrounds. One moment you could be chatting with a sophisticated-looking American lady in a green frock over lunch, and the next you are attempting to make conversation with a ten-year-old homeless Kazakh kid over Google Translate.

The trick to pulling it off is to be comfortable with yourself. Because the greatest gift you can bring to another person (apart from a million dollars) is your honest self. And sure, not everyone will like or appreciate that necessarily, but that is okay. It is the only true way to build any semblance of meaningful connection.

Problem is, it is so hard to be yourself. If you have ever cringed at a photo or video with you in it, you probably know what I mean. In order to be yourself, you have to accept yourself.  The most beautiful people in the world could see themselves as ugly. Yeah, there are people out there who have trouble looking at themselves in the mirror. How crazy is that? How painful is that?

I find it so hard to be okay with myself. Not a day goes by that I do not wish I was someone else, that the life that I am now living was not my own, that I would wake up and realise it is all just a bad dream, and that my true life is terrific and fun and free from all the burdens that weigh me down and I cannot get rid of.

But I am beginning to learn that I am all that I can ever be. Perhaps there is a freedom in being grounded in reality, grounded in the present, in not wishing for a life that is not your own, and things and people who do not belong to you. Thou shall not covet. What if "be contented" is more than just a well-worn platitude, and is really the secret to freedom? What if the only step of faith I need to take is not some crazy leap into the dark, or leap into anywhere, for that matter, but simply uttering the words "Thank you, Lord."

Sincerely, me.

The Lessons of Love

God loves me just as I am

Love one another

Dear Friend,

Sometimes there are things heavy on my heart that I want to write to you about, but it's hard to put down in words. It's too embarrassing. I'll rather maintain my reputation as stoic and impenetrable, even in front of you.

This afternoon I had lunch with Russian Hitchhiker, a guy I met at the border crossing yesterday. He told me he's travelling to China where he hopes to spend the rest of his life. He is in love with the language, he said. Also, with his Chinese girlfriend who studies anthropology in the US. "Oh, which university?" I asked. He scratched his cheek and shrugged. "Stanford."

He reminds me of my old Mexican friend Matteo, who also had a Taiwanese girlfriend who was pursuing a PhD. I don't know what it is about these white male vagabonds that make them so attractive to Chinese girls. I don't suppose I'll receive the same treatment if I turn vagabond. I'll just be that weird middle-aged uncle who refuses to get a job.

Anyway, Russian Hitchhiker told me this crazy story of how he and his ex-girlfriend (what did I say, this guy's got game) once tried to venture into the Russian wilderness in search for a place to stargaze (according to lightpollution.info, there was a forest clearing that presented itself as the ideal location), but the woods were so thick that if took ages to advance even a few hundred metres, then his ex-girlfriend hurt her leg so they ended up having to spend the night in the woods and in the rain. "Damn," I said. When morning came, he called the police and three fat policemen pulled up in a beat-up ancient Soviet-era vehicle to evacuate them. "I thought they would send helicopter," he said.

Before we parted ways, I handed him a ten-thousand Tenge bill, the equivalent of USD 20. "Good luck bro," I said, shaking his hand. I knew I'd never see him again. That's how it is with people you meet on the road. It's like two lines among the billions of other criss-crossing lines on the planet meeting at a single point, then racing off in different directions never to come together again. How difficult it must be, against all odds, for two people to be at the same place and same time, to share even a brief encounter in this vast universe. How much more impossible for two people to be acquaintances, friends, lovers and family. If only you stopped to consider the sheer impossibility of it, the one in a billion chance... it would seriously blow your mind.

Today might just have been the worst day of my life. Never before or since will there be a shittier day.

So I woke up in the morning feeling pretty good about the day ahead. The birds were chirping. A golden shaft of sunlight had pierced through the window and I could see dust motes dancing, twinkling almost, in it. "This is going to be a good day," I said to myself. Terrific. Life-changing. Because today is the last day of camp and I am going to ask Chelsea out. "Hey, there's this sushi place…"And who knows, who knows. Maybe she might just say yes.

