Of My Moleskine Notebook

So it’s that time of the year again.

That time of the year around the Gregorian-calendar-using world, where we all can’t help but get a little retrospective. Where we find ourselves in airport waiting rooms, our near-empty schools or offices, where we can actually cruise at 40km/h on the main road, or where we find ourselves stuck in one massive traffic jam of one exodus or another; looking back on the year we had. Or perhaps, even the decade.

Various newspapers have been publishing lists of the best and the worst of what has been christened the Noughties since late October, but I’ve only started thinking about this a few days ago. It then hit me completely when I was sitting on the loo a few minutes ago nursing the latest Monocle, reading Tyler Brule’s closing letter at the back.

While this year has been rather quiet on this blog front, it was rather eventful for me.

I actually started the year on the wrong foot. I couldn’t get into two boarding schools which I thought would hold the keys to The University and The Bright Future I had always envisioned. To add on to the disgrace, I had only a few days earlier, made one of the biggest brouhahas in my teenage life by having some friends at my house while my parents were out, and while it started with chicken and peas, it ended with the entire group scrubbing out pieces of vomit from my parent’s persian rug. The ‘rents arrived home the next day and I was grounded for the next 3 months.

So with my tail between my legs, I redeemed the bursary I won at Sunway two years ago in a quiz. The same scholarship which I had overlooked because I thought my future was to be pinstriped shirts and grey blazers, vast halls and prep and not the more laid back humble atmosphere of frappes, sandals and 5 minute walk to a mall. I wasn’t appalled, I was crying my eyes out.

But things happen for a reason and the reasons soon came to make sense. I met a whole new set of people who are chilled out and going through the same cross-roads as I am. I spent my time doing Model UN and doing work for two student councils. I took my own bloody sweet time to get my driving license. I bought my first pair of Converse shoes (which I would never have thought of doing in a prep school, God no). I have successfully worn out those shoes. I loss half a dozen debates but always feeling amazing afterward. I finally won my battle with Math. I went to Langkawi with two crazy girls and brought back stories we’ll still laugh about in years to come. I fell in love. I did my SATs, TWICE.

I grew up.

Going to Sunway made me realize one essential fact I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. It made me realize that it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter which school you went to before, unheard or international, private or shit-comprehensive. It doesn’t matter what your background is, how you speak, what you like or what you wear. You are made up of more than the some of all your parts, and people accept you for the bigger picture. Everything else becomes obsolete.

The bigger picture also meant that despite not having to pay the equivalent of a small car for A-Levels, I still had the chance to run after that Bright Future I thought I had lost. Sure, circumstances were not ideal, I was still enjoying the distractions of having a freaking mall on my doorstep, and I didn’t have Mander Portman Woodward coaching me day and night. I still faced plenty of discouragement from all corners, but at the end of the day I filled in those blue forms and I got the interview. I got vast amounts of time from teachers who were willing to spend extra time with me to learn. So I can’t say I’m any further from The University whose picture I’ve kept in my notebook since Form 2.

Though while at some junctions I found myself making choices, at times I found that life makes them for you. A year ago I was reading Elaine’s US uni application essays prepping myself to know what to say when the day came that I would be doing the same. A year later I was fighting with my parents and it came to the conclusion that I was not applying. At least unless after my A-Levels. I’m still sore about it. But if one thing this year’s taught me, is things always come through differently than you would think. So dream big.

Tomorrow morning I’m trying to break my record and wake up before 7 since I’ve come home. I’m going to return a long overdue library book which somehow renewed itself while I was away. I’ll perhaps make my last run up the three flights of stairs to my locker.

So, in terms of an education, 2009 was just as it was. Laid back but not far from luminous. Here’s retrospective for you. Haha

It’s my last night in the UK, and my first and final attempt to write.

Lying awake in bed fighting off the vestiges of jet lag nearly three weeks ago, I knew I felt odd; yet I couldn’t put my finger on it.I lie awake having words form at the back of my eyelids, never finding them again in the morning. And tonight, like so many other nights before, the frustration takes me in disgust.

A holiday is precisely a vacation. A moment in time where one vacates ones routine in order to embrace things beyond the confines of daily life. This trip has been about vacating the mind. I wake, I talk, I eat and sometimes, if I feel like it, I read.

It’s so beautiful how comforting it is to arrive in a foreign land and stock back on creature comforts that make you feel like you’re home. It’s self-reassuring when you go to the news agents knowing exactly what paper you read, or political magazine you align to, and which flavour crisps you love.

Or even something as simple as going back to the estate where you spent a good part of your childhood. Having clear kodak memory of what tree used to be where, which slot opens the door; and as you run through the barns and private rooms, that you know the exact overlay of the land, just as you have years before.

Yet the current affairs section of the paper -while it may interest you terribly- covers a domestic issue that doesn’t concern you in the least. The political mag you got  fights for the advancement of a nation in which you have no right to vote, and while you support their effort, the MPs that catch your attention are continents away from the constituency where you live.

Admittedly, some things remain constant. Nothing much gets in the lay of the land; and architectural fortitude has lengthened the permanence of buildings.  Yet we always fail to see that the people that we relate to to these buildings are more evanescent than ever. People age, people settle, people then will pass.

Just as, while people roughly stay the same, the mind of the growing young adult does not.

So does it surprise me how much it hurts – or how it doesn’t really – feeling so fascinated and belong, in a place where you know is not yours to call home.

Home is where the heart is. I love this city, and hopefully, someday; it’ll love me back too.