The pent-up desire to travel overseas, after three years of enforced restrictions, was finally fulfilled when Jenny and I boarded our flight to Singapore last month. Since purchasing our tickets in January, planning our itinerary and booking our accommodation, I was full of anticipation of what the trip would be like. Would the places we were familiar with look different? Will my favourite shop selling Nonya cakes [cakes called kuah, of traditional Peranakan cuisine, the people group of mixed Chinese and Malay/Indonesian heritage] still be there? Would the appointments I had made with cousins and old friends, some of whom I had not met for a very long time, be kept? And, as we were driving to Malacca from Singapore, for the first time with close family friends; will the three-day holiday in Malacca be pleasurable? These were just some of the questions that were milling around my head as the days drew closer to our departure.
It had been five years since we last travelled anywhere by plane. We were due to fly to Perth in November 2021 for my nephew’s wedding in Perth, Western Australia, however this trip was cancelled because of border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can imagine how anxious we were, a week before this Singapore trip when we read in the local papers of a new COVID-19 variant, less fatal but more contagious, lurking around. Dr Lynn Zubernis, professor at West Chester University, Pennsylvania, in her January 2022 article in Psychology Today refers to it as “negative prediction error”. Suggesting that our minds use past experiences to predict future ones as this helps us prepare for them. Zubernis writes, “Anticipating future events happens automatically, taking place largely in the oldest part of the brain, the cerebellum. Our minds are wired for anticipation; having the capacity to form accurate expectations about the future so we could make better predictions about it. That ability allowed humans to take advantage of experiences that benefit us and avoid ones that would be dangerous, increasing the chance of survival.”
This was exactly what was happening with me when anticipating the outcomes of our holidays. One medical definition of anticipation is the emotion we experience when we are expecting something to happen (good or bad), where we are left in a state of anxious suspense. Some people may feel excited, while others may just feel nervous. Anticipatory concerns (either positive or negative) are the thoughts we have while feeling anticipation. In situations of uncertainty and anxiousness, there may be less dopamine released than usual because we feel disappointed, opposite to the pleasurable release of dopamine in the brain when we expect good outcomes in the future.
If you are wondering what dopamine is, dopamine is a chemical released in the brain that makes you feel good. Having the right amount of dopamine is important both for your body and your brain. Dopamine is responsible for allowing you to feel pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. When you feel good that you have achieved something, it’s because you have a surge of dopamine in the brain.
On the day of our departure, there was a high expectation for our holidays. The act of anticipation is very much a cognitive process as there are strong emotions attached to our expectations. Psychologists tell us that setting well based expectations motivate us. It is always reassuring to be accurate in our predictions as it reinforces us in future planning when we anticipate correctly. We can relate to this when we, for example, play a video game and, despite being unfamiliar with a game, as it is often the case when I play video games with my grandsons, that if a button is randomly pressed on the console and produces the right outcome, you are likely to continually be pressing the same button until something different occurs.
To set the scene, our flight left on a Sunday morning and arrived in Singapore during the early evening local time. Later that evening our family friends, Eddy and Jacqui met us at our hotel and took us out for supper for a meal of satay (marinated beef and chicken on bamboo skewers cooked on an open charcoal burner, which are then dipped in peanut sauce before eating). The place where we drove to was appropriately named Satay Street, located at Lau Pa Sat. Having been there some years before, my senses of taste, smell and sight were on high alert despite my body-clock being on Australian Eastern Daylight Time, which was close to mid-night.
Photo Credit: Steven Pereira. Satay stall holder at Satay Street, Singapore.
Psychologists tell us that when an individual anticipates something good happening, as was the case with me, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, resulting in positive feelings and excitement. Dopamine plays a significant role in the brain’s reward system, helping us learn to repeat positive events and avoid adverse ones. They tell us that we all tend to seek out more pleasure from life, so people seek out experiences that result in the brain's releasing more dopamine. Both the positive experience itself and the anticipation of that experience can produce feelings of euphoria that we repeatedly seek out. In Zubernis’ article, she reports that functional MRI studies, undertaken over the last several years, have shown that anticipation of future positive events resulted in enhanced brain activation that was associated with higher levels of well-being. The researchers concluded that anticipating good things is associated with experiencing positive emotion, which in turn benefits mental health.
Well, I must say that the first night on arriving in Singapore was certainly a positive feeling. Even while my body was a little tired and recovering from a long flight and delays at the airport, the dopamine which was being released in my brain was certainly keeping me awake. The happy mood was helping me enjoy the food and conversations with our friends Eddy and Jacqui.
However, it was a different story the following day. Less than 24 hours since we arrived in Singapore.
After a beautiful lunch with my cousin Gerry and his wife Cheryl, at the National University of Singapore Society (NUSS) The Graduate Club, situated on the grounds of a refurbished English Colonial Building, called Mandalay Guild House, we struck a conversation about my plans for that late Monday afternoon.