Maybe.

Except some scoundrel has just ripped my bedsheets out for laundry, and along with it, my precious airpods my brother bought for my birthday.

I raced down to the laundry room and there it was, among the damp pile of sheets.

"Who did it?!" I demanded to know.

"Oh sorry, it's me," came a delicate voice. Chelsea.

Why, why did it have to be her? Was the universe playing a cruel prank on me?

I bit my lip. Composed myself. Said, through gritted teeth, "That's okay." The two hardest words I've ever said.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

Also two words. Two words that cannot bring my airpods back to life. There they lay in their pristine white case, now casket. Squeaky clean. Dead.

I never did ask Chelsea to sushi. Later, on the bus home, I saw her sitting in the back row with Carl. Their heads awfully close, shoes off, socks off, feet touching—skin to skin. Hushed whispers and giggles emanated from their corner of the bus, punctuated frequently with snorts of laughter, each one tearing open the flesh of my heart, leaving it raw and in shreds.

I thought of blocking them out with my airpods, but then I remembered. The thought filled me with an inexplicable sadness.

Dear Friend,

Kid's camp is finally over and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. It's funny how for all my dislike toward organised mass activities (especially those involving kids), I have a terrible knack for getting myself involved in them. Perhaps my subconscious is eagerly seeking to reverse all the traumatic experiences I had at camps as a child by facing it head on through exposure therapy.

Well, I think I've certainly redeemed myself. All the water balloons and splashing and musical chairs and play fighting with the kids. I also think I'm done for the day. Possibly for an entire lifetime.

In the afternoon, we did a circle of forgiveness in the afternoon where we sat in a literal circle with the kids, and we all drew on slips of paper the times in our lives when someone had hurt us. One boy said he came from a poor family where there's never enough to eat, and it hurts whenever the kids at school eat their snacks in front of him and didn't offer him any. Another girl said a bunch of kids once ganged up on her at the seaside, splashing water at her face and calling her names. Whoa. I thought that kids in their perpetually confused state of minds don't register a single thing, but man…they do. In our Yandex ride home after dinner, Isaiah fished out a red vial of bubble solution from his pocket and started blowing bubbles out the window. He's such a crazy dude who's permanently high that sometimes I forget he's a human, too. I wonder what his mind registers.

Before bedtime, there a high-pitched shriek echoed down the hallway. Moments later, Wendy burst into the common room. The new mask that Suki had given her had backfired. Apparently, it was meant for Ahjummas, and it you are not one... well, your face turns into one.

Kid's camp today was chaotic as expected. I still haven't figured out if it is a good or bad thing that we don't understand the kids and they don't understand us. When you can't comprehend the words coming out of their mouths, you can pretend they are just crazy little puppies bounding around the room, and you can't really be angry at puppies, right?

Still, we had our fair share of screaming and crying (most of which was probably actually the voice in my head), and half the time I had no idea what to do with myself or how to respond. At the end of the day, I lay flat on the carpet, unwilling and unable to get up. I slept till dinner.

Is this what it is to be a missionary? To be this event planner/people person thing? I feel so far from what I want to be in life. Sure, if this is what God is calling me to be, then…okay. But what if there is an alternative?

If only there was an alternative. After all these years of trying to find myself, find my way, I still feel hopelessly clueless. It's as if some sort of curse is placed on me that prevents me from finding my place in this world, settling. Yes, yes, I know—I'm probably going about it the wrong way. If only I knew the right way…

Sincerely, me.

We spent the entire day in transit. Time and space don’t feel the same way—they are rendered irrelevant.

Last night, we hugged everybody at base. Everybody. People who won’t ordinarily hug each other did so anyway. Farewells bring about a closeness like no other. It’s funny how it's on the brink of parting that people draw the nearest to one another, as if our capacity for intimacy has to be conserved. Only at the last minute when there is no further opportunity to spend it do we give ourselves fully over.

