Rootless

I feel more and more displaced for some reason. I looked forward to coming home to Bolehland and imagined that things would be wonderful, great food, great weather, catching up with friends and family.

The food has consistently been great and if I had spent the first week consistently downing sambal petai, my system had to put up with copious amount of Tom Yam last week. My abused digestive system handled the challenge very well. It is probably relieved that for these few weeks it doesn't have to put up with my own cooking.

The weather, ahh, the thing that became an obsession with me since I started living in London. The weather has been predictably great and as the sun mercilessly grill us and try to drown us in our own sweat, it is easy to forget the chilliness of a typical day in London. It is probably considered ungrateful to wish that it could have been sunnier here, but I reckon that it would certainly have helped with the visibility when I went snorkeling in Perhentian. Maybe I am speaking out of unjustified nostalgia, but I think I prefer Tioman. Maybe the weather was a lot better or the water was less polluted when I was there, but I remember the water as being a lot clearer than Perhentian. What happened in Perhentian though, stays in Perhentian. I am of course trying to make it sound more interesting to cover the fact that we spent the weekend mind numbingly staring at the sea. I am boring, I know.

As for relations, well, people move on. Meeting up for a few times in the span of a few weeks in the interval of a year make for stilted conversations. We are different people now. It is true that living abroad changes you, but your friends at home have also moved on with their life. Generally I find that conversations revolve around at the superficial level, we were spewing out facts without really going deeper on the rationales behind the facts (GM, I support your decision bebeh!). Not that I want to be nosy, but I am aware that I haven't been there and thus have been out of the scene. And to include me again requires a hell lot of explanation about the background of the issue and maybe even the backdrop. And I can't be there to hang out at the mamak with my friends anytime I want, as mentioned before, I don't live in the same city as them.

At times I feel like I have lost my social skills. It is easy to explain away my silence in social situations in London by putting the blame on language barrier which then influence my confidence in speaking up (or I can blame it on the fact that I fell asleep while you were talking). But here, I am on home ground and can deliver a joke in my own language with all the cockiness of a local. And I can just continue to meaninglessly rant to keep conversations going. But still sometimes pregnant silence fill the void in conversations. People have moved on and I am no longer a part of their daily life. I feel like I am desperately trying to retain flowing water in my cupped hands. Nobly Herculean but hopelessly Sysiphean, I know.

I feel like I am not here neither there. I feel at home in London for the aspirations it offers me as well as the freedom to be whatever I want to be. And of course for the challenge it offers me by merely being contextually different which then keeps me on my toes intellectually. And also the freedom of discourse. But it can get lonely at times. And since my tastebud has refused to adapt, I generally pine for the ready availability of cheap good greasy spicy food well-suited to my Malaysian palate. And while Malaysia can offer me all that I pine for in London, I feel that it would be too easy to fall into the old rhythm which will then dull my senses and I will then be chained by the demands of daily routine. And I won't have the time, or maybe willing company, to rant about the bigger questions in life.

It has only been 2 weeks, but I am beginning to miss London. I have to keep myself occupied. Tomorrow, I am going out to sketch the old Chinese townhouses. For I have brought back the white Ordning and Reda sketchbook still untouched since I got it for Christmas. Tomorrow, for once, the pages will be streaked with ink. And maybe I will make friends with the Chinese shopkeepers to whom I can rant about my life questions.

Home

From time to time, specially when I am at this place I proudly call my hometown, I would think about the meaning of home. For the likes of me, the word 'home' could be the starting point of an interesting and long-winded discussion, and would then proceed to other mundane topics like the meaning of life (I prescribe to Monty Python's interpretation in case you are wondering, so that question has been answered for me). For us, home is not easily defined nor identifiable. We are the people who are at home anywhere in the world, and yet, precisely because of that, we are tied to none.

When I say the likes of me, what I mean are those fellow ex-boarders who left home at the age of 13 to go live with their peers from all around the country. I am not saying all ex-boarders are as screwed up as we are. No, some ex-boarders turned out exactly like our Orwellian government intended us to be (come to think of it, maybe WE are the results they intended and not vice versa, hmm, trust my old paranoia to kick in). Good or bad, I am not one to judge.

Having left home at such a young age and having spent our formative years with people from the same age group, we learned to be emotionally independent (although of course the first few days at the hostel were spent glued to the public phones bawling our eyes out begging our parents to come pick us up), and we learned the intricacies of friendship. Living together with about 200 other girls was no joke. Had I paid more attention to the politics, I could probably be a shrewd politician today (there goes my career in politics eh Idlan? lain konteks sama maksud ni, boleh kot apply? hehe). Friends became substitute for family, for they stuck with you through your years of teenage angst, and being teenagers themselves, accept your emotional rants as normal. Well maybe not 'normal', but they accept it as part of who you are. Without question.

