Homeland

How on Earth can a modern nation-state be conceived of as a home? It is a vast, impersonal and bureaucratic entity, far removed from its individual citizens. What you do, as an individual member, does not matter to it in the grand scheme of things, unless many of its individual members move in the same way at the same time. Whether you choose to leave or join as a citizen, what impact will it have on its waning and waxing over the years?
The original term probably used to make more sense. The land was where food and life sprung from---and people, living all or most of their lives on the same patch of land, naturally felt attachment to it. But now the world has become increasingly urbanised, and sacred attachment to land is becoming less of a deeply-held gut feeling and more of an abstraction.
The term, honestly, holds little meaning for me. What is there to hold me to the Serenissima, or to my place of birth? Only the thinnest of wisps: family ties and friendships, and specific memories, of specific things at specific places and times. Shanghai is changing all the time; old buildings are knocked down, new ones go up, and people move in and out; every year when I go back the scenery has changed again. Singapore is at least a little saner in this respect, but only a little. My primary school campus has moved already; RI has undergone a lot of renovation recently; so has RJC. There is just the slightest suspicion in my mind that before too long the places that conceivably could hold our memories would be renovated out of recognition. Then the memories would have to go back where they came from. Deep in the recesses of the nostalgic mind.
Home is other people. The people who will exchange smiles and easy banter with you and create the warm, convival atmosphere than is what home really is, rather than some place, or building, or institution.