Home

In Vietnam they usually call a house 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade or 4th grade. When I was a small child living in my old home, my mom tried to explain to me why the commentators on the TV announced the building of some new 3rd grade houses in my city. So I asked my mom "Our house is first grade, right, mom?" Back then I thought the 4th grade house is the slum along the riverside that I see when I walk down to the river bank to catch the small crabs living in the sand. Back then there was one whole district in my city with houses build on wooden poles, protruding haphazardly along the river banks, with the walls made of plastic sheet and metal toles. The people there lived by sorting out trashes, to sell the metals back to the metallurgies and to put up there house's walls. So based on the standard of these house, I would consider my house to be like first grade. It was build of bricks, got a roof, a small garden. My mother laughed and said, "No. Our house is the 4th grade type".

Back then I did not really understand why my mother thinks so low of our home. I found the home so much fun. During the raining season, which usually last for 3 months in my city, with 5 or 6 storms during that period. The water would leak down from the roof, falling down on a metal pot that my parents place under the leaking spot. I used to like the raining season because if the storm is bad enough, we don't have school. I love hearing the "tink .. tink ... tink" sound of the water drop on the pot at night. When the sound of the rain outside becomes louder, the "tinks" would become faster. My parents would wake up now and then at night to empty the pot. There was this huge crack near the front door of our house, from the side of the door to the roof. When it rains, the water would leak down from the roof and the water would soak the wall around the crack. I loved touching to feel the cool wet wall. Before the rain, there would be a lot of ants coming out from the crack, follow the door and disappear somewhere at the bottom of the wall. I used to wipe the invisible path of the ants and see how the ants would scramble at the wiped out path. But a few ants will wander across the wiped out path and smell the aroma on the other side. The ants would always find their way to their secret nest no matter how big the gap I made.

When I was in grade 5, our old house is renovated. Once when I visit the house when it is under construction. I love the view of the house. Although there are scaffolds and cements and sand piles all over the floor, I like my parents' room without the windows. It was in the afternoon and the dusk's light filled up the room. The light blends so nicely with the bricks' red color. When my parents planned for the house, I told them to have a lot of windows. Big windows so that the light and the wind can come into the room. I sat on the bare edge of one of those windows, with the roughness of the brick and the cement ticking my bottoms. I loved siting there, looked at the trees, the top so near to me now and felt the wind blowing around me. Soon after that when the windows panes are put on (no matter how I tried to tell my father not to), I could not get that scene anymore. I felt so natural and free when I sat on the windows' edge there. That unfinished room was the most beautiful room that I have ever seen.

When I was fifteen, I went to study in Singapore. My third home was my room in the boarding school. The room was for 4 people, each one has a share of a corner of the room. My room back in Vietnam was nearly three times the size of the room in boarding school. I could crawl on the floor in the room, papers and color powder placed around me. I could move from one corner to another to start a new painting. When I want to draw, I would need to squeeze the stuffs just nicely in the rectangle bounded by my bed, the wall, my table and my roommate's wardrobe. And I would have to bend my knee, put the canvas on my thighs to paint.

I stayed in Singapore on my own without my parents. I had another Vietnamese and two Indonesia guys as my roommates. They were very nice and helpful to me, but I always found something is missing. Singapore is not like my home in Vietnam. I did not know beforehand that I would miss my parents so much. My bed was next to the windows. Whenever I happened to forget to close the windows, my whole bed and pillows would get soaking wet when there was a heavy rain. I miss my father's nagging when it rained: he had to close the windows when he came home from work and found me so engrossed in the computer game that I forgot to close my windows upstairs. I remember the times when I fell sick and lying alone, staring at the rotation of the fan on the ceiling and could not sleep. I craved for the feeling of my mother's calloused hands on my head.

I joined a school event when I was in secondary school in Singapore. We were divided into groups to survey this block of apartments of low-income people to see which apartment are in the low condition to be renovated. It was the first time I went to such a place. From the outside it looks like it's at a pretty good condition. But I was shocked when I walked in. They are old one-room apartments and most of the people there did not have a fixed job. A room would be piled with random hoarded stuffs. I thought all the rooms are bad enough to be repainted but my friends said some were just repainted the year before. It seems like all the mold growing in the damp carton boxes in those room has made the paint falling out so fast. Later in the day, we even found bed bugs and insects under the mattress of many rooms. From the outside, I would never expect the block to be in such a bad state. When I came to Singapore, before that time, I have only see a shiny Singapore with the glamorous Durian Theater, the skyscrapers in the Central Business Districts and the neat and clean streets. I had always assumed that all the houses in Singapore would be so modern and beautiful.

Another time I was in a community project at a community center of another low-income block. The rooms inside the block quite bad, too, but the community center, although small, was at a decent state. We were there to organize game and talk to the elderly people, or basically do anything to keep them accompanied. I could not play Mahjong and I could not speak Cantonese or Hokkien with the old people there. But at the end I found a Chinese woman of her sixties who could speak English. So every time I came to the center, she was the only person I talk to while my friends organize games for the rest of the people. I could not pronounce her Chinese name correctly so I always called her Auntie instead. I found it quite strange that she could hardly remember me every time I come. One day the Auntie told me, with an apologetic tone, that she had dementia. She got a heart attack before that partially paralyzed one side of her body and she could only stutter words very slowly. I once asked her where husband was because I saw the ring on her hand. She said he passed away a few years before that. I asked her whether she had children. She said they were all in Australia and could visit her once or twice a year. I was quite uneasy knowing that she still had relatives. All the while I had thought she was alone, but I did not ask her more about her children. I was still struggling with English back then. I would always say things like "I need to come to school now" before parting someone. So once I told Auntie that I would not see her the next week because I will leave for Malaysia the following weekend, and I would only "go back home the week after that". Auntie was a bit puzzled and asked why I go back to Vietnam at the middle of the term. I said I mean I will be back to Singapore. Auntie placed her hand slightly on my hand and said with a smile "You use "come" and not "go". Here's your home"