And thus, we became emotionally independent from our families. Not to say that we cut ties from our families. Being Asians, being Malays, and being Muslims, and of course, being products of boarding schools in the sense that there's always that desire to excel in life (and not be failures in any way possible although glitches are considered normal), we dutifully make that journey back to our parent's home from time to time. We try our best to be filial children and accommodate to our parents wishes (maybe this doesn't really apply to me come to think of it). Most of us ex-boarders never fail to make our parents proud of us, although at times in worryingly unconventional ways.

Being emotionally independent has its uses. If you haven't seen your mom on a daily basis for the past 5 years, what's another 6 at a Uni away from home? And then what's another god-knows-how-long in another different city for you to pursue your career? And the ultimate is of course when you get on that plane to fly halfway around the world and have no idea when you'll come home for good. Or if you ever will.

We then went to Uni and make another batch of friends from around the country. At this point, having at least one friend from your hometown is considered a bonus. I don't know, maybe

1. Melaka is too small a place for its loyal natives to leave ever,
   
2. or Melakans in general snub offers to go to boarding schools and prefer to remain roasting in this coastal town,
   
3. or maybe we did not go to the same one,
   
4. or maybe just having the same hometown doesn't mean that we would get on like a house of fire,
5. maybe Melakans in general do not go to that particular architecture school, or
   
6. repeat reason 4 but change context to Uni.

As a result, most of us do not really have friends from our own hometown. We make that dutiful journey home to spend time with our family, and apart from that, if your hometown doesn't happen to be happenin' KL y'all, there's not much action as rest assured that most of your friends, exes, foes, lovers, haters, from boarding school AND from Uni, would be roosting there. Through my conversations with friends, I find that most of us experienced the same thing when we visit our parents. There would be days when the only time we stepped out of the house was just to hang the laundry or take out the garbage. Our moms wanted us to be home, and hey, they got their wishes. Our life at our hometown would really revolve around the family, we go out to visit uncles and aunties, to chauffeur our parents or grandparents around, we tag along when our parents do their groceries shopping, and we go to eat out with our families though we have no idea which place is good.

Our hometowns thus become that place where we spent our childhood and where our families reside now. We recognize certain landmarks which evoke certain childhood memories, but that's about it. Our hometowns now serve as museums to us, and coming from a place which city centre is chock full of museums of any kind, I certainly appreciate the irony. There is nothing there for us save for our families. And although we can always make that journey home for good and settle there, most of us need the bright lights and fast pace of big cities to function. And for people like me, we always want to keep our hometown different from where we reside, just for that novelty of being able to escape to the bosom of your family when you are troubled (or in serious trouble). Also, after so long of keeping your families at an arm's distance, most of us can't really deal with living in so close a proximity to them.

Not to say that we do not love our families, we do. Of course we do. We do in our weird little ways.

And thus that explains why you can't really give directions around your own hometown (I gave directions to a friend and out of caution I called my mom to check, and of course, I was giving my friend the wrong direction), or tell people where are the best places to eat and drink. When you are home, you eat at home and rarely have any interest to eat out unless of course, you are going for seafood at Umbai. Now, THAT is a place I know how to go to (although I need to check the direction with my mom first, you know, just in case).

Having been away from our families since we were 13, we also find it easy to relocate. We rarely tie ourselves down to a particular place. That place where we spent 5 years at and then dispersed was just boarding school, that place where we spent 6 years at and then dispersed was just uni, that place where we spent 1 year working was just a transit while we ponder our next move. In fact, every place served as mere transits because we knew we would leave. I am amused at friends who ended up living and working in the same town where they went to school or uni. Kajang as I remember was a small town close enough to KL and barely able to satisfy our needs. Bangi was just that suburb which was slightly better than Shah Alam, at least it didn't have as many confusing roundabouts, I don't know now though. Skudai was a different animal altogether, the people there scared me initially, though during the time when I was almost done with my studies, Starbucks opened their first branch there, and therefore, Skudai had arrived. JB was made up of peculiar people, though of course my JB friends are different. In terms of the daily on-goings, all these places numbed my senses. JB has its quirkiness which made it kind of fun when you were there after a while but not enough to make me stay. Therefore, the amusement I feel when friends decided to settle in those places. And then of course, the extremes are those who grew up, went to school, went to uni, got married and settled down in the same bloody town. These people I sometimes playfully and openly mock, although they are probably scratching their heads looking at my nomadic life and wondering what the hell is it am I looking for shuffling from one place to another?

Where is home then? Is it where our parents live though we barely feel any actual tie to the place itself? Is it where we went to school although we spent every semester shuffling from one dormitory to another, and our perception of that place was confined to the compound of the school? Is it where we went to Uni though we knew since day one we wouldn't want to stay? Is it where our friends we accumulate from school and uni live and work? Is it where we live now though we don't know how long we'll be there? Or is it that place we have yet to live at?