Sharing with Gerry my plans to visit the new location of my old primary school, De La Salle School, and to meet with my alumni coordinator Herald, I set about showing him the address I was to meet him at. On showing him the address, Gerry smiled and said that it would be quite a long journey using the local MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) train system, however it would be a much cheaper option than using a taxi. Having used the MRT during our last trip to Singapore, we decided to try it again.
That afternoon, after researching the MRT train schedule, we caught the train from the closest station to where we were staying, realising then that our destination would be 18 stops away and would take 51 minutes to reach our final station at Yew Tee. To me the time and distance did not matter as I was ‘pumped up’ to meet Herald, whom I had only corresponded with via social media over the last six years, and also to see what my old school looks like in its new location.
During the train journey, my anticipation of the event was on a high. This sense of anticipation claimed by psychologists produces emotions of euphoria and a strong desire to see and interact with the expected activity. The same euphoric emotion is experienced by fans of a rock band, a sporting team, or fans of the first Avatar movie watching the latest release of Avatar: Way of Water movie [I chose Avatar because I saw the first movie and loved it, and am waiting to see this new release]. Other seemingly inconsequential events such as a celebrity’s new Instagram posts, a news story about the celebrity or a win by one’s favourite football team in a pre-season match, can be a source of joy for fans. In fact, psychologists suggest that the mere anticipation of these kinds of positive experiences can bring a surge of dopamine.
You can imagine the flush of dopamine being produced in my cerebellum during that 51-minute train ride as we travelled to the Yew Tee MRT station. When we got to the station, my friend Herald was not there as expected. As we were running late, it did not, at that time concern me that much. However, searching all around the lobby area of the train station with only a faint image of what Herald looked like, started to worry me. What made it more frustrating was the inability for me to ring Herald on the standard telephone network as my correspondences with Herald up that point were only via Facebook Messenger, requiring me to have Internet access, which I did not have. I could ring a telephone number but not call via a social media platform. [I was yet to switch on data roaming as it was only a day after our arrival].
This episode, where my positive anticipation was not met, was my second bout of “negative prediction error”, causing again less dopamine being released than usual because of my disappointment. Thinking that he could be waiting for us at the school, as it was almost an hour after our scheduled rendezvous, Jenny and I jumped into a taxi. After a 5-minute ride, the driver dropped us off at the school gates which were closed.
Photo Credit: De La Salle School website (No copywrite infringement intended)
“Oh no!”, I exclaimed. Jenny who all this while had been supportive of me, even gasped when she saw the chains on the gates.
By this time, my sense of disappointment of the situation was overwhelming the positive anticipation I had been working up to. Apparently from a psychological diagnosis of the situation, the body goes into a state of anxiety, as with repeated disappointments the pleasure that was derived from anticipation begins to wane. It had been shown from medical research that dopamine plays an important role in anxiety modulation in different parts of the brain. This was certainly the case with me as I stood and saw the school from behind locked gates, seeing the taxi drive away, and then wondering what to do next.
Not wanting to give up, we decided to walk towards the security gates after Jenny spotted that they were partially open. There I was fortunate to meet two friendly school security guards. I told of them that I was an ‘old schoolboy’, and asked if there was anyone in the school with the name Herald waiting for me. They replied saying that there were only a few teachers there and politely asked to see the message I received from Herald. Upon reading the message, they turned to each other, and speaking in Tamil, gave the biggest grins ever! They tried to break the news gently to me, without upsetting me even further. They told me that I was one week early for my appointment, at which point I felt so embarrassed that I couldn’t find a rock big enough to hide behind. I was more disappointed with myself for not comprehending fully the message from Herald, and the embarrassment of explaining to Jenny how I could get it that wrong.
Before proceeding with the rest of the story, fast forwarding to two days later, we met my Singapore-based nephew over a delightful dinner of Chilli Crabs at Robertson Quay. While chatting I told him of the 'school' incident. We laughed about it, and he said, “Uncle Steve [he’s very polite] you should have focused on the trees instead of worrying about the forest!”. In other words, I failed to concern myself with the details, as I was so preoccupied with meeting my school alumni coordinator Herald, and the school visit. Andrew was absolutely correct.
Photo Credit: Steven Pereira. Chilli Crab at Long Beach @ Robertson Quay, with Andrew,Hailey and Jenny.
In a 2016 article by Maia Szakavitz, titled ‘The Chemistry of Addiction Explains Why Disappointment Hurts So Badly’, she writes, “Researchers call this [disappointment] a “reward prediction error” – your dopamine systems use your past experience to predict what will make you feel best. And when that fails, it hurts doubly hard: Not only do you not get what you wanted, but you also feel the displeasure of having been wrong, and the associated dopamine drop”.
