JUST MY IMAGINATION

It’s been almost a month since I moved to Aberdeen, and I’m trying to get back to writing. I am trying to remember what it was like to be in Singapore. Does one magically forget about one whole year, just like that? For this past month, I started my job as a lecturer, met with my students, and gave my first induction lecture. When I tell this to my family and friends, they say, “You mean introduction?” I say, “Yes.” So why don’t they just call it that? I guess “induction,” for non-academic people, means induction hob. I checked, and technically, induction and introduction are pretty close. So why do academics call it an induction class and not an introduction class?  Talk about diverting from the topic. Have I become a proper academic yet? Where was I? So yes, I started my job. Then, a quick flight to Turkey, brought two families together to put a nice ring on our fingers. Ate my mum’s delicious homemade snacks. Then flew back to our Scottish home. All the shenanigans just ...

Being overwhelmed working from the office yesterday, I decided to take the afternoon and work from a coffee shop. Sat there. Opened my laptop. Went to the counter and gave my order. "Could I please get a venti oat latte? And some tap water as well, please." "Hot or iced?" "Just normal water." Five minutes later, my water and coffee order came. One hot water. And this isn't even happening to me for the first time. I couldn't count how many times it's happened. For some reason, whenever I ask for tap water in Singapore, I get hot water. Unless you ask for iced water, which I don't want most of the time because it freezes my brain, they just bring a hot one. Could this be frustrating? For me, yes. At least, sometimes. I don't know why it's so hard to comprehend. At first, I thought it was a language barrier. Like, maybe they simply don't understand my English. Then the same thing happened while I was waiting for m...

“How can you be sure?” “Well, I am not.” How can anyone be sure of anything? Is there even a way to be sure of things? Through testing, experimenting, and doing actuarial analysis? I'm thinking about my own life. All the things I've done. I don't think there was a single moment when I felt completely sure before doing something big. Because isn't life like this? It isn't lived by objective standards. Whatever you decide to do, you do for the first time. There is only one version of you in the entire universe. So there is only one set of circumstances in which everything can be tried. You know how, in labs, they have test groups? They arrange the optimum conditions and keep everything the same, changing only one variable. That is how you measure whether something is successful or not. Now imagine how this would apply to one person's life. I'm thinking about my siblings. We all grew up in the same household. You could say under the similar testing conditions...

Getting off the plane, thinking a million things at the same time. How am I gonna resolve the visa issue? Will I be able to find a hotel at the last minute? Gosh, I'm so sick, I just want to go home. How could I have even booked a 28-hour layover? How silly of me. I know I've been very busy lately. And I know I booked this flight when I was hardcore homesick. But 28 hours, really? Approaching the transfer desk. "Excuse me. I have another flight to Singapore. But I accidentally booked a 28-hour layover. I don't even know how that happened. Do you by any chance have a complementary hotel option or any recommendations for me?" "Was your flight supposed to leave tonight?" "Huh?"  Meanwhile, I overheard the girl next to me saying the following. "Sorry, but our flight got delayed for 24 hours due to the war. What are we supposed to do now?" "Same! That happened to me too." I knew I didn't book my connecting f...

There’s a moment in everyone’s life when they think, ‘I should write a book.’ But not many people end up doing it.  I wanted to write a book since I was a little girl, and I had been writing since the day I learned how to write. When I was in elementary school and had just started writing, I went to my parents and said: “Mom, Dad, I wrote a story.” My parents got excited and asked what I had written, and I read it to them, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ They smiled and said, “The story should be original, something you came up with, something that hasn’t been written before.” That’s when I realised that writing was much more than just writing. What we desire is not just the meeting of pen and paper. The ideas had to come from your core, not from someone else. During my middle school years, I wrote all sorts of things. Mostly stories with positive endings, characters from my neighbourhood, and poems filled with family love. By the time I entered high school, the rose-colour...

So many things to write about Vietnam… but this won’t be a long one. I just want to keep some practical points on record for the future. Vietnam was my first solo trip after a while, and also my first proper hostel experience. I’ve travelled solo a lot before, and I’ve stayed in hostels before, too. But this time it was just… different. I was truly sad when I left Hanoi. Exhausted after 11 days. Slightly sick. But also, sad. I think it’s genuinely amazing that human beings are capable of moving around the world and making connections. Like, I could literally meet a bunch of people from all around the world, have the most interesting and brave conversations, and then never see them again. Travelling is freeing on so many levels. And I think I’m starting to enjoy the human element of travelling more and more, even more than the “fantastic places” I’ve seen. In Vietnam, I felt that so strongly, and my extroverted side really came out towards the end, which is why I’m grateful. Some storie...

I’ve always felt that I am destined to accomplish big things. How? Let me explain. First of all, I adore my name. I think my parents did the greatest job in the world by giving me such a special name. It is the name of the daughter of the Prophet Mohammad, and I’ve always felt special because of that, even though people have mispronounced it my entire life. I never minded correcting them. It’s not the most practical name, for sure. Not in my home country, not abroad. But I truly love it.  Second, I am one of the most emotionally intelligent and self-aware people I know. You know that moment when you go to therapy, and you already know exactly what the therapist is going to say– and you shock them? That’s me. When I meet a stranger, and we share a conversation, they almost instantly start telling me their darkest secrets. I realised this when I was younger. I have the face of someone people feel they can trust, and I genuinely excel at listening. This may seem like a disposabl...