We ate breakfast at a crowded café at the airport. As we were gathering our belongings to leave, I saw Betty sweep her knitted cardigan across the grubby restaurant floor. I shook my head. Betty once told us that she's a bit of a clean freak, but her standards pale in comparison to my mum's. My mother would never approve of that cardigan sweeping the floor.

Sage sat on the luggage trolley while Audrey pushed her along.

“How old are you?” her husband Jay asked.

I made a new friend today. His name is Isaiah, he is fifteen years old, and he can barely speak a single word of English. We should not be able to understand each other. Yet I am learning that there is language that exist which do not require words.

We had lots of fun today just hanging out at the church and the mall. He showed me a song on TikTok called 'sorry mum' and performed it on the guitar. The lyrics of the song spoke to me. They are about all the ways the songwriter has let his mother down by basically being a failure in life.

Traveling to the mall with Isaiah in tow feels like taking an overenthusiastic puppy to a park. At the clothes shop he randomly ducks his head through the leg hole of jeans and tries on a pair of ridiculous sunglasses. At the toy shop he hands me a hoop and dunks a basketball through, yelling "Score!" During dinner, he attempts a bottle flip beside our table. After dinner, when we are waiting for the rest outside the supermarket, he climbs into the trolley and tells me to push him (which I do, full speed ahead) while he video-calls his friends.

Even as I am writing this, he has just crept into the room with a rubber chicken and a maniacal cackle. Despite the fact that we do not comprehend the words coming out of each other's mouths, the reason I love hanging out with this crazy monster energy kid is that part of me wishes I could be like him, unencumbered by all the ways adults complicate the world and make life far more serious than it needs to be. You see, few people survive their childhood. Many of us, sensing that we have lost something precious, attempt to feel our way back, yet never quite fully return.

Over lunch today I talked with Acacia, an ABC from the Seattle team. The conversation felt like playing ping-pong, bouncing randomly from topic to topic. We talked until we ran out of things to say, but still I lingered at the table, even if my head was starting to throb from having to pay attention and come up with witty responses on the spot. I stayed because I knew this was my last chance to talk with her, as tomorrow my team leaves and her team will be gone by the time we return. It's been so long since I felt like I met a kindred spirit of sorts and formed a connection that feels like the wriggly tentacles of two octopuses clasping together.

I don't think I'll ever see Acacia again. We live on opposite corners of the world and I don't believe in texting. But I'm glad our paths crossed however briefly. 有緣千里來相見，無緣對面不相識. If nothing else, she taught me that my life has value. That a life of struggle and showing up is overcoming in itself. And even if I'm loathe to claim credit, I shouldn't withhold the credit from God.

Sincerely, me

Dear Friend,

Today was a good day. I'm not saying that it is going to be a good day, but that it was. It's not wishful thinking for something that hasn't happened, but gratitude for something that has already happened. Something real.

I don't suppose I've had a happier day in the past 17 years of my life. But this morning I woke up with the joy of the Holy Spirit in me. Joy that I can't explain. Joy that does not negate my fears, anxieties and problems, but co-exists with them and makes them bearable. During quiet time this morning I was challenged that to be a witness for God, we don't have to present a squeaky clean image, or seem to convince anyone of anything. We only need to be our honest selves.

In the afternoon we had group debrief. Through picture cards we shared what God has been working in our lives. We did a circle of gratitude - seven, eight, nine rounds. There was so much to say that we overran the allocated time.

At night I talked with Rio and Acacia. I have not had such an open and enjoyable conversation in a long time. Acacia said a struggling Christian who shows up, just shows up, was to her a more incredible testimony than the most spiritually gifted Christian.

But they are not overcoming, I said.

But showing up is overcoming, she said.

She also said that I have probably overcome more in life than I would give God the credit for.