That would explain, while I was walking despondently back to the Yew Tee train station after realising my error, why I was subconsciously hankering for a ‘pick me up’ local snack. Obviously, the body was after a “replacement” dopamine fix. Jenny and I decided to look around the local shopping precinct, as there was no urgency to return to the hotel. While wandering around, I found a store which sold local delicacies, and while I sat down to enjoy eating what I bought, Jenny found some solace by browsing amongst the local apparel and shoe stores. I think we both had a boost of dopamine to help us recover from the afternoon’s stressful event.
We boarded the return train and over the next 51 minutes, my disappointment while still present was fading, because I knew that the anticipation of the catchup with Herald and revisiting my school were still on his calendar. In fact, it was also in my calendar, though I had not referred to it. But rather than focusing on the second week, I was more focused on the next day’s program and the 3-day road trip to Malacca later in the present week with greater anticipation. I knew that all my planned dinner and lunch dates, travel details to Malacca, pick-up times and travel itinerary were confirmed. What’s more, this road trip was to be the highlight of our overseas holiday, and I knew that the plans, which were months in the making were in the safe hands of our travelling companions Eddy and Jacqui. They were ‘real stars’, not only during the road trip, the three days in Malacca, but in fact during the whole of our 12-day holiday. They knew where to go and what to eat, and for me, these were key measures for success.
In his 2020 article 'It’s Time to Learn How to Microdose Anticipation', Markham Heid quotes a few eminent medical practitioners. In one case Heid quotes Gary Small, MD and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at UCLA, who says, “The things we anticipate reflect our sense of self and who we are and on who we are going to be in the future…The brain’s ability to look ahead is something that separates human beings from most animals.”
As I was already anticipating upcoming positive events during the return train journey and during the night which helped reduce my stress and anxiety, my behaviour reflected a 2015 study reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology also referenced in the Heid article. Co-author of the study, Christian Waugh, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, reported that anticipating a positive event bolsters a person’s mood and helps them endure a stressful task or event. Waugh goes on to say that “Having things to look forward to is a major coping strategy. It helps us recover and adapt to stressors.”
Photo Credit: Jacqui. Dinner at De Lisbon Restaurant, Portuguese Settlement, Malacca, with close friends and ex-colleagues. Pictured from L to R: Lee Na, Sunny, Jacqui, Eddy, me and Jenny.
For me, this holiday was one of the best holidays I have had. The road trip to Malacca, was a trip back to where my parents were born and one I last made 43 years ago. The food we had during the three days in Malacca, could not be faulted. I would go as far as to say stupendous, exquisite, memorable, delicious and all the usual adjectives used by the judges in the television series MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules. Some foods we had were very simple, like the local iced sweet dessert called chendol and the fried doughnut sticks (called youtiao in Chinese). They were super memorable as we ate each item at a rustic ‘coffee shop’ and at a night café with the locals respectively. Experiencing these gatherings in foreign locations with close friends over a meal, and sharing stories are what memorable holidays are made of.
Unlike previous trips to Singapore, this trip was about reconnecting with close and long-time friends, ex-work colleagues, and relatives whom I had not seen for years. It was also about connecting with new friends like Herald.
And what about Herald? Did I eventually meet him, you may ask? Yes, I ended up meeting him for lunch on the original (correct) Monday schedule. I made contact with him after the incident at Yew Tee. We agreed that I would skip the visit to the new De La Salle School campus [as I had already seen it, albeit from the outside], but meet in person. We had a pleasurable two-hour lunch at the local food court at Plaza Singapura. Herald even shared with me the background to his name. I explained to him that I had a dinner-date that evening with an old and close work-mentor and his wife, so we reluctantly parted but agreed to maintain our contact, and perhaps try a school visit the next time I am back in Singapore.
Not only was my holiday about reacquainting relationships, which had a significant part to play in my professional and private life, but it was also to savour the local foods which I missed dearly. Jenny was happy too with the shopping [she loves Singapore] but joking commented that my holiday activities were all about food. Well apparently, in Singapore, whether you are living there or visiting there as a tourist, even the locals admit that it’s all about shopping and food. As the saying goes, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” And that’s exactly what I did!
Photo Credit: Steven Pereira. Orchard Road, Singapore.
This holiday in Singapore and the road trip to Malacca, Malaysia, exceeded my expectations. From a psychological perspective, the euphoric emotion and the release of dopamine, the feel-good chemical released in the brain during the holiday, despite a few relatively minor “reward predicting errors” has caused me to plan for another trip back to Singapore. The next time perhaps selecting another city in Malaysia, like Penang or Kuala Lumpur. As Zubernis, said in her article, anticipation of future positive events results in enhanced brain activation, with researchers concluding that anticipating good things associated with experiencing positive emotion, can only benefit mental health and mental well-being.
Steven
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