[ad_1]
SINGAPORE: A few months ago my husband and I decided to make 2020 even more memorable and we moved from Jakarta to Singapore.
Moving home, and the physical and emotional disruption that goes with it, is often cited as one of the main causes of stress.
A cross-border move in the middle of a pandemic with a four-year-old was a highly stressful life event, so stressful it justifies the first letters in capital letters.
But the move made sense for a number of reasons: a new regional role for my husband, the opportunity for me to work from my company headquarters in Singapore, and the opportunity for my son to grow up in one of the safest cities in the world.
READ: Comment: A COVID-19 Vaccine in Singapore? This is what has to happen first
READ: Comment: As Singapore gradually opens its borders, we must be aware of a second wave of COVID-19
None of the experience could have been classified as “normal”.
Our applications were delayed for months due to the circuit breaker; once Singapore entered phase 1 of its reopening, we took a chance and reapplied.
We were fortunate to receive approval a month later, but this was at a stage when Singapore was beginning to reopen its borders. There was a lot of confusion about the paperwork and the process.
In the end, we were left with a small window of three weeks to prepare. Missing that window for approved entry and we’d run the risk of going through the whole process again.
LISTEN: What’s next for the Malaysian workers trapped there and the Singapore companies that hire them here?
PREPARING LIKE A MOTHER GOING TO THE DITCHES
We chose a condo and a school based on Zoom calls and Google Map queries; it was disconcerting to transfer deposits to places we had only seen on a screen.
We were incessantly restless when the moving workers came to pack, pleading for masks to be kept on despite the heat, spraying disinfectant on all surfaces. I braced myself like a mother entering the trenches, for a two-week stay-at-home notice that took family ties to a new extreme.
LISTEN: Singapore’s real estate market: is it changing for the better?
But in hindsight, those were simple logistical problems that could be overcome. In fact, the real challenge of moving during COVID-19 was mental and emotional – it was the element of leaving Jakarta not knowing when we might return.
What in the past would have been a simple move to a neighboring country suddenly felt like a huge, life-changing relocation.
It was sad saying goodbye to a closed city, a ghost of the vibrant and tangled metropolis that it should be. When we left, several places that had been key parts of our daily lives (our grocery stores, gyms, favorite restaurants, street food vendors) had closed or remained closed.
Moving workers wearing masks carry clients’ belongings in a residential complex in Beijing, China, as the country is hit by a novel coronavirus outbreak on February 1, 2020. REUTERS / Stringer
My husband’s office was still restricted and he was not allowed into the building to pack his belongings. The security guard did it for him.
Meanwhile, I emptied my desk on my own, my colleagues continued to work from home, not in the way I never imagined leaving an office where I had worked for many years.
READ: Comment: When Singapore Homes Become Workspaces: Big Changes at Home and Beyond
READ: Comment: I made fun of life in the office, and then it disappeared
UPDATED HOME CONCEPTS
My experience was not unique, but millions of people around the world have passed during the last few months.
For those of us privileged enough to be used to the freedom of travel – expats, global travelers, diaspora – the concepts of seamless travel, home, and belonging have changed.
When borders began to close earlier this year, those of us who had the privilege of choosing were forced to weigh the pros and cons of staying in a foreign country rather than returning to countries of nationality.
The fear of being excluded from one’s own country and the possible loss of rights, protections and freedoms led to a wave of repatriation that few could have anticipated.
A passenger waits in the departure lounge of Singapore’s Changi Airport on June 8, 2020 (File Photo: AFP / Roslan Rahman).
In most cases these movements are meant to be temporary, but they have turned out to be much more.
I have seen friends return to the countries that issued their passports with renewed recognition. I have seen self-proclaimed nomads strive to accept their severed wings.
I know those who have chosen to leave countries with better health systems to be locked up with their loved ones, and I know those who have chosen to stay abroad, recognizing that after several years abroad, friends have become family .
READ: Comment: I never planned to visit Hong Kong anytime soon, but the air travel bubble could change that
READ: Comment: Our flights of fantasy have stopped, but were they all so romantic anyway?
A STRANGE KIND OF DISEASE
There are those who have lost their jobs and with it their visas. There are people for whom going home is not an option.
And there are those like me, trying to build a sense of belonging in a time of uncertainty, oscillating between feeling grateful that you were even allowed to enter another country in the first place, and feeling nostalgic for a life that really only existed before. -coronavirus.
For those of us with lives previously defined by multiple geographies, it has been an ongoing process. Where do we fit in in a world where physical location means so much, but at the same time, due to incessant Zoom calls, has become irrelevant?
As we approach the end of the year and an upcoming holiday season with no festive pilgrimages home, I hope the feelings of displacement deepen, along with feelings of nostalgia, loneliness, and longing to see the change of a new year and hopefully a better year, in a place we will soon call home.
Artist’s impression of the Christmas lights along Orchard Road. (Photo: Orchard Road Business Association)
We cannot allow those feelings to affect our sense of identity. Because the truth is that no one has felt “at home” since the pandemic began.
And as borders are gradually reopened, it will be impossible to return home to the lives we left behind, when traveling back to Jakarta on a whim, a fantasy or family emergency will not be perfect.
Ultimately, I am also learning that a sense of belonging can be derived from a physical place, but it can also be derived from a person or a shared experience.
READ: Comment: A home can heal in times of coronavirus
While the simplest definition of home is where you live, perhaps this pandemic calls for an oversimplification.
Perhaps now more than ever, home should simply be the people we love and the life we lead, wherever it may be.
Annisa Natalegawa is a Partner and Managing Director of Asia Group Advisors, a Singapore-based government relations and public affairs consulting firm.