I don't know what tomorrow holds for me. But while today still stands, I want to testify of this: that God did show up for me. Maybe I'm delusional and imagining things. I might even be tempted to think that it is an evil spirit interfering with my brainwaves. Or I could ascribe it to some psychological thing. And yeah, maybe none of my questions are solved, and I haven't fixed the problem of pain or whatever. But so be it. I will give glory to God and praise his name, and if it is somehow a cult or I'm wrong to do so...I don't care. Well, I do care, but I'm just not going to. So there.

Jesus, thank you. Thank you so, so much.

Slept past my alarm this morning. I’ve been so, so tired these past few days, and I would have to loved to keep sleeping, but it’s a work-from-home day and I’ve got work to do.

For lunch I warmed up the potatoes and beans I cooked on Sunday in the microwave, and added a bit of kimchi for taste. I ate my lunch while watching a Cinema Therapy video on You’ve Got Mail. I've never watched the movie before. It's about a small bookshop owner who both detests and is in love with the same man - but she doesn’t know it. She detests the real-life, public version of him, who is the representative of a conglomerate  trying to drive her bookshop out of business, and is in love with his private online persona, a sweet and sensitive man with whom she corresponds (hence the movie title). At each extreme, she knows only a part of the man, and extrapolates for the parts she does not know. I guess we are all like that. We only ever know one side of people, but still we divide them into good and bad camps, ignoring the reality that people come in shades of grey.

Rushed through the rest of my work in the afternoon to finish right on time at six o’clock, so I can go for parkour practice. Ben and Solomon were at the park today. Their presence spurred me to take high swings on the lache I've been working on. I also successfully landed the big precision jump I had been working on since the start of the year, the one from the grey wall to the big black box. One time, two times, thre—

Nope.

My left foot slipped. My shin crashed into the edge. Uh-oh, I thought. UH-OH...when I actually saw the wound. It was nasty. Nastier than any wound I'd ever sustained. I know that because I could see the slimy flesh and bone quivering beneath the skin.

The boys came to my rescue. Solomon pulled out his first aid kit. Ben pulled out his phone. "SHIZZZZ!" He took a video, featuring a close-up of the wound, a close-up of my grinning face (because that's what you do when you get injured, you plaster a ridiculous grin on your face), a closeup of the reactions of the two young boys who had edged their way over to check out the buzz. Then, we all had a group photo before I limped away. A truly Kodak moment.

The clinic doctor gave me an local anaesthesia shot and palpated the wound. The thought crossed my mind that he was touching my raw flesh and bone with his fingers, and I could only imagine what I'd be feeling right that instant if it wasn't for the anaesthesia. I had to look away. I didn't want my brain to remember this. I was afraid I'd never dare to do parkour again if I remembered.

He frowned. "I can feel a little crack on the shin bone. Might be an open fracture. I hope I'm wrong, but you need to go to the hospital to get an X-ray.”

Parkour jam at Macpherson wave in the afternoon. Asked Nachos about his thoughts on Ukemi, the art of falling. He told me that he prefers to prevent failures in the first place by analysing the reasons for lack of confidence in executing the move (e.g. fear, environment, lack of technical skill), and working on those reasons until the risk of bailing is reduced to an insignificant level. How people do parkour, he added, is a reflection who they are. It got me thinking about my own approach to parkour and life. I tend to zoom in on worse-case scenarios, and the fear of them being realised becomes so intense that ironically I find myself wishing for those scenarios to happen, so that I can become immune to them. It’s a pretty crazy way of thinking, I know, but that’s how my mind works.

Monday

Watched Kina Grannis' Behind the Music series. In one of the videos, she talked about how she came to write the song Lonesome. She said there are often days, weeks, perhaps even months where she is overcome by dark feelings, and this song was her way of sharing that experience. Listening to her bare her soul brought tears to my eyes. Recently I've been feeling so alone, feeling so filled with longing and loss. It’s as if everything is slipping through the gaps between my fingers. It's killing me. While nothing she said is going to help me fix myself, simply knowing that there is a kindred spirit out there makes me feel a little less alone.

