One voice in my head goes, "What's with Poms and UK education?" and another goes, "Goddamnit, everyone I know is studying in the UK and I'm stuck in Australia." Sheesh.

And then I have to retract my hyperbolic statement because not everyone is. And I have to wonder about the old adage that the "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence".

After all, I am rather privileged in the sense that my parents can afford to pay for an overseas education and all my little shenanigans over here. Let's face it; if I were in the UK, with the weaker Singaporean dollar, I wouldn�t have as much freedom as I have in Australia. Money matters. That is the way the world works.

What brought this envy on? Sassy wrote to me after almost a year and a half to tell me that she just graduated from NTU, lost a boyfriend, found a new one and is going off to UK to read law. Like Panther. Like my ex-boyfriend.

I wanted to go to the UK to read English Literature because it is English Literature after all, but was shot down because my dad explained the economics of it. Because I get to study abroad, it means that my sister (who is fifteen this year) must have the option available to her as well, if she wants it. Additionally, Daddy is getting really close to retirement. So yes, to be equally fair to both brats, we will both get a relatively expensive education, instead of one really expensive culture immersion for one, and an unfairly dispensed education for the other.

So yes, everything boils down to economics. But truth to tell, I don't regret it. The UK is a fine and pretty place, but it is a culture that is adversely different from Singapore. I do not mean to be all sour grapes about it, but it is the truth. I am not a creature of change, but of habit. And if I get tossed into an immensely different culture, I guess I will be cast adrift without any safety valve.

As it is, the safety valve I have now was hard and painfully won.