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Day 85 of 100, Nordjylland, Danmark

I woke today to find that daffodils had crept into the north end of the lawn overnight. Along with those tiny white flowers I can’t name. They’re clustered around the molehills, a cheery nod to the frustrations of the lawn keepers (heh) who have been trying to catch it for some weeks now.

It’s easy to sink into the physical rhythm of days, out here in the country. Away from the jam and rush of concrete jungles which have framed the majority of my life, I find the presence to notice little changes in my surroundings. To take pleasure again in the small things.

I adore this rural level of quiet – it’s often so still around these parts that the hum of the refrigerator is as prevalent as someone speaking to you; every time a car drives by you find yourself thinking “goodness, I wonder who that is.” It yea difficult to be this sensitized and stay sane everywhere though. Not in Singapore where my mother lives: 11th floor, 50 metres away from the expressway, people, kids, unending traffic and of course, TVs… it’s a neverending cacophany, and that, in a quiet suburban area.

It’s one of the reasons I keep late hours when I’m back in the motherland (the other being: late nights are the only time it’s cool). But away for too long, I tend to forget that these pockets of small pleasures exist there daily too – the way the light illuminates each bougainvillea bloom’s petal at sunset, the sunbird that makes its home in the rambling old plant that must be as old as the elderly neighbour who tends to it. Slices of still, in the big city, before it’s swept away by the pace, again.