Tuesday

Sat with Jesse at lunch today. Somehow the conversation veered to BTO and marriage. I said I can't get married because I have no money. Jesse said that in the past, people didn’t think that way. As long as two people liked each other, they got together and then fought to make it work. I liked that. There's a simple, old-fashioned beauty to this approach to love and marriage. It feels so much less calculativem, compared to nowadays, where there are so many wearisome considerations.

Later in the afternoon, Esther popped me five mocha-flavored balls into my palm as she said I looked sick and sleepy, and they would help me wake up. Such a kind girl. I'll really miss her when I'm gone. If only we could have been friends. If only I had the courage to be warm to people at my workplace, instead of pushing everyone away because it's just easier that way.

Nighttime. I'm wide awake. Those damn mocha balls.

Thursday

First time doing parkour this week. Lost my Lache and getting it back would be a painfully slow process. I hate the all-too-familiar feeling of pursuing a goal that is constantly out of reach.

I'm sitting in my room typing away at my laptop when a bird lands on the ledge outside my window. It has a bright yellow chest and wings with a shimmer of green at the edges. The bird tapped its beak against the glass as it stood radiant in a pool of yellow sunlight. I smiled back at the bird, and it kept my company for a while before flying away.

Finally. The officialisation of a solid relationship that has been a decade in the making.

I can’t help but think what different trajectories our lives have taken since we were eighteen. Over the same years we’ve begun, my two friends have poured their hearts steadily into forging a meaningful, unbreakable bond. Meanwhile, all I’ve done is filled my mind with useless romantic notions and confessed to a girl whom I did not love, and who did not love me. I feel so damn immature. I wonder...am I jealous? I don’t think so. Not quite. Maybe a little? Or more likely, it’s something else altogether that I can't put a finger to, and shall not try right now.

You’re always swimming. Gotta swim fast, you say, faster and faster still. When the net comes down, you’ve gotta be swimming fast to not get caught.

Can’t you just chill, I say. Lepak la…just live a little. What good is living if all you do is spend it swimming? Ain’t no use trying to run, anyway. Sooner or later, one way or another they’ll get us. So might as well be kids and have as much fun as we can before they do.

But you won’t listen. There’s no time to chill, no time to have fun, you insist. We’ve got to keep swimming, and we’ve got to swim fast.

Yup. When the net finally fell, you were swimming fast, the fastest ever, just like you said you would. And it got you all the same, just like I said it would.

It's the fourth day of Chinese New Year and I wake up bleary-eyed to find a voice message sitting in my Telegram chats. It's from my friend Ruth. I hit the play button, and as I listen to it, my eyes are no longer bleary—no, they are widening in shock, because the words that are coming out of the phone speaker and into my ears are entirely unreal.

Ruth says she has feelings for me.

I don't believe it. But I've got to believe it, for when I replay the message, it really is her voice saying those words. It's the first time any girl has said she liked me, and I'm completely blown away. It's as if someone has just thrown a grenade at my face.

But really, I shouldn't have been too surprised. In the past year, I had been dimly aware that our friendship might be developing into something, well, a little more than friendship. The two of us often went on long walks at night, our conversations stretching on and on for hours. Those conversations… they had a depth and effortlessness that I had never experienced even with my best friends and family. I felt like I could tell Ruth anything, and she, more than anyone, was able to take it all in. It was as though I'd met my soulmate.

And I liked that. More, I cherished that rare space between friends and more-than-friends, one that evades strict definitions, along with all the baggage and commitment that burden those definitions. I'm not someone who usually likes ambiguity, but this was one ambiguity  that I didn't quite mind. But now, on the fourth day of Chinese New Year, Ruth has thrown the grenade. And that grenade has landed right inside that happy little in-between space of ours and exploded into flames, leaving me reeling in the aftermath.

