Everyone looks out their own window.

I sat outside on my balcony in my comfy college-days red butterfly chair. I am talking to my dear pal in SF, exchanging bits and pieces between our worlds.

It’s pitter-pattering on the rooftop of the car porch right below me. I thank the heavens quietly under my breath for this miraculous occurrence. It smells damn right good, right now.

The rain. The scent tonight (or rather, in this city) distinctly distinct.

It’s gritty. It’s crass. It’s like mud in the air, a bizarre mixture of the unsettling earth and the lost leaves of trees clashing into each other’s elements.

Whereas in Singapore, when it pours, I can smell the density of each droplet. It’s very complex to say what I feel but it’s something more human, more organic, like the taste of a warm butter cookie, earlier, dipped into a cup of mint tea.

And to get a whiff of the rain in San Francisco is like having the crispness of an iceberg dashing through and through my entire insides topped with a 2-second blackout—only to be awaken into a dream that doesn’t end until you deliberately leave.

With the rain, it feel extraordinarily serene tonight. Like the weather, this week turned out random and surprisingly diverse. From sadness to disillusion, and from anger to hope. Today, I feel like I’ve been taken for a shaky ride and finally, finally, returned home safely.