i. Christmas in Singapore, New Year’s back home, my dad’s seventieth birthday and relatives from abroad visiting for the occasion, friends’ celebrating their fortieth, various belated wedding catch-ups, a new acquaintance’s baby dog’s birthday party (he turned eight!), meeting the tiny humans recently ushered into the world, Chinese New Year chaos... this visit home has felt like a whirlwind of celebrations, one after another. It has felt, for the most part, nourishing, and makes me feel grateful that some of my friends and I still try to keep up with each other in some way, if not often while we’re apart then at least when we’re all drawn back to the same place. It’s a contrast, still, to my life in Berlin. I’ve made a handful of individual friends here, and we meet D.’s friends in groups at times, but I haven’t yet gathered my own group. In truth, I think I am better at one-to-one meet-ups, but I have always also had some sort of group around me (sometimes very small, sometimes very large)—with the exception of the year I spent on my own backpacking in Central America. It’s never been something I had to miss too much, so in that sense, Berlin is taking some getting used to.