This moment...

Over the past few weeks I have been exposed to the joys (and pains?) of near-complete independence. It is an experience of unparalleled liberation to be able to rent one's own flat in a foreign country. To choose the furniture that I want in my room and how I want to arrange them. To be able to plan my own meals and cook them from scratch. To wash the dishes (a first for me, I must admit) and take out the trash, to pay water bills and deal with bedsheets, vacuum cleaners, rugs and clothes racks. I derive such a great deal of satisfaction from these very mundane things because it makes me feel that I am growing up.

One of the things that I am learning to do, meanwhile, is to enjoy the present moment. No matter how routine the thing I am doing is, I plunge into it with the enthusiasm of a child who has discovered a new toy. I believe it is important to savour every one of life's experiences that rolls our way- and the only way to do that as an adult is to act as though we are seeing everything for the first time. Sometimes when I pop underground into the Tube, I dash down the escalators as fast as I can. At other times I enter Waitrose as though I have never seen an English supermarket. At the LSE library entrance I like to pause for just a second to catch a glimpse of the strange spiral staircase at the centre of the building. I want to see London and my life in London through eyes of novelty; the same eyes I had on me when I first came up to this city last September.

And I want to extend that perspective to the rest of my life, whether in London or back in Singapore. This may or may not be a form of resistance on my part to the fact that I am growing up. Perhaps I am just being silly. Whatever. Experiences and even opportunities throughout life may be plentiful and may come again and again, but as far as I'm concerned, right at this moment, they only come once. I've never seen them before, and I'm going to enjoy them.