Beth and Jo

Beth lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way, -
"I don't know how to express myself, and shouldn't try to any one but you, because I can't speak out, except to my old Jo. I only mean to say, that I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long. I'm not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I'd do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you all did. I couldn't seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven"

-Little Women, Louisa May Alcott.

And This Is (Just One of The Reasons) Why Paul McCartney Is Awesome

All the lonely people,

where do they all come from?

All the lonely people,

Where do they all belong?

Arrival

9th February 2011

... Arrival day. ANU's huge. Canberra's lovely. My room is okay. In fact everything is, except for the toilets which don't have pipes. Yes I'm okay, and Australians are very pleasant people...

17th February 2012

I've just arrived. New carpet. Felt like I've only been away for only a while. Music playing downstairs - O-Week party tonight. 

New SR, nice guy called Tristan, whom I've created an impression of being an extremist within seconds of our acquaintanceship. Made me laugh at the nameframe he installed on my door while I was away - 'Karim' (saw me laughing alone at the door, add nutter to the impression). Cece, Eva, and Shaneel (with his new fridge) are still my  neighbors. Max's room has a new tenant- Daniel. I'll miss the study groupmate/tutor/confidante in him.

Packing should have been a breeze, only it's not. Unpacking a lot of things I want stowed away from my mind. Finding things that were never mine in the first place. Thought about what Ani said to me at the airport, and what I have been thinking of, all summer. 

Journey has been okay. Still managing well after close to 40 hours of travelling. Went through two jet-lag sessions in the process. And would you know it, when the bus came to the Condamine Street stop it started raining heavily, thunders included. And I thought Canberra's best was weak drizzles.

Met an Indonesian-speaking Aussie who helped me put my 40 kg worth of stuff on the bus. Met Dan Rose, the new FRC president who used to help me sort out my internet connection, and he did not open the front door for me (mind you - 40 kgs of stuff, drenched in rain, no proper hygiene whatsoever for the last day and a half). Let me wait for the Duty Warden instead.

Have yet to call home. Have yet to send that dreaded email. Have yet to catch up with fellow Malaysians. Have yet to acquire secondhand textbooks (and, by extension, have yet to start the dreaded readings) for start of uni next week. Have yet to do the common registrations housekeeping.

Have yet to leave home, actually. 

Have yet to leave my sisters. Have yet to leave my parents. Have yet to leave my uncles, my aunts, my grandmothers. Have yet to leave the person I was when I was with them. 

When I sob at the thought of them, I realized that they are probably the only people I ever sincerely loved.

Trespass

You take me on a jolly walk

And I wandered across your kindness

Foolish me, I should have walked away.

Usurer!

Sweet talk me to loans I can never repay

And you think you did me a lifetime of favour.

The Rooster Coop

"Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent - as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way - to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key to his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse."

- The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga.

Little Willow

Karbala.

"They would have brought you down for the same reason they massacred them"

Faisal Tehrani.

"Be wary of Faisal Tehrani," said she, "he's a Shiite propagator"


And they'd call you a Sunni propagator.

Long, Windy Road Home

4 days in Melbourne, 6 days in Melaka, a day in Labuan, and 3 days in Kota Kinabalu.

I have seen a universe outside my consciousness for quite some time. And it is a timely reminder of my existence across these just as much as my current one. Am I older, wiser? I shall not ascribe. Poorer, certainly.

Previously I have dawned upon a supposition that maybe, nowhere is home. But home, as I learned, is as much a product of one's attitudes, of one's willingness to fit in rather than a willful resignation.

I have lost any sense of articulation, you see. And I end up saying things which make little sense to me, even now. But worn out I am, at last, and I could wish for little else besides for time to pass me by, until it's time for me to come home.