Enid: Look, I didn’t say you couldn’t come with me… I just feel weird about it. You can still come.
Rebecca: Oh yeah, you really want me to.
Enid: What? I do!
Rebecca: Well maybe I don’t! I don’t want to go anywhere or do anything... I just want it to be like it was in high school!
Enid: I guess that’s the problem. I feel like I want to become a totally different person.
Rebecca: I don’t get what this has to do with me…
Enid: It has everything to do with you. You remember every little detail I wish I could forget. Before I was going to college, my secret plan was to one day not tell anybody and just get on some bus to some random city and just move there and become this totally different person…
Rebecca: Then what?
Enid: And not come back until I had become this totally new person… I used to think about it all the time.
Rebecca: I don’t get it.
Enid: That’s because you don’t utterly loathe yourself.
- Ghost World, Daniel Clowes (dialogue taken from The Importance of Being Enid)

For the record, I don't loathe myself completely, but I do sometimes feel that I need a fresh start. And that's what I love and hate about Singapore - that everyone knows someone who knows you. There's always something or someone who'll remind you of the person you're trying to get away from being. How can you possibly hope to start off with a clean slate when there'll always be someone around you who remembers what you were like back then? There are days when I feel people are constantly judging me, looking at my background and qualifications and demanding why is it that I'm not doing better and how dare I feel so stressed out by life?

At the same time, every time you meet someone new, you spend time instinctively looking for what the two of you have in common: hobbies, schools, universities, employers and who you know. And what could be better than knowing that someone who has already received your stamp of approval has similarly given his/her stamp of approval to the friend who you just haven't met yet?