As much as I want to just go back to bed and hibernate for the next ten or fifteen years, I know that's not an option. But I don't know what to do. The thing is, I don't want to lose my friend and soulmate, but at the same time, I just don't think she's, well… the one. You know, that one special, special person you fall crazy in love with? That larger-than-life character who breaks into your lame existence and whisks you up into the starry sky? That mythical creature that my twenty-nine-year-old self should really have stopped believing in a long, long time ago?

Problem is, once upon a time, I did meet someone like that. Five years ago at university, during a boat trip to the Indonesian Riau Islands. She was an adventurer and an artist. Her reality was effervescent, beautiful, a splash of colour erupting across a grey canvas. I close my eyes and I can still see her on the boat, strumming her midnight-blue guitar that she'd painted herself, singing along with the voice of an angel to the chords reverberating through the salty air. Somewhere between the sunset, the stars and the sea, my gaze began to stray with increasing frequency in her direction. Thoughts about her filled my waking hours and lived rent-free in my mind. There was no running away from it—I'd caught the love bug.

Well, nothing came of it. And yet, five years on, I often still stop and think of her. I'd like to think that makes me a hopeless romantic, someone who's full of passion and sincerity, but if I'm honest with myself, I'm pretty sure that just makes me someone who's full of bullshit. I mean, how do you love someone you don't know? Because the fact is, I knew nothing about her. We'd only ever hung out in a group and were barely even friends. I had no clue whatsoever about where she was in life, her hopes and dreams and fears, her habits and idiosyncrasies. I did not know who she was on the inside.

So what that really means is this: when I think of her, I'm not actually thinking of her. I'm thinking of an idea, a fantasy. I'm hung up on a goddess who exists exclusively in my mind. I'm the Singaporean Chinese guy version of the Little Mermaid, perched on her rock and gazing up through the ocean into the world above: wondering, wishing, dreaming. Pining.

Slumped on my bed on the fourth day of Chinese New Year, still reeling from the explosion, I weigh my options. On the one hand, I have Ruth, a soulmate who knows me and is somehow crazy enough to love me, and tell me she loves me. On the other, I have what is essentially a pipe dream.

It dawns on me, in this utter state of misery, that this is not how normal people travel. You don't generally read, among the top ten things to do in Perth: Experience being homeless on Hay Street! Feel deep in your bones what it's like to be cold, destitute and hungry! But the thing is, I didn't come to the land down under to do normal touristy stuff. No, I came here to become an adult.

You see, at the age of twenty, I was a year away from being officially declared an adult by society. Yet I felt anything but one. I was just this scrawny, timid guy plagued with all sorts of anxieties and fears, not to mention a perpetual existential crisis I couldn’t shake. Consequently, I felt this strong need to prove myself, to undergo a rite of passage that would launch me into the world. An initiation of sorts, where I could measure myself and come out the other end worthy. I wanted to be able to tell myself that I was a real adult—a real man—capable of handling the real world and standing on my own two feet. I needed to know that I would survive.

So I came up with a plan. I bought a plane ticket to Perth and emailed a local bike shop to rent a mountain bicycle for a week. I was going to bike through the forest for seven days, subsisting on energy bars and filtered rainwater. It was going to be epic. On the morning of expedition day one, I show up at the bike shop all pumped up for my crazy Australian adventure. The shop attendant is this wiry guy sporting a trendy beard. He looks at me from head to toe, sizes me up, then shoots me a sceptical look. "I don't think this is a good idea," he says . I tell him, "I'm doing it anyway," and he puts his hands up and shrugs. "Fine, do what you want, but don't say I didn't warn you."

Half an hour later, I'm wheeling a mountain bike with big-ass tyres out of the shop and on my way to the start of the forest trail. All my stuff is loaded on it, and the bike is much heavier than I'd expected—slower, too. Still, as I watch the pavement rolling away beneath me, I'm thrilled. I think to myself, this is it. I'm actually, actually doing this. I'm going to make it work!

