Dealing with loneliness

My page has not been touched for two weeks already. I find myself engaged in writing replies to my emails everytime and then suddenly I have to leave. wow, so many problems of OFWs. And now my son is in Singapore and he feels very lonely. He wants to get out of it already. He cannot stand the solitude.

But what is being lonely in a foreign land? Is Singapore really a lonely place? Why should we feel alone in that country? i wonder? I was in London for 18 months and I was able to develop many friends. Everyday I was cycling my way to the center of London to go to Ujamaa where I read a lot about the women's movement, the left movement, the third world movement. I was fired by that idealism to read, read books because at that time, the country was under martial law. ( I lived up north in Kentish Town and later at Hampstead Heath in one of those Victorian era two story houses. They are gone now. The city council did not find it important to keep them despite their historical value.)

Of course, I also had to deal with loneliness and I had close friends to whom I could pour my heart out like Judith Weeks, Mari, Sindamani Bridglal, and Pat Thomas. They were really great people. I also met a lot of folks from all over the globe -- all steeped in democratic processes and respectful of other people's ideas. There was even one Vietnam war veteran there who slept with a woman from an Eastern european country and was I so shocked.

I guess, I will have to teach my child how to appreciate his good luck, earning a lot while enjoying a new culture. I hope also that Singapore would open up his vista about culture and raise their level of democratic acceptance of different beliefs.