I used to marvel at friends whose frequent relocation is part of their lives. Long ago when I was prodding through the national education system learning addition, subtraction and the like, I would quiz them on how was it like to live wherever they lived. Some lived so far away in Labuan on the other side of Malaysia. Some in Kelantan. Others were from other places. I remember from elementary school, one lived in London.
They moved around because their fathers were working with the government. Teachers, police officers, military men, diplomats, civil servants. Wherever the fathers went, the family would follow.
Seeing new things and meeting new faces must be an exciting experience, I thought.
Back then, I was a smart kid. At least, I would like to think so. In fact, I think, smarter than I am right now. I topped my class often. And when others were talking of Ultraman and Transformers, I already knew who Marcus Aurelius was. But I had little inkling of what was in store for me. Predicting the future was beyond me.
With academic achievement, the reward came with the curse of having no permanent home. By the age of 15, I found myself uprooted from my familiar neighborhood to embark on a journey travelling to places I would not have imagined years ago as a teenager, much less as a child.
From the metropolitan Kuala Lumpur, I stood hundreds of kilometers north in the rural and serene town of Kuala Kangsar. Kuala Kangsar was not as glorious as I had imagined it. Those colonial stories were clearly exaggerated. But it was a magnificent experience nonetheless.
Once done with high school, I moved to Bangi to become a lab rat of the Ministry of Education. There is a new system in place for the bright ones, they said. Yeah, sure, whatever. What I knew was that Bangi, at least the place I was marooned in, was in the middle of nowhere even compared to Kuala Kangsar, although it was closer to the cultural, economic and political center of Malaysia. I did not spend too much time there. Finding myself hating the place, I grabbed the first best chance I could get my hands on.
That brought me to in an even worse placed called Tronoh in Perak. Hot, empty, I call it hell on earth. The best chance, eh? It was a big mistake. Thank the stars I was fated to stay there for no more than 2 weeks. A scholarship to the United States saved me.
From Tronoh, I spent a short period in Shah Alam before setting my feet in the new world. Across the Pacific Ocean, Ann Arbor became my home for the next four years. My years in Ann Arbor were ones that changed everything. That however is a story for another day.
Even in Ann Arbor, I kept moving to new places although it was within the same town.
I will not tell the whole story but suffice to say, I was young, immature and lacking self-confidence. That contributed to me having to move around a lot. Each spring and each summer, I had to move out of the posh Cambridge House on State Street to somewhere near north campus or closer to the University Hospital.
Moving can be fun, especially with friends. However, after doing it so many times, it became tiring and old. It was, and still is stressful. My friends decided enough was enough. I did not do the same, even though I hated it. I was stupid. I continued doing the same thing over and over again. I somehow refused to break the Sisyphean cycle. In a year, I found myself moving at least twice.
The biggest relocation ever for me was from Ann Arbor back to Kuala Lumpur. This is the hardest decision I had to make so far. It is the hardest decision because I did not want to go back. Ann Arbor, decidedly, was my home. I was tired. I want, for once, to stay somewhere familiar. I want a home and the tree town was my home.
I returned to Malaysia, regardless.
Malaysia was a country that I no longer recognized then. Four years could do that. New buildings, new roads, new places and new faces. Never mind the heat and humidity. There was no rest, physically and mentally.
Mentally because I discovered that the culture in Malaysia as suffocating. I did not realize that previously. The freedom that I tasted the previous four years was no longer there. And the paternalistic atmosphere was just everywhere. There was no escape. I despised that. And I rebelled. But I was stuck in Malaysia. I did try to get out of the country and some friends did connect me with something abroad. But I, somehow, did not take it up.
Once, I joked to a friend about the supposedly five stages of grief. There are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. I progressed from denial, to anger, to bargaining, to depression and then violently returned to the state of denial instead of progressing to the final stage. That is partly why I am in Australia now. I refused to accept the fact that I was in Malaysia, only that this time, I did something about it. The financial crisis, and a little bit of luck, made it possible for me to do that.
Tomorrow, after spending over five months at a place where I am in right now, I will move yet again to new place in Sydney. I dread tomorrow’s moving but the place that I am moving to in many ways is better than where I am at the moment. It is much farther from the university but I think I would enjoy the walk. I love walking, and maybe this is the time I should do more of it.
I can explore Sydney’s suburb too by doing so. I love the stairs around Forest Lodge and Glebe. There is something charming about them, the stairs. Old, they are. It reminds me of those stairs in Keramat, going through the Indonesian squatters that is no more, where military residential complex now stands.
But I like where I am right now as well, even if it is a bit small and cramp. I have always lived like a spartan. I do not need much to live. So, the small space does not disturb me too much. As long as I have a space of my own, I am fine.
I like it here because the cats on the streets, the neighbor who plays his violin on the weekends and the pide place. I like my current house mates too. It took time to develop friendship with them but it worked out in the end. How sad it is to finally having to move out and start anew on building relationship with new people.
But sigh, life moves on.
