Looking back

I wrote Chinese poems in a cafe till the cafe closed at two o'clock in the morning. I painted next to a graveyard at twelve midnight, urinating into the drain even as there was no nearby toilet which I could use. Days of reading novels and trying to write my autobiography. Crazy nights of drawing and painting into the wee hours of the morning. Watercolour sunset next to a roadside stall, with smoke and ashes from the joss bin blowing in the wind. Banyan tree in a Muslim graveyard. Canal and construction site next to the old folks’ home at Kembangan. Insomnia blues at Pandan Reservoir. Stir-fried kway teow, iced coffee and intellectual conversations at Teban Gardens. Mosquitoes and drizzle at the Botanical Gardens and Fort Canning, with “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in my bag . I have done it all…