A student’s life at Edinburgh University is beautiful; lush green of the meadows, epic heights of Arthur’s seat, drunken windy cigarettes with fabulous bohemian idealist students. As an anthropology disciple I am particularly fortunate, having moved from London at the tender age of eighteen, I stumbled across this Scottish capital with vast dreams and explorative eyes.
These years at Edinburgh have been better than the most moving Radiohead song or that amazing feeling you get when Humphrey Bogart looks at his lady in Casablanca, even better than the thrill of insignificance front row at Manu Chao at Exit festival in the blistering heat of Serbia. It is this same feeling of insignificance that inspired me to embark on my most exciting adventure yet; a year abroad in Singapore.
Edinburgh’s been good to me, but the world is massive and in my lifetime I am likely to not even cover one tenth of it. Thousands of different languages, different ways to make tea, different ways to express love, hate and respect; all things my academic contemporaries seek to explore, understand and explain.
My summer since exams has blinked by and despite working at the International Film Festival and travels around Eastern Europe to slow time, two weeks today my life as I know it will change. I will be plunged into Southeast Asia onto an island with around 4 million inhabitants, into a world of Buddhism and cleanliness, a country associated with the exotic, the distant and the sling; a gin based cocktail. The exchange fair lured me with ideas of island hopping and a previous student of Singapore convinced me with tales of every night being lady’s night. Mostly it was the passion with which he spoke of all the sunrises he’d seen that exemplified to me heading out to Asia was an opportunity I could not walk past.
It feels distinctly like my first scuba dive, with a lot of equipment to sort out; a heavy oxygen tank filled for survival, cloudy goggles so you can’t see perfectly and big flippers for ultimate freedom and mobility.
Yet when you’re sitting on the edge of the boat all alone your filled with a large knot of excitement and fear you can only imagine what lies ahead. The smell of noodles sometimes gets my heart racing and talk of the Olympics in China makes bright colours and loud music seep through my senses. I could read every lonely planet guide and Wikipedia entry on Singapore but the knowledge I seek can never be read in a book.
As cliché as it seems I’m looking for excitement and adventure, looking to take the kind of photos you’d show your kids with pride and looking forward to relaying stories of the impossible and unimaginable. I’m ready to jump now.
