In Singapore they say the other side when they mean Johor — the causeway crossing, cheaper petrol, weekend makan, the country that begins where the strait ends. After 12 Years A Guest, when I finally took the career break, I did not fly home. I took it on the other side: Johor Bahru, a room, a router, a cat named Jie Mao, rent low enough to think. Same region, different jurisdiction — Singapore still visible on the map and in my calendar, but life anchored in Malaysia for most of 2025.
The other side of the guest years
Twelve years in Singapore taught me queues, MRT timing, and the quiet grammar of not-quite-belonging. Guest worker, guest artist, guest in a city that works if you keep moving. The break was not rebellion against that chapter — it was step two: keep Southeast Asia, lose the lease. JB is what Singaporeans treat as backup and what Johoreans treat as home; I treated it as launchpad — engineer on purpose, not adrift, nomad with a postal code.
Take it on the other side is the joke and the plan. Take remote work, take the pilgrimage tickets, take Songkran and Saigon and Bali — but from a base where the passport stamp is Malaysian and the causeway is a commute, not a crisis. The title is not a song lyric I can cite cleanly; it is the phrase I heard in hawker lines and WhatsApp groups until it became my address.
Base camp routine
The room was simple: desk by the window, kettle, Jie Mao claiming the chair by the router. Mornings were kopi and ticket triage; afternoons deep work; evenings groceries and sleep. When Singapore meetings needed clearer bandwidth I did what everyone on this border does — MRT north, bus to Woodlands, causeway south again with a laptop bag and the mild absurdity of living there while earning here. Sabbatical discipline: weekdays for salary and sprints, weekends for maps that started at JB Sentral.
Border cadence
JB taught stamps and patience — Woodlands queues, Tuas when the universe hated me, passport in hand, digital copies useless at the booth. Two-way rhythm: Singapore for standups and laksa when the queue justified it; Malaysia for rent, cat, and the slow exhale. Friends on both sides called the crossing normal; I called it proof the break was geographic, not escape — still wired to the island, no longer sleeping on it.
Food as calendar
JB taught me to eat by neighbourhood, not by Michelin. Taman Sentosa hawker rows for wanton mee when the week had been heavy; Austin Hill kopitiam when I needed quiet and kaya toast; causeway runs when Singapore laksa was worth the stamp. On the other side, food is how you mark Tuesdays versus Saturdays when the view from the window does not change much — and how you remember which country you woke up in without checking your phone.
Jie Mao cared only that something grilled returned to the room. The cat made sabbatical domestic: you are not performing travel; you are living somewhere cheap enough to think, one strait away from the city that shaped you.
Weekends versus weekdays
Weekdays belonged to tickets and terminals: KL, Penang, Melaka, later Saigon and Bali booked from the same desk. Weekends belonged to the map within an hour of JB — forest walks when the haze allowed, mall air when it did not, Stulang ferries when play still felt like play. I learned to pack light for forty-eight hours and heavy for nothing, always returning to the same side of the water before the next arc.
Launchpad
From here the map opened: late-January peninsula pilgrimage northbound, April Songkran in Krabi, May Batam from Berjaya Waterfront, a full Saigon month at the end of June, Bali after that, Da Nang and Hanoi when seasons turned. JB was where I downsized — belongings to trusted hands, one bag philosophy practiced until it felt normal — and where I landed again between trips, resetting laundry and router before the next stamp. Every departure assumed a return: the other side held the cat, the desk, and the proof that 2025 was a chosen base, not a drift.