I've always wondered if it's possible to ever live out that line from Franz Ferdinand's Jacqueline:

The only way I can see that happening is if I find out one day that an unknown relative of mine died and left me a fortune or if I live off the royalties of a perennially favourite song I pen that keeps receiving airplay, much like Will Freeman's father in About A Boy.

Fat chance of that happening, at least for now so, like most of the population, I'm struggling to settle into a second choice of a job to put food on the table and independence from my once-overprotective parents.

The sun is shining brightly and a cool breeze is blowing into the box I live in that is so common in a land with limited building space like Singapore. Time to get up.

I brush my teeth, use the bathroom, pack my dirty laundry plus some belongings and take the bus down to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station to get a ticket back to Johor Bahru. Horizontal slits that make up a painting of ships sailing towards the shore decorate one side of the concave ceilinged wall, while window panes flanked by the initials F.M.S.R. with Malaysia's national emblem or jata negara in between them decorate the other. F.M.S.R. stands for Federal Malay States Railway, referring to the states of Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang back when they were termed as such in the late 1800s before Malaysia was fully formed -- a telling sign of how old the railway station is and how it is a marvel that it is still standing today.

The space in front of the counter is gloriously devoid of a snaking queue line that one usually sees on Friday nights and eves of public holidays -- my ideal situation. This allows me to get a seat (it's free seating for regular Johor-bound passengers) instead of having to stand up and I spend the next half-hour watching places from my past drift into view. I see the park where my poly mates and I used to hang out, the bus stop next to the overhead bridge where I used to transfer buses on my commute to poly (short for polytechnic), the row of shops where I used to have breakfast before classes and the mall I used to kill time at while in between classes whiz past.

These are distant memories of what my life was like as a poly student, like a movie reel playing in front of my window not unlike Radiohead's Knives Out music video. Those were richly emotional times, times that challenged and defined me to what's become of me today. Pretty soon, these memories are gone, just like the places, when I reach the Singapore Checkpoint and get out to have my passport cleared together with the rest of the passengers.

I get my passport cleared and get back into the train, seeing what I find to be the best view in this routine journey: a watercolour-like painting of the causeway, with smudges of orange, yellow and blue in the sky against unnaturally calm, glass-like waters making up the bottom half of the horizon (the water being this calm is unnaturally possible due to the separation of waters created by the causeway.

Soon enough, the train I'm in stops at Johor Bahru Railway Station and disembarks as well as picks up passengers. I am not among the passengers who disembark, for I stop at the next station. I give my mom a call her to inform her regarding my current location so that she can collect me when I arrive.

Her car is waiting for me outside the mall where the train next stops -- the revamped and renamed Danga City Mall. I vaguely remember what the mall looked like when it was still Best World Plaza, back when it still had a bookstore (Johor Central Bookstore which, though it sold outdated books, had quite a few good reads, particularly Random House books) and an inflatable castle with a giant slide at the atrium (I remember with particular fondness the brief exhilaration I got from sliding down the two- or three-storey-high setup.

I walk down the steps at the porch towards the blue Proton Wira 1.6 and throw in my bags before me. "Did you wait long?" are the first words I ask her, as I know she gets antsy if she ends up having to wait too long (by too long I mean more than 10 minutes). "A bit," she grumbles, but thankfully she isn't in an arguing mood today.

We go up the flyover just next to the Mall and head straight for the coast where Lido Beach is. Less than five minutes later, we’re passing through there, with the coast at our right and buildings at our left. On our right, we pass by the previously-opened-to-public-until-gangs-kept-killing-their-rivals-there jetty, the Tenaga Nasional Berhad hydroelectric generator and eventually a small stretch of beach with a rough cement road leading down to the water for sailboats to be tugged across.

Whereas on our left, we pass by a seaside hotel, a Chinese restaurant, seafront homes built in pre-war times and eventually a row of three-storey shophouses where mom, Dad and I used to have our typical Chinese breakfast until the shop ceased to exist (a Photostat shop now stands in its place).

Mom parks the car in front of the shophouses and we have one of my favourite lunches: black-sauced fried kuey teow with cockles. This particular shop does it well, adding copious amounts of black sauce (which I like) together with kuey teow strands that are not too fat nor too thin (but just right) and safely-cooked cockles that I love chewing on with just the right amount of effort (unlike abalone, which I find too tough to chew on).

It’s a windy day today, thankfully, so it isn’t hot where we’re sitting, which is alfresco by the shop, facing the beach and its coconut trees. In the distance, we see windsurfers trying to take advantage of the wind, while much nearer, fishing boats are docked near the beach edge and the road leading down to the water is lined with two parked sailboats on tow and even a few stationary cars.

It’s low tide so some of the kids are on the beach spraying sand onto each other while their parents watch (I don’t see anyone making sandcastles though), which wouldn’t be possible if it was high tide because the water covers the beach totally whenever that happens. Crows gather around and perch on the wires that link the streetlamps on the road, looking for food and cawing away loudly like they usually do. Up above, the sky is a dull, grayish blue, with gray clouds blocking the sunlight – ideal in such a hot climate like ours.

I conduct light banter with my mom about my trip back and how work’s been, but we’re mostly engaging in non-verbal communication, communicating silently that we’re comfortable in each other’s presence.

Pretty soon, our lunch is over and we get into the car as my mom heads back on the road. The road in front of us begins to take a turn to the left as the Duty-Free Zon shopping mall, hotel and ferry terminal comes into view and creates a dead-end where bikers congregate at the parking lot, amidst tourists and locals who just want to idle away doing nothing.

The road on the left leads us past low-cost flats, the Sultan’s palace gates, the equestrian range where Johor’s radio station is also stationed, the Sultan’s mosque, the sports club where I used to play badminton and swim at with friends when I was much younger and finally, home.