The Humble Home

author
article, Paperspace press
In Collaboration with Brian Khoo
2014

Home is a roughly 3.5m by 2.5m space. I know, because I lay on my bed and the longer wall was about two times my height, slightly smaller than my eyes first estimated it to be. It is my own personal space every 2/3 of a year since I started university and the other 1/3 of the year, it doesn’t even register in my mind. 

Home is 3 storey dwelling tucked deep into the woods of Rifle Range. The multi-storey monstrosity of brick and concrete come off as slightly intimidating and as I stare up towards its roof, I suddenly am aware of my stature. On the right side of this monster, there exists a garden. There exists dark corners I do not dare to venture into, a patio 20 kid-strides long and a swing that very much resembles a light wooden ship rolling on invisible waves.

Home is on the ground floor, too low for a good breeze and too deep in for a nice view. It is miserably humid on a hot day despite the fan and comfortably cold when it rains.  It is a bike back downhill on a school day night and a 40 minute 143 bus ride from Orchard on days when there is time for a break. Home is the best place to sleep in at the end of a long day and also the worst place to be in when the wired internet goes down. Frankly, this place has the drabbest looking tiles, the worse ventilation ever, and a desk too small for my comfort, but to me it’s home, at least during this point of my life. 

Home is 3-storeys tall but my home is third floor. It is huge and it is also occupied by a soundly snoring beast of a sister. I am afraid but I take my chances and I go in. My tent occupies the left side of the 5m by 3.5m cave. The branches wait by my window side and the little bit of warm sunlight that makes its way through the leaves remains just as I like it. The coolness of my bed sheets provide the comfortable warmth of a nest. As I am tucked in, I am in my own world. 

After a while, the stained whitewashed walls become less of an eyesore and a favourite place to lean on while reading a book or watching a movie. The desk becomes an arranged mess of familiar items, from the green frog coin bank staring eagerly right at me, to the metal pot once containing an African violet, now a container holding pens of a multitude of colours. Cards and paper cling onto the dusty pin board and a Lego figure with books half read sit on the pigeon hole shelves above. Like a temporary nest made out of things picked up as I go along.

I am awakened by a soft yellow glow behind my head. I tilt my head upwards and touch the peeling paint of my yellow wall. Old maps patch up the fading colour with lines of black blue and green.  A piece of paper charting immature hate, a map of the ever-expanding underground state, a world map, a pair of diving costume goggles and a poorly painted scene of an adventure that I have longed to embark on.

Home is where it is mostly quiet, the silence punctured once in a while by a piercing laughter and shouts which makes me frown. It is where my laptop plays Death Cab for Cutie from an ever expanding playlist a few years old as I lazily lay on the bed as the familiar Pokémon music streams out from the 3DS in my hands.


Sleep, 
Sleep with the lights on
Shutter, the shades drawn
There’s too many windo –

(Cue Pokécenter theme song)

Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home
'Cause, I built a home

For –

(AI WEN, chia̍h-pá-bô (jia bah bo)!!!!!)

*Teochew for “Have you eaten?”

Home is away from the muted teochew interchanges between my grandmother and mother. Home is a quiet, soundless wintery enclave as I pick off the last bite of kueh kueh that is comfortably resting on my tea plate. Home is my mother constantly barging in to offer warm milk and nuts as I sail the great internet. It is my father pulling me to dance to beat of the song on the radio, it is also time I sit in mutual co-existence with now-awoken sister. I look back at my computer screen and venture on my journey deeper into the world wide web. 

My mother once mentioned to me that a home is only a good home when someone truly makes it their own; books stuffed between the railings on a staircase, family photos found on any surface large enough for a picture frame, and the awkward space between the cabinet and the ceiling, containing a cardboard box stuffed with old memorabilia, the total opposite of an Ikea catalogue or a picture perfect rendering of the dream home as declared by some magazine. There is warmth exuded from personal little things, which invade the idea of a perfect space, and sometimes even creating the perfect temporary space in an imperfect little hole on the first floor.

Yet again, my father has to fix the sagging blob on the ceiling, he says there is water in it and that the house is old and falling apart. I take another look at my living room, it breaks all the architectural rules that I have been taught, an awkward balcony railing splits the living room into half, a pussy willow stands at the corner, an abstract metallic sculpture hangs on a textured wall where some European flowers mark the entrance to the kitchen. The scene makes me chuckle. It is both awkward and messy, yet it is what makes me feel comfortable and safe. I look over at the balcony railing that is adorned by recently painted gold roses, where I used to be small enough to slip through the gaps. Its kitsch and dated but it is more home than any #dreamhome I’ve seen.

I can’t describe what my home is like; it exudes no architectural influences but rather what influences. It has chipboard furnishings in place of the mahogany nest I would have imagined it to be, raw concrete where yellowing paint is. While it is just a small hall room for some, it is a familiar space I call home for now, because of the way I have made it my own. 

I know what my home is like. It’s nothing I can replace. It may be dull, old and its parts may be falling off but I like my comfy couch and my old pillows. It is the fort I build away from stranger things, it is an extension of myself. While I have been here all my life, it is a familiar space I have been calling home, because of the quirks that make it whole.