I left home when I was 13. I am now 26 years old. I have been away from my family for 13 years. 13 years is not a short while. A lot had and could happen in 13 years.

I always feel comfortable wherever I go, because adaptation is one of the useful skills the likes of me learned as a boarder. Though it is liberating to know that we are so mobile that given the chance we could easily uproot ourselves and explore a new place, it is also somewhat unsettling to feel at the same time that we are rootless.

So where is home then? Perhaps it is not a place, but rather an ideal we bring with us no matter where we go. Perhaps home is that comforting knowledge that no matter where we are in the world, we still have our families and friends who love and care about us whom we can always visit. Perhaps it is knowing that although we can't call a particular spot our home, the whole country and what it is made up of then, is home. Perhaps to feel at home is to make peace with ourselves and the reason why we struggle is the reason why we feel unsettled.

They say home is where the heart is. I agree. And we, the likes of me, we take our hearts with us wherever we go (the likes of me are also terrible at maintaining relationships come to think of it, and thus we always wrench our hearts back from those who have managed to steal them), and so our homes are with us, always.

Picture credit to the talented Din Dang.

The Light of Courage

My name is Nurul Azreen. It's Arabic so it means something.

Nur means 'light' (not as in weight but as in at the end of the tunnel kinda light). Al means 'the'. Azreen means 'courage'.

The fact that I once managed to score a '0' for my Arabic test (much to the chagrin of my Arabic teacher and an endless source of fun for my friends and family) is probably testimony enough for the fact my grasp of the intricate grammar of the Arabic language is very poor. Hence, I am not sure whether my name means The Light of Courage, as Mr First Boyfriend had once addressed a love letter to my home address (how's the wife doing, luv?), or if it means Light of the Courage or Light of the Courageous Ones.

I have been called brave many times, although I think that was also people being polite when they thought I was being foolhardy. I think in most cases, I am more of the latter but really, to be foolhardy, you need courage. You need to know that things would probably screw up and you should be able to handle it all.

I usually have no problem taking responsibility for my actions. If I think I'm right, I would say so. If I think I'm wrong, then I have no problem owning up and apologize. If I'm in a rather hairy situation of which I think I am being ill-treated, then I will make sure that I get to say what I need to say and then people can make up their minds. Some people describe this action as bravery, for me, it's just about being fair.

I like to think that I am a pretty independent person, a trait that has probably attracted previous boyfriends but at a later stage was definitely an issue (applicable to all relationships I've ever had). I personally disdain any kind of authority and I always treat rules, regulations, and laws more like suggestions of how to act rather than mandatory. This means that I am always in some kind of trouble. But because I'm an incurable optimist, I believe things will always work out in the end.

This is a very self-indulgent post, I realize, but since my life is being toyed with by a higher authority, I need to reassure myself that I do have the courage and strength to fight for it. And also to remind myself that although I have to do most of it on my own, I am never alone in the sense that I have people that care about me. And for that, I am grateful.

Maybe it doesn't matter whether it means The Light of Courage or Light of the Courageous Ones. For all I care it has Light and it has Courage in it, and it's a comforting thought that I can draw strength from my own name.

Thank you Mama and Ayah for giving me a nice name =)

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I feel like writing about change now.

I am one of those people who thrive on change. I am crazy about change. As soon as I'm comfortable with something, I would start yearning for change. Maybe it's the excitement that draws me to it, the fact that I don't really know what's going to happen exactly. I am such an adrenaline junkie when it comes to change.

People change. Whether they like to admit it or not, they do. I know I've changed in certain aspects. It's rather silly to quote things that I've said 5 years ago and still hold me against it now if I feel differently about it now, as I've changed. Maybe for some people it's a sign of inconsistency, but really, you should've evolved from who you were when you were 18.

I believe that we are responsible for our own life and we are the only person that can change it. This thing about changing another person is bull, because you can't change a person who doesn't want to be changed. Trust me, been there, done that. Change must come from within, or it happens gradually over time because of events and circumstances. I once had the ambition to change people. Needless to say, it was a futile endeavour. I realize now to say that wanting to change a person is a very patronizing thing to say. Perhaps we should just focus our energy at changing ourselves to be better.

I believe that we should all strive to be better. But we should do it on our own terms, according to our own needs and personalities. We shouldn't do it according to the terms of others, as it rarely works. It's ok to seek help, but to leave it all to other people doesn't work.

What do I want to change about myself? Well, I want to have a better control of my temper, I want to be a more tactful communicator, and I want to be more confident in general. I also want to be more truthful to myself and address my personal issues properly. Even if I need to seek professional help then so be it. It's about time I admit I'm crazy.

The only thing that doesn't change is change. It's the only constant thing we can rely upon.

So embrace it.