And then I grind to an abrupt halt. In front of me, the pavement disappears and I see a busy junction. Uh-oh. To get to the start of the forest trail, I'd have to cycle on the road alongside traffic, which is a problem, because I can't cycle on roads. Back at home, I cycle on park connectors, which are these broad pavements with bold white and yellow lines and plenty of signs. It's all very safe. There are no cars whizzing beside you at eighty kilometres an hour, no buses that could mow you down—easy-peasy. And so now, staring ahead at the busy junction, two words appear in my mind.

Hell no.

My epic expedition is over before it's even started. The adventure of a lifetime, put to an end not by a bear attack, or heat exhaustion, or anything epic whatsoever, but because of… traffic.

Yep, so much for becoming a real man.

I next proceed to do the most un-manly, un-adult thing. I back the bicycle into someone's garage, collapse into a heap on the floor, and burst into tears. For five or ten minutes, I have a pathetic little twenty-year-old man-child breakdown. Then, I wipe away my tears and begin the return journey of shame to the bike shop. The shop attendant's face says it all.

"Oh, back already?"

I could have punched him.

But then, as I step out of the shop, I catch myself, pull myself together. I give myself a pep talk. Look, so maybe things didn't exactly pan out the way they were supposed to. But that's how it is with travelling, amiright? You're young, you're adaptable. You can still make the best of a bad situation. Go with the flow. Be chill, be spontaneous. Have fun. Sure, the biking thing might have fallen through, but we can still go camping. That still counts, right?

Yes, I can do this. I can DO this.

Filled with new resolve, I make a plan. I scroll through Google Maps for the largest patch of green I can find near me, and Kings Park shows up. The city's botanical gardens. Cool. I head there right away. At the park, tourists amble casually around me while my eyes dart furtively around for a place to camp. I spot a pavilion below a green slope, and I settle on the carpet grass, waiting. Once it gets dark and everybody goes home, I'd go down to the pavilion, get into my sleeping bag, and weather the night. Achievement unlocked.

But then, the daylight fades and a chill seeps into the air. I begin to feel cold, scared, abandoned.

I can do this… I can do this… I can do this… I can't do this… I can't do this… I CAN'T DO THIS!

I chicken out. I return to the city and wander about the malls. When closing time rolls around, I end up loitering on the streets. A sense of desperation steals over on me, but still I refuse to check into proper accommodation. I don't want to admit defeat. I come across a homeless man lying in front of a shopfront, and realise what I need to do. I decide to draw inspiration from the pros.

So that's how I end up here, lying in the doorway of a shop on Hay Street, bent over in a foetal position in my sleeping bag. It's a brisk spring evening, but I feel like I'm surrounded by the Arctic cold. Well, I think to myself, at least this would probably make a funny story when I get home, ha-ha.

Except that I'm not laughing anymore. Nope, I'm crying, or I would have been crying if my tear ducts aren't immobilised by the cold. I'm lonely, I'm afraid, and I want to go home.

I think of the last time I was here in Perth. It was nine years ago, when I was eleven. Back then my family was with me. We went to the beach, the sun was setting, and I remember idiotically trying to chase my own shadow. We ate seafood at a restaurant, and on the car ride back to the hotel I squabbled with my sister over who got to bathe first when we got back. During the trip, we took lots of photos, went sightseeing at tourist traps and bought lame souvenirs. Basically, the stuff that families on holidays do.

Now, I'm twenty years old and my carefree childhood is long behind me. I'm an a not-yet-adult struggling to find my place in a world where I constantly feel like an outcast. I've got family and friends but none of them understand me. Nobody is able to help me or save me from myself. Though we inhabit the same world we're worlds apart, living our separate lives and fighting our own demons. Knowing this makes me feel unaccountably sad. Incomplete.