The Avocation (A 20 Facts Special)

One: A Rare Horizon

"The place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you."

- Rumi

There was a possibility I was leaving home.

Next month I would be going back to junior college, just to receive my results for the national examinations known as the 'A' Levels. It was the notorious giant of all examinations - 'A' stood for 'Advanced' for a reason; the papers were marked at Cambridge University.

For the past few weeks I had imagined a frail old man in freezing winter-struck England, fumbling with my script. He would look right at it then squint, take off his glasses and bring the papers as close to his nose as if he intended to smell the dust between the sheets. "What tiny handwriting," he would say, before proceeding to read my almost illegible answers.

The fate of my future seemed to lie in his hands.

I wasn't sure if I was ever ready to leave this city - this garden city. Where among the skyscrapers and noisy traffic, there was a hint of serenity, if only one would seek it. It could be the Singapore sun that nudged the horizon on Lower Seletar Reservoir during the suburban train ride from Yishun to Khatib, or the delicate lights of the tallest, futuristic architectural designs that prided themselves along Marina Bay. I didn't have the heart to leave that all behind.

Dian was right beside me, tracing a world map I had handed her as a pullout from an old travel journal. If there was anyone in the world who felt the same unsettling mix of anticipation and anxiety as I did, it was her. Since birth, we had always been one minute apart, but our experiences together were timeless. Tomorrow was the day we would discover if we were finally going separate ways.

Leaning against the train doors, Dian groped for a pen in her shoulder bag and uncapped it. She marked a cross on the little red dot just a degree north of the equator, and another in central Canada. "We may be going here soon," her eyes gleamed as I responded a 'yes' promptly following a heavy sigh. Talking was one way we got things off our mind, but in the train it had always been a challenge to raise our voices above the wheels' thundering dash across the tracks underground.

We were headed home after an hour's visit to the open house of the National University of Singapore.

"A's in the 90th percentile," seemed to be the only sentence by a fellow professor that remained stuck in my head since we left those prestigious grounds. With my projected grades, it was almost impossible to apply for the courses I wanted. Then again, I didn't really have an eye for any particular undergraduate programme.

I was lost. At eighteen I was guided by the school curriculum; at eighteen-and-a-half I was deluded by the arbitrary units of time and a silly interest.

I say 'silly' because I knew writing was never going to pay well in expensive Singapore. And although I noted that writing wasn't exactly about the money, at some point I still had to be practical. As rich as our literary arts scene may be, I had doubts of finding my place here in the industry. There was an exceptionally high standard in Singaporean literature as I recalled reading the wondrous poems of Alfian bin Sa'at back in secondary school, and the elegant excerpts of books by Catherine Lim later in my mid-teens. Their stories were in the upper reaches of the mountains while mine were at the foot, or even further beneath the ground. I had decided that writing remained an avocation.

So there I was, in a train back home, with my sister by side, admiring a distant horizon and still clueless of the looming future. I had a map, but it was useless without some specific coordinates or a sense of direction. When people asked, I learned to hide and deny my love for writing, while feigning interest in medical and law schools.

Soon I had adopted the geographical mantra, "Meandering on a marked map." Perhaps it was time I left my compass to the Almighty.