20:37.

Now and then, I wonder how it is like at home. I still call my, our HDB flat in Woodlands home even though I refer to 5*/2*2 Victoria Street as home too in conversation and in my daily life here.

When I pick up the phone to call across the seven-hour plane journey between my family and me, I see them - in my mind's eye - at their various places in the living room, kitchen and rooms. I see the phone ring, I see Dad, sitting at his comfy chair next to the phone reading his newspapers for the day, picking up the ringing apparatus or Mom, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel and rushing out of the kitchen to get the phone. I can hear the radio playing 95.8FM, Dad's favourite channel, or sometimes, it's the television that's on, on Channel U, 8 or Cable Channel 49, 55 or 56. Or Discovery Channel, which Dad loves. I can see them all in some distant mirage-like real manner in my head. Playing like a mind reel of the home I lived in for five years. With the family I've had for 22 years, 10 months and some.

The people I love most in the world.

You can call this egoistic, I don't think it is, I just think it channelled-introspection. I do wonder how they live without me. If they stop some time and look into my room and miss me for a moment the way I miss them. If they sometimes just stop or wake up feeling like they want me home because I do feel this way regarding them.

Two or three mornings ago when I finally woke up properly - it was one of those cold mornings where it's very hard to get out of a warm duvet and futon - I turned around and hugged my pillow. And I thought, "Mom". Then "Home". For a moment, spanning the half-second I pressed my eyes shut, I found myself wishing myself home.

I guess even a 50-year-old would miss his/ her mom, dad and family. Age doesn't really matter, does it? Or maturity? *shrugs* I want to hug Mom and Dad.