A couple of days ago, someone asked me a question during a presentation that I couldn’t answer, and it’s still haunting me. It’s been four f*cking days. I wake up and make myself a brekkie, I think about it. I go watch a show, I think about it. I even attended a K-pop class, I still thought about it. That K-pop class was supposed to help me forget and move on. But it didn’t quite work like that. In the class, most people were regulars. I was one of the very few newcomers, and I messed up most of the moves. I wasn’t synced with the rest of the troupe at all. The instructor — gorgeous, gorgeous man by the way — kept saying that newcomers shouldn’t be hard on themselves or stressed because they can’t keep up. My man… what are you talking about? I came here to blow off some steam. I wasn’t even aware that this was yet another thing I needed to be good at, and therefore another thing to feel stressed about. Then I started feeling like a failing student again. Even though I’m not a “st...

“Would you rather have loved and lost, or not have loved at all?” This was asked of me recently, and as a hopeless romantic, my answer is, and always will be, the first one. I think it’s always more precious to taste something beautiful, no matter how long it lasts. In the end, nothing lasts forever. I’ve been mourning and longing for the UK and everything within it lately, to the point where it makes me walk to the local coffee shop at night while it’s still raining and order one hot cocoa and one coffee: the first to give me warmth, and the second, strength. It still blows my mind that I am miles and miles away from everything and everyone I love. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been missing, so so bad, the country where I spent my last six years, the city that has been home to me for most of my adult life. I still get emails from my old workplace. I still get notified when there’s free food in my university kitchen. I still see if there’s a new dance class at my gym, or a de...

Recently, I realised that I do a lot of things half-assed. I go out of my way and try stuff. Meet people. For example, I’ll go to an event, join whatever it is, and talk to one or two people in between. But as soon as it finishes, I’m on my way. If they have a drink or supper planned afterwards, I won’t join. It’ll be too much for me. Too much what, I don’t know. Am I afraid to be too close to people? I don’t think that’s the issue. Maybe I’m just hitting my social battery by the end of the event, so I don’t have the mental capacity for more. But I keep doing this. Why am I rushing? Where am I rushing to? To my single room, where no one is waiting for me? Absolutely not. I’ve noticed this a few times recently. There was a hike I joined, and I spent five hours with those people. But afterwards, it was dinner time, and we all went to a food court. And though most people sat at long tables to keep chatting, I ate by myself. It wasn’t a sad occasion. I was actually very blissful about...

“ What do you even research in law? ” This is the question I’ve been regularly getting ever since I moved here. I wasn’t aware that the law is seen as such an “unresearchable” area. Probably my bad. Being surrounded by lawyers in the UK, I thought what we were doing made sense, and honestly, I never really questioned it. But in Singapore, being surrounded by engineers and other sciencey types, my poor little subject has been subjected to so many questions, and as a lawyer, frankly, I’m not doing a great job defending it. Usually, when people find out that I do law, or maritime law, they act surprised. They ask why . I thought it was common knowledge that Singapore is one of the best in shipping, but clearly not. I’ve met some Singaporeans who didn’t even know that their country excels in shipping. Then, when they hear what exactly I do for my PhD research, they act impressed. “Autonomous ships” and “cyber risk” are two fancy phrases that sound “unknown” enough to make people feel int...

Having decided to spend a chill day today, I was blissfully scrolling through Instagram, knowing that my only workout of the day was going to be walking across the road to grab myself an oat latte later in the morning. I was scrolling and scrolling when I saw one of my favourite influencers (this term somehow strikes me — don’t we all influence someone one way or another?) share in her story the new book by Cat Stevens, “On the Road to Findout”—  an autobiography. Coincidentally, I had been listening to Cat every day that week,  songs from Muslim Cat and before. Also, coincidentally, a few weeks earlier at a BBQ party, someone I met asked if I knew him. I nodded, thinking to myself, “Who doesn’t?” So, I had a Cat theme going on in my life for the last few weeks. And when I saw that his autobiography had just come out, fresh off the press, I had to have it. But I had little patience to wait days for it to arrive from Amazon. Plus, it was a hefty book, and I wasn’t sure how ...

   “ May God rescue you from this mall with a death sentence soon.” I’ve been thinking about this line since yesterday, that someone dropped it in a group chat. The funny thing is, it’s not untrue. But there’s still something disturbing about it that has been occupying my mind. There are two types of people here. One type absolutely hates Singapore; they feel trapped and want to move toward the West. The other kind absolutely loves it here: good salary, better quality of life, higher standards in everything, a travel hub in the heart of Southeast Asia where you can just hop on a flight and be at a spectacular beach within a few hours, the most beautiful nature when it’s green and the most stunning buildings when it’s not. The gap between the two kinds seems huge. I’m yet to figure out which type I belong to. But also — why on earth do we have to make everything black and white? Like, why can’t it be something like, “ It’s good here, except for the weather,” for exa...

In a world where everyone can be anything they want, I just want to be this coffee, dripping my way away from it all. The overthinking and stress I had made me share these lines a couple of days ago. Respectfully, in a world where anything can happen, who the f*ck cares? When I was a young university student, I read something that stayed with me all these years. It said: If you learn a foreign language, you double your value. I didn’t quite understand it back then, but over the years, I came to experience it very closely. When you know only your mother tongue, you’re somehow confined — by your country, your job options, your way of living, even your dating life. But when you break those barriers of language and set yourself free, the sky truly becomes the limit. You can go anywhere, do anything, and be with anyone — no limits whatsoever. Then why are we punishing ourselves just because we’re actually able to do that? We live in a world where borders don’t really feel like b...