By Daphne Loke

I WAS sitting in the garden reading a book and soaking in the summer sun when I heard a strange sound that made me look up. It was not, as I feared, an intruder trying to climb over the fence, but two birds flapping their wings as they flew off their perch in the trees. Surely this should not have been an unusual sound to me and yet it was!

Having been a high-rise dweller all my life (I believe anything over 10 floors is higher than most trees!) and having worked only in an air-conditioned office, I realised I was not used to being so close to nature. Now, as the summer gives way to a chilly autumn, there are some days when I miss the tropical Singapore sun. But other times, I am happy to experience the change of seasons and have an almost childlike reaction to the most basic signs of the shifting weather.

I first arrived in winter and was blissfully undisturbed by any of the usual domestic 'wildlife' one finds in Singapore - cockroaches, lizards, ants or mosquitoes. Then, summer arrived and I was shocked to find that the house and garden suddenly seemed to have spiders and cobwebs every corner I turned. It's not that we don't keep the house clean, but those spiders are fast workers and a new cobweb can appear in under an hour!

The flip side of that are the many colourful butterflies, which are attracted to particular flowers in the garden. And the other day, when night fell, I found a hedgehog right outside our front door.

Now that autumn is here, the rain has brought three different species of mushrooms that has popped up in the garden overnight. Sadly, none of them seem edible and my lack of foraging knowledge and Singaporean kiasi (afraid of dying) mentality thankfully prevents me from experimenting with them in my next meal. I wonder what new surprises winter will bring besides the sun setting at 3.30pm every day.

Besides enjoying the seasons and nature, what living in Reading, UK has brought me are great nearby options for days out. There's always the option of running off to the countryside and enjoying the pretty villages of the Cotswolds or the Royal Landscape at Windsor - a thousand acres of landscaped gardens, lakes and woodland - its website I regularly check for the current flowering status, to decide whether it's time to visit to see the full blooms of summer or the red and gold autumn leaves on the trees.

And a stone's throw from home, the 294 kilometre long Thames path runs along the banks of the Thames River from the Cotswolds through Reading to London. I dream of running down that path, but the thought of the sharp cold wind on my cheeks quickly put a stop to any such ambitious idea. On the other hand, a 25 minute train ride brings me back to urban living with the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, world class dining in London as well as the FREE museums. An entire day can be whiled away exploring ancient civilisations at the British museums, or admiring the Monets and Van Goghs at the National Gallery, which I had only glimpsed in books before and the Tate Modern's exhibits which I honestly didn't quite understand, but stared at incredulously nonetheless. This has inspired me to visit all the Singapore museums when I next visit home!

This brings me to some of the slightly negative aspects of living abroad, which came as a shock to my Singaporean sense of order and efficiency. I long for the comforting efficiency of the MRT when what is ordinarily a 15 minute tube journey in London turns into an hour long ride with the usual weekend maintenance works on vital tube lines.

Right now, the weekly strikes by the Royal Mail have become the nation's bugbear and I find myself feeling rather proud of the fact that this would never happen with the Singapore Post.

When I first told friends I was moving to Reading, only the guys had a vague idea where it was because of its football club (which at that time had just been relegated from the Premiership to the Championship where sadly, it has remained). I am now quite smug about Reading's geographical position as it is only a 30 minute bus ride to Heathrow airport and all of Europe is only a short plane ride away. This winter, we are off to France to ski!

This article was first published in